Palin (throne): Difference between revisions

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[[File:Saya Chone's "Royal Audience".png|300px|thumb|Depiction of the Burmese royal throne by a court painter, [[Saya Chone]].]]

'''''Palin''''' ({{lang-my|ပလ္လင်}}; from {{lang-pi|pallaṅka}}, {{lit|couch}}or'sofa') refers to any one of six types of [[throne]]s recognized in traditional Burmese scholarship. The ''palin'' is an important symbol of the Burmese monarchy and features prominently in Burmese architecture and Burmese Buddhist iconography. The ''palin'' is featured on the seal of Myanmar's [[Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture (Myanmar)|Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture]].

[[File:The Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi calling on the President of Myanmar, Mr. U. Thein Sein, at Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar on November 11, 2014 (2).jpg|thumb|Former Burmese President [[Thein Sein]] and Indian prime minister [[Narendra Modi]] seated in the backdrop of a ''palin'' in [[Naypyidaw]].]]

# {{IAST|Aparājitapallaṅka}} ({{my|အပရာဇိတပလ္လင်}}) – the [[Buddha]]'s throne

# {{IAST|Kamalāsanapallaṅka}} ({{my|ကမလာသနပလ္လင်}}) – [[Brahma]]'s throne

# {{IAST|Dibbāsanapallaṅka}} ({{my|ဒိဗ္ဗာသနပလ္လင်}}) – [[Nat (spirit)|nat]]'s throne

# {{IAST|Rājapallaṅka}} ({{my|ရာဇပလ္လင်}}) – monarch's throne

# {{IAST|Dhammāsanapallaṅka}} ({{my|ဓမ္မာသနပလ္လင်}}) – [[Buddhist monk]]'s throne

# {{IAST|Aṭṭakaraṇapallaṅka}} ({{my|အဋ္ဋကရဏပလ္လင်}}) – [[judge]]'s throne

[[File:Queen Supayalat and King Thibaw.jpg|thumb|[[King Thibaw]] and Queen [[Supayalat]] seated on [[The Lion Throne of Myanmar|The Lion Throne]] at [[Mandalay Palace]]]]

In pre-colonial times, the {{IAST|rājapallaṅka}} (Burmese ''yazapalin'') seated the sovereign and his chief consort. Traditionally, Burmese palaces possessed eight types of thrones, housed in nine palace halls, leading to the Burmese adage, "eight thrones, nine palace halls" (ပလ္လင်ရှစ်ခန်း ရွှေနန်းကိုးဆောင်).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.moi.gov.mm/npe/?q=news/8/03/2016/id-38407|title=ယဉ်ကျေးမှု ထုံးဓလေ့ဟောင်း တို့နိုင်ငံသားတို့မမေ့ကောင်း|website=Myanmar News Agency}}</ref>

[[File:Lion Throne of Myanmar.jpg|thumb|The [[Lion Throne of Burma|Lion Throne]] from [[Mandalay Palace]] was preserved and is now displayed at the [[National Museum of Myanmar (Yangon)|National Museum of Myanmar]] in Yangon.]]

The thrones were carved of wood, specifically by hereditary palace carpenters.<ref name="Thant 1960">{{Cite journal|last=Thant|first=Yi Yi|date=December 1960|title=The Thrones of the Burmese Kings|url=http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs20/Yi_Yi-1960-The_Thrones_of_the_Burmese_Kings-bu-red.pdf|journal=Journal of Burma Research Society|volume=43|pages=97–123}}</ref> An auspicious time was chosen by astrologers to commence operations, and construction of these thrones was heralded by a royal ceremony to propitiate spirits.<ref name="Thant 1960" /> The thrones were simultaneously constructed according to a prescribed list of requirements, coated with resin, and decorated with [[gold leaf]] and [[glass mosaic]].<ref name="Thant 1960" />

The most important throne was the "Lion Throne" ({{IAST|Sīhāsanapallaṅka}}), which had a replica in the Hluttaw as well.<ref name="Thant 1960" />

The thrones used different prescribed motifs and designs, types of wood, and were allocated to specific halls in the royal palace.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.moi.gov.mm/moi:zg/?q=content/%E1%80%95%E1%80%9C%E1%82%85%E1%80%84%E1%80%B9%E1%80%9B%E1%80%BD%E1%80%85%E1%80%B9%E1%80%81%E1%80%94%E1%80%B9%E1%80%B8%E1%81%8A-%E1%80%B1%E1%80%9B%E1%82%8A%E1%80%94%E1%80%94%E1%80%B9%E1%80%B8%E1%80%80%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%B8%E1%80%B1%E1%80%86%E1%80%AC%E1%80%84%E1%80%B9|title=ပလ္လင်ရှစ်ခန်း၊ ရွှေနန်းကိုးဆောင်|last=Tha|first=Maung|date=2016-11-15|website=Ministry of Information}}</ref> The thrones were also grouped by height, as follows:

#{{IAST|Mahāpallaṅka}} (မဟာပလ္လင်) – {{convert|24|ft}}

#{{IAST|Majjhimapallaṅka}} (မဇ္စျိမပလ္လင်) – {{convert|12|ft}}

#{{IAST|Cuḷapallaṅka}} (စူဠပလ္လင်) – {{convert|6|ft}}

!Primary motif

!Type of wood

!Location(s) in palace

!Photo

| {{IAST|Sīhāsanapallaṅka}}

|''[[Gmelina arborea]]''

|[[File:Lion throne, Mandalay Palace.jpg|100px]]

| {{IAST|Bhamarāsanapallaṅka}}

|''[[Cinnamomum tamala]]''

|[[File:Bumblebee Throne of Myanmar.jpg|100px]]

| {{IAST|Padumāsanapallaṅka}}

|[[File:Lotus Throne of Myanmar.jpg|100px]]

| {{IAST|Haṃsāsanapallaṅka}}

|''[[Hopea odorata]]''

|[[File:Hamsa Throne of Myanmar.jpg|100px]]

| {{IAST|Gajāsanapallaṅka}}

|''[[Magnolia champaca]]''

|[[File:Elephant Throne of Myanmar.jpg|100px]]

| {{IAST|Saṅkhāsanapallaṅka}}

|''[[Mangifera indica]]''

|[[File:Conch Shell Throne of Myanmar.jpg|100px]]

| {{IAST|Migāsanapallaṅka}}

|[[File:Deer Throne of Myanmar.jpg|100px]]

| {{IAST|Mayurāsanapallaṅka}}

|''[[Butea monosperma]]''

|[[File:Peacock Throne of Myanmar.jpg|100px]]

The ''palin'' is also used to seat images and statues of the Buddha, variously called ''gaw palin'' (ဂေါ့ပလ္လင်), ''phaya palin'' (ဘုရားပလ္လင်) or ''samakhan'' (စမ္မခဏ်), from the Pali term {{IAST|sammakhaṇḍa}}. This ''palin'' is a feature of many Buddhist household shrines in Burma.

{{Commons category|Thrones of Myanmar}}

* [[Busabok]], the Thai equivalent

[[Category:Culture of Myanmar]]

[[Category:Burmese Buddhist architecture]]

[[Category:Buddhist iconography]]