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Pagan
| Article
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14523 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1988 |
1,649 Words |
| Author
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Claudia Simms and Thomas Tarleton
Claudia Simms and Thomas Tarleton are free-lance
photojournalists who have lived and worked in Southeast Asia
for two years. They coproduced "Akhazan: A Vanishing Culture"
and "The Akha Way," published in the January 1987 issue of THE
WORLD & I. They lived and worked among the Lisu for four
months and wish to thank Dr. Otome Klein Huthseesing, who
acted as their interpreter and gave access to her extensive
research, and Paul Lewis, author of Peoples of the Golden
Triangle. |
On the east bank of the Irrawaddy River in upper Burma lies the village of Pagan. It is a poor village, populated by farmers, craftspeople, and the tenders of a modest tourist trade existing in the shadows of vast, historic structures.
Formerly the site of an ancient capital city, Pagan today is a center for pilgrimage. Some 2,000 temples and pagodas, built by a long line of rulers seeking merit in the eyes of Buddha, cover the twenty square miles of the broad plains of Pagan. A few of the centuries-old shrines have been restored and kept in use. And amid the ruins, one simple craft, linked with a noble past, survives.
The lacquerware industry found here today is possibly as old as the temples themselves. A circular teak box, painted in a mixture of lacquer and yellow ochre and dating from the thirteenth century, was discovered in the Mingala Pagoda, and a lacquer statue of a twelfth century king is found in the Ananda Pagoda. However, widespread use of lacquer did not occur until the seventeenth century. Today it is a cottage industry that has gained a reputation for fine craftsmanship.
The lacquerware usually known to us as Pagan-ware is called yun work in Burmese. Yun is the Shan word for Laos, indicating the origins of the craft. A theory popular among historians is that the craft was first brought from the Yun state to Thaton, and later to Pagan after Thaton was sacked by the forces of Pagan's King Anawrahta in 1056. It is, however, possible that the craft made its way directly from the Yun state to Pagan since there was, certainly from the time of Anawrahta and possibly before, a great deal of interchange between the two.
The lacquerware industry is localized, and involves about 7,000 people directly in production. The material used by the Burmese people to achieve the shiny surface is called thitsi. To obtain the substance, incisions are made in the thitsi tree, which then oozes a sticky gray liquid which will eventually harden into a jet black material. To set properly, it must be placed in a cool, dark location rather than in hot, direct sunlight.
The forms lacquerware usually takes are cups, betel-boxes (cylindrical cases with two or three fitted trays used for storing the betel leaf, nuts, lime paste, and other ingredients for betel-nut chewing), food trays, bowls, and platters of all sizes.
To make these, fine bamboo is
...
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