1 The First Anglo-Burmese War was waged between 1824–26.

2 The term ‘Theravada’, which means ‘the doctrine of the Elders’, was not widespread until the 20th century. The 19th-century communities that used Kammavācas used ‘theravāda’ in some contexts but were much more likely to use the more general Pali term ‘sāsana’ (B. ‘thathana’) to describe the Buddha's teachings in India, preserved in Lanka, and then adopted and promoted in Burma. See Skilling, Peter, ‘Theravāda in History’, Pacific World 3, 11 (2009): 61–93Google Scholar; and Skilling, Peter, Carbine, Jason, Cicuzza, Claudio and Pakdeekham, Santi, eds., How Theravāda is Theravāda? Exploring Buddhist identities (Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2012)Google Scholar. On how the English term ‘religion’ came to be used in colonial Burma alongside ‘sāsana’, see Turner, Alicia, Saving Buddhism: The impermanence of religion in colonial Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Kammavāca in other Theravada settings with simple, incised palm-leaf folios will occasionally feature illustrated cover boards. There are some rare examples of illustrated manuscripts from other Theravada countries, namely Thailand, where there are painted Kammavāca from the 19th century. These Thai manuscripts have expertly illustrated margins, but they do not use lacquered cloth pages or the special script that distinguishes the Burmese Kammavāca.

While the geographic extent and premodern history of Kammavāca texts are outside this article's scope, we also know of early Sanskrit versions, Karmavācanā, and versions in other languages found throughout Asia, with fragments found in places as far-flung as Maral-Bashi in Xinjiang, China. See for example, Bailey, H.W., ‘The Tumshuq Karmavācanā’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 13, 3 (1950): 649–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Theravada rituals in Burma place great importance on the ritual use of Pali, although they regularly employ Burmese language pieces as well. As Jason Carbine has shown, higher ordination rituals among the Shwegyin, the second largest monastic order in Burma, are mostly conducted in Burmese, but key portions are always in Pali because, those texts are ‘considered to be the very words of the Buddha himself […] so they must be recited with precision in Pali. Ritual continuity with the teachings and practices of the Buddha is thus predicated upon certain types of linguistic fidelity to him. The ritual process allows for deviation from direct usage of the Pali, but only up to a point.’ Carbine, Jason A., Sons of the Buddha: Continuities and ruptures in a Burmese monastic tradition (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), p. 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Clough, Benjamin, ‘The ritual of the Budd'hist priesthood, translated from the original Pali work, entitled Karmawakya’, Miscellaneous Translations from Oriental Languages Published for the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland 2 (1834): 1–30Google Scholar.

6 Dickson, John Frederick, ‘The Upasampadā-Kammavācā: Being the Buddhist manual of the form and manner of ordering of priests and deacons’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 7, 1 (1875): 149–59Google Scholar. For more on how these translations fit into the history of Buddhist studies, see deJong, Jan Willem, ‘A brief history of Buddhist Studies in Europe and America’, Eastern Buddhist 7, 1 (1974): 55–106Google Scholar.

7 Hallisey, Charles, ‘Roads taken and not taken in the study of Theravada Buddhism’, Curators of the Buddha (1995): 46Google ScholarPubMed.

8 Sinead Ward has extensively researched Burmese Kammavāca in Asian and Western collections. See S. Ward, ‘Stories steeped in gold: Narrative scenes of the decorative Kammavaca manuscripts of Burma’, in From mulberry leaves to silk scrolls: New approaches to the study of Asian manuscript traditions, vol. 1, ed. Justin McDaniel and Lynn Ransom (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), which analyses narrative scenes in 10 of the 440 manuscripts she surveyed. See also Christian Lammerts’ overview of the Burmese Kammavāca tradition as part of his larger survey of styles of ornamentation in Burmese Buddhist manuscripts. Dietrich Christian Lammerts, ‘Buddhism and written law: Dhammasattha manuscripts and texts in premodern Burma’ (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2010); and Lammerts, Dietrich Christian, Buddhist law in Burma: A history of Dhammasattha texts and jurisprudence, 1250–1850 (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2018)Google Scholar.

9 There are many other types of Burmese Buddhist manuscripts with adorned cover boards, and certain manuscript traditions, such as astrological texts, regularly feature illustrated folios, but there are no other manuscript types whose folios and covers are consistently constructed with precious substances and illustrations and that were distributed widely in the kingdom. For more on the range of manuscript ornamentation in premodern Burma, see Lammerts, ‘Buddhism and written law’, pp. 214–23.

10 An exquisite example of a lacquered Kammavāca box with inlaid glass is featured in Htun, Than, Lacquerware journeys: The untold story of Burmese lacquer (Bangkok: River, 2013), p. 171Google Scholar.

11 While we cannot know for sure that every commissioned Kammavāca manuscript was actually used in a monastic ritual, we do have written accounts of Burmese communities employing these manuscripts during ceremonies. As I discuss later, Ledi Sayadaw emphasised the importance of using highly adorned Kammavāca so that the manuscript itself scared away troubling spirits before the monastic specialist began to read the text during the ritual. We also have British records of these special manuscripts’ use, such as British travel writer Alice Hart's description of the use of a manual with ‘lacquered, gilded, and illuminated leaves’ in a monastic ordination in Mandalay's Dragon Pagoda. See the photograph of one such Kammavāca in Alice Marion Rowlands Hart, Picturesque Burma, past & present (London: J.M. Dent, 1897), p. 281.

12 The longer history and speculation about the origins of this manuscript tradition are not only beyond the scope of this article, but also quite impossible to uncover given the lack of pre-18th century evidence. I have only found one reference to this tradition in a Konbaung Buddhist chronicle (B. thathanawin) in the final chronicle of this textual tradition, the Sāsanavamsa, composed by Paññasāmi in 1861, which briefly notes the unique Burmese practice of preparing polished books adorned with red and gold paint. Paññasāmi dates this practice to the reign of King Siripavaramahārājā, who, he writes, ruled from years 1035–60 of the Kali age. Paññasāmi writes:

Here is B.C. Law's translation of this passage:

Law's translation of ‘aṭṭhi’ as ‘bones’ here is exciting because this could refer to the use of cremation ashes in the manuscript preparation, a practice known to happen in the creation of 20th century Kammavācas, but that term could also be referring to the nuts of the Bhallika tree, leading to the revised translated phrase: ‘the juice from the nut-Bhallika tree’.

13 Sylvia Fraser-Lu and Donald Martin Stadtner, Buddhist art of Myanmar (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015); Forrest McGill and M.L. Pattaratorn Chirapravati, Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam and Burma, 1775–1950 (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2009). I also engage cautiously with Noel F. Singer, ‘Kammavaca texts: Their covers and binding ribbons’, Arts of Asia 23, 3 (1993): 97–106. While Singer's article does not provide detailed source material, it surveys a large collection of Kammavācas.

14 Buddhist activity in Burma dates to at least the 5th century, when the Pyu people began to establish the country's first urban centres near modern-day Prome. The Pyu were in contact with peoples in southeastern India and built stupas featuring Pali and Sanskrit inscriptions. The height of medieval Buddhist culture in Burma was during the Pagan period, which peaked in the 11th–12th centuries. Buddhist communities practised both Mahayāna and Theravada traditions, but by the end of this period, royal support went exclusively to Theravada communities. Following the Pagan period, a lineage of kings ruled out of Pegu and included Dhammaceti (r. 1472–92), a famous reformer of Theravada Buddhism. The kings at Pegu were subjugated by kings based out of Taungoo, who then moved their courts to Pegu and then Ava. This second major lineage of Burmese kings—most famous for the foreign campaigns of Tabinshweti and Bayinnaung—was overthrown by Mon rebels, who were then deposed by the first king of the Konbaung dynasty, Alaungpaya. See Ralph Isaacs and T. Richard Blurton, Visions from the Golden Land: Burma and the art of lacquer (London: British Museum Press, 2000). See also Fraser-Lu and Stadtner, Buddhist art of Myanmar; Alexandra Green and T. Richard Blurton, Burma: Art and archaeology (London: British Museum Press, 2002); and Alexandra Green, Buddhist visual cultures, Rhetoric, and narrative in Late Burmese wall paintings (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2018).

15 Victor Lieberman examines the Taungoo kingdom as part of his inquiry into how only three centralised Southeast Asian kingdoms emerged in 1830 when there were numerous small polities throughout the same region in 800. He views the consolidation occurring through religion, culture, demographics, agriculture, and climate change. Lieberman shows how concurrent temporal patterns in these areas led to a relatively synchronised shift toward integration in the region. Victor Lieberman, Strange parallels: Southeast Asia in global context, c. 800–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). My analysis here suggests that part of this move toward consolidation included centralised religious book and ritual practices.

16 Michael Charney argues that it was the literati in the Lower Chindwin Valley, not Burmese kings, who created myths of legitimation that Konbaung rulers used to maintain their power. Michael W. Charney, Powerful learning: Buddhist literati and the throne in Burma's last dynasty, 1752–1885 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 2006).

17 Many of these ethnic groups, including the Shan, Lao, Mon, and Arakanese practised forms of Theravada Buddhism as well as spirit worship, making religious activity key for political control. Juliane Schober, Modern Buddhist conjunctures in Myanmar: Cultural narratives, colonial legacies, and civil society (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2011), p. 16.

18 These inscribed marble slabs were installed by King Mindon. Kuthodaw Pagoda's Tipitaka is still called the ‘world's largest book’ by travel websites and databases like Atlas Obscura, which use a common definition of a book as a material base that humans have marked to record and communicate information. Joshua Foer, ‘World's largest book at Kuthodaw Pagoda’, in Atlas Obscura (Brooklyn, NY: Workman). The Kammavāca largely fits this definition. Scholars have long questioned the limitations of this definition of the book. See for example, D.F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the sociology of texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 13.

19 The notion of ethnicity is not a fixed category, but rather changing and permeable. See for example, Jane M. Ferguson, ‘Who's counting? Ethnicity, belonging, and the national census in Burma/Myanmar’, Bijdragen tot de taal-, land- en volkenkunde 171, 1 (2015): 1–28.

20 Singer has suggested that Burma's oldest dated ornamented manuscript, a Pañcanipāt aṅguttuir aṭṭhakathā from 1683, features a title page adorned in Kammavāca style. Singer, ‘Kammavaca texts’, p. 99. But, as Lammerts writes, ‘we should be cautious about attributing a Kammavāca ‘style’ to the 17th century, as few (if any other) securely-dated decorated manuscripts from this era survive, and thus it is impossible to know whether Kammavāca comprised a model for manuscripts ornamented in this way’. Lammerts, ‘Buddhism and written law’, p. 215.

21 Examined by the author on 7 June 2018.

22 Isaacs and Blurton, Visions from the Golden Land, p. 138.

23 Singer, ‘Kammavaca texts’. Isaacs and Blurton, Visions from the Golden Land, p. 15, also connects Burmese warfare and Thai artisans, although this catalogue does not offer a full elaboration of this connection.

24 For more on slave gathering in the region, see Bryce Beemer, ‘The creole city in Mainland Southeast Asia: Slave gathering warfare and cultural exchange in Burma, Thailand and Manipur, 18th–19th C’ (PhD diss., University of Hawai‘i, 2013).

25 Examined by the author on 8 June 2108. The folio with the Buddha illustrations was previously published in Singer, ‘Kammavaca texts’, p. 100.

26 For a well-preserved example of an earlier chinthe, see the 1628 bronze Buddha sculpture protected by four chinthes in Fraser-Lu and Stadtner, Buddhist art of Myanmar, p. 156. An important related majestic creature in Burma is the galon or garuda, a kind of half-man, half-raptor. As Maitrii Aung-Thwin has shown, during the British period, the galon emerged as a representation of the Burmese peasantry's desires to overthrow the British and restore the monarchy. Aung-Thwin's work details how followers of the rebel leader Saya San (who became known as the Galon King) would tattoo themselves with the galon symbol. This protective practice of marking the fighters’ bodies with this image associated with Burmese royalty mirrors the practice this article analyses of marking Kammavāca manuscripts with powerful, regal illustrations. Maitrii Aung-Thwin, The return of the Galon King: History, law, and rebellion in colonial Burma (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011).

27 As Patrick Pranke's study of monastic accounts of the Sudhammā Reformation shows, what was at stake in this conflict between King Bodawpaya's and the Burmese sangha were perceptions of legitimacy, the role of the sangha to bring salvation to the world, and the prerogatives of the relationship between the sangha and the state. Patrick Pranke, ‘“Bodawpaya's madness”: Monastic accounts of King Bodawpaya's conflict with the Burmese sangha’, Journal of Burma Studies 12, 1 (2008): 1–28.

28 Wladimir Zwalf, Buddhism: Art and faith (New York: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 167, 72.

29 This folio was published in Isaacs and Blurton, Visions from the Golden Land, p. 140.

30 Singer, ‘Kammavaca texts’, p. 100.

31 Another early 19th-century Kammavāca that incorporates silver is held in the Harvard Art Museum. This manuscript features silver folios that also have golden gilded margins on which illustrations of nats have been painted. Unlike the silver manuscript considered above, this manuscript has six lines of tamarind-seed script, not the rounded Burmese script. It is also worth noting that the nats in this manuscript resemble the nats of the late Konbaung style with their royal costume and headdress, but they do not carry any weapons. Instead they hold their hands together in anjali. Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Gift of Philip Hofer, object no, 1984.421, 19th century; ibid.

32 Pratapaditya Pal and Julia Meech-Pekarik, Buddhist book illuminations (New York: Ravi Kumar, 1988), pp. 190–91.

33 Ibid., p. 192.

34 See also Alexandra Kaloyanides, ‘Buddhist teak and British rifles: Religious economics in Burma's last kingdom’, Journal of Burma Studies 24, 1 (2020): 1–36.

35 See Myo Myint, Confronting colonialism: King Mindon's strategy for defending independence 1853–1878 (Yangon: Ministry of Religious Affairs, 2012), pp. 190–241.

36 Alicia Marie Turner, Saving Buddhism: The impermanence of religion in colonial Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2014); Erik Braun, The birth of insight: Meditation, modern Buddhism, and the Burmese monk Ledi Sayadaw (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).

37 Allott, Anna, The end of the First Anglo-Burmese War: The Burmese chronicle account of how the 1826 Treaty of Yandabo was negotiated (Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 1994), pp. 6–8Google Scholar.

38 The American Baptist Historical Society Thibaw Kammavāca was examined by the author on 19 June 2014 with the help of archivist Jan Ballard. For more on the looting of Thibaw's palace, see Blackburn, Terence R., The British humiliation of Burma (Bangkok: Orchid, 2000)Google Scholar.

39 Kaloyanides, Alexandra, ‘“Show us your god”: Marilla Baker Ingalls and the power of religious objects in nineteenth-century Burma’, Religions 7, 7 (2016): 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Ingalls is also the author of an early English-language description of Burma's book practices, including the maintenance of Kammavācas. In a vignette titled ‘A morning visit to a monastery, or kyoung’, Ingalls writes that ‘The sacred books were written in a Pali (sometimes written Bali) character; the letters square and angular. The books were composed of the Palmyra leaf covered with gold and black varnished letters, or painted black and lettered with gold. These were kept together by a string, and then placed between two boards richly covered with figures in gold.’ This description begins a longer section detailing a range of the book types and practices she encountered at this monastery, including common palm-leaf manuscripts with Burmese script, parabeik account books, and practice slates. Ingalls listens to a star student read loudly for her and then tells the novices and monks that in America, the schoolrooms are, by contrast, very quiet. Before leaving, Ingalls distributed Protestant tracts to a few of the students and one of the old priests. Ingalls, Marilla Baker, Ocean sketches of life in Burmah (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1857), p. 149Google Scholar.

41 Examined by the author on 14 Mar. 2012.

42 Examined by the author on 14 Mar. 2012.

43 Examined by the author on 7 June 2018.

44 Examined by the author on 29 Aug. 2013.

45 Than Htun, Lacquerware journeys, p. 136.

46 de la Perrière, Bénédicte Brac, ‘The Burmese nats: Between sovereignty and autochthony’, Diogenes 44, 174 (1996): 45–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Ibid., p. 49.

48 See de la Perrière, Bénédicte Brac, ‘An overview of the field of religion in Burmese Studies’, Asian Ethnology 68, 2 (2009): 186Google Scholar. See also Kaloyanides, Alexandra, ‘“Intercultural mimesis”, empire, and spirits’, Journal of Global Buddhism 22, 1 (2021): 125–31Google Scholar.

49 Schober, Modern Buddhist conjunctures in Myanmar, p. 16.

50 Braun, The birth of insight, p. 83.

51 Material culture has played an important role in marking distinct groups and forging political alliances in related Southeast Asian contexts. For example, Susan Conway has shown how female court dress displayed the identities of a princess’ homeland and signalled the extensive influence of the prince she was married to. Conway considers marital alliances in Lan Na, the Shan States, and Siam by focusing on the textiles princesses wore in intermarriages among royalty in valley and hill regions. Conway, Susan, ‘Power dressing: Female court dress and marital alliances in Lan Na, the Shan States and Siam’, Orientations 32, 4 (2001): 42–9Google Scholar.