Mizzima/AFP-Apr 30
When a massive earthquake hit Myanmar last month, centuries of sacred history tumbled down — towering Buddha idols, sky-scraping stupas and the pure-white pagoda where 83-year-old Khin Sein has prayed for most of her life.
The magnitude-7.7 tremor razed Nagayon Pagoda in the central city of Mandalay, Myanmar’s last royal capital where ancient heritage was decimated in the disaster which claimed more than 3,700 lives. For around 200 years, the temple was adorned with a carving of a sacred serpent said to have shielded the Buddha from the elements after his enlightenment. The quake that struck one month ago on Monday reduced it to a heap of shapeless masonry, half burying the snake’s bowing head. “I cried out to pray that Nagayon Pagoda would save me when the quake started,” said Khin Sein. “But my son told me that the pagoda was already gone.” “I don’t think any bricklayer or architect could rebuild it the same as it once was,” she told AFP, her eyes welling with tears as she paced the perimeter of the temple where she had prayed for 51 years. The March 28 quake has left more than 60,000 people living in tent encampments, according to the United Nations, and pushed two million people into “critical need” in a country already devastated by civil war since a 2021 coup. As the ground sheared up to six metres (20 feet), more than 3,000 monasteries and nunneries were destroyed alongside more than 5,000 pagodas, the ruling junta says. Myanmar’s second city of Mandalay and the adjacent cities of Sagaing and Inwa, dotted around the quake’s epicentre, are all ancient seats of power, steeped in history and now pockmarked with ruins.
Cultural capital Mandalay was where the British captured the country’s last king in 1885, beginning colonial rule of the whole nation. The Royal Palace’s crenellations have crumbled in places with ornate bastions collapsed askew.
A one-kilometer colonial-era bridge has collapsed into the Irrawaddy River towards Sagaing, where the horizon was once prickled with pinnacles of pagodas and stupas now contorted or simply gone. Myanmar is still grappling with the recovery of human remains from the ruins and the oncoming summer monsoon season. Heavy rains are already forecast this week as thousands mark one month camped outside. While surveyors have investigated damage to historic buildings, reconstruction efforts are focused on aiding the living victims with little thought yet for the restoration of heritage landmarks. Read more at:
