Pagan Kingdom

The Pagan Kingdom was the first Burmese kingdom to unify the regions that would later form modern Myanmar, known in its own time by classical names including Arimaddanapura and Tampadipa, and its roughly two-hundred-fifty-year dominion over the Irrawaddy valley laid the foundations for the spread of the Burmese language, the Bamar people, and Theravada Buddhism across mainland Southeast Asia. Emerging from a modest ninth-century settlement fortified around 849 AD, the small principality gradually absorbed surrounding territory until King Anawrahta transformed it into an empire in the 1050s and 1060s, uniting the Irrawaddy valley and its periphery for what may have been the first time, and his successors extended its reach south into the Malay Peninsula, east to the Salween River, north toward the border of China, and west into Arakan and the Chin Hills. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Pagan ranked among Southeast Asia's two principal empires alongside the Khmer Empire, until Mongol invasions between 1277 and 1301 weakened the kingdom and three brothers overthrew its last ruler on 17 December 1297, establishing the Myinsaing Kingdom in its place.