DatarrX/my-era-bagan

Eras of Myanmar Literature: Bagan Era (ပုဂံခေတ် စာပေ)

This repository hosts a curated corpus of primary inscriptions and early written records from the Bagan Era (ပုဂံခေတ်), forming the inaugural chapter of the Eras of Myanmar Literature collection.

It is maintained as an open-access epigraphic and linguistic resource under the DatarrX Foundation, curated by Khant Sint Heinn (Kalix Louis).

This release contains the currently available collection of curated records. The dataset is not yet a final or exhaustive collection, and additional inscriptions and historical texts are planned for future updates. The existing records have been curated and analyzed, with an emphasis on maintaining data quality and historical relevance.

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The Historical & Literary Significance of Bagan

The Kingdom of Bagan (flourished circa 11th–13th century CE) marks the cradle of Myanmar’s classical civilization. Centered along the Ayeyarwady basin, Bagan transformed from a regional cluster into a sprawling empire that unified the central plains, fostered profound Theravada Buddhist scholarship, and constructed thousands of monumental stupas and temples across the landscape.

More importantly, Bagan is where written Burmese emerged and cemented its foundations. Prior to this era, epigraphic records in the region were preserved largely in Pyu, Mon, Pali, and Sanskrit. The inscriptions of Bagan represent the earliest surviving corpus of the Burmese script—carved onto stone stelae (ကျောက်စာ), painted across temple corridors as ink glosses (မင်စာ), and pressed into terracotta votive tablets (အုတ်ခွက်စာ).

These texts are not merely historical decrees. They are primary records of a developing literary language:

• Linguistic Genesis: They capture Old Burmese orthography, preserving complex consonant clusters (ဖ္လစ်, မ္လိယ်, က္လွန်) and archaic syntactic structures that have long since evolved in the modern language.
• Cultural & Social Ledger: Through deeds of merit, boundary demarcations, legal arbitrations, and solemn donor oaths, they provide unmediated insight into the judicial systems, social hierarchy, land tenure, and daily life of medieval Southeast Asia.

Understanding the literature of Bagan is essential for anyone studying the evolution of Tibeto-Burman linguistics, regional epigraphy, or the history of mainland Southeast Asia.

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Corpus Overview

This dataset brings together authenticated texts from the Bagan period, normalized into clean, machine-readable format while rigorously preserving their authentic orthography.

• Scope: Epigraphic stone inscriptions, ink writings, and primary dedicatory texts
• Period Covered: Circa 11th – 13th Century CE (Recorded in Myanmar Era: ME 400 – ME 657)
• Current Records: 156 primary entries
• Language: Old Burmese (Archaic Burmese / ရှေးဟောင်းမြန်မာစာ)

Each record contains the inscription title (name), the historic year inscribed (date), the attributed donor or author (author), and the verified text body (text).

The collection will be expanded gradually as additional historical records are identified, curated, and prepared for inclusion.

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About the Project & Series

The Eras of Myanmar Literature initiative seeks to systematically collect, preserve, and digitize the textual heritage of Myanmar across its major historical epochs:

1. Bagan Era (ပုဂံခေတ်) — [This Dataset]
2. Pinya Era (ပင်းယခေတ်) — DatarrX/my-era-pinya
3. Inwa Era (အင်းဝခေတ်) — DatarrX/my-era-inwa
4. Taungoo Era (တောင်ငူခေတ်) — DatarrX/my-era-taungoo
5. Nyaungyan Era (ညောင်ရမ်းခေတ်) — DatarrX/my-era-nyaungyan
6. Konbaung Era (ကုန်းဘောင်ခေတ်) — DatarrX/my-era-konbaung

By converting fragile, scattered historical literature into standard JSONL datasets, the project aims to bridge classical humanities scholarship with computational linguistics, natural language processing, and open AI research.

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Attribution & License

Curated and released by Khant Sint Heinn (Kalix Louis) under the DatarrX Foundation.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share, adapt, and build upon this dataset for academic, historical, or technical purposes, provided appropriate attribution is given.