The legends of Phaung Daw Oo

The history of the Phaung Daw Oo Pagoda Festival

As with all legends the details differ but the essence of the story remains the same. Two of the legends are recounted here, first is the official version as told in a Burmese handbook.

One of the powerful kings who lived in Pagan in the 11^th century was King Alaung Situ.  He wanted to be a Buddhist missionary. He decided to travel with a boat. He had a lot of power though he was not a Buddha, nor was he a nat (nats are part of the spirit world of Myanmar). He had power because he was a king. When he pointed with his finger there would automatically be water in a river or a canal. When he was travelling he met many kinds of people including a good nat. The nat asked the king to stop the boat because he wanted to speak to him. The nat wanted to give the king something special, because he was visiting other Buddhists. The nat gave him some wood called tarakan, which is something like sandlewood and has a wonderful smell. The nat told the king he should make a woodcarving of the Buddha image. When King Alaung Situ gave the nat the image, it was very small only about four inches in height. The king promised the nat he would make five Buddha images with the wood.

The king put the five images in the boat and continued his journey. At Inle Lake he found Indein village. This village had its own king. Kings are known as sawbwas in Shan State. King Alaung Situ gave the Shan sawbwa the five images. He was honoured to receive such a gift from the king. These images have been held around Inle Lake for over 523 years. Around the neighbouring villages the people were excited to come and see the images. So the Shan sawbwa decided once a year in October, he would take the Buddha images by boat around the lakeside villages.

On one occasion they had a problem with a hurricane with too much rain and wind. The boat was swamped and one of the images was lost. Try as they might, they could not find it. They did manage to salvage the boat and return to Indein village. When they opened the door of the Phaung Daw Oo monastery, they found the lost image inside. They were very surprised. The sawbwa said the image must have been found by the good nat. So then there were five images as before.

The following year the sawbwa planned to take the images around all the Inle Lake villages once again by boat. The people thought they must leave one image in the Kyaung (monastery) to prevent hurricanes. So they left the one that had been lost last time.  Ever since only four images are carried around each year and until the present time there have been no more hurricanes.