Yangon & Around - Myanmar (Burma) - page 71

Downtown Yangon
Botataung Paya BUDDHIST TEMPLE
(Strand Rd, Botataung; admission $3/K3000, camera $1/K1000; 6am-9.30pm) Botataung's
spacious riverfront location and lack of crowds give it a more down-to-earth spiritual
feeling than Shwedagon or Sule Paya. Its most original feature is the dazzling zig-zag
corridor, gilded from floor to ceiling, that snakes its way around the hollow interior of
the 131ft golden zedi (stupa).
Also look out for a bronze Buddha that once resided in the royal palace in Mandalay,
and a large pond full of hundreds of terrapin turtles.
The temple is named after the 1000 military leaders who escorted hair relics of the
Buddha from India to Myanmar over 2000 years ago. For one six-month period this paya
(religious monument) is said to have harboured eight strands of the Buddha's hair before
they were distributed elsewhere.
A bomb from an Allied air raid in November 1943 scored a direct hit on the unfortu-
nate paya. After the war the Botataung was rebuilt in a very similar style to its prede-
cessor, but with one important and unusual difference: unlike most zedi , which are solid,
the Botataung is hollow, and you can walk through it.
There's a gold leaf-coated maze inside the zedi , with glass showcases containing
many of the ancient relics and artefacts, including small silver-and-gold Buddha images,
which were sealed inside the earlier stupa. Reconstruction also revealed a small gold cyl-
inder holding two small body relics and a strand of hair, said to belong to the Buddha,
which is reputedly still in the stupa.
On the northern side of the stupa is a hall containing a large gilded bronze Buddha ,
cast during the reign of King Mindon. At the time of the British annexation, it was kept
in King Thibaw Min's glass palace, but after King Thibaw was exiled to India, the Brit-
ish shipped the image to London. In 1951 the image was returned to Myanmar and
placed in the Botataung Paya.
In the southwest corner of the temple is a nat (spirit being) pavilion containing images
of Thurathadi (the Hindu deity Saraswati, goddess of learning and music) and Thagyam-
in (Indra, king of the nat ) flanking the thoroughly Myanmar nat Bobogyi.
The terrapin turtle pool is in the southeast corner. Most of the turtles are fairly small
but every now and again a truly monstrous one sticks its head out of the water.
The nearby Botataung Jetty provides a good view of activity on the Yangon River.