THE DHAMMAYANGYI TEMPLE

The Dhammayangyi Temple is well known for its massive structure. It is the biggest structure of all buildings and temples in Bagan. The Dhammayangyi shares a similar architectural layout to Ananda Temple. The Dhammayangyi Temple is one, among the four notable monuments of Bagan.

BACKGROUND

The Dhammayangyi Temple was built and donated by King Narathu, also known as Kalagya Min (1167-1170). Kalagya Min in Burmese language means “the king killed by Indians”. The temple is located roughly a kilometer to the southeast of the city walls.

After murdering his own king father, Prince Narathu ascended the throne of Bagan and built this temple in celebration of his success. According to the records, it is said that Narathu supervise the construction of the temple himself. He pay a great attention to the durability of the temple that masons were executed if a needle could be able to push in between bricks they had laid. But he could not been able to complete the construction since he was assassinated before the completion. The history said that he was displeased by the Hindu rituals.

STRUCTURE

There are two ambulatories in the interior floor plan of the temple. Only the outer corridor is accessible as all the entire innermost passages were intentionally blocked with brick debris for unknown reason. Three out of the four Buddha sanctums were also sealed with bricks. What very eccentric to see at The Dhammayangi is that two Buddha images in side-by-side position. Yes, the shrine at the western gate features two original side-by-side images of Gautama and Maitreya, the historical and future Buddhas. The interlocking, the mortarless brickwork at Dhammayangyi, best appreciated on the upper terraces, is said to rank as the finest masterpieces in Bagan. To prevent deterioration and corrosion, the trustee decided to lock up the highest terraces and hidden stairways leading to them.

SHOOTING

This is my old shots from Bagan road trip (June 2009). I went there with my first hand photography teacher, Kyaw Thura Htun (TKG) and Htin Lin Aye (Mg Hla). It was just a short trip. I requested both of them to join me the road trip which I had scheduled 2 weeks before I left Burma. Bagan is the land of fantasy for me. I love shooting there. And my gratefulness goes to TKG for his guidance and councils. Without his supports, there won’t be Bagan series here on my blog. I owe you a big time, bro…

Personally, this set is one of a few sets on my blog, which I would say “SATISFIED”. Yes, I have been opportune to shoot the temple from different spots, and the nature gifted us with a cloudy blue sky. Truthfully, I have put a big amount of afford both in terms of shooting and post shooting tasks.

* * * * *

The Dhammayangyi Temple is biggest structure of all buildings and temples in Bagan…

The Dhammayangyi Temple is the best brick work you can see in Bagan…

It is very eccentric to see two Buddha images in side-by-side position…

Only the outer corridor is accessible as all the entire innermost passages were intentionally blocked with brick debris for unknown reason…

A pilgrim offering gold leaves to the Buddha image on the eastern gate of the temple…

King Narathu paid a great attention to the durability of the temple and he summoned that masons were executed if a needle could be able to push in between bricks they had laid…

I have captured this from a horse drawn cart…

The Dhammayangyi Temple. I have made this picture from Shwesandaw Pagoda the upper platform…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mmboyz/ Nyi Lin Win

The last one is my favorite bro!
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Nyi Lin Win >> Thanks bro. I prefer the first one… :)
Ko Thura

all photos are great… bro, 6th & 7th more…!
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Ko Thura >> Thanks for the comment, bro…
Yan Paing Oo

love it all… 1, 7 & 8 the most. Bravo bro!
Gina Khine

လွလိုက္တာဟယ္… ခ်က္ခ်င္း ပုဂံ ကို ေျပးသြားခ်င္စိတ္ ေပါက္တယ္… coz Bagan is my fav place of all times :’(
MiMi

Love the first as well. composition, light… just so right.. the rest, Great pixs as always. Where have U been? Wonder u r ok. What’s going on bro? Stay well! Hope things went ok with Granny. In my prayers… Stay in contact when u get a chance! Talk to u soon!
မီးငယ္

အကိုေရ… ဘုရားက ပိုၿပီး သပၸါယ္သြားတယ္… ပထမဆံုးပံုနဲ႔ ေနာက္ဆံုး တစ္ပံုကို ႀကိဳက္တယ္ အကိုေရ… သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြကိုလည္း ေပးဖတ္လိုက္တယ္… ပုဂံ လာလည္ခ်င္တယ္တဲ႔… :)
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Yan Paing Oo >> Thanks a lot, bro. I love all too…

@ Gina Khine >> ပုဂံ ဆိုတာ ကၽြန္ေတာ္႔ အတြက္ အံ႔မခန္းေလာက္တဲ႔ ေနရာတစ္ခုပါ။

@ Mi Mi >> Thanks for the visit and comment, sis. I am fine. Just a bit busy this weekend…

@ မီးငယ္ >> ေက်းဇူးပါ ညီမေလး။ ပုဂံ ဆိုတာ အကိုတို႔ ႏိုင္ငံ ၊ အကိုတို႔ လူမ်ိဳးေတြ အတြက္ အထြဋ္အျမတ္ ေနရာ တစ္ခု ဆိုတာ…
Poll3n

Astonished…
Evry photo is nice… Thanks & glad that you reveal our precious ancient buildings & especially Buddha… Like the 1st, 2nd and 4th photos more… ^_^
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Poll3n >> Thanks a lot for your kind comment… Looking forward to your future visits, sis…
Ye Pyae

The last photo is really nice.
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Ye Pyae >> Thanks for the visit and comment, bro… The day I shot the last pic, the sky wasn’t blue and cloudy…
http://www.travellingmyanmar.com Thazin

Ko YLO, you are a talented photographer…
Thein S Soe

ပုဂံ ပံုေတြကေတာ့ ၾကၫ္႔လို႔ ဘယ္ေတာ႔မွ ႐ိုးမသြားဘူး…။ အားလုံး ေကာင္းပါတယ္…။
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Thazin >> :) You make me laugh, my sis…

@ Thein S Soe >> Thanks a lot, bro. Yes, Bagan is a place with lots of miracles… I never feel bored of this place…
Sweet

Love the last one so much. Amazing Details…
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Sweet >> Thanks a lot for the comment, my friend… The first one stands on the top of the series… The day I captured last one, the sky was so clear… I wish there were some clouds…
Naing

Hi bro. I like all of these photos.Especially, 1st and last are my favorite. When I see your photos,I feel homesick. Thanks a lot my bro…
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Naing >> Thanks heaps bro. Yes, #1 is my fav of this set…
Pon Gyi

1st of all, i have to apologize ya for being late to give a comment bro… as usual, i wanna comment on ur pics only after i’ve looked at them thoroughly… more than that, it took me longer than usual to give a comment this time since Dhammayangyi is the temple that i adore most among all stupas in Bagan & i have a lot to say about it… the massive architectural design, notorious history of King Narathu, mysterious reasons behind those blocked walls, tools that were used to cut hands of the masons… all those things have caught my interest about Dhammayangyi since i was a kid… though ppl used to say that unlike other temples, Dhammayangyi looks disgraceful ‘caze of the inhumane king who built it, those cruelty & mystery have drawn my affection towards it… & i feel deeply impressed to read about all those facts in ur background story… since this is my favorite temple, i admire all of ur shots but i seriously fall in luv with 2nd, 7th & 8th one… in the 2nd one, i really luv the tone u chose… i think it’s the essence of the pic that portrays the unique appearance of the sky & gloomy temple which perfectly reflect the mysterious history of the temple… & it’s really rare to see Bagan shots with greenish background like in the 7th & 8th one… well… to tell the truth, i adore this post 110% bro… i do mean it… & my desire to take a shooting trip to Bagan together with ya become more & more intense… ;D
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Pon Gyi >> You make my day, sis… I know you will write this long because I know how much you love this temple. You always mention (more than many times) that Dhammayangyi is the biggest reason you love Bagan… Well you not only love but ADORE Bagan. Truthfully, this post a time consuming one since I have read 4 books to have this BACKGROUND information and rewrite as decent blending. For the shooting, wherever I go around Bagan, I shoot Dhammayangi. From Shwe Gu Gyii, from Shwe San Taw, from Mie Nyein Gone, from Pya Thut Kyi… etc. That’s the reason, I made me so confused which photo to be chosen for the post. I don’t want a single post crowded with a series of similar photos. So, I filter out those pics didn’t touch my soul. I am delighted that you like this post. And you know what? Without your comment, this post is nothing. Cheers, sis…
Albert

Bro:
The photos are awesome. The documentary (description) is great as usual. Thank you for the photos and appreciate your hard work.
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Albert >> Thanks for the visit and comment, bro. Appreciated! I will try harder…
http://www.hlayamin.com Yamin

So good. Nice photos!
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Yamin >> Thanks…
http://www.auterytech.com/ Steve

Bro:
The photos are awesome. The documentary (description) is great as usual. Thank you for the photos and appreciate your hard work.
Monark Mark

Dear Mr.Ye Lwin Oo:
It is the best way to show the world how amazing our Great Myanmar. I am forward this web to every one I know. Thank you very much from the bottom of my heart.
Monark Mark – California
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Steve >> Thanks a lot for your appreciation, my friend. You make me smile…

@ Monark Mark >> Thanks a lot, my friend. This is how I am proud of my country and being a Burmese myself…
နတ္သား၇၅

ပထမ ပုံကေတာ႔ မဟာ… the Magnificent ေပါ႔… မုိက္တယ္ဗ်ာ…
ဘာ Lens နဲ႔ ရုိက္တာလဲ ကုိရဲလြင္ဦး…??
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ နတ္သား >>> NIKKOR AFS 18-200mm F3.5-5.6 DX VR နဲ႔ ဗ်။ အားေပးတာ ေက်းဇူးဗ်ာ…။
Htutyimon

Brother… 2nd and 4th are the most influence on my mind and soul. I like all of your shoots. g8!
http://www.stanleykay.com Stanley Kay

Bro:
I like photo #1 and the introduction of this temple has given me a better insight about Dhammayangyi Temple. I would surely want to take a good look when I visit Bagan again…
Cheers
Stan
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Htutyimon >> Thanks a lot, sis…

@ Stanley Kay >> I am glad that you like it, bro. It’s one of the temples I love most in Bagan…
http://www.action-and-sports.de/ Peter Frank

Try the 4th one next time in HDR i guess it will become amazing…
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Peter Frank >> Thanks for the suggestion bro… I am not very good in Photomatix… Anyway, I will try next time…
Ko Soe

ကုိယ္ ျမတ္ႏုိးတဲ႔ ပုံကုိ ေနာက္ခံေရစာ ထင္ထင္ရွားရွားနဲ႔ လုပ္ပါလား။ အခုဟာက နာမည္ေလးကို Photoshop နဲ႔ ဖ်က္လုိက္ရင္ သူမ်ား အပုိင္ ျဖစ္သြားၿပီ။ ေတာ္ၾကာ ကုိယ္ထားတဲ႔ ေစတနာက တစ္မ်ဳိး ၾကားက ျဖတ္ခုတ္တာ တစ္မ်ဳိး ျဖစ္မွာ စုိးလုိ႔ပါ။
http://yelwinoo.com/ Ye Lwin Oo

@ Ko Soe >> ကၽြန္ေတာ္က အဲလို လုပ္ခ်င္တာဗ်…။ ဒါေပမယ္႔ Viewer ေတြ ဖက္က ျပန္စဥ္းစား ၾကၫ္႔ျပန္ေတာ႔ အဲလို ေရစာ ႀကီး ကြယ္ေနရင္ ရသ နဲနဲ ေပ်ာက္သြား မလားလို႔ ပါ…။ ခုလို အႀကံေပးတာ အထူး ေက်းဇူး ကိုစိုး။