Qualla: Ananda Temple

Ananda Temple: Introduction

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.5. Stand close to the south-facing Buddha inside the Ananda Temple and it wears an expression of sorrow. Step back twenty paces and the same face shifts into something like joy. This optical trick, built into solid teak nine centuries ago, captures something essential about the Ananda: it is a place designed to change depending on how you approach it. Completed in 1105 AD during the reign of King Kyansittha of the Pagan Dynasty, the temple has been called the "Westminster Abbey of Burma," a title that gets at its spiritual importance if not quite its architectural strangeness. Rising 51 meters above the Bagan plain, it fuses Mon and Indian building traditions into something that belongs to neither and both.

Read more: Ananda Temple on Qualla

Image: CC BY-SA 2.5

Ananda Temple: A Legend Sealed in Silence

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 3.0. The temple's origin story is as dark as its architecture is luminous. According to tradition, eight monks approached King Kyansittha seeking alms and described the Nandamula Cave temple in the Himalayas, where they had meditated. Using what the legend calls meditative psychic ski...

Read more: Ananda Temple on Qualla

Image: Gerd Eichmann | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ananda Temple: Four Faces, Four Ages

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerd Eichmann, CC BY-SA 3.0. At the heart of the temple, a central cube houses four standing Buddha statues, each 9.5 meters tall above an eight-foot throne, each facing a cardinal direction. They represent four Buddhas: Kakusandha facing north, Konagamana facing east, Kassapa facing south, and Gautama facin...

Read more: Ananda Temple on Qualla

Image: Gerd Eichmann | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ananda Temple: Stories Written in Clay and Stone

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michael Coghlan from Adelaide, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Ananda is less a single temple than an encyclopedia rendered in architecture. Its walls and terraces carry 554 glazed terra-cotta tiles depicting jataka tales, the stories of Buddha's previous lives sourced from Mon texts. At the base, from south to west, 552 images show Mara...

Read more: Ananda Temple on Qualla

Image: Michael Coghlan from Adelaide, Australia | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ananda Temple: Shaken, Gilded, Enduring

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vyacheslav Argenberg, CC BY 4.0. The 1975 Bagan earthquake damaged the Ananda along with hundreds of other monuments across the plain. But the temple's masonry, which scholars have described as showing "an astonishing degree of perfection," survived largely intact. Restoration followed, and the temple has been w...

Read more: Ananda Temple on Qualla

Image: Vyacheslav Argenberg | CC BY 4.0