Buddha's life in Konbaung period bronzes from Yazagyo

Abstract

This is a study of a collection of narrative bronzes retrieved from a cluster of ruins (see figure 1) at Yazagyo, in the Kabaw Valley, in a remote area of Northwestern Myanmar/Burma. The valley lies between the Upper Chindwin River and the hills which separate Burma from Manipur. Yazagyo is on a side road from the Myanmar-India Friendship Highway, 35 kilometres north of Kalaymyo. It was formerly protected by several kilometres of earth banks and moats, surmounted by a stockade. The bronzes come from a total of six ruined buildings, five of which have since been demolished. The Yazagyo collection (see figure 2) is kept at the Minkyaung (royal monastery). Figures in this distinctive style, generally posed on rectangular open-frame bases and representing events in Buddha’s life, are a near-ubiquitous feature of reliquary deposits of the 1752–1885 Konbaung Period.1 The ruins also yielded oval silver boxes filled with small fragments of an uncertain substance which are now preserved in