Show notes
In the lowlands of Burma lie the remains of thousands of crumbling temples.In this episode, we tell one of the most colourful stories of civilizational survival: the story of the Bagan Empire of Myanmar. Find out how this kingdom rose up in the Irrawaddy river valley of central Myanmar, and built one of the most remarkable series of monuments to have survived from the medieval world. Discover what life was like for the people who lived there, and find out what happened to cause its sudden and complete collapse.
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by the late 13th century, as much as 63% of the kingdom's land that had once belonged to the crown, as well as the majority of its gold and silver, was in the hands of the tax-exempt church.
“When the elephants felt the smart of those arrows that pelted them like rain, they turned tail and fled, and nothing on earth would have induced them to turn and face the Tartars. And then too they plunged into the wood and rushed this way and that, dashing their castles against the trees, bursting their harness, and smashing and destroying everything that was on them.”
“the Mongols could have easily moved in to occupy the territory of Bagan, but it seems they had no interest in doing so. In fact, they would send no more expeditions to restore order. Their policy seems to have been to allow the fragmentation of the kingdom to continue and to watch from afar as the once great power that had challenged them simply tore itself apart and sank into irrelevance.”
“A courtier's satisfaction in enjoying kingly confidences in golden palaces and a king's own good fortune are merely bubbles on the surface of a vast ocean, momentary and evanescent. If, dictated by mercy and pity, I were to be released and freed from execution, still I would not escape death. Inseparable am I from karma. It is the nature of every living thing to decay.”
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