Maha Shwe Thein Daw Pagoda

Maha Shwe Thein Daw Pagoda
Maha Shwe Thein Daw Pagoda
Religion
AffiliationTheravada Buddhism
Location
LocationKyaukse, Mandalay Region
CountryMyanmar
Maha Shwe Thein Daw Pagoda is located in Myanmar
Maha Shwe Thein Daw Pagoda
Shown within Myanmar
Geographic coordinates21°38′41.78″N 96°7′51.07″E / 21.6449389°N 96.1308528°E / 21.6449389; 96.1308528
Architecture
FounderAnawrahta
Groundbreaking11th century

The Maha Shwe Thein Daw Pagoda (Burmese: မဟာ ရွှေသိမ်တော် ဘုရား, also known as the Shwetheindaw Pagoda) is a Buddhist temple in Thindaunggyi village [my], about two miles north of Kyaukse, Mandalay Region, Myanmar. The Maha Shwe Thein Daw Buddha image is enshrined in this temple, and is believed to grant the wishes of its worshippers.[1][2][3] Students from nearby regions come and pray at this pagoda for blessings before their exams.[4]

History

[edit]
Maha Shwe Thein Daw Pagoda

The Pagoda was built by King Anawrahta of Pagan. Shin Arahan set the consecrated ground for the pagoda. The pagoda was originally named the Shwe Thein Daw by Anawrahta. The board of pagoda trustees renamed it to Maha Shwe Thein Daw.[when?] The pagoda used to have an inscription, but the contents of the inscription are no longer known because the inscription was lost when Prime Minister U Nu was in power.[5]

Although the pagoda had been worshipped for generations after Anawrahta, some historians say that the pagoda was covered in bushes about 100 years ago due to the negligence of the villagers. During that time an epidemic hit the village, and those who had fled the village cleared the bushes near the pagoda. Legend says that the clearing of the pagoda keeps the local village clear of epidemics.[6]

References

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  1. ^ "Parents flock to ancient pagoda in Mandalay region for exam success". Myanmar Mix. 3 March 2020.
  2. ^ "ကျောက်ဆည်မြို့နယ်၊ မဟာရွှေသိမ်တော်ဘုရားသို့ တက္ကသိုလ်ဝင်တန်းစာမေးပွဲမဖြေမီ ရက်ပိုင်းအတွင်း နေ့စဉ်လူထောင်ချီ လာရောက်ပြီး အဓိဋ္ဌာန်ပြု ဆုတောင်းမှုများ ပြုလုပ်နေ". Eleven Media Group (in Burmese). 4 March 2019.
  3. ^ "ကျောက်ဆည်မြို့နယ်၊ မဟာရွှေသိမ်တော်ဘုရားသို့ တက္ကသိုလ်ဝင်တန်း စာမေးပွဲမဖြေမီ ရက်ပိုင်းအတွင်း မြန်မာပြည်အနှံ့အပြားမှ လာရောက်ကြပြီး နေ့စဉ်လူဦးရေ တစ်သောင်းကျော် လာရောက်အဓိဋ္ဌာန်ပြု ဆုတောင်းမှုများ ပြုလုပ်နေ". Eleven Media Group (in Burmese). 2 March 2020.
  4. ^ "ကျောက်ဆည်ရွှေသိမ်တော်တွင် တက္ကသိုလ်ဝင်တန်းစာမေးပွဲအတွက်ဆုတောင်းသူ နှစ်ဆခန့်မြင့်တက်". The Voice Weekly (in Burmese). 8 March 2020.
  5. ^ "ေရႊသိမ္ေတာ္က ထြန္းကားလာတဲ့ ကန္ေတာ့ပြဲဓေလ့". The Myanmar Times (in Burmese). 12 September 2019.
  6. ^ "ရွှေသိမ်တော်ဘုရားဝယ် အဓိဋ္ဌာန်ဆုတောင်းကြမယ်". The Myanmar Times (in Burmese). 29 June 2016.

Bibliography

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  • Takahashi, Akio (2024). "Revitalising a Village Through Buddhism: Thindaunggyi Village and Shwetheindaw Paya". Regime Changes and Socio-Economic History of Rural Myanmar, 1986–2019. Singapore: Springer. ISBN 978-981-99-3271-9.