Pindaya Caves

A limestone ridge above the small Shan State town of Pindaya holds one of the densest gatherings of sacred images anywhere in Myanmar. Of the three caves that open in the ridge, only the southernmost can be entered, and it has been filled over roughly two and a half centuries with more than 8,000 images of the Buddha lining its passages. The oldest dated inscription among them is from 1773, and donors have kept adding images ever since — villagers, merchants and rulers alike — so the cave now reads like a catalogue of Burmese Buddhist sculpture from the early Konbaung era to the present.

What scholars single out is not the quantity but the range. Nowhere else in the country shows such variety in the images themselves and in the carved thrones and backdrops around them. About seventy figures stand apart altogether: late-18th-century Buddhas of the Bhisakkaguru type, the healing Buddha, holding a seed in the upturned right palm and with a treatment of hair, face and robe unlike other Burmese images. The historian Than Tun, who studied Pindaya in depth, took them as a sign that the cave once served a Mahayana cult, which is unusual in a Theravada country. The path inside runs for about 150 metres along a well-worn floor, and the cave is still an active pilgrimage site as well as an attraction.

The approach is part of the experience. A covered stairway climbs the hillside to the 15-metre Shwe U Min ("Golden Cave") pagoda at the entrance, and a lift has been added in recent times. Local tradition credits the pagoda to King Ashoka and a 12th-century restoration to King Alaungsithu, though its present form is clearly modern and no independent record supports the story. A bronze bell cast in 1842 hangs by the southern entrance. The mouth itself was blasted wider in 1925 to admit more pilgrims, at the cost of some early images and inscriptions. At the foot of the stairway, sculptures of a giant spider and an archer recall the best-known legend: seven princesses bathing in a lake were trapped in the cave by the spider and freed by Prince Kummabhaya, who shot it.

Pindaya lies in the Myelat uplands, the homeland of the Danu people, and the town looks out over Pone Taloke Lake. The caves are within walking distance of the centre — roughly three quarters of an hour on foot.

Getting there

The caves are about 2.4 km from the centre of Pindaya (Pangtara). The nearest airport is Heho (HEH), about 25 km away as the crow flies, and the last stretch is by road.