Ananda Temple completed at Pagan

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King Kyansittha's architectural masterwork rose complete above the dusty Burmese plain at Pagan - a perfectly symmetrical cruciform temple housing four colossal standing Buddhas facing the cardinal directions, each over thirty feet tall. Gilded inside and out, adorned with hundreds of glazed terracotta tiles illustrating the Jataka tales, it became the spiritual heart of Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia.