palin (throne)

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 and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi seated in the backdrop of a palin in Naypyidaw.]]

Traditional Burmese scholarship recognizes six types of thrones, namely:

1. {{IAST|Aparājitapallaṅka}} ({{lang|my|အပရာဇိတပလ္လင်}}) – the Buddha's throne
2. {{IAST|Kamalāsanapallaṅka}} ({{lang|my|ကမလာသနပလ္လင်}}) – Brahma's throne
3. {{IAST|Dibbāsanapallaṅka}} ({{lang|my|ဒိဗ္ဗာသနပလ္လင်}}) – nat's throne
4. {{IAST|Rājapallaṅka}} ({{lang|my|ရာဇပလ္လင်}}) – monarch's throne
5. {{IAST|Dhammāsanapallaṅka}} ({{lang|my|ဓမ္မာသနပလ္လင်}}) – Buddhist monk's throne
6. {{IAST|Aṭṭakaraṇapallaṅka}} ({{lang|my|အဋ္ဋကရဏပလ္လင်}}) – judge's throne

File:Queen Supayalat and King Thibaw.jpg and Queen Supayalat seated on 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).{{Cite web|url=http://www.moi.gov.mm/npe/?q=news/8/03/2016/id-38407|title=ယဉ်ကျေးမှု ထုံးဓလေ့ဟောင်း တို့နိုင်ငံသားတို့မမေ့ကောင်း|website=Myanmar News Agency}}

File:Lion Throne of Myanmar.jpg from Mandalay Palace was preserved and is now displayed at the National Museum of Myanmar in Yangon.]]

The thrones were carved of wood, specifically by hereditary palace carpenters.{{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}} An auspicious time was chosen by astrologers to commence operations, and construction of these thrones was heralded by a royal ceremony to propitiate spirits. The thrones were simultaneously constructed according to a prescribed list of requirements, coated with resin, and decorated with gold leaf and glass mosaic.

The most important throne was the "Lion Throne" ({{IAST|Sīhāsanapallaṅka}}), which had a replica in the Hluttaw as well.

The thrones used different prescribed motifs and designs, types of wood, and were allocated to specific halls in the royal palace.{{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}} The thrones were also grouped by height, as follows:

1. {{IAST|Mahāpallaṅka}} (မဟာပလ္လင်) – {{convert|24|ft}}
2. {{IAST|Majjhimapallaṅka}} (မဇ္စျိမပလ္လင်) – {{convert|12|ft}}
3. {{IAST|Cuḷapallaṅka}} (စူဠပလ္လင်) – {{convert|6|ft}}

Below is a list of these eight types of thrones:

File:Botataung Stupa 0308.jpg.]]

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.

{{reflist}}

{{Commons category|Thrones of Myanmar}}

• Busabok, the Thai equivalent
• Throne

Category:Culture of Myanmar

Category:Burmese monarchy

Category:Burmese Buddhist architecture

Category:Buddhist iconography

Category:Thrones