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| Pagan's significance was
to await recognition from the West. Indeed, only with the recognition of the
antiquity and past glory of Pagan, would contemporary Burmese civilisation gain
some credibility with the envoys visiting the Burmese court during this period.
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| John Crawfurd, in his
account of the 1827 expedition, mentions that his party stopped off and toured
some of the ruins. Crawfurd was no antiquarian and his observations are
general; though the monuments did impress the envoy of the value of Burma's
demised civilisation, he was to write: "The vast extent of the ruins of Pagan,
and the extent and splendour of its religious edifices, may be considered by
some as proofs of considerable civilisation among the Burmans."' = A number of
Crawfurd's observations are of some interest today to the historian 9f Pagan,
for example, he counted some fifty-three inscriptions stored in the hall of the
bodhi Temple (the temple itself he likened to that of a neat English parish
church)." In 1835, Captain Hannay, on his way to survey amber mines to the
north, mentioned in his narrative that the monuments "were covered with jungle
on top", and in 1837 a Rev. Kinncaird visited Pagan. '4 It was in 1855 that one
Scotsman, Henry Yule, commissioned in the Bengal Engineers, visited the old
capital on his way to Ava where he, as the envoy Phayre's secretary, like
Symes, was to visit the Court in the aftermath of the Second Burmese War of
1852. With Phayre, Yule disembarked and explored the city, instantly
recognising the historical and architectural significance of the monuments.
Using his skills as a military engineer, he surveyed a number of the principal
monuments and recorded his explorations in his Narrative of the Mission to the
Court of Ava
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| No.2: the yangyi, c.1855, by in 1855.
Captain Linnaeus Tripe, who accompanied Yule, possessed a very early camera and
took the first photographs of Pagan and the artist Colesworthy Grant made a
number of sketches, which with Tripe's photographs, were reworked to create
colour illustrations for the Narrative."
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| Yule was thus the first foreign visitor,
possibly since Marco Polo, to recognise the importance of Pagan and he wrote in
the Narrative. "Pagan surprised us all. None of the preceding visitors to Ava
had prepared us for remains of such importance and interest." "6 Yule and his
party were the first Westerners to realise the importance of Pagan and convey
it to the rest of the world together with the drawings, sketches and written
descriptions of the monuments that he included in the Narrative. Following this
visit, Dr Emil Forchammer, a roving German archaeologist, came to Pagan in
1881, only five years before the absorption of Upper Burma into the British
Empire." It is uncertain whether Forchammer's visit was a response to Yule's
pioneering, albeit brief, study, however, Forchammer presented a detailed
report on the min temple near U that was printed by the Superintendent of
Government printing in 1891, along with the publication of reports on various
other monuments throughout Burma.' It seems strange that Forchammer should
carry out so articulate a study of such an obscure, though by no means
insignificant, temple. One may wonder if, perhaps, as this temple is closer to
the old landing stage at Nyaung-U than the Pagan village sites, whether
Forchammer only had time for one study, executed with a Teutonic exactness. The
next visitor to Pagan was also German, though less academically inclined than
Forchammer, Fritz von
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Colesworthy Grant, from
Yule's Narrative
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