In Burma all the higher branches of architecture are almost exclusively dedicated to religion. Except the Palace at Mandalay there is hardly a native building of note which is not connected with a shrine or monastery. Burmese architectural forms show most analogy to those of Nepal and perhaps[185] both preserve what was once the common style for wooden buildings in ancient India. In recent centuries the Burmese have shown little inclination to build anything that can be called a temple, that is a chamber containing images and the paraphernalia of worship. The commonest form of religious edifice is the dagoba or zedi[186]: images are placed in niches or shrines, which shelter them, but only rarely, as on the platform of the Shwe Dagon at Rangoon, assume the proportions of rooms. This does not apply to the great temples of Pagan, built from about 1050 to 1200, but that style was not continued and except the Arakan Pagoda at Mandalay has perhaps no modern representative. Details of these buildings may be found in the works of Forchhammer, Fergusson, de Beylié and various archæological reports. Their construction is remarkably solid. They do not, like most large buildings in India or Europe, contain halls of some size but are rather pyramids traversed by passages. But this curious disinclination to build temples of the usual kind is not due to any dislike of images. In no Buddhist country are they more common and their numbers are more noticeable because there is here no pantheon as in China and Tibet, but images of Gotama are multiplied, merely in order to obtain merit. Some slight variety in these figures is produced by the fact that the Burmese venerate not only Gotama but the three Buddhas who preceded him[187]. The Shwe Dagon Pagoda is reputed to contain relics of all four; statues of them all stand in the beautiful Ananda Pagoda at Pagan and not infrequently they are represented by four sitting figures facing the four quarters. A gigantic group of this kind composed of statues nearly 90 feet high stands in the outskirts of Pegu, and in the same neighbourhood is a still larger recumbent figure 180 feet long. It had been forgotten since the capture of Pegu by the Burmans in 1757 and was rediscovered by the engineers surveying the route for the railway. It lies almost in sight of the line and is surprising by its mere size, as one comes upon it suddenly in the jungle. As a work of art it can hardly be praised. It does not suggest the Buddha on his death bed, as is intended, but rather some huge spirit of the jungle waking up and watching the railway with indolent amusement.