THE PYU: AN ANCIENT CIVILISATION OF UPPER MYANMAR
Stephen A Murphy soas-uk.academia.edu
In the early first millennium, a civilisation based around large brick-walled cities began to emerge in Upper Myanmar. Known as the Pyu, this culture gained mastery over irrigation techniques at an early stage in its development. This allowed for
This article traces the evolutionary record of urbanism at two sites in Myanmar: their transition from late prehistory in c. second to first century BCE to proto-urban and fully urban development at Sri Ksetra and Beikthano by the mid-first millennium CE. The Pyu cities are remarkable because of their spatial continuity, for their early achievements in water control, iron production, ritual and domestic ceramics, brick monumental architecture, rich funerary culture, literacy and adoption of Buddhism on both elite and popular levels. Though the radiocarbon dates for Pyu urbanism are at present earlier, they share many features with other urbanising societies in mainland Southeast Asia, where new chronologies are emerging for social and economic complexity at Dvaravati, Pre-Angkorian and Co Loa sites. The article provides new and specific evidence on the dates and types of contacts between the Pyu, India, and other areas of Southeast Asia to interrogate the meaning of Indianisation in Southeast Asia.

Myanmar today is a vibrant patchwork of peoples, cultures, and beliefs. Its history stretches back through the millennia and in many ways is the story of its cities, and by extension, the kings who built them. Following their rise and fall, this essay moves through the centuries as it explores the art and archaeology of these many varied and at times competing centres. After a turbulent half-century, the country has reopened once again to the world, affording us a chance to experience its unique art and culture first hand.

The people known as the Pyu1 probably drifted from southern China into the side valleys of the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) River in the dry zone of Upper Burma during the first millennium b.c. (see map on p. x). Small population groups speaking related languages in the Tibeto-Burman group still live in Yunnan, notably the Lolo. The Pyu cultural heritage was greatly valued by the kings and nobles of Bagan (mid-9th–late 13th century), and it is probable that many Pyu people were peacefully assimilated into Burmese society at that time; certainly, the Pyu language still figured in major inscriptions at Bagan. The Pyu left a body of ancient inscriptions in Pali, Sanskrit, and Pyu dating from around the mid-fifth to the twelfth century, but only those in Pali and Sanskrit have so far been translated. The Pyu language remains one of the few Southeast Asian languages not yet recovered. It can be transliterated, because the sound value of most of the letters of Indian origin is known, but tonal languages have a large number of homonyms, whose meanings are not easy to distinguish. The language is related to Myanmar (Burmese), but the two would not have been mutually comprehensible