MAHA MYAT MUNI PAGODA
A BRIEF HISTORY
The Mahamuni (meaning “Great Sage“) or Maha Myat Muni Pagoda, or Phaya Gyi (Great Pagoda) was built about 75 years before the formal founding of Mandalay.
According to legend, the Mahamuni image was cast in the Buddha’s own image during his lifetime by King Sanda Thuriya. However, archaeologists say it was most likely made more than 600 years after the Buddha’s death, around 150 AD. The image is in the seated posture of relaxed deportment, namely Bumi Phasa Mudras, symbolic of His Conquest of Mara.
In 1784 when King Bodawpaya conquered Rakhine (Arakan), the fertile western coastal plains, the image was taken to Burma. King Bodawpaya built a magnificent seven layered pagoda to house the Mahamuni image, which sits on a diamond encrusted platform. The pagoda burned down in 1884, but it was soon rebuilt with 19th century details.
The Mahamuni image was cast in bronze. The crown & neck are adorned with countless golden amulets and precious gems. Generations of devotees offer small squares of gold foils onto the image to gain merit, so much so that the the lower part of the image has been now distorted in “lumpy” appearance.
Every morning at dawn a team of designated monks and a group of selected laymen would wash the Buddha’s face with scented water and brush the teeth. It starts at 4:15am, during the procedure, traditional religious melodies are played by 4 types of instruments. The ceremony has been done continuously since the days of Burmese kings without a day break.
Remark: Long Live Mandalay… This post is the last dedication post to the 150th Birthday Anniversary of Mandalay.
4:15am – Buddha’s face washing and tooth brushing with scented water…
The crown is adorned with countless golden amulets and precious gems…
Generations of devotees offer small squares of gold leaf the image to gain merit, so much so that the the lower part of the image has been now distorted in “lumpy” appearance…
Every morning, thousands of pilgrims come to offer alms, to donate gold leaf and to pay homage…
Maha Myat Muni Pagoda before sunrise…
ေက်ဇူးတင္တယ္ ကိုရဲလြင္ဦး… မနက္ခင္းမွာ အခုလို မဟာျမတ္မုနိ ဘုရားကို ဖူးခြင့္ရတဲ့အတြက္ က်က္သေရ မဂၤလာအေပါင္းနဲ႔ ျပၫ္႔စံုသြားတယ္ ဗ်ာ။
Thanks a lot !!!