Popa Sawrahan ( my, ပုပ္ပါးစောရဟန်း) was the 20th king of

Pagan Dynasty The Kingdom of Pagan ( my, ပုဂံခေတ်, , ; also known as the Pagan Dynasty and the Pagan Empire; also the Bagan Dynasty or Bagan Empire) was the first Burmese kingdom to unify the regions that would later constitute modern-da ...

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

and the eighth king of ''Tampavati period'' of

Bagan Bagan (, ; formerly Pagan) is an ancient city and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Mandalay Region of Myanmar. From the 9th to 13th centuries, the city was the capital of the Bagan Kingdom, the first kingdom that unified the regions that wou ...

. He was notable for restarting the

Burmese calendar The Burmese calendar ( my, မြန်မာသက္ကရာဇ်, , or , ; Burmese Era (BE) or Myanmar Era (ME)) is a lunisolar calendar in which the months are based on lunar months and years are based on sidereal years. The calendar is ...

in Bagan history and one of the two Sawrahan kings of

Bagan Dynasty The Kingdom of Pagan ( my, ပုဂံခေတ်, , ; also known as the Pagan Dynasty and the Pagan Empire; also the Bagan Dynasty or Bagan Empire) was the first Burmese kingdom to unify the regions that would later constitute modern-da ...

. He was advised to reign over Pagan by his student, Queen Singharaj ().အရိယဝံသ၊ အာဒိစ္စရံသီ မုံရွေးဇေတဝန် ဆရာတော်ဘုရားကြီး ရေးသားစီရင်တော်မူအပ်သော စေတိယကထာ မည်သော ရာဇဝင်ချုပ် (2013) In 640 AD (562 Burmese Year), he encountered ''Khachapañja kein'' () or "The number needed to demolish year number". He subtracted 560 years from year 562, leaving a remainder of 2 years. Burmese people have been counting from the year two without restarting the calendar again.

Legend

Sawrahan is the former monk seized the throne after King Htun Chit died in 613 CE. He launched the

on 21 March 640 CE, with the starting date of 22 March 638.(Maha Yazawin Vol. 1 2006: 143): The calendar was reset, leaving two years, in year 640 CE. The starting date of the Burmese calendar was 22 March 638; Year 2 of the Burmese calendar began on 21 March 640 per (Eade 1989: 39). (According to scholarship, the Burmese calendar was actually launched at

Sri Ksetra , conventional_long_name = Kingdom of Sri Ksetra , common_name = Kingdom of Sri Ksetra , era = Classical Antiquity , status = City-state , event_start = Founding of Kingdom , year_start = c. 3rd to 9th century CE , date_start = , ...

(Pyay/Prome) by the

Pyu Pyu, also spelled Phyu or Phyuu, United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. is a town in Taungoo District, Bago Region in Myanmar. It is the administrative seat of Phyu Township Pyu Township is a township in Taungoo District in the ...

.Hall 1960: 8–10) Popa Sawrahan made peace with the royal line by giving his daughter to Shwe Ohnthi, son of Htun Chit and rightful heir, and making his son-in-law the heir apparent. Popa Sawrahan died in 640 soon after his new calendar was launched, and Shwe Ohnthi succeeded, restoring the Pyusawhti line.

Notes

References

{{reflist Pagan dynasty 7th-century monarchs in Asia Burmese monarchs 640 deaths Year of birth missing