Burmese Pegu Tile

This large, terracotta tile glazed in green shows two bovine-headed (Asiatic water-buffalo) warriors from the Mara’s demon soldiers. Standing, legs in profile and in movement towards the viewer’s right, torsos and heads in frontal view. While the entire body of the demons is green, they are dressed in a type of red short skirts, with the background of the tile in a neutral ivory shade. Each of the demons is carrying a short spear over the right shoulder. This tile formed part of the famous series of tiles placed in niches around the enclosure wall near the Shwegugyi pagoda, representing armed warriors in pairs from Mara’s army of demons. A large number of supernatural creatures populate Buddhist literature and imagery but among these Mara is definitely unique. Mara is the name of the demon that tempted Siddhartha Gautama by trying to seduce him with the vision of beautiful women who according to various legends are often said to be his own daughters. As the about-to-be Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, sat in meditation, Mara brought his most beautiful daughters to seduce him. Siddhartha, however, remained in meditation. Realising the fruitlessness of his scheme, Mara then sent vast armies of horrible looking creatures to attack him, in an attempt to distract and disturb him from his meditation. Yet Siddhartha continued meditating motionless and calm. This story came to be mythologized as a great battle with Mara, whose name means “destruction” and who represents the passions that snare and delude humans. According to the Buddhist cosmology Mara personifies unwholesome impulses and the death of any spiritual life. He is a tempter, distracting humans from practicing a spiritual life by making mundane things appear alluring, or the negative seem positive. The pious king Dhammaceti (r.1472-1492) of Pegu (today known as Bago) commanded the construction of a series of temples to honour the life of the Buddha. The most distinguished in size and importance among these was the temple complex of Shwegugyi, built in 1476, just south of Pegu. It was decorated with an extensive series of large-scale glazed tiles, many of which illustrated the demonic warriors of Mara’s army, who were sent to disrupt the Buddha’s meditation immediately prior to his Enlightenment. Among these tiles, particularly noted for their unusually large size, those representing pairs of Mara’s soldiers show a variety of animal heads on human bodies; another series has female figures in pairs, representing the daughters with whom Mara tried to tempt the Buddha. The tiles were cut from clay slabs. The figures in high relief were then boldly moulded and applied on the surface. The plaques then would have been dried, slipped, glazed with both lead and ash glazes and then finally fired. Each tile is unique and distinguished from the others by the heads of animals surmounting the human bodies of the warriors and by the weapons held in their hands. Scholars estimate that the number of plaques made was between 200 and 300 but that no more than a hundred are traceable today of which around fifty are in public collections. This could only suggest that surviving examples as relatively rare. Tiles from this series are known to been kept in public and private collections. The British Museum has an example and another example is in the Osothspha Ceramic Collection in Thailand. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has an example with a very similar glaze – colour and condition – as the example here.