![]() ![]() Despite the wars, cultural synchronization continued. ![]() Like the Pagan Empire, Ava, Hanthawaddy and the Shan states were all multi-ethnic polities. The valley too was beset with petty states until the late 14th century when two sizable powers, Ava Kingdom and Hanthawaddy Kingdom, emerged. Several competing Shan states came to dominate the entire northwestern to eastern arc surrounding the Irrawaddy valley. Like the Burmans four centuries earlier, Shan migrants who arrived with the Mongol invasions stayed behind. Pagan's collapse was followed by 250 years of political fragmentation that lasted well into the 16th century. Repeated Mongol invasions (1277ā1301) toppled the four-century-old kingdom in 1287. Pagan's rulers and wealthy built over 10,000 Buddhist temples in the Pagan capital zone alone. Theravada Buddhism slowly began to spread to the village level although Tantric, Mahayana, Brahmanic, and animist practices remained heavily entrenched. The Burmese language and culture gradually became dominant in the upper Irrawaddy valley, eclipsing the Pyu, Mon and Pali norms by the late 12th century. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the Pagan Empire and the Khmer Empire were two main powers in mainland Southeast Asia. Pagan gradually grew to absorb its surrounding states until the 1050sā1060s. Anawrahta laid the foundation of Modern Burma by uniting all of the Irrawaddy valley and its periphery for the first time in history and by founding the Pagan empire. ![]()
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