Myanmar's first Unesco World Heritage site may surprise
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Yangon - THIS month, Myanmar is likely to get its first World Heritage site listing since the Southeast Asian nation joined UNESCO in 1994, but the chosen site will not be the obvious front-runner that all the tourists talk about.
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Yangon - THIS month, Myanmar is likely to get its first World Heritage site listing since the Southeast Asian nation joined UNESCO in 1994, but the chosen site will not be the obvious front-runner that all the tourists talk about.

The 38th session of the World Heritage Committee meets in Doha on June 15-25 to decide on the eligibility of 40 sites worldwide, including Myanmar’s nominee – three Pyu ancient cities.

Pyu? Outside of Myanmar, few have heard of the Pyu at all, let alone their cities.

Whereas almost every traveller has heard of Bagan or Pagan, the spectacular 11th to 13th-century ruins of more than 3,000 Buddhist temples and monuments which are spread over an 80-square-kilometre plain in central Myanmar.

Ranked as Myanmar’s top tourist attraction, Bagan would have been the obvious first choice to be the country’s prime World Heritage site.

Myanmar nominated Bagan to the World Heritage Committee in 1996, but the submission process, which usually takes years, ran into problems with Myanmar’s notoriously prickly ruling junta.

“The outstanding universal value of Bagan was recognised completely by the committee, but they said you need a more detailed management plan on zoning, and we have concerns about the building of golf courses,” said Tim Curtis, chief of Unesco’s regional cultural unit.

“Back then, generals were in control and they just stopped the process,” Curtis said. “Basically it was taken as a rejection but it wasn’t a rejection.”

The generals went on to do their own renovation and restoration work on Bagan between 1998 and 2002, slapping a lot of fresh cement and brick work on 890 of the 3,122 monuments. There were also serious breaches of zoning norms.

“Our department objected, but we could do nothing,” said San Win, a retired director general of the Department of Archaeology.

President Thein Sein, who has been in power since March 2011, has restarted the Bagan listing process, and Unesco is engaged in providing technical assistance, something it has been doing with the Pyu ancient city sites since 2012.

Bagan is likely to be listed shortly after the Pyu sites, maybe even by next year.

“They are interested in going forward with Bagan, but they want to finish the work with the Pyu cities first,” Unesco’s Curtis said.

The Italian government has provided a US$500,000 grant to assist Myanmar in preparing a dossier for the Pyu sites, which could be approved in Doha this month.

The Pyu civilisation flourished between the 2nd century BC and the 8th century AD, a period of scant written records, said Sin Win.

The Pyu did leave behind pottery, jewellery, a written language, Buddhist and Hindu monuments and sprawling ancient city sites, but little is really known about them, even in Myanmar.

“The first millennium in Myanmar has one of the least studied civilisations in Southeast Asia,” contends Thant Myint U, a historian, author and founder of the Yangon Heritage Trust. “The first thing we have to say about the Pyu is we don’t know much.”

One thing known about the Pyu is that they started to have trade and cultural links with southern India between 400 and 500 AD, leading to the introduction of Buddhism to Myanmar and mainland Southeast Asia.

Pyu city sites in central Myanmar were first “rediscovered” by foreign archaeologists in 1902.

The three excavation sites chosen for the World Heritage listing comprise Halin, Beikthano and Sri Ksetra, which are deemed indicative of the Pyu’s cultural contribution to the region.

“They were the first Buddhist city-states that were key to the spread of Buddhism to Southeast Asia,” Curtis said.

Unfortunately, there is not that much left of them, save some ancient brick foundations and a few bell-shaped pagodas.

“We don’t have many clients who go to the Pyu sites,” said Edwin Briels, general manager for Khiri Travel.

“You have one big pagoda and a couple of kilometres away you have the excavation, so if you are really interested in archaeology, it is exciting,” he said of Sri Ksetra, the closest Pyu site to Yangon, which in its heyday was Southeast Asia’s largest city-state.

The Pyu civilisation collapsed in 832, falling to invaders from southern China, San Win said.

They re-emerged in altered form in 849 as founding members of Bagan dynasty, an amalgamation of 18 Pyu cities with their Burman neighbours, according to legend.