BURMA Ruined buildings and sculptures of a Gupta type have been found at Tagaung, Prome, Thaton, and elsewhere. Further north, remains of the old city and a gateway dating from the 9th cen tury can be seen at Old Pagan. Amongst other structures dating from the loth century at Pagan are the Nat Hlaung Gyaung Vais nava temple (A.D. 931), and the cylindrical Ngakywe Nadaung, a stupa recalling the Dhamekh at Sarnath.
But it is only with the unification of Burma, accomplished by Anawrata (I 04o-I 0 7 7) that a great building era was initiated. Remains of no less than 5,000 "pagodas," mainly stupas, but also Buddhist temples, can be traced in the Pagan area. Two types are especially characteristic. In one the basement terraces of the chapel or stupa are developed to a great height, giving a cubical effect, and provided with chapels and galleries in their mass, for which an early Indian parallel is afforded by the stupa at Mirpur Khas in Sind ; the Ananda, Thatbinnyu, and Shwegugyi pagodas are examples. The other is that of a stupa supported by a high pyramidal terraced basement provided with four median stair ways as a means of access, and often with smaller stupas at the angles, thus repeating a type already established at Borobudur, which in turn derives from the terraced stupas of the Kashmir, and Turkistan. Other structures exhibit special peculiar ities, for Anawarata and his successors were in touch with all parts of the then Buddhist world, and built in various manners. Con nections with northern India, Bengal and Nepal were especially close. The Mahabodhi stupa is clearly a direct imitation of the ancient Indian shrine of the same type at Bodhgaya, described above, and which was itself in turn restored by pious Burmese Buddhists in the I2th century. Active construction at Pagan continued well into the 13th century, after which the unity of the country was for a time destroyed by Shan invasion.
The unfinished Mingun pagoda, begun in the i8th century, was to have been the largest in Burma, and what remains is still over 14o feet in height, though this represents only a third of the pro posed elevation. It is highly characteristic that ancient stupas of small size were again and again enclosed within larger struc tures, and thus lost to view, so that huge pagodas like those at Prome and Pegu, while really representing ancient foundations, are in their present aspect comparatively modern.
Mandalay was founded only in 1857, and occupied by Mindon, the last great Burmese royal patron of Buddhism. The palace, a wooden structure in which material from an older palace at Am arapura (the previous capital, near Pagan) is employed, like most wooden palaces consists of connected halls, pavilions and galleries within a walled enclosure. The main features of the style are the use of immense teak columns, lacquered and gilt multiple roofs and spires with flamboyant crockets, and an interior decoration in which glass mosaic plays an important part. Other fine exam ples of late Burmese wooden architecture are afforded by monas teries such as the Myadaung Kyaung at Mandalay and the Sang yaung at Mandalay, due to the piety of various queens. Still more modern is the famous Shwe Dagon pagoda (stupa) at Rangoon; its tapering form, the outline of the spire being almost continuous with that of the body, contrasts conspicuously with the more monumental hemispherical and cylindrical types of early Indian art. There is a general tendency to the development of more re fined and aspiring, and less massive types in all the later stages of Indian architecture wherever it is found. (See BURMA, IN