Old Bagan Arts

This is an old city. What did they do since there was no photography yet? They picture it manually and the result have been marvelous paintings and drawings in various styles and techniques. The two common techniques are mural or wall paintings in the temples plus watercolor and drawings for other artwork. This paintings telling the the story of a colorful city although the dust of the dry zone produce a rather uniform color but with some imagination beautiful paintings where the result. also today paintings are made of the landscape, the monuments, people and festivals. To bring photography art into it. Just have a look at the Ananda Temple, at one of entrance a famous local photographer has a small shop where the family sells the best pictures ever made of  the ancient city. There are also pics of other places in the country on sale. Some of the Naga and Chin tribes images are particular interesting.

Here are a couple of old paintings.

They were made in the 18th and 19th Century, telling a bit about people and life. The landscape and architectural monuments are the natural object for some great visualization, they are the everyday views, Buddhist legends and parables plus everyday life of the people are another ideas to be depicted. This scenic environment is sometimes not correct in terms of perspective but this does not matter.

Often paintings express the elegance of the poses, costumes, hairstyles, lines and colors in a very realistic manner.

Irrawaddy River Banks

The arts and crafts of that time.

They were directly connected with Buddhism all this coincided roughly with the emergence of bigger States around the Ganges river and the victory of the idea of ​​centralism over the fragmentation of a tribal society that had cherished the Brahmanism.

It is characteristic of Buddhism of a centralized power as a protection of morals and the ruling elite. The creators of the first centralized Burmese government at Bagan obviously found the usefulness of this and other Buddhist teachings useful to strengthen their political power. 

This helped to justify the central kingdom, for example, the raids into southern Mon territory was justified with the desire to come into the possession of sacred Buddhist scriptures, and the claim Kyanzitthas, third king of Pagan to be so because he was selected by Buddha himself.

Buddhism in this terms is a correlation with the power of the king and it sanctified the rulers power. According to the doctrine of karma of man's place was in society, his position on the social ladder is completely relative to its conduct in society and due to his good and bad deeds in the previous incarnations. 

Therefore this can only obtain a person who had distinguished himself in his earlier existences by outstanding justice and virtue. For this reason alone the power and wealth of the king were considered deserved and indisputable. Thus, this has been placed at the service of the new Burmese empire; he united the people under his ideology and strengthened state power - the power of an almighty autocrat, to some degree this is largely a social role.

History goes back a long way