IT CANNOT have pleased Burma's ruling family: the collapse of a 2,300-year-old gold-domed pagoda into a pile of timbers just three weeks after the wife of the junta's top general had helped reconsecrate it.
There is no Asian country more superstitious than Burma, and the collapse of the temple has been widely seen as something more portentous than poor construction work.
It comes at a moment when the junta has put on trial the country's pro-democrac
y leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, after an American intruder swam across a lake and spent a night at the villa where she has been under house arrest for most of the past 19 years.
After two weeks of testimony, the trial is on hold as the junta apparently tries to decide how to manage what seems to have been a major blunder, drawing condemnation from around the world.
The superstitious generals may be consulting astrologers as well as political tacticians as they decide how to proceed. That would not be unusual for many people in Burma, where currency denominations and traffic rules have been changed in the past, the capital has been moved, and the timing of big events has been selected with astrological dictates in mind.
And so it seemed only natural to read a darker meaning into the collapse of the Danok pagoda, on the outskirts of Burma's main city, Rangoon. It had been blessed on 7 May in the presence of Daw Kyaing Kyaing, the wife of the country's supreme leader, Senior General Than Shwe. The event received major coverage in the government-controlled press.
In a solemn ceremony, the worshippers fixed a diamond orb to the top of the pagoda, along with a pennant-shaped vane, and sprinkled scented water on to the tiers of a holy umbrella, according to the government mouthpiece, The New Light of Burma.
Like the rest of the heavily censored press, the newspaper was silent, a week ago, when it all came crashing down. But word of mouth – and foreign radio broadcasts – spread fast.
"OK, she thinks she is so great, but even the gods don't like her, people believe like that," a senior astrologer said on condition of anonymity because of the danger of speaking to the media.
The ceremony was part of a decades-long campaign by the senior general to legitimise military rule on a foundation of Buddhist fealty, dedicating and re-gilding temples, attending religious ceremonies and making donations to monks.
That campaign was undermined, and perhaps fatally discredited, in September 2007 when soldiers beat and shot protesting monks in the streets, invaded monasteries, and imprisoned hundreds of monks.
So when the Danok pagoda suddenly collapsed last Saturday as workmen were completing its renovation – killing at least 20 people, according to émigré reports – many people saw it as the latest of a series of bad omens for the junta that included a devastating cyclone early last year.
Its sacred umbrella tumbled to the ground and its diamond orb was lost in the rubble.
"The fact that the umbrella did not stay was a sign of more bad things to come, according to astrologers," said Ingrid Jordt, an anthropology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and a Burma specialist. "It is also a sign Than Shwe does not have the spiritual power any longer to be able to undertake or reap the benefit from good acts such as this. In a sense, the pagoda repudiated Than Shwe's right to remain ruler."
As labourers began trying to rebuild the pagoda, local residents were quoted in émigré publications with vivid accounts of supernatural happenings.
"While I was loading bricks around the pagoda, the weather suddenly turned very dark," a 24-year-old worker told The Irrawaddy, a magazine based in Thailand. "Then we saw a bright red light rising from the northern end of the pagoda. Then, suddenly, the temple collapsed. I also heard a strange, haunting voice coming from the light."
It seemed to suggest at least that the choice of the Danok pagoda for the junta's ruling family to seek religious affirmation may have been a poor one.
