Siṅguttara Hill ( my, သိင်္ဂုတ္တရကုန်းတော် ; also spelt "Theingottara Hill") is a small hill in

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

Myanmar 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 C. Wells, Joh ...

(formerly Burma), crowned by the

Shwedagon Pagoda The Shwedagon Pagoda (, ); mnw, ကျာ်ဒဂုၚ်; officially named ''Shwedagon Zedi Daw'' ( my, ရွှေတိဂုံစေတီတော်, , ) and also known as the Great Dagon Pagoda and the Golden Pagoda is a gilded stupa ...

, the most famous pagoda in the country.

Legends associated with Singuttara

Tapussa and Bhallika

Two pious merchant brothers from the Mon country of Lower Burma, Tapussa and Bhallika (), met the

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was ...

in northern India soon after he had attained enlightenment, and were entrusted with eight sacred hair relics. The two brothers are recorded as the first lay disciples of the Buddha. The Buddha told them the relics should be enshrined in their own land on Singuttara hill, where relics of three previous Buddhas already rested. The Buddha then explained to them the origin of the hill's name: ages before, it was the home of a giant centipede who devoured elephants and piled their tusks (

Pali Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist ''Pāli Canon'' or ''Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of ''Theravāda'' Buddhism ...

''singa'') high (Pali ''uttara'') on the peak. Tupassa and Bhallika would know they had found Singuttara when they found a tree trunk balancing on a peak in such a way that neither end touched the ground.

The Convention of Sule

The brothers returned to Lower Burma (Okkalapa) and presented the hairs to the pious King of Okkalapa. Although the King searched diligently for the hill for three years, he was unable to locate it. Eventually Sakra, a deity of Vedic origins, took pity on the king and cleared the jungle from the hill. Sakra could not, however, identify for Okkalapa the exact spot where the relics were to be enshrined. It was because he was only 36 million years old, and therefore did not remember the visits of the earlier Buddhas (which, according to Buddhist cosmology, happened eons in the past). Okkalapa therefore asked local

nat Nat or NAT may refer to: Computing * Network address translation (NAT), in computer networking Organizations * National Actors Theatre, New York City, U.S. * National AIDS trust, a British charity * National Archives of Thailand * National As ...

s (spirits) if they could remember. Fortunately the oldest of the nats,

Sule Sule may refer to: * Sule (river), a river of Lower Saxony, Germany * Sule Skerry, a skerry in the North Atlantic off the north coast of Scotland * Sule Stack, a stack in the North Atlantic off the north coast of Scotland * Punta Sulè, a mountai ...

, recalled once trying to eat one of the Buddhas. But he had learned the

Dhamma Dharma (; sa, धर्म, dharma, ; pi, dhamma, italic=yes) is a key concept with multiple meanings in Indian religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism and others. Although there is no direct single-word translation for ''d ...

and was no longer a cannibal. Ashamed of his earlier acts and eager to earn merit, Sule led the king and the brothers to the correct spot, the relics were recovered, and the first Shwedagon pagoda was built on the spot.John Strong, "Relics of the Buddha", (Princeton University Press, 2004) p.76ff.
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Description and history

The hill is located on the last spur of the

Pegu Yoma The Pegu Range ( my, ပဲခူးရိုးမ; Pegu Yoma or Bago Yoma) is a range of low mountains or hillsSeekins, Donald M. (2006) ''Historical dictionary of Burma (Myanmar)'' Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Marylandpage 357 and uplands between ...

(Pegu Mountains), some three kilometers north from the centre of Yangon, and on the western shore of

Kandawgyi Lake Kandawgyi Lake ( my, ကန်တော်ကြီး ; literally "great royal lake", formerly Royal Lake), is one of two major lakes in Yangon, Burma (Myanmar). Located east of the Shwedagon Pagoda, the lake is artificial; water from Inya Lake ...

(Royal Lake). It is divided into three terraces, the Lower Terrace at road level (ascent of the hill must be made on foot from this point), the Middle Terrace (the beginning of the sacred precinct of the pagoda, beyond which footwear and head coverings are not permitted) and the Top Terrace (the terrace immediately surrounding the main stupa). There are four covered walkways from the road to the top of the hill, one for each cardinal direction. Those on the southern and eastern sides are the most popular entrances to the pagoda. Following the British capture of Rangoon in the

Second Anglo-Burmese War The Second Anglo-Burmese War or the Second Burma War ( my, ဒုတိယ အင်္ဂလိပ် မြန်မာ စစ် ; 5 April 185220 January 1853) was the second of the Anglo-Burmese Wars, three wars fought between the Konbaung dy ...

, the hill became a military encampment, a status it retained until the 1920s.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Official Shwedagon Pagoda websiteJohn Strong, "Relics of the Buddha" (Googlebooks), chapter ''Hair Relics of the Shwedagon Pagoda''Shwedagon.org
Geography of Yangon Hills of Myanmar Buddhism in Myanmar