King Anawrahta converted Bagan to Theravada Buddhism not only from genuine spiritual conviction but also to weaken the powerful and corrupt Ari Buddhist monks, bringing the church under royal control.

51:29he also spotted an opportunity. If he brought this new branch of Buddhism to his kingdom, he could weaken the hold of the Ari monks. So, King Anawrahta went to war with the church. First, the king went after the monks’ ability to recruit. He brought in new laws that meant that common people were no longer obliged to give up their young children to become monks, as they had been before.

52:00Next he changed the law to remove the punishment for those who deserted their life as a monk. As a result, many dissatisfied monks simply hung up their robes and left to do something else. Bit by bit, Anawrahta chipped away at the monks’ power with every tool at his disposal. There were, of course, those who fought the changes. Anawrahta banished thousands of monks who resisted his reforms. Many of these fled to the nearby volcano of

52:33Mount Popa or east into the narrow forested valleys of the Shan Hills, and while they were never completely wiped out, they would never again wield the same power in the kingdom. To celebrate the conversion of his land, Anawrahta sent an envoy to Sri Lanka and asked rather boldly that their most precious relic, a tooth belonging to the Buddha himself, be sent to Myanmar to be placed in one of his great temples. The Sri Lankans understandably refused,

53:06but at the last moment they remembered that they had a spare, and the envoy was sent back to Burma with what they were told was another tooth of the Buddha. Like the small fragments of wood taken from the cross used at Jesus's crucifixion that showed up in churches across Medieval Europe, teeth of the Buddha had a way of multiplying in Southeast Asia according to the needs of