Shwe Dagon
Shwedagon Zedi Daw is also known in English as the Great Dagon Pagoda and the Golden Pagoda. Shwe means Gold in Burmese, and Dagon means three hills, the ancient name of Yangon City where the stupa is located. The greatest of all the Burmese pagodas, the Shwe Dagon of Rangoon, is a solid mass of brick, with no interior cell, yet enormous in size, erected on a broad platform one hundred and sixty-six feet from the ground, towering to an additional height of two hundred and seventy feet, and crowned with a jewelled "umbrella". The total elevation is four hundred and thirty-six feet above the teeming streets of the city below, and three hundred and seventy feet in the air from the summit of Thehngoottara Hill.
Rangoon (Dagon), the present capital of Burma, is an ancient site. The Shwedagon Pagoda, a stupa whose present height is variously reported as between 99.36 and 112 meters, has an ancient nucleus that has been enlarged and repaired many times. Pegu is easily reached from nearby Rangoon either by road or rail, and is still an active city. The major monument there, famous throughout Burma, is the Shwemawdaw Pagoda, a stupa enlarged and restored on several occasions, the latest being after the earthquake of 1930.
Archeological evidence indicates that the Shwedagon Pagoda was built by the Mon, an ethnic group that originally dominated southern Burma, sometime between the 6th and 10th centuries CE. The building of the Pagoda made the settlement around it a sacred area for devout Buddhists, and the area prospered. During this period, the village was known as Dagon and was primarily dependent upon fishing and the wealth brought in by pilgrims to the Pagoda.
Greatest of Burma's pagodas, and Holy of Holies to the Buddhist world, the superbly beautiful Shwe Dagon in Rangoon is the most universally visited of Asia's Buddhist shrines, its peculiar sanctity being due to the fact that it contains several original relics of Gautama including four hairs from the head of the Buddha. Built on the highest point of land in Rangoon, the Shwe Dagon is visible for a distance of 20 miles or more, brilliantly lit by floodlights at night, dazzling in the sun by day. Its spire is covered with pure gold which is renewed each generation by public subscription. Actually, though, its regilding goes on perpetually. Almost daily the devout climb its sides with little handfuls of gold leaf which they fasten onsome part of its vast surface, thus adding their bit to its grandeur.
The Shwe-dagon is the most celebrated object of worship in all the Indo-Chinese countries, as enshrining several hairs of Gautama Buddha. The Shwe-dagon is the great pagoda of the Talaings. They say the Shwe-dagon pagoda was founded by two brothers, who had met and conversed with Gautama Buddha in India. But the first notice of the country that can be considered as historical is given in the Singhalese Mahawanso, which mentions the mission of Sono and Uttaro, sent by the third Buddhist Council (BC 244) to Suvarna-bhumi (' Aurea Regio') to spread the Buddhist faith.
The main platform from which the pagoda proper rises is an immense court nine hundred feet long by six hundred and eighty-five feet wide, and crowded with minor pagodas and shrines. This great esplanade is approached from the four points of the compass by long cov ered arcades, lined with shops in which offerings of every description can be bought. On the marble floor of the main court and before the minor shrines these offerings are presented by scores of worshipers prostrating themselves before statues of Buddha of every size. And yet the great conical or bell-shaped dome of the pagoda is its chief attraction, for this is covered with gold-leaf from its base to its summit, and its shining splendor salutes the traveler from miles and miles away.
Burma is the land of pagodas. These places of worship are the most striking feature of every landscape. Their bell-shaped domes, startlingly white, or so covered with gold-leaf as to shine resplendent in the sunlight, crown many a hilltop and constitute the chief beauty of the towns. The pagodas are usually solid structures of brick, with facings of plaster, and they are buildings at which, rather than in which, worship is offered. There are exceptions, however. The more ancient of these edifices, like the Ananda at Pagan, have inner chambers enshrining gigantic statues of Buddha, with corridors around the chambers, quite comparable to the aisles of English or French cathedrals.
The religion of Burma is Buddhism. Buddhism is a religion of "merit," so called, and the surest way to acquire "merit" is by building a pagoda. Repairing an old pagoda will not answer the purpose; hence many an old pagoda goes to ruin, side by side with a new one coated with whitewash or gold-leaf. Curiously enough, the epoch of pagoda-building was almost coincident with that of cathedral-building in England and France, that is, from AD 1000 to 1200.
Shwe Dagon is a marvelous building, truly one of the wonders of the world, the finest example of Burmese Buddhist art. It is very different from the styles of architecture to which westernes are accustomed. It has no large halls, but is composed of a medley of small shrines surrounding the great central dome with its tapering point. This feature is three hundred and sixty-eight feet high and is made of brick covered with gold. The upper part is overlaid with solid gold-plate, but the lower surface is only gold-leaf, which has to be frequently renewed after the annual rains. The chief shrine is said to contain a golden casket with four hairs from the head of Buddha. The summit of the pinnacle on the great dome is a mass of diamonds, emeralds and rubies, but it is so high that no human eye can distinguish the individual stones.
Mr. Scott O'Connor writes in The Silken East: "One cannot but recognise the nobility of sentiment underlying this matter. In a like spirit, one sees placed at the climbing pinnacles of some gray cathedral in Europe the fine work of the artist lavished on hidden gargoyles and saintly figures far out of reach of the thronging world below. . . . But it is only in Burma, so often accused of superficiality, that men put a great ransom of jewels where no eye can testify to their splendor."
Combinations of seven subordinate roofs forming a tall spire are the most frequent in the Shwe Dagon. The number seven is connected with royalty, and of course has many other philosophical interpretations. The entrance is flanked by two gigantic monsters of forbidding though picturesque aspect. These are guardians and not idols to be worshipped, as ignorant Europeans often fancy. They are symbolic protectors of the holy places within, to which no profane foot ought to penetrate, and there are said to be other meanings still more significant.
The mass of small shrines and chapels on the platform is bewildering. New ones were constantly being put up, so that great changes are observable in the general effect within a few years. Burmese architecture, like the Buddhist religion, is a living thing, not dead like the European Gothic; and though there is much that is grotesque to an eye accustomed to the severe purity of the Greek, the grandeur and simplicity of the Roman, and the solemn grace and perfection in constructive art of the finest Gothic, it has a nobility and beauty of its own which call forth high admiration.
Mr. P. W. Sergeant said: "In few places on earth can there be seen so curious and charming a blend of the beautiful and the grotesque as on the platform of Shwe Dagon. And in the midst rises the great golden mass which, in the words of Mr. H. Fielding" (Fielding Hall?), "seems to shake and tremble in the sunlight like a fire, white, as the wind blows, the tongues, of the bells at its summit move to and fro, and the air is full of music, so faint, so clear, like 'silver stir of strings in hollow shells.'"
The clappers of the bells are flattened and elongated so that they catch the wind and keep up a continuous musical tinkling, which the Nats, the guardian angels of the Burmese, are supposed to hear and note that an act of devotion has been performed. At the base of the pagoda on every side are chapels containing massive carved figures of Buddha; and scattered here and there over the huge platform on which the pagoda stands are small pagodas of richly carved wood, or glass mosaic or masonry covered with gold leaf like the Shwe Dagon itself; stone altars for the offerings of devotees; stalls for the sale of religious offerings; bells of all sizes; and everywhere, figures of creatures half lion and half man. These lions are symbolical of a Burmese legend which tells of a Burmese prince lost rn the jungle and mothered by a lioness who, when her foster son escaped from her by swimming across a river, died of a broken heart. So the lions are a memorial of the loving devotion of the lionmother.
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