Kyauktawgyi Buddha Temple ( my, ကျောက်တော်ကြီးဘုရား) is a Buddhist temple located on Mindhamma Hill on

Mingaladon Township Mingaladon Township ( my, မင်္ဂလာဒုံ မြို့နယ် ) is located in the northernmost part of Yangon, Myanmar. The township comprises 31 wards, and shares borders with Hmawbi Township in the north, North Okkalapa Towns ...

Yangon Yangon ( my, ရန်ကုန်; ; ), formerly spelled as Rangoon, is the capital of the Yangon Region and the largest city of Myanmar (also known as Burma). Yangon served as the capital of Myanmar until 2006, when the military government ...

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

. The temple houses a feet tall Buddha called the Loka Chantha Abhaya Labha Muni (), which is carved out of a single piece of white marble quarried in Sagyin Hill, Madaya Township, Mandalay Region. The image weighs approximately 560 tons. The Buddha is carved making the abhayamudra (), the gesture of fearlessness. The marble image was transported using a special railroad carriage, which was then placed on a long barge donated by the

Asia World Company Asia World Group ( my, အာရှဓန ကုမ္ပဏီ) is a Burmese conglomerate. It is Myanmar's largest and most diversified conglomerate, with interests in industrial development, construction, transportation, import-export, and a lo ...

. The barge was pushed down the

Irrawaddy River The Irrawaddy River ( Ayeyarwady River; , , from Indic ''revatī'', meaning "abounding in riches") is a river that flows from north to south through Myanmar (Burma). It is the country's largest river and most important commercial waterway. Origi ...

by three steamers, stopping along major towns before reaching Yangon. The barge was accompanied by a fleet of decorated ceremonial boats. The marble image landed at Gyogon, Insein Township on 5 August 2000 to an audience of 500,000 people, including government officials from the

State Peace and Development Council The State Peace and Development Council ( my, နိုင်ငံတော် အေးချမ်းသာယာရေး နှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေး ကောင်စီ ; abbreviated SPDC or , ) was the offi ...

, including

Than Shwe Than Shwe ( my, သန်းရွှေ, ; born 2 February 1933 or 3 May 1935) is a Burmese strongman politician who was the head of state of Myanmar from 1992 to 2011 as Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). During this ...

, his wife Kyaing Kyaing, and Khin Nyunt. The image was then carried atop Mindhamma Hill using a special railway carriage requiring 4 locomotives, on 10 August. The partially carved image was finished and erected at an auspicious location designated by astrologers (''aung myay'', lit. "victory grounds"), where it is currently housed. The Buddha image was consecrated in February 2002. This Buddhist project was reportedly a ''

yadaya Yadaya ( my, ယတြာ, ; from Sanskrit ; variously spelt yadayar and yedaya) refers to magical rituals done to delay, neutralize or prevent misfortune, widely practiced in Myanmar (Burma). These rituals, which originate from Brahmanism, are gui ...

'' exercise to avert misfortune. The Kyauktawgyi Buddha Temple was built near the site of the former

Nine Mile Cemetery Nine Mile Cemetery ( my, ကိုးမိုင်သင်္ချိုင်း) was an ethnic Chinese cemetery located in Yangon, Myanmar. In 1996, the Burmese government announced that the cemetery would be demolished and that remains we ...

Gallery

File:Kyauk Taw Kyee Pagoda.jpg, Kyauktawgyi buddha

References

{{Buddhist sites in Myanmar Buddhist temples in Yangon 20th-century Buddhist temples