The Dhammazedi Bell: A Legend Awakened

The search for the Dhammazedi Bell, illustrated by Kenneth Wong

Along the muddy waterfront, crowds gather almost daily, hoping to witness the miraculous moment a piece of Burmese history literally rises from the bottom of a river. Four hundred years ago a foreigner ill-advisedly attempted to transport a virtuous Buddhist king's legendary bell, and the boat sank. The oral tradition and some historical texts point to the confluence of Rangoon River, Bago River, and Pazundaung Creek as the spot where the 180,000-viss (320-ton) bell lies asleep.

On August 9, efforts to resurrect it from its watery grave began, with a supernatural undercurrent that has long been a natural part of Burma.

Burmese Ways, Burmese Means

In the press briefing reported by Kamayut Media, project lead U San Lin said he favors "Burmese ways, Burmese means" over scientific methods and technology. He believes the bell is guarded by a nest of Nagas, or mythical serpents, and must be freed by mystical means.

That would explain the involvement of the Thanlyin Nat Sin Tayar abbot, who led a Buddhist chant during the search for the diving spot. "If you get involved in this with self-interest, you'd never set eyes on the Dhammazedi bell," he told a reporter from Eleven Myanmar. He said he trusts the altruistic spirit of U San Lin and colleagues, who plan to restore the bell to its original site--the Shwe Dagon Pagoda.

The project is approved by the Rangoon Division authorities, said U Win Myint, another project organizer to Kamayut Media. Ten divers, along with three ships on loan from the government, will be employed, according to him. "The most it would take is one month, the shortest a week," he said. "We'll do it using Burmese ways, Burmese means."

The divers are ethnic salons, or sea gypsies, known for their underwater skills, according to a report by 7 Day Daily. They've also been asked to adhere to a vegetarian diet (in Burmese, the phrase means "a kill-free diet") and maintain thila (good conduct), BBC Burmese reported. While the project invites snickers from skeptics, it has also attracted some powerful donors. It has so far collected about 180 million kyats (U.S. $185,000) in donations, according to the same BBC Burmese report.

Even if the ancient bell is never recovered, the quest turns out to be a good omen for local boatmen, who have since begun charging spectators and onlookers who want to get close to the action. According to DVB, a ferry ride to diving spot is currently at 1,000 kyats a head (a little more than U.S. $1).

Legend or History?

Forty miles outside Rangoon, in the Maha Kalyani Ordination Hall in Bago, a series of stone tablets offer what might be the strongest piece of evidence for the Dhammazedi bell's existence. Among the Kalyani inscriptions, carved on seven-foot-tall monuments, is the following reference (translated from Pali and Mon into English by Taw Sein Ko):

It would, indeed, be appropriate that I should myself welcome them [the monks returning from Ceylon] on my return from Tigumpanagara, where, on the Mahdpavarana day, which falls on the full-moon day of Assayuja, I shall present the cetiya containing the Hair Relics of the Fully Enlightened One, obtained during His life-time, with a large bell made of brass, weighing 3,000 tulas.

Dated 1476, the inscriptions commemorate the Buddhist reformation efforts of by King Dhammazedi, a former monk who once ruled Bago. Tigumpanagara corresponds to the old spelling variant of Dagon, which later morphed into Yangon, Anglicized as Rangoon during the Colonial era.

Nearly a hundred years after the installation of the Kalyani inscriptions, Venetian traveler and trader Gasparo Balbi, passing through the East Indies, arrived in Dala and Dagon. In his travel records published as Viaggio delle Indie Orientali, etc. (Venice, 1590), he recounted his encounter with a giant bell installed atop "the Pagod, or Varella of Dogon."

[At] the foot of the first staire when I went downe I turned my face to the left side, and with some Portugals which were in my companie found in a faire Hall a very large Bell, which we measured, and found to be seven paces and three hand breadths, and it is full of Letters from the top to the bottome, and so neere together that one toucheth the other, they are very well and neatly made: but there was no Nation that could understand them, no not the men of Pegu, and they remember not whence, nor how it came thither. 

The Historical Villain

So how did the bell that once hung in the shelters of Shwe Dagon end up at the bottom of a river? The protagonist of this narrative is Filipe de Brito e Nicote, a Portuguese mercenary and adventurer who briefly declared himself king of Syriam (present day Thanlyin) in lower Burma.

Burmese historian Maung Htin Aung wrote, "[De Brito] forced all the Mons in his kingdom to become Roman Catholics, and, on the plea that idolatry must be suppressed and with the full approval of the friars representing the archbishop of Goa, he looted all the Buddhist temples of their ornaments and treasures, melted down all the golden images, and cast the bronze from the bells into cannons."

Walter Desai (W. S. Desai), former head of Rangoon University's History Department, wrote in A Pageant of Burmese History that "[De Brito] began to plunder Buddhist temples of their valuables. He took the pagoda bells and made cannon out of them."

This is consistent with the character of de Brito as recorded in Hmannan Yazawin (The Glass Palace Chronicles), a Burmese historical tome composed in 1829. According to the chapter detailing "The Destruction of Hanthawaddy Kingdom" in the third volume of Hmannan, "Lord of Thanlyin [de Brito] broke into the shrines and pagodas around Hanthawaddy and, upon finding gold and silver statues, peeled off the precious gemstones, turned them into gold, and used them to trade with sailors." (Translation mine.)

De Brito would eventually be made to suffer a cruel fate for his crimes. When King Anaukphetlun captured Thanlyin, he brought the Portuguese before him. The sentence pronounced on him was recorded in Hmannan Vol. III, in the chapter titled "How, after hearing about the fall of the King of Taungnoo, the Lord himself marched to Taungnoo and Thanlyin."

"Nga Zinga [as de Brito is commonly known among the Burmese]: For you're an infidel and a violator of pagodas, you shall be put on a spit in front of your residence, in the middle of the town, so that the people of Thanlyin, men, and women may look upon you. So I order!" Accordingly, on the third day past the full moon of Tagu month, a Saturday, he was executed. (Translation mine)

The Ill-Fated Journey

As to de Brito's direct involvement in the disappearance of the Dhammazedi bell, historian G. E. Harvey offered this footnote in the History of Burma. "When [de Brito] removed Dhammazedi's great bell from the Shwe Dagon, it sank in the stream." Harvey's source was an article titled "History of Syriam" by J. F. Furnivall, in a 1915 issue of the Journals of Burma Research Society (JBRS).

In his book The Mysteries of the Dhammazedi Bell, Burmese researcher and historian Chit San Win shared the following details, found in The General History of Shwe Dagon. "Between the [Burmese lunar] year 965 to 974 [Western calendar year 1604 to 1613], foreigner Nga Zinga, ruler of Thanlyin, took the said bell away, and it fell into Daw Bon river. Older people talked of how they could still see the shrimp-curl-shaped hook at low tide." (Translation mine)

Chit San Win also dug up this account in A History of Rangoon by B. R. Pearn. "[De Brito] took Dhammaceti's great bell from the pagoda so that he might cast its bronze into cannon, but by the power of Buddha the boat bearing it to Syriam sank in the river."

There seem to be sufficient evidence, both in folkloric tradition and in historical texts, to affirm that the Dhammazedi bell once hung somewhere on the deck of Shwe Dagon; and that de Brito was somehow responsible for its loss.

It is puzzling, however, that the bell's last journey, repeated with vivid details in a number of colonial histories, didn't appear in Hmannan, a major work of history written 300 years after the alleged incident took place. The 19th century Burmese historians' curious silence casts a sliver of doubt, if not about the bell's former existence then about how it was lost and its whereabouts.

Who is Dhammazedi?

One of the tutors of Shin Sawbu, Dhammazedi later left the monastic order and became a layman to marry the queen's daughter. When Queen Shin Sawbu died without a male heir to succeed her, Dhammazedi ascended to the throne of Hanthawaddy (present day Pegu or Bago).

Sir Arthur Phayre, one of the earliest colonial officers to compile a comprehensive history of Burma, wrote, "Though brought up from early youth in the seclusion of a Buddhist monastery until he was more than forty years of age, [Dhammazedi] reigned with dignity and wisdom. His moderation reconciled to his rule the diverse interest of the grandees of the land ... Though he made no wars, yet he extended the boundaries of his kingdom ..."

Burmese historian Maung Htin Aung wrote, "Dhammazedi reigned from 1472 to 1492 and during this period the Mons in Burma reached the height of their achievement. Although he had spent the best years of his life in the monastery, he proved to be a very able administrator, and throughout his reign law and order prevailed."

For Better of Worse

Legend or history, the loss of the Dhammazedi bell was a black eye to Burmese pride, a permanent bruise on the Burmese psyche, a wrong that went without redress for four centuries. In history classes across the country, teachers invariably get fired up when talking about de Brito. He was the epitome of an opportunistic foreigner who managed to hijack, even if only for a time, the destiny of the country. Recovering the bell would go along way to bolster the population's morale. Since the iconic artifact is associated with a Buddhist king, it holds even more allure in this era of renewed religious fervor and nationalism.

Salvage attempts that involve outsiders--one with deep-sea diver James Blunt in 1995, another with Australian filmmaker Damien Lay (seems to be ongoing, based on Lay's own professional profile)--didn't yield meaningful results, despite access to modern technology and sonar equipment. These experiences may have swayed the current team to put their faith instead in local labor and expertise. 

The project leaders' insistence on homegrown methods may also be a manifestation of the conservative faction's weariness with what they see as undue foreign influence, a consequence of Burma's opening in the last two years. If they're successful, they would have proven to the world that they are self-sufficient, that they don't have to rely on an influx of NGOs and foreign aid to solve the country's domestic issues or heal its wounds.

For the current government, the bell--even in its absence--has already shown to be a blessing. These past two weeks, the search for the bell dominates the headlines, pushing Aung San Suu Kyi's call for constitution reform to the back pages.

I sincerely hope, when the Dhammazedi bell resurfaces, it ushers in a new era of peace and tolerance, marked by the original bell maker's spirit and wisdom. But considering the outbreak of sectarian violence targeting the religious minorities (the latest one in Mandalay was only last month), the heightened ethno-religious attitude the bell might stir up also weights heavily on my mind.

References: 

Kalyani Inscriptions: erected by King Dhammaceti (Dhammazedi) at Pegu (Bago) in 1476 A.D., translated by Taw Sein Ko, The Superintendent, Government Printing, Rangoon, Burma (1892).
"Coral, Yes; Republicanism, No!," by Gasparo Balbi; Inroads into Burma: A Travelers' Anthology, compiled and edited by Gerry Abbott, Oxford in Asia Paperbacks, Kuala Lumpur Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997).
History of Burma, G. E. Harvey, Octagon Books, a division of Hippocrene Books, Inc., New York, 1983.
Hmannan Maha Yazawin Daw Gyi (The Great Glass Palace Chronicles), three volumes, published by the Ministry of News and Information, Burma (February 2003)
A History of Burma, by Maung Htin Aung, Columbia University Press, New York and London (1967)
A Pageant of Burmese History, by W. S. Desai, Orient Longmans Ltd., India (1961)
The Mysteries of the Dhammazedi Bell, by Chit San Win,  Pan Myo Tayar (100 Flower Types) Publishing, Pazundaung Township, Rangoon (2010).
History of Burma, by Arthur Phayre, Bibliotheca Orientalis, Orchid Press, Thailand (1998)