Pagoda Guardians
The story of why chinthes guard the entrances of pagodas and temples are given as such:
A princess had a son through her marriage to a lion, but later abandoned the lion who then became enraged and set out on a road of terror throughout the lands. The son then went out to slay this terrorizing lion. The son came back home to his mother stating he slew the lion, and then found out that he killed his own father. The son later constructed a statue of the lion as a guardian of a temple to atone for his sin.
The chinthe is revered and loved by the Burmese people and is used symbolically on the royal thrones of Burma. Predating the use of coins for money, brass weights cast in the shape of mythical beasts like the chinthe were commonly used to measure standard quantities of staple items.
Read more about this topic: Chinthe
Famous quotes containing the words pagoda and/or guardians:
“One is sick at heart of this pagoda worship. It is like the beating of gongs in a Hindoo subterranean temple.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren’t in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)