Botataung Paya, Yangon

22 July 2013 Waso full moon day

The Botataung Paya sits beside the river in Yangon and is unusual in several ways. Inside, instead of the usual solid core, beneath which are enshrined relics of the Buddha, there’s a maze of rooms. At the entrance, a notice read ‘Sacred hair relics of the Buddha enshrined and exhibited in an ivory shrine studded and decorated with gold, diamond and precious jewels.’ The shrine was further protected by glass and iron bars and only viewed through a small window. You must queue behind other visitors, because only one or two people can view at a time. We reached the window and gazed down in amazement at the gold-leaf and glass cabinet and gold-leaf, walk-in safe to one side of a deep ‘well’ plunging many metres and lined in gold-leaf too. We gazed ahead at the Buddha and the dozens of caskets of paper money around his feet donated by pilgrims. All were full to the brim; many spilled over in a waterfall of money running down the well. I made way for another visitor and watched as he paid homage. As it’s impossible to shiko head touching ground at the same time as you throw in a donation, he did three standing shikos then threw. His note dislodged previous ones and, to his joy, his note remained on the pile. Other pilgrims were not so lucky, they dislodged previous notes, but theirs floated down with them into the gold painted void.

The corridors inside this round stupa formed a square and every corridor turned at a sharp right angle to the next to form a maze. Nearest the Buddha image, the corridor’s gold-leaf walls were clad with glass to protect them from pilgrims’ fingers. Around the first corner, behind locked grilles and glass, ranged row upon row of mini-sized, different-style zedis. One glassed, grilled and guarded cabinet had a very unusual hti. Five or six rings diminished in size as the hti (umbrella shape) built upwards. Hanging from the rings were antique coins: the head on some seemed to belong to Britain’s monarch King George V. We continued walking and came to a Myanmar king’s silver scroll case. When the king wished to send a letter to one of his ministers, he gave the scroll to his most-trusted servant to deliver. The message was not written on paper, but on cotton with golden writing. I turned the next corner. By now, far from the Buddha’s relics, the walls were not clad in gold-leaf, but in tiny mirrors forming a mosaic. The corridors continued. The display cases continued. Curiously, one case that didn’t, to my eyes, contain anything more special that the previous, had a huge cage around it that ballooned out and bore a hefty padlock.

Returning to the world outside we found a large notice that interpreted the different parts of the zedi. They are much the same as any paya (pagoda) of this age. At the top was a diamond orb, then a jeweled vane. Moving in a downward direction was the cone and then came the hti, The hti is the final spear-like ornament that adorns the top of a paya. Below the hti came lotus buds, lotus petals, mouldings, and an inverted bowl. Here the whole graceful bell-shaped paya sat on a several-tiered terrace. To deter would be villains who might covet the diamond orb, around the bell there were two seriously strong rings of down-curved spiked palings. But they didn’t frighten the crows: they perched above and cawed loudly.

If a Myanmar visits an astrologer because he or she feels they are having a run of bad luck, the astrologer often suggests releasing birds, fish or as at Botathaung Paya turtles, from captivity into the ‘wild’. As it is unlikely the population would stumble across birds, catfish or turtles, the gawpaka or committee of people responsible for looking after the paya, provides the birds, fish and turtles for those wanting to make merit or to change their luck. The huge tank at Botathaung contained more than 50 turtles and on Waso - full-moon day - the locals were making merit by throwing in bread and vegetables. There were several species of turtles judging by their appearance and size. Some had virtual road maps on their shell, others had a green stripe down their face. The star, huge and beautifully bedecked with spots, would have weighed about 50 kilogrammes.

Less surprising to find in the grounds of a paya was an ancient ‘hti’. The hti here was about 15 feet tall. It stood on the ground and was protected by a tall steel fence: it may have been the original, several hundred years old. Maybe it had become fragile and was threatened by wind gusts or more likely, a wealthy patron had felt the need to make merit by donating a new hti, perhaps studded with precious stones.

At all Buddhist shrines there are donations of coconuts, bananas, flowers and money and on full-moon days hundreds of worshippers will leave an enormous number of these donations and these the gawpaka take away as their ‘reward’ for looking after the shrines.