The Three Tagondaing Buddhas: 6th–7th-Century Pyu Buddhist Bronzes
- Denis Lepage
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
Among the most fascinating surviving examples of Buddhist sculpture from ancient Myanmar are three bronze standing Buddhas discovered at Tagondaing village. Although relatively little detailed archaeological information about their discovery is available in Western-language publications, the sculptures are important witnesses to the development of Buddhist bronze casting during the later Pyu period.
The group is known in Burmese scholarship as the Three Buddha Images from Tagondaing of the Pyu Period. A dedicated Burmese-language study by Myo Thant Tyn, published in Yangon in 2006, was specifically devoted to these three sculptures.
Their importance lies not only in their age. Their distinctive standing format and restrained modelling provide a fascinating glimpse into a period of Myanmar's history that predates the great Buddhist art of Bagan by several centuries.
Tagondaing and the Pyu World
Tagondaing, also spelled Tagundaing, is situated in southeastern Myanmar. Its location is significant because it lies outside the major Pyu urban centres that are most familiar to historians, such as Śrī Kṣetra.
The Pyu world extended across a considerable part of Myanmar during the first millennium CE. Its cities were connected to India, Sri Lanka and other parts of the Buddhist world through trade, pilgrimage and cultural exchange.
By the 6th and 7th centuries, Buddhist artistic traditions had already become firmly established in Myanmar. Artists were producing images in bronze as well as stone and terracotta, while Buddhist ideas and iconographic models were being adapted to local traditions.
The Tagondaing bronzes belong to this mature phase of Pyu-period Buddhist art.
They should therefore not be described simply as "primitive Burmese Buddhas" or as the beginnings of Myanmar sculpture. Their style belongs to a developed artistic environment that had already absorbed and transformed influences from the wider Buddhist world.
A 6th–7th-Century Tradition
One of the three Tagondaing sculptures is particularly well documented.
The Asia Society's Buddhist Art of Myanmar, published in connection with its 2015 exhibition, illustrates a standing Buddha discovered at Tagondaing village and dates it broadly to the 5th–7th century CE. The bronze is approximately 15 inches, or 38.1 centimetres, high.
Other evidence points toward the later part of this range.
A report concerning the ancient city of Kyaungpya describes a monumental standing bronze Buddha discovered there in 2007. The article notes that the sculpture is similar to the three Buddhas found at Tagondaing and states that, according to an expert, the Tagondaing examples are believed to represent 7th-century workmanship.
For this reason, the Tagondaing group is particularly interesting when considered within the 6th–7th-century development of Pyu Buddhist sculpture.
The exact dating of each individual figure should nevertheless be treated with caution, since the available published evidence does not provide a detailed archaeological chronology for all three sculptures.
The Standing Buddha
The standing format is one of the most striking characteristics of the Tagondaing group.
In later Burmese sculpture, particularly from Bagan onwards, the seated Buddha becomes by far the dominant form. In the earlier centuries, however, standing images were an important part of Buddhist iconography.
The Tagondaing standing Buddha is represented frontally, with a strongly vertical body. The surviving sculpture has an elongated appearance, with a comparatively slender torso and restrained modelling.
There is little of the massive physical volume that would later become familiar in Burmese sculpture.
Instead, the figure conveys its presence through symmetry and verticality.
The result is a Buddha who appears calm, formal and almost weightless.
This quality gives the Tagondaing sculpture a distinctive character within the history of Buddhist art in Myanmar.
The Body of the Buddha
The treatment of the body is particularly revealing.
The figure is not conceived as a naturalistic portrait of a human being. The proportions are deliberately idealised, creating a body that communicates spiritual perfection rather than individual identity.
The shoulders, torso and legs are organised around a central axis. The result is an image intended to be experienced from the front, with the symmetry reinforcing the Buddha's serenity and spiritual authority.
This approach connects the sculpture to the wider Buddhist artistic traditions of India and Southeast Asia, while the particular proportions and modelling give it a distinctly Myanmar character.
It is precisely this combination of international Buddhist imagery and local interpretation that makes Pyu sculpture so important.
Indian Influences and a Local Buddhist Language
The Buddhist art of the Pyu period cannot be separated from the wider artistic world of South and Southeast Asia.
Myanmar was connected to India through maritime and overland routes. Buddhist monks, merchants and pilgrims travelled between these regions, bringing with them religious texts, iconographic traditions and artistic ideas.
The Buddha images produced in Myanmar consequently reflect a complex mixture of influences.
The Tagondaing bronzes should be understood within this environment. Their sculptors were not working in isolation. They were participating in an international Buddhist artistic tradition while simultaneously developing local solutions for the representation of the Buddha.
This process would become one of the defining characteristics of Myanmar Buddhist art.
Bronze Casting in the Pyu Period
The Tagondaing sculptures are also important because they demonstrate the sophistication of bronze casting in Myanmar several centuries before Bagan.
Bronze allowed artists to create images that could be smaller and more portable than stone sculptures. Such objects could be installed in monasteries and shrines or transported between religious centres.
The casting process also allowed sculptors to achieve subtle details and carefully controlled forms.
The survival of the Tagondaing bronzes is therefore particularly valuable. Metal images are inherently vulnerable to damage, melting and reuse, especially during periods of political instability.
That these sculptures survived into the modern period gives us a rare opportunity to study the technical and artistic achievements of Pyu-period bronze casting.
A Connection with Kyaungpya
The Tagondaing Buddhas become even more interesting when compared with a later discovery from Kyaungpya, an ancient fortified settlement in the Taungoo region.
In 2007, archaeologists and local researchers encountered a large standing bronze Buddha measuring approximately 12 feet in height. The discovery was associated with laterite Buddha images, bronze trays and votive tablets.
The enormous sculpture has a hook attached to its back for fixing the image to an altar or architectural support. According to a report published by Myanmar Digital News, its form was considered similar to the three Tagondaing Buddhas, which the consulted expert associated with seventh-century workmanship.
This comparison is intriguing because it suggests that the Tagondaing sculptures may belong to a broader tradition of standing bronze Buddhas in the region.
The Kyaungpya discovery also demonstrates that bronze images of this type could be produced on a monumental scale.
The two groups should not, however, be confused. The Kyaungpya Buddha has its own archaeological context, and similarity does not necessarily mean that the sculptures came from the same workshop.
Before Bagan
The Tagondaing Buddhas are particularly important because they help correct a common misconception about Burmese Buddhist art.
The artistic history of Myanmar did not begin with Bagan.
When King Anawrahta established the power of Bagan in the 11th century, Buddhist sculpture already had centuries of development behind it. The Pyu, Mon and Arakan cultures of Myanmar had produced religious images and monuments long before the great temples of Bagan transformed the artistic landscape.
The Tagondaing bronzes belong to this earlier history.
Their approximate 6th–7th-century context places them several centuries before the monumental Buddhist sculpture of Bagan. They therefore provide an essential link between the early Buddhist traditions of Myanmar and the later development of distinctly Burmese sculpture.
From Pyu Sculpture to Bagan
It would be tempting to imagine a simple artistic progression: Pyu sculpture followed by Bagan sculpture, followed by Ava and Mandalay.
The reality was considerably more complicated.
Different artistic traditions existed simultaneously, and ideas travelled between regions. Pyu, Mon and Indian influences interacted with one another, while later Bagan artists inherited and transformed many earlier traditions.
The Tagondaing Buddhas should therefore be viewed as part of a larger artistic environment rather than as isolated ancestors of the Bagan Buddha.
Their significance lies in showing how sophisticated Buddhist imagery had already become in Myanmar before Bagan emerged as the dominant political and religious centre.
The Rarity of Early Myanmar Bronzes
For collectors of Buddhist sculpture, early Pyu bronzes are particularly desirable because they are comparatively rare.
Later Burmese bronze Buddhas are far more numerous. The surviving sculptures from the 6th and 7th centuries, by contrast, belong to a much smaller body of material.
This scarcity makes the Tagondaing group especially significant.
They provide tangible evidence of an artistic tradition that is otherwise known largely through archaeological remains, architectural fragments, inscriptions and a limited number of surviving sculptures.
The importance of such bronzes therefore goes beyond their aesthetic appeal.
They are historical documents cast in metal.
The Three Tagondaing Buddhas
The fact that three related Buddha images were discovered at Tagondaing is itself significant.
A single early bronze can sometimes be difficult to place within a broader artistic tradition. A group provides the possibility of identifying recurring features in proportion, posture, modelling and casting technique.
The three Tagondaing Buddhas have consequently become an important point of reference for the study of Pyu-period Buddhist sculpture.
The dedicated 2006 publication by Myo Thant Tyn confirms that the three images have long been recognised in Myanmar scholarship as an important group.
Yet much remains to be discovered about them.
The archaeological circumstances of the original find, the precise relationship between the three sculptures and their subsequent history deserve further study.
This lack of information makes the bronzes all the more intriguing.
A Forgotten Chapter of Myanmar Buddhist Art
The history of Myanmar Buddhist sculpture is often dominated by the extraordinary temples and images of Bagan. Yet the Tagondaing Buddhas belong to an earlier and much less familiar world.
They represent a period when Buddhism was already deeply established in Myanmar, when bronze casting had reached a sophisticated level and when local artists were adapting ideas from the wider Buddhist world into their own visual language.
Their slender standing forms are very different from the powerful seated Buddhas that would later dominate Burmese sculpture.
They are therefore not simply early examples of a style that would eventually become Burmese.
They are evidence of a distinct artistic moment.
Conclusion
The three bronze Buddhas discovered at Tagondaing are among the most intriguing surviving sculptures associated with the Pyu period of Myanmar.
Rather than placing them within the very early Pyu centuries, they are better understood in the context of the 6th–7th centuries, with evidence pointing particularly toward the 7th century for the Tagondaing group. One of the sculptures published by the Asia Society is broadly dated to the 5th–7th century, while a Myanmar source specifically associates the group with seventh-century workmanship.
Their importance is considerable.
They demonstrate the sophistication of Buddhist bronze casting in Myanmar long before Bagan. They reveal the importance of the standing Buddha in the earlier Buddhist artistic vocabulary. And they illustrate how Myanmar artists participated in a wider Buddhist world while developing their own distinctive visual traditions.
The Tagondaing Buddhas are therefore more than rare archaeological survivors.
They represent an important chapter in the formation of Myanmar Buddhist art — a chapter that predates Bagan but helps explain how the great sculptural traditions of later Myanmar became possible.
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