HALIN, PYU CULTURAL WORLD HERITAGE LISTED

World Heritage Listed Halin

Thirteen kilometres from Shwebo is the World Heritage listed site of Halin.

Radiocarbon dating from earthenware just outside the city show the area was settled some 4,500 years before present.

Halin was one of three Pyu cities that arose in the valley between the Ayeyawaddy and Mu Rivers between the second century BC and the ninth century AD. There were three Pyu cities: Beikthano, Halin and Sri Ksetra. They were a literate and cultured race with their own language and literature and were master craftsmen.

Although Pyu cities disappeared in the ninth century, the Mya Zedi inscription of the 10^th century, written in four languages, includes Pyu script, so some of them were still around. Maybe they assimilated into the new kingdom of Pagan. The other three languages inscribed are Bamar, Mon and Pali. We know the Pyu were in contact with the people of Rakhaing from at least the 5^th century, because in Vesali there are Buddha images showing the Pyu stylisation. In Mrauk U there’s an inscription in Pyu script dating from the 6^th century. The Pyu became devoted Buddhists: so much so, they would not wear silk, as they abhorred the taking of life.

The Pyu were a gentle people: but they had their moments. Allegedly they invaded Rakhaing and tried to steal the Mahamuni Buddha. In 6^th century Vesali, there was a royal shrine which legend says is the burial ground of a Pyu king and his army. Perhaps these were the aspiring looters.

Halin is a huge archeological site covering 540 hectares. The brick walls extend 3.2 kilometres from north to south and 1.6 kilometres from east to west. The foundations of the city have 12 city walls each many metres thick made of terracotta bricks in which you can still see the rice husks that were used in their manufacture.

In the site museum are objects ploughed up by farmers. From the Neolithic came stone tools and rings. From the Bronze Age wire bundles and bronze tools and from the Iron Age came earthenware in terracotta.

There were accessible routes from Halin to ancient silver mines and they manufactured their own silver coins. A nearby hill, Dutin-taung was a source of chalcedony a semi-precious greenish coloured stone that they carved into beads and small figures of elephants. 

Beside and beneath one entrance gate, excavations descend many metres.  The area is enclosed in concrete and has a roof making it a shady place to view the albeit rather grizzly skeletons. Whether these people were buried alive to protect the inhabitants of the city, as was the custom in some ages, is unclear, but there were rather too few to indicate a cemetery.   

Myo Daunt Pagoda Festival

I was surprised that Shwebo did not seem crowded bearing in mind there was a pagoda festival. I was even more surprised when I learned there are 17 paya or pagodas around Shwebo and 17 Buddhist festivals take place over five months. The one we’ll attend is the Myo Daunt Paya, five kilometres out of town.

In the centre of the town, built by King Alaungsithu 251 years ago and maintained by King Narapatisithu stands the Shwe Tan Sar pagoda. This is not the largest or most famous of Shwebo payas, nor is it the one with the festival, but is the most historic. It is undergoing a yearlong renovation by the Ministry of Culture and will be even more sumptuous than it is now. Inside the main hall where the populous come to pay their respects to the Buddha towering pillars reach from floor to ceiling. These are covered not in gold paint as is often the case, but gold leaf. The upper parts are left plain and smooth. Lower down the gold has been molded into figures of elephants, angels and devas who leap with one bent leg to the front and the other bent to the back – very striking. 

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Oh this is more like it: hundreds of people, hundreds of motorbikes and buses full, really full, of people are headed for the Myo Daunt paya festival. As well as paying homage to the Buddha, the people come to socialize and to sell whatever they produce. The atmosphere is one of a fair and a party. We were advised not to come in the evening when there are real parties and everyone is drunk!

Shwebo, north of Mandalay, is famous for the quality of its rice, its woven and colourful cotton blankets and for thanakha, which is the fawnish whitish powder that men, women and children wear on their face.

Win Kyaing’s family has thanakha trees and if things go wrong in the future they can sell the trees, so they are a good investment. The stumps don’t need to be dug up as the tree will grow again from the roots. It is only the trunk that produces fine quality thanakha: branches are pruned away and it’s the quality of the bark that indicates the quality of the powder within.  Thanakha works as a sunscreen and insect repellent. It is used medicinally and it covers pimples and moles. Women keep a log or two at home and grind it in a little pestle and mortar each day.

Commercially, the cut trees are put in a tank with water and clay to make a slurry which eventually turns into paste. The little town of Yesagyo about a hundred kilometres from Shwebo makes incense sticks using thanakha which smells delightful when lit. Almost every household would have an appropriate little machine and the producers can sell a bundle of 200 sticks for about Ky200: (Ky1,000 = $1) certainly not a fortune but at least they can be made at home.

As always the passages leading to the pagoda were crowded with stalls. Clothes stalls, children’s toys, food in wide array, flowers, bananas and green coconuts to be given as offerings to the Buddha.

This paya had an ingenious feature that I’d not seen elsewhere. We headed toward men chanting and an orchestra playing.

Off to one side was a pulley reaching from the ground to the top of the paya. But this was no ordinary pulley. This was a winged horse pulling a winged chariot in which two devas sat. One deva in particular was bending forward and paying homage to the Buddha as the chariot jogged upwards. On the ground a queue of mostly women carried what I thought were prayer sticks: a small folded paper in the top of each stick. But then I noticed another queue buying small gold leaf squares with paper folded around them. So the prayer sticks were carriers of gold. Usually these would gild a Buddha image and indeed all four were being decorated in the usual way. But the bell of this pagoda needed gilding too, hence the ingenious pulley.

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Nat Pwe

As the Buddha is not seen as a god, there’s no contradiction in respecting or even worshipping spirits, and every year around Myanmar there are festivals called nat pwe: spirit festivals with orchestras, dancing and present giving. The pwe may be both modern and religious. In some, modern music plays until midnight and then the players act out tales of the Buddha’s life.

The nat or spirit world is almost as central as Buddhism and certainly much older. Nats can be protectors of cities, houses, people, crops and land. But though nats may seem good and helpful, they need propitiation. Around every paya (pagoda) in the land - and there are thousands - nat shrines dot the perimeter. When people come to worship the Buddha, they also make offerings to the nats.

Yadanagu Pwe honours the most famous female nat, Popa Medaw. She was an ogress before she became a nat and now lives on the 737-metre high extinct volcano: Mount Popa, which is southeast of Bagan. Her main festival, on Mount Popa in December, is a hugely important affair.

Smaller pwe are doubtless of no less importance to people who hold them in their homes and a riot of decibels alerted me to one in a Mandalay quarter. Spirit nats have earthly wives called nat kadaw: men dressed up and often wildly made up as women. This nat kadaw wore a gold longyi (sarong), which touched the ground and had a trailing train that had to be flicked up (or tripped over). At some stage in the proceedings the nat kadaw goes into a trance and their particular nat speaks and acts through them.

Away to one side was the band: cymbals crashed, drums walloped, a xylophone pinged and bamboos clacked with short, sharp sounds. A horn completed the ensemble. There’s was unbelievable noise, which precluded all talking, all hearing and much thinking. The watching crowd included men and children, but by far the majority were women. One nat kadaw picked up fruit from the nat shrine and then from several dishes that women offered. She nibbled, or sucked, and then put each piece back. Perhaps the fruit was now considered sacred and those who ate it would get some sort of blessing (or a cold as the nat kadaw seemed to have one).

On a huge table stood various nat images in their specific costumes and with their specific attendants that watched the show. The nat kadaw took a rigid fish with its tail in the air (it was cooked) and presented it to the band. Perhaps they’d stop playing to eat it. (No, they didn’t.) Then two women held a cloth across the ‘stage’, which was really just a clearing in the crowd. Wildly waving bunches of Eugenia leaves, the nat kadaw, dressed in a gold longyi with pink accessories, ducked beneath the cloth and emerged on ‘our’ side. Maybe the cloth was the division between the nat heaven and the human world, I thought. Later I found I was completely wrong. The audience was enjoying the performance up to a point, but they also seem pretty scared at times. Now on ‘our’ side of the cloth, the nat kadaw lunged towards some people (including me, but I kept my eyes down writing). There was more touching of fruit and then wiping the hand that touched it over people who seemed curiously ungrateful. As the nat kadaw lunged at women (there were few men), they cowered away, but I did notice that some gave her small notes, which she sprinkled, along with flower petals, on a cushion and longyi laid out on the floor. Her attendants scooped up the longyi with the petals. I learned later that this, together with the money, went to the organizer of the pwe. She would distribute the petals. Suddenly, half the audience seemed possessed. There they all were in a circle: small old women and stout middle-aged matrons all swaying and stomping in time to the band.  

Whole hands of bananas and large green coconuts were thrown in the air (at which point I put my camera away). Judging by the amount of fruit on the table, if they were going to dance for each piece, this pwe was going to last some time. And there wasn’t just fruit and vegetables, there were two cooked chickens complete with heads (but no feathers). They looked more alive than many of the live chickens around here.

Later, I was disabused of my notions about nats. Apparently the people want the nats to leave them alone not, as I had thought, to encourage them. They must be propitiated at all times otherwise dire happenings happen. At times, the people make promises to the nats that if such and such good thing happened, they would give offerings to the appropriate nat. And I learned that there is no such thing as a nat heaven. No, the nat kadaw who crept beneath the cloth was a monkey nat. She was imitating how monkeys can get in anywhere. Her poking and pawing of the audience was for them to give her money. This might have been why some looked so scared: they probably didn’t have any.

There’s a story of a nat called Amay Ye Yin who was also known as the Western Mother. This nat foretold accidents and sickness and her predictions always came true. Then she met a monk who offered her his knowledge. He gave her a pair of slippers with which she could walk on water (sounds familiar?).  So now this nat takes care of people who live on or around water. Another nat kadaw who fell into a trance that day was inhabited by a snake nat. The people believe that when nat kadaw start shaking, this is when the nat enters into them. This may be why many of the women that day looked frightened. Perhaps they worried that they wouldn’t get them out again.

Bobo Gyi Nat Pwe

Myanmar is full of surprises and not all of them nice ones. We were given the dates (by the Tourist Information Office in Yangon) of the Bobo Gyi Nat Pwe at Taungthaman village. It was due to end on 23rd September: it actually ended the day before we arrived! Fortunately there are many, many festivals in Myanmar and tomorrow we will go to Shwebo north of Mandalay to a three-day Buddhist festival. 

Bo Bo Gyi Nat

The Bo Bo Gyi Nat Festival in Mandalay had already started when I arrived in Yangon, because dates here move according to a lunar calendar and last year’s dates may have no bearing on this year’s.

Win Kyaing and I took the luxurious GI-Group bus for the nine-hour journey to Mandalay in the daytime for once to enjoy the scenery. I used to take the overnight bus when I travelled alone and sometimes, after a food stop, I’d panic because all the buses looked alike and would I get back on the right one. Now I have a minder so I don’t have to worry about such things.

 Bobo Gyi Taungthaman Nat Pwe

Myanmar is full of surprises and not all of them nice ones. We were given the dates (by the Tourist Information Office in Yangon) of the Bobo Gyi Nat Pwe at Taungthaman village. It was due to end on 23rd September: it actually ended the day before we arrived! Fortunately there are many, many festivals in Myanmar and tomorrow we will go to Shwebo north of Mandalay to a three-day Buddhist festival. 

Win Kyaing and I took the luxurious GI-Group bus for the nine-hour journey to Mandalay in the daytime for once to enjoy the scenery. I used to take the overnight bus when I travelled alone and sometimes, after a food stop, I’d panic because all the buses looked alike and would I get back on the right one. Now I have a minder so I don’t have to worry about such things.