Shwethalyaung Pagoda ( my, ရွှေသာလျောင်းဘုရား) is a Buddhist temple in

Kyaukse Kyaukse ( my, ကျောက်ဆည် မြို့, ) is town and capital of Kyaukse District in Mandalay Region, Myanmar. Lying on the Zawgyi River, 25 miles (40 km) south of Mandalay, it is served by the Mandalay-Yangon (Rangoon) railway ...

Mandalay Region Mandalay Region ( my, မန္တလေးတိုင်းဒေသကြီး, ; formerly Mandalay Division) is an administrative divisions of Myanmar, administrative division of Myanmar. It is located in the center of the country, bordering ...

, Myanmar. It is located on top of the

Shwethalyaung Hill Shwethalyaung Hill ( my, ရွှေသာလျောင်းတောင်), also known as Kyaukse Hill ( my, ကျောက်ဆည်တောင်), is a hill that is located to the east of Kyaukse in Myanmar. Shwethalyaung Hill is kn ...

. The pagoda was built by King

Anawrahta Anawrahta Minsaw ( my, အနော်ရထာ မင်းစော, ; 11 May 1014 – 11 April 1077) was the founder of the Pagan Empire. Considered the father of the Burmese nation, Anawrahta turned a small principality in the dry zone ...

of Bagan and enshrined the replica of the Buddha's teeth.

History

King

Anawratha Anawrahta Minsaw ( my, အနော်ရထာ မင်းစော, ; 11 May 1014 – 11 April 1077) was the founder of the Pagan Empire. Considered the father of the Burmese nation, Anawrahta turned a small principality in the dry zone ...

Pagan Paganism (from classical Latin ''pāgānus'' "rural", "rustic", later "civilian") is a term first used in the fourth century by early Christians for people in the Roman Empire who practiced polytheism, or ethnic religions other than Judaism. ...

obtained several Buddhist relics on a trip to

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Upon his return to Pagan, he decided to build a pagoda to house the precious relics. He strapped the replica of the Buddha's teeth to the back of his white elephant Sinma Yintha and told the elephant to choose a suitable spot for the new pagoda. When the elephant stopped in the two hills, named Shwethalyaung and Pyat Kha Yway, the monarch ordered the construction of pagodas on each summit and enshrined the relic at Shwethalyaung Pagoda. To honor the royal elephants, a festival named

Kyaukse elephant dance festival Kyaukse elephant dance festival ( my, ကျောက်ဆည်ဆင်ပွဲ) is an annual major traditional dance festival in Myanmar. It is held is on the day before full moon day of the Burmese lunar month of Thadingyut and the full moon d ...

is held every year at the foot of Shwethalyaung Hill.

References

Buildings and structures in Mandalay Region Buddhist pilgrimage sites in Myanmar Buddhist temples in Myanmar 11th-century Buddhist temples {{Myanmar-stub