Anawrata's confidence. The story implies that there was a
party in Pagan which knew that the prevalent creed was corrupt and
also looked upon Thaton and Ceylon as religious centres. As Anawrata
was a man of arms rather than a theologian, we may conjecture that his
motive was to concentrate in his capital the flower of learning as
known in his time--a motive which has often animated successful
princes in Asia and led to the unceremonious seizure of living saints.
According to the story he broke up the communities of Aris at the
instigation of Arahanta and then sent a mission to Manohari, king of
Pegu, asking for a copy of the Tipitaka and for relics. He received
a contemptuous reply intimating that he was not to be trusted with
such sacred objects. Anawrata in indignation collected an army,
marched against the Talaings and ended by carrying off to Pagan not
only elephant loads of scriptures and relics, but also all the Talaing
monks and nobles with the king himself.[149] The Pitakas were
stored in a splendid pagoda and Anawrata sent to Ceylon[150] for
others which were compared with the copies obtained from Thaton in
order to settle the text.[151]

For 200 years, that is from about 1060 A.D. until the later decades of
the thirteenth century, Pagan was a great centre of Buddhist culture
not only for Burma but for the whole east, renowned alike for its
architecture and its scholarship. The former can still be studied in
the magnificent pagodas which mark its site. Towards the end of his
reign Anawrata made not very successful attempts to obtain relics from
China and Ceylon and commenced the construction of the Shwe Zigon
pagoda. He died before it was completed but his successors, who
enjoyed fairly peaceful reigns, finished the work and constructed
about a thousand other buildings among which the most celebrated is
the Ananda temple erected by King Kyansitha.[152]

Pali literature in Burma begins with a little grammatical treatise
known as Karika and composed in 1064 A.D. by the monk Dhammasenapati
who lived in the monastery attached to this temple. A number of other
works followed. Of these the most celebrated was the Saddaniti of
Aggavamsa (1154), a treatise on the language of the Tipitaka
which became a classic not only in Burma but in Ceylon. A singular
enthusiasm for linguistic studies prevailed especially in the reign of
Kyocva (_c._ 1230), when even women are said to have been
distinguished for the skill and ardou