The most celebrated shrine in Burma is the Shwe Dagon Pagoda which attracts pilgrims from all the Buddhist world.  No descriptions of it gave me any idea of its real appearance nor can I hope that I shall be more successful in giving the reader my own impressions.  The pagoda itself is a gilt bell-shaped mass rather higher than the Dome of St. Paul’s and terminating in a spire.  It is set in the centre of a raised mound or platform, approached by lofty flights of steps.  The platform, which is paved and level, is of imposing dimensions, some nine hundred feet long and seven hundred wide.  Round the base of the central pagoda is a row of shrines and another row runs round the edge of the platform so that one moves, as it were, in a street of these edifices, leading here and there into side squares where are quiet retreats with palm trees and gigantic images.  But when after climbing the long staircase one first emerges on the platform one does not realize the topography at once and seems to have entered suddenly into Jerusalem the Golden.  Right and left are rows of gorgeous, fantastic sanctuaries, all gold, vermilion and glass mosaic, and within them sit marble figures, bland, enigmatic personages who seem to invite approach but offer no explanation of the singular scene or the part they play in it.  If analyzed in detail the artistic merits of these shrines might be found small but the total impression is unique.  The Shwe Dagon has not the qualities which usually distinguish great religious buildings.  It is not specially impressive by its majesty or holiness; it is certainly wanting in order and arrangement.  But on entering the platform one feels that one has suddenly passed from this life into another and different world.  It is not perhaps a very elevated world; certainly not the final repose of the just or the steps of the throne of God, but it is as if you were walking in the bazaars of Paradise—­one of those Buddhist Paradises where the souls of the moderately pure find temporary rest from the whirl of transmigration, where the very lotus flowers are golden and the leaves of the trees are golden bells that tinkle in the perfumed breeze.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 124:  For the Pyus see Blagden in J.R.A.S. pp. 365-388. Ibid. in Epigr.  Indica, 1913, pp. 127-133.  Also reports of Burma Arch.  Survey, 1916, 1917.]

[Footnote 125:  So C.C.  Lowis in the Gazetteer of Burma, vol.  I. p. 292, but according to others the Burmese chronicles place the event at the beginning of the Christian era.]

[Footnote 126:  Sometimes called New Pagan to distinguish it from Old Pagan which was a name of Tagaung.  Also called Pagan or Pugama and in Pali Arimaddanapura.]

[Footnote 127:  See the travels of Kia Tan described by Pelliot in B.E.F.E.O. 1904, pp. 131-414.]

[Footnote 128:  More correctly Taung-ngu.]