Water, Ritual, and Prosperity at the Classical Capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th Centuries CE): Archaeological Exploration of the Tuyin-Thetso “Water Mountain” and the Nat Yekan Sacred Water Tank | ၁၁ မွ ၁၄ရာစ( ◌ျမ+,ာ့ ဂႏ◌ၲဝင34ဂံေ◌ခတ္၏ ေ◌ရအသံ◌(◌းခ်မႈ၊ ႐ိ(းရာေဓလ့ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ သာယာေဝ◌ျပာမႈ - အGထတIJမတK ားရာ နတ္ေ◌ရကန္ ◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့တရ( ငကN Oိ4းေ◌တာင္ ေ◌ရအသံ◌(◌းခ်မႈဆိ(ငQာ ေ◌ရွးေ◌ဟာင္◌းသ(ေ◌တသန စSးစမ္◌းရွာေ◌ြဖ◌ျခင္◌း

Abstract

The IRAW@Bagan project is aimed at developing an integrated socio-ecological history for residential patterning, agricultural practices, and water management at the classical Burmese (Bama) capital of Bagan, Myanmar (11th to 14th centuries CE). As part of this long-term research program investigations have been initiated in the Tuyin-Thetso uplands, located 11 km southeast of Bagan’s walled and moated epicenter. This mountainous area figures prominently in the chronicles of early Bagan, given that it was one of five places around the city that a royal white elephant carrying a Buddhist tooth-relic kneeled down, prompting King Anawrahta (1044-1077 CE) to build a pagoda (i.e., temple) there. Numerous 13th century religious monuments were subsequently built on the Tuyin Range. Recent explorations in these uplands have drawn attention to an additional feature of historical significance, a rock-cut tank located along the eastern edge of the Thetso-Taung ridge. Referred to by local villagers as Nat Yekan (Spirit Lake), this reservoir appears to have been integral not only to the initial collection and subsequent redistribution of water across the Bagan plain via a series of interconnected canals and reservoirs, but also, through its associated iconographic imagery, it may have been intended to symbolically purify this water, enhancing its fertility prior to its flowing into the city’s peri-urban zone. Hydrological modelling, excavations, and both iconographic and epigraphic analysis are used to build a multilayered understanding of Nat Yekan’s economic, political, religious, and ideological significance during Bagan’s classical era.IRAW Bagan စီမံကိန္◌းသည္ ၁၁ရာစ0မွ ၁၄ရာစ0အ4တင္◌း စ789ငန: ္◌းကားခ့ေဲ ◌သာ◌ျမ@Aာတိ0႔၏ ပ0ဂံႏ◌ိ◌0ငGံေ◌တာ◌္4တင္ ဘက္ေ◌ပါင္◌းစံ◌0ေ◌ပါင္◌းစည္◌းထားေ◌သာ လLမႈေ◌ဂဟ သမင0ိ ္◌းေ◌ၾကာင္◌း◌ျဖစ္ေ◌သာ လLေ◌နထ0ိငႈA ပံ◌စ0 ံ၊ စ0ိကး8် ေိ ◌ဳ ရး ေဓလစ့ ႐0ိကA်ား◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ ေ◌ရအရင◌္ းအျမစသV ံ◌0◌းခ်မႈမ်ားအား ◌ျပ@Wည္ေ◌ဖာ◌္ထ0တXန ္အဓိကရY7Xယ8ါသည္။ အဆိ0ပါ ေ◌ရရွည္ သ0ေ◌တသန စီမံကိန္◌း ေ◌လ့လာေ◌ရးအားဗဟ0ိအခ်ကV ခ်ာ◌ျဖစ္ေ◌သာ ပ0ဂံၿမိေဳ႕ဟာင္◌း၏ ေအရွေ႕တာငက` ္ ၁၁ကီလ0ိမီတာေ◌ဝး4ကာေ◌သာ တ0ရင္ ◌ႏ◌ွင◌္ ့ သကbိcးေ◌တာင္ ဧရိယာမွ စတငWcပ္ေ◌ဆာငပeဲ ့ ါသည္။ေ၎တာငgန္◌းဧရိယာသည္ ပ0ဂံရာဇဝ9ငgင္ ေအနာ◌္ရထာမင္◌းႀကီး (၁၀၄၄-၁၀၇၇ AD)အဓိဠာန္◌ျပဳ၍ လႊတW ိcက္ေ◌သာ ဗ0ဒၶျမYတbယ္ေ◌တာ◌ ္ တင္ေ◌ဆာငqည္◌ ့ဆင္◌ျဖဴေ◌တာ◌္ကိန္◌းဝပXာ ငါးေ◌နရာ4တင္ တစecအပါအဝင္◌ျဖစqည္◌ ့ထငာX းs ေအရးပါသည◌္ ့ ေ◌နရာလဲ ◌ျဖစ8ါသည္။ မ်ားြစာေ◌သာ ၁၃ရာစ0 ပ0ဂံေ◌ခတ္သာသနကိ ေအဆာကVအံ◌0 မ်ားလည္◌း တ0ရင္ေ◌တာင္ေ◌ၾကာ တစ္ေ◌လ်ာက္တည္ေ◌ဆာက:ား ၾကသည္။ အဆိ0ပါေ◌တာငgန္◌း4တင္ လေကgလာ စLးစမ္◌းရွာေ◌ြဖမႈသ7Wည္◌း သမ0ိင္◌းတ@vိcးအရ သာသနကိ ေအဆာကVအံ◌0မ်ား ကဲ့သ0ိ႔ေအရးပါေ◌သာသကbိcးေ◌တာင္၏ ေအရွ႕ဖကV ြစန္◌း4တင္ တ7Xိေs◌သာ ေ◌က်က္ေ◌ရက@ာV းအထLး◌ျပဳေ◌လ့လာ◌ျခင္◌း◌ျဖစqည္။ ေ◌ဒသခံ wxာသLwxာသားမ်ားက ေ၎က်ာက္ေ◌ရက@Vားနတ္ေ◌ရက@yc ေ◌ခၚဆိ0မႈအရ ေ၎ေရလွာင{@|ကီးသည္ ကနဦး ေ◌ရစ0ေ◌ဆာင္◌းသိ0ေ◌လွာင~ပီးေ◌နာက္ ပ0ဂံ4လင္◌ျပင္ တစ္ေ◌လ်ာကXိ s ေ◌ေရလွာင@{ ာ်A းတLးေ◌◌ျမာင္◌းမ်ားႏ◌ွင◌္ ့ ဆကqယ္၍ ေ◌xျပ@Wည ္ ◌ျဖန္ေ႔ေဝပးယံ◌0သာ မကဘ ဲ4ထင္◌းထ0ထားေ◌သာ ႐0ပWံ◌0◌း႐0ပ္◌ႂ4ကမ်ားသ7Wည္◌း ကန္ေ◌ရအား ဒ0မဂၤလသန္႔ရွင္◌းစငက‚ ယAႈေသဘာေ◌ဆာင္၍ ◌ျဖန္ေ႔ဝျခင္◌း◌ျဖင္◌ ့ ပ0ဂံၿမိ႕ဳအနးီ တဝ0ိက္၎ကန္ေ◌ရရာရွိရာ ေ◌နရာေ◌ဒသမ်ား သာယာစ78င ္ ြဖံ႔ၿဖိးေဳ ◌အာင ္ ◌ျပဳလ0ပမbီ ံထားသ7ycမွတƒ „ရပါသည္။ ဂႏ◌ဝၲ ငc8 ဂံ ေ◌ခတV 4တင္◌း ထငာX းs ခ့ေဲ ◌သာ နတ္ေ◌ရကန္◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ပတqတ†က္◌ႏြ◌ယ္ေ◌ေနသာ စီးြပားေ◌ရး၊ ◌ႏ◌ိ◌0ငGံေ◌ရး၊ ဘာသာေ◌ရးစသည္◌ေ့ သဘာတရားေ◌ရးရာ အဆင◌္ ဆ့ င္◌အ့ ား နားလည္ေ◌စရန္ေ◌ရအရင္◌းအျမစVသံ◌0◌းခ်သိပၸံပညာ၊ ေ◌ရွးေ◌ဟာင္◌းသ0ေ◌တသန တLးေ◌ဖာ◌္မႈ◌ႏ◌ွင္◌အ့ တL ႐0ပWံ◌◌0 း႐0ပ◌္ ေႂ 4ကလ့လာမႈ ◌ႏ◌ွင္◌ ့ ေ◌က်ာကbာ စိစစ္ေ◌4တ႕ရွိခ်ကA်ားအားအသံ◌0◌း◌ျပဳ ေ◌လ့လာ တင္◌ျပ4သားပါမည္။

Water, Ideology, and Kingship at the Ancient Burmese Capital of Bagan, Myanmar: An Iconographic Analysis of the Nat Yekan Sacred Water Tank

“…Integral to this system was a large rock-cut tank with three stairways and a series of auspicious base-reliefs carved into its walls (Figures 4 and 5). Located on the western edge of the Thetso-Taung portion of the Tuyin range, the Nat Yekan tank first collected runoff from the surrounding uplands, and when filled, diverted the overflow into what is now a seasonally dry water fall that once fed the Mya Kan reservoir (Iannone et al 2019;Macrae et al 2022). Although more subtle than its counterparts found at places like Angkor, Bagan's water management system was still effective at collecting and redistributing water from the monsoon rains.…”