Thandawgan is one of Burma’s official Thirty-Seven Nats, his name meaning “receiver of the royal voice.” The nat is the deified form of Ye Thiha, a royal messenger of Minkhaung II, the viceroy of Taungoo and brother of King Bayinnaung. By belief he went to the forest to gather flowers, contracted malaria, and died.
He is portrayed seated on a lotus pedestal, holding a fan in his right hand with his left resting on his knee. That an ordinary, almost trivial end — dying of a fever while picking flowers — should be raised into a worshipped spirit connects to our world, which dwells on the place where the everyday turns numinous.