| 1 The Journal of Burma Studies Vol. 22 No. 1 (2018), pp. 1–30 © 2018 Center for Burma Studies Northern Illinois University Buddha’s life in Konbaung period bronzes from Yazagyo Bob Hudson Pamela Gutman Win Maung (Tampawaddy) This is a study of a collection of narrative bronzes retrieved from a cluster of ruins (see fgure 1) at Yazagyo, in the Kabaw Valley, in a remote area of Northwestern Myanmar/Burma. The valley lies between the Upper Chindwin River and the hills which separate Burma from Manipur. Yazagyo is on a side road from the Myanmar-India Friendship Highway, 35 kilometres north of Kalaymyo. It was formerly protected by several kilometres of earth banks and moats, surmounted by a stockade. The bronzes come from a total of six ruined build- ings, fve of which have since been demolished. The Yazagyo collection (see fgure 2) is kept at the Min- kyaung (royal monastery). Figures in this distinctive style, generally posed on rectangular open-frame bases and repre- senting events in Buddha’s life, are a near-ubiquitous feature of reliquary deposits of the 1752–1885 Konbaung Period. 1 The ruins also yielded oval silver boxes flled with small frag- ments of an uncertain substance which are now preserved in 1 We take the periodisation published in Chew 2005 pp. 256–257 as the standard for art periods in Post-Bagan Upper Burma. These are First Ava Period (including the latter half of the 16th century when Ava was subsid- iary to Toungoo), 1364–1597; Second Ava Period (also called the Nyaung Yan period after the frst king of that dynasty), 1597–1752; Early Kon- baung Period (in which the capital moved from Shwebo to Sagaing, Ava and Amarapura), 1752–1819; Late Konbaung Period (in which the capital moved back to Ava, again to Amarapura and fnally to Mandalay, where the last king, Thibaw, was deposed and exiled by the British), 1819–1853.