ИСТИНА

The Hnget-pit-taung monastery near Nyaung U, Bagan, is the only monastery in Burma possessing historiographic literature that has been worked on and updated for at least last three hundred years. The monastery has long claimed an exalted origin, tracing its establishment back to arrival of monk Arahan and the inception of Buddhist monastic tradition at Bagan. However, Hnget-pit-taung’s prominence finds limited support in archaeological and art historical evidence on the site as well as in epigraphic and textual sources originating outside of the monastery. Putting inscriptions, manuscripts, and printed histories produced at Hnget-pit-taung in broader historical context suggests that major instances when monastery laid or renewed its claims to a notable pedigree coincided with periods of political transition when new rulers or administrators sought for candidates for patronage in Bagan or looked for sources of information that could help in recasting the country’s past. At the same time, of particular importance was the emergence in Burma of academic study of Buddhism, when defining the nature and history of that religion ceased being a task shouldered exclusively by the exponents of Buddhist tradition, and the transition from manuscript to printed circulation. Tracing the manuscript corpus of Hnget-pit-taung and its circulation, the paper will explore the timeline of production of historiographic manuscripts versus other kinds of texts recopied at Hnget-pit-taung and the demand for these manuscripts among colonial and post-independence scholars of Burmese history. Narrating how the shift to print technology has disproportionally enhanced historical visibility of the monastery, the presentation finds that factors that influenced major changes and trends in modern Buddhist cultures worked similarly at the micro-level of a relatively obscure Burmese monastery.