Depeyin ( my, ဒီပဲယင်း; also spelled Dabayin, Debayin, Depayin, or Tabayin) is a town in the
Sagaing Division in
Myanmar
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 ...
.
Etymology
The town's classical name is (), which means 'continental theatre' or 'dyed field' in
Pali
Pali () is a Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language native to the Indian subcontinent. It is widely studied because it is the language of the Buddhist '' Pāli Canon'' or '' Tipiṭaka'' as well as the sacred language of '' Theravāda'' Bud ...
. According to the
founding myth of Tabayin, when King
Sithu I
Alaungsithu or Sithu I ( my, အလောင်းစည်သူ ; also Cansu I; 1090–1167) was king of Pagan Dynasty of Burma (Myanmar) from 1112/13 to 1167. Sithu's reign was a prosperous one in which Pagan was an integral part of in-land ...
toured the land, the
gods
A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers great ...
assumed the forms of goats and bleated as if they were thirsty. The king saw the signal of the deities and established a settlement on the spot thereafter. The settlement is named Dee-pae-yin''
' ( Here-bleat-those) after the bleat of the divine goats.
History
Depayin has been around for over 700 years and it was called Dhipaesyin''
' ( ဓိပေအ်သျင် ) during the
Bagan Dynasty
The Kingdom of Pagan ( my, ပုဂံခေတ်, , ; also known as the Pagan Dynasty and the Pagan Empire; also the Bagan Dynasty or Bagan Empire) was the first Burmese kingdom to unify the regions that would later constitute modern-da ...
.
Located a few kilometers west of
Shwebo, the birthplace of
Konbaung dynasty
The Konbaung dynasty ( my, ကုန်းဘောင်ခေတ်, ), also known as Third Burmese Empire (တတိယမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်) and formerly known as the Alompra dynasty (အလောင်းဘ ...
, Tabayin was a major source of many Konbaung soldiers and officials, including the country's most famous general
Maha Bandula
General Maha Bandula ( my, မဟာဗန္ဓုလ ; 6 November 1782 – 1 April 1825) was commander-in-chief of the Royal Burmese Armed Forces from 1821 until his death in 1825 in