Anawrahta

Statue of King Anawrahta in front of the Military Academy in Pyin U Lwin

King Anawrahta (also Aniruddha, Anoarahta and Anoa-ra-hta-soa; Burmese အနော်ရထာ, IPA ənɔ̀ja̰tʰa) was ruler of Bagan between 1044 and 1078 and for the first time united the various empires on what is now Burma .

Anawrahta was the son of Kunhsaw Kyaunghpyu , who took over the throne from Nyaung-u Sawrahan and was in turn overwhelmed by his sons Kyiso and Sokka-te , who forced him to become a monk. When Anawrahta grew up, he challenged the remaining brother Sokka-te to a hand-to-hand fight and beat him. Anawrahta then offered his father the rulership, but he refused and continued his monastic life. So Anawrahta took over the throne himself in 1044.

He made a pilgrimage to Ceylon , from which he returned home to convert his country from Ari Buddhism to Theravada Buddhism. To achieve this goal, he appointed the famous monk Arahan of Thaton to be in charge. In 1057 Anawrahta penetrated Thaton on the pretext that it had refused to borrow the Pali canon from Bagan . He returned to Bagan with the Mon king Manutha as a hostage. Between 1057 and 1059 Anawrahta and his troops went to Nánzhāo to look for relics of the Buddha (a tooth of the Buddha ). Upon his return, the Shan chiefs swore allegiance and Anawrahta married Sao Monhla, Princess of Moguang , who was under a Shan chief. In 1071 Anawrahta received the complete Tipitaka from Sri Lanka. Buddhists from the Dai region in southern Yunnan and Laos , Thailand and India , where Buddhism had been suppressed at the time, came to Bagan to study when Anawrahta moved the Burmese center for Buddhism from Thaton to the north of the country.

Anawrahta is the founder of the Lokananda and Shwezigon Pagodas in Bagan and Nyaung U respectively . Within two centuries, Theravada Buddhism was firmly established in Burma and later spread over large areas of Southeast Asia.

Anawrahta was forcibly removed from his throne by General Kyanzittha , who was said to have been in love with his bride, a princess of a Mon kingdom.

In Rangoon , Anawrahta Street in the center commemorates the former ruler of Bagan.

literature

• Charles Higham : Encyclopedia of Ancient Asian Civilizations . Facts on Files, New York 2004, ISBN 0-8160-4640-9 .
• Maung Htin Aung: A History of Burma . 1967
• GE Harvey: History of Burma . 1967