Pagan Empire Unifies Burma

In 1044, Anawrahta took the throne of Pagan, a small kingdom on the Irrawaddy River in central Burma, and began a program of conquest and reform that created the first state to bring much of the Irrawaddy valley and its surrounding regions under one rule. The Pagan Empire he founded lasted more than two centuries, left thousands of temples across a dry plain, and helped make Theravada Buddhism central to Burmese identity. The framing of 1044 as a single moment of unification is a simplification: the process unfolded over his reign, which is usually dated to about 1044 to 1077.

Before Pagan, the region was divided among several peoples and polities. The Pyu city-states, which had flourished in the central dry zone, had declined by about the ninth century, and the Bamar, speakers of a Tibeto-Burman language, had settled in the area, with Pagan emerging as their main center. To the south, the Mon kingdoms around Thaton and Pegu held a rich Buddhist and literary culture, while Khmer and other powers lay beyond. Pagan's location gave it control of rice-growing irrigated land and river trade, which provided the base for expansion.

Anawrahta's reign is known mainly from later chronicles and inscriptions, and historians treat the traditional narrative with caution. The best-known account says he conquered the Mon kingdom of Thaton around 1057, bringing back scriptures, monks, and craftsmen. Some scholars doubt the scale or even the details of this conquest, and suggest that Mon influence reached Pagan more gradually through trade and religious contact. What seems clear is that Pagan grew powerful, extended its authority south toward the coast and into surrounding uplands, and adopted much Mon script and learning. The Burmese writing system derives from Mon models.

Religion was central to his rule. Anawrahta is credited with promoting Theravada Buddhism, supposedly encouraged by the Mon monk Shin Arahan, and with curbing the influence of other Buddhist traditions, including the Ari monks, who were associated with Tantric practices. Older spirit worship, the nat cult, was not eliminated; the tradition holds that he brought the nats into a Buddhist framework, and nat veneration remains part of Burmese life. Calling Theravada the "state religion" is a convenient label, since the full dominance of the tradition developed over later generations.

His successors, particularly Kyanzittha and Alaungsithu, expanded and consolidated the realm. Rulers and wealthy donors funded vast numbers of temples and pagodas, and thousands of structures still stand at Bagan. The kingdom's wealth relied heavily on land grants to religious institutions, which eventually reduced royal revenue. Pagan weakened in the thirteenth century and fell into decline after Mongol attacks in the 1280s. Even so, the political model, the script, and the religious culture of the era shaped later Burmese kingdoms, and Pagan is still remembered as the founding age of Burmese civilization.