Pyinbya

Chronicle tradition According to the Burmese chronicles, the future king was born to King Saw Khin Hnit of Pagan. He was born in either 817 CE (or 802 CE). He was lord of Pyinbya village of Pagan prior to his accession, and known as Pyinbya Mintha. He succeeded his brother King Khelu as king in 846 CE. He founded the city of Pagan on 23 December 849 (6th waxing of Pyatho 211 ME). He also founded a settlement of Taungdwin in 857, perhaps the southernmost limit of his nascent kingdom. He died in 876 CE at age 59 (in his 60th year). (Note that main Burmese chronicles do not agree on his regnal years or birth and death years. The oldest chronicle Zatadawbon Yazawin is considered to be the most accurate for the Pagan period.) The table below lists the dates given by four main chronicles, as well as Hmannan's dates when anchored by the Anawrahta's inscriptionally verified accession date of 1044. Pagan was founded as a fortified settlement along a bend in the Irrawaddy river. The new settlement may have been designed to help the Nanzhao pacify the surrounding countryside. It was a certainly a strategic spot, close to the Chindwin river and just to the west of a richly irrigated rice plain.

Pagan was one of several competing city-states until the late 10th century when it grew in authority and grandeur. Two hundred years after Pyinbya founded Pagan, his great-grandson Anawrahta went on to create the Pagan Empire, the first ever unification of the Irrawaddy valley and its periphery.