Bulletin of Chuo Academic Research Institute

（Chuo Gakujutsu Kenkyūjo Kiyō）

No.44 Nov.2015

The Project to Digitize Manuscripts in Myanmar

William PRUITT
 The Project to Digitize Manuscripts in Myanmar
William PRUITT

Introduction
I. Aims of the Project
2. Inspiration from Similar Projects
3. The Material Currently Available for Our Project
4. Computer Programs Developed for Our Project
5. Manuscripts of Artistic Interest
6. Cataloguing Manuscripts
7. How Two Collections Were Selected
8. The Importance of Digitizing Texts
9. The First Collections to Be Digitized
10. Preparing and Conserving Manuscripts
11. Photographing and Scanning Texts
12. Accomplishing Our Objectives
Appendix

Introduction

 For some two thousand years Pali texts have been preserved in manuscripts. From the
nineteenth century various printed editions of Pali texts have been produced both in Europe
and Asia on the basis of these manuscripts. The manner in which the editors of printed editions
have made use of Pali manuscripts has varied. In the case of editions made in Europe usually
only a very few manuscripts of a particular text have been consulted: usually just two or three,
sometimes none at all (as in the case of the Pali Text Society edition of the Yamaka, which is
based on Siamese and a Burmese printed editions). The nature of the manuscripts underlying
the major Asian editions is not clear. The result is that the Pali Text Society and Asian printed
editions of Pali texts give us access to the variants witnessed in the manuscripts in only a
haphazard and unsystematic way. Moreover the history of the Pali manuscripts tradition is not
yet fully understood: over the centuries Pali manuscripts have passed back and forth between
Lanka and South East Asia, and the traditions they witness are likely to have become confused.

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Ultimately the proper application of the methods of textual criticism requires that scholars
return to study of the manuscript tradition. The palm-leaf manuscripts of Pali texts do not
survive well in a humid tropical climate and probably the majority of the manuscripts of the
Pali canon date from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. All this means that the
preservation of the Pali manuscript heritage is matter of considerable importance and some
urgency. The Pali Text Society is thus very pleased to support the current project to preserve,
digitize, and make available Pali manuscripts from Myanmar.
Professor Rupert Gethin
President, Pali Text Society

1. Aims of the Project

 A project to digitize palm-leaf manuscripts in Myanmar was begun in February 2013 with
the following aims:
 (1) to help preserve Myanmar s heritage of texts (principally Buddhist texts),
 (2) to make photos of texts available for free to scholars all over the world,
 (3) to help raise the awareness in Myanmar of the value of manuscripts and early editions of
texts,
 (4) to train people in Myanmar to care for manuscripts and books and take over the work of
digitizing them.
 The project has been made possible thanks to funds raised by Professor Yumi Ousaka and Dr
Sunao Kasamatsu. The following generous grants have made it possible to make good
progress:
 (1) Scientific Research B (SRB) by JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences) from
April 2011 to March 2014 (Head Investigator: Ousaka)
 (2) Challenging Exploratory Research (CER) by JSPS from April 2013 to March 2015 (Head
Investigator: Kasamatsu)
 (3) KDDI Foundation from April 2013 to March 2015 (Head Investigator: Kasamatsu)
 (4) Mitsubishi Foundation (MF) (Head Investigator: Kasamatsu)
 The project is also supported by the Pali Text Society. The photographs and scans will all be
the property of the Pali Text Society. Further help comes from York University, Canada, where
Dr Alicia Turner is setting up a Web site where full sets of photos in PDF format will be made
available online.

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2. Inspiration from Similar Projects

 It is difficult to keep up with the resources available on the internet for Burmese manuscripts
and books as well as manuscripts and books of Pāli texts from other countries. There are many
similar projects like ours, both past and present. When we began to work on the project to
digitize manuscripts in Myanmar, we were hoping to emulate a Web site for Laotian palm-leaf
manuscripts: http://www.laomanuscripts.net. The images on this site are in black and white,
which seemed a good idea as it could mean keeping down the size of the files. In practice,
however, we soon found that the dark colour of the palm leaves did not offer enough contrast
with the letters to turn colour photos into black-and-white files. We later learned that the
Laotian site was able to use black-and-white photos because the images were scanned from
microfilms made before the days of digital cameras. As computer memory has become less
and less expensive, the need to reduce the size of the files is not as urgent as before.
 Two other sites that serve as an example are hosted by the École française d Extrême-Orient,
One is for manuscripts using Khmer script: http://www.khmermanuscripts.org. The images on
this site are in colour and can be enlarged by scrolling over the window with the text. We have
not been able to learn more about the computer program used for this site. The other is a site
for Lanna manuscripts “A
( northern Thailand collection of chronicles and others texts”
):
http://www.efeo.fr/lanna_manuscripts/manuscript/list.
 PDFs of manuscripts in Sinhalese script can be found on a Web site hosted by the Palm Leaf
Manuscript Study and Research Library, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kelaniya in
Sri Lanka:
http://www.kln.ac.lk/socialsciences/units/plmsrlJ/index.php/collection/palm-leaf-digital-
collation.1

3. The Material Currently Available for Our Project

 Our project is different from the ones just mentioned as we are concentrating on
photographing and scanning entire collections of manuscripts which will be useful for scholars
preparing critical editions of texts. We include a greater variety of types of texts as well. In
addition to texts in Pāli, we include Burmese nissaya (Pāli texts with Burmese and Mon word-

1 The site does not use the standard way of transliterating Pāli into Roman script, so it can be a little difficult
to locate texts. “Pātimokkha”, for example, is transcribed as“Pathemokka”
. It seems only the first few
leaves are included in the PDFs of the manuscripts.

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by-word translations and explanations), texts in Burmese and Mon, and illustrated manuscripts.
Scans of early Pāli editions printed in Burma that are difficult to find will also be of great value
to scholars. The photographs and scans will be made available as PDFs and can be used as
E-books.
 The Pali Text Society Web site has a short description of the work and two short videos
filmed and edited by U Aung Moe.2 There is also a link there to the Web site of the National
Institute of Technology, Sendai College (Hirose), Japan,3 where PDFs of the beginning and
ending leaves of palm-leaf manuscripts can be viewed and downloaded “Digital
( Data Sample
) and low resolution images in PDFs of illustrated parabaiks
of Myanmar Manuscripts”
“Digital
( Data Samples of Parabaiks”
) can be viewed and downloaded.4 The PDFs for all the
manuscripts will be added as they are photographed. Complete sets of images of manuscripts
can be requested by contacting the Pali Text Society. In addition to the manuscripts, a scan of a
recent book of interest to scholars is also available on the Pali Text Society Web site.5 More
scanned books will be added later.

4. Computer Programs Developed for Our Project

 Dr Win Htay, who is the director of the computer university in Thaton, is developing a
computer program to automatically crop the photos and put them in PDFs. We will be able to
offer this program free of charge to scholars. Dr Kazuhiko Fujiwara, Professor Miyao, and
Professor Yumi Ousaka of the National Institute of Technology, Sendai College, are now
making a computer program to compile an electronic book from photos of the palm-leaf
manuscripts together with information about the leaves that is automatically added to the book
― for example its serial number and the front and backs of the leaves (recto and verso). This
computer program will save a great deal of time and can easily process hundreds of
manuscripts, each of which contains dozens of palm leaves. We can edit these books,
depending on how they will be used ― for example, to upload them to a Web site in order to
preserve the manuscripts in a very clear format so that they can be studied in the future.

2 See http://www.palitext.com/, under“Pāli Studies”,“Digitizing Myanmar Manuscripts”

.
3 http://hirose.sendai-nct.ac.jp/~ousaka/.
4 A small number of black parabaiks that serve for taking notes have not be included in the project.
5 U Nārada, Guide to Conditional Relations, Vol. II (Rangoon: Department of Religious Affairs, 1986). Text
and charts are available in PDF format on the Pali Text Society Web site (www.palitext.com,“Our
Publications”,“Corrections & Additions”,“Download the Guide to Conditional Relations II, and the Charts
included in the book”). Vol. I was published by the Pali Text Society, but due to the expense of printing the
many charts, the Society did not print the second volume.

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1. The U Pho Thi Library building

2. Ornate manuscript cabinet

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5. Manuscripts of Artistic Interest

 The first library whose manuscripts are being digitized possesses several illustrated
parabaiks (accordion-style books on heavy paper)6 with subjects such as the Thirty-one Planes
of Existence, medicinal plants, and royal regalia. These have already proven to be of interest
to scholars working on Burmese art. Kammavācās, which have texts used for ordination
ceremonies and other acts of the Sangha, are another type of manuscript used in Burma.
4

Formerly, these could be very elaborate manuscripts with a special script that monks would not
be able to read now. Today, printed versions with modern Burmese script are used. The U Pho
Thi Library has a rare late Kammavācā manuscript that uses modern script; it was made in
1951 in Mandalay in honour of U Pho Thi after his death. It is housed in an ornate chest.
Photos of the Kammavācā manuscripts are being used by Ms Sinead Ward for her doctoral
thesis.

3. Manuscript chest for a Kammavācā manuscript

6 Many parabaiks have a black background and can be used much like a slate. These rarely have straight
forward texts, being used very often for making notes. These have not been photographed.

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6. Cataloguing Manuscripts

 Both of the monastery collections that we have been given permission to photograph and
scan have been more or less well catalogues. A catalogue has been published of the
manuscripts in the Thar-Lay Monastery on Inle Lake: U Thaw Kaung, U Nyunt Maung et al.,
Palm-leaf Manuscript Catalogue of Thar-Lay (South) Monastery.7 In the introduction, U Thaw
Kaung says that this is the first such catalogue prepared in Myanmar. When we made our
initial trip to the monastery, we were shown a typed list of manuscripts in a nearby monastery,
the Nga Phe Kyaung (known as the jumping cat monastery). We went to see if those
manuscripts could also be photographed, but we were informed that they had all been given
away.
 There are several lists of the manuscripts in the U Pho Thi collection in Thaton. Three
different sets of numbers were used over the years. None of them is up to date, however, so it
will be necessary to prepare a details catalogue once the manuscripts have been photographed.

4. Palm-leaf manuscript with woven ribbon used to tie the manuscript

7 Yangon: Myanmar Book Centre, 2006.

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One list was prepared fairly recently by U Nyunt Maung and a group of librarians from
Yangon. In 1998, ten scholars from the Universities Central Library, Yangon, worked in the
liberary for ten days and made a list of 775 manuscripts. But they were not able to prepare a
complete catalogue. With the photos, we will be able to check the accuracy of the earlier lists
and add more detail. We hope to prepare a catalogue similar to the one of Burmese
manuscripts in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London.8
In the meantime, we have published a provisional catalogue.9

7. How Two Collections Were Selected

 There are many challenges to a project such as ours. State controlled institutions in
Myanmar are generally off limits for anyone coming from outside the country. These include
universities, museums, and religious monuments like the Shwedagon Pagoda. Many areas in
Myanmar are off limits to foreigners, so only Burmese nationals will be able to photograph
manuscripts in those areas. For the time being, we are concentrating on collections we can
work on ourselves.
 There is also the problem of explaining the importance of preserving and making available
manuscripts and earlier editions of books. Many monks and Burmese scholars think that once
a text has been printed, only the edition needs to be consulted. When I asked an 84-year-old
monk if he had ever used a palm-leaf manuscript in his studies, he said he had only ever used
printed texts. He had given most of the manuscripts in his monastery to a museum in Yangon.
Four manuscripts are still with him, and he agreed to let us photograph them before giving
them to the same museum.
 There is some validity in the idea that it is not necessary to consult every available copy of a
text in perparing a critical edition. Many copies are very derivative and do not include early
readings. As the librarian U Nyunt Maung told me, so many manuscripts of the Dīgha-nikāya

8 William Pruitt and Roger Bischoff, Catalogue of the Pāli–Burmese and Burmese Manuscripts in the Library
of Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (London: Wellcome Trust, 1998). It is available as an
E-book at
 http://search.wellcomelibrary.org/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2008601__Sburmese%20manuscripts__P0%2C4
__Orightresult__X6;jsessionid=6CC30F4C7B8152D821532F44E8A22244?lang=eng&suite=cobalt
9 William Pruitt, Sunao Kasamatsu, Aleix Ruiz-Falqués, Yatuaka Kawasaki, and Yumi Ousaka, Manuscripts
in the U Pho Thi Library, Sadhammajotika Monastery, Thaton, Myanmar (Tokyo: Chuo Academic Research
Institute, 2014). This also includes an article by Aleix Ruiz-Falqués with extracts from two rare manuscripts
with texts on Pāli grammar,“Two Treasures of Pāli Literature from the U Pho Thi Library in Thaton: The
Saddanīti-tīkā and the Mukhamattasāra”, pp. 27–41.
4

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5. Wrapped manuscripts

are given to the Shwedagon Pagoda library, they are not catalogued in detail. We even found
one manuscript in the U Pho Thi Library that was copied from a printed edition.10
 Documents that are accessible are found in monasteries, where the head Sayadaw is
responsible for the manuscripts and books in the monastery. The original plan was to
concentrate on rare texts in Pāli that will be important for revising editions already printed and
to edit texts that have not been published. We wanted to identify texts that were copied before
around 1860 (that is to say, before the Fifth Council held in Mandalay).11 The head Sayadaws
at the monasteries where we have been given permission to take photographs want us to
photograph all their manuscripts, however, so in addition to including nissayas and texts in
Burmese and Mon, we now include illustrated parabaiks and scans of selected books printed
before the Sixth Council.

10 Jinālankāra-tīkā (UP493), copied from an edition printed in Yangon in before 1930 (it was reprinted in
4

4 4

1940).
11 The idea behind this was that manuscripts copied after the Fifth Council would be influenced by that
recension. Alexey Kirichenko suggested that in remote areas, this would not be the case and that useful
variant readings could still be found in later copies (email communication).

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6. Instructing the helpers

8. The Importance of Digitizing Texts

 Photographing and scanning manuscripts and books is a very useful way to preserve various
versions of texts and the most practical way to make them available. Recent developments in
digital photograph, availability of reasonably priced scanners, and computer programs as well
as the internet make it possible to digitize texts and make them freely available. Before, it was
very expensive to make microfilms, assuming it was possible to take the equipment to where
the texts were kept or bring the documents to an institution with the equipment. In some ways,
it is easier to get permission to digitize texts in a monastery in Myanmar than to do the same
thing in a Western library.
 It is rare to find Burmese manuscripts older than 1600. Palm-leaf manuscripts continued to
be produced well into the twentieth century, but manuscripts in Pāli from before around 1860
are the most important ones for projects like ours ― with the exception of later manuscripts of
texts in Burmese that are of interest to historians as well as very rare Pāli texts. For example,
the Pali Text Society has published the“old”sub-commentary on the Anguttara-nikāya that
4

was found in a Burmese manuscript and edited by the late Dr Primoz Pecenko.12

12 Anguttaranikāya-purānatīkā (Pali Text Society, 2012) based on a manuscript copied in 1892. In the
4

introduction to her husband s edition, Dr Tamara Ditrich says that he was not able to consult a second
manuscript with the text that had been located in the Universities Central Library, Yangon, in 2007. But
when I enquired about it, no one in the library was able to locate it.

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 We were able to identify a number of manuscripts in the collections we have begun to
digitize that could be edited or used for revised editions of texts. Examples of manuscripts that
it would be useful to have digitized found in the Thar-Lay Monastery include manuscripts that
can be used when preparing new editions of texts already published in roman script such as the
Sammohavinodanī (A.D. 1741), the Petavatthu-atthakathā (A.D. 1757), the Atthasālinī (A.D.
44 44

1778), the Jinālankāra (A.D. 1773) and the commentary on it, the Jinālankāra-tīkā (A.D.
4 4

1773). Perhaps more important are manuscripts of texts that have not been edited in roman
script such as the Vinayālankāra-tīkā (A.D. 1769), the Dhātukathā-anuvannanā (A.D. 1775),
4

4 4 4

and the Patisambhidāmagga-atthakathā (A.D. 1779).

4 44

 U Nyunt Maung identified approximately fifty manuscripts in the U Pho Thi Library that
contain rare Pāli texts, most of which have not been published. There are also many
manuscripts with nissayas, which are word-by-word translations of Pāli texts into Burmese.
Many of these could be useful to Burmese scholars.
 Another reason it is important to digitize texts is that so many of them disappear. As they
are not considered important, monasteries and institutions do not always take care of
manuscripts and books. Insect or rodent damage and climate conditions can mean that texts
deteriorate and are no longer useful. Texts can be given away by monks who do not consider
them important as we discovered at a monastery in Inle Lake. Texts can also be stolen. Many
manuscripts were smuggled out of the country and sold in Thailand. The Fragile Palm Leaves
Foundation has bought up thousands of these texts and preserved them in Bangkok.13 For
detailed information concerning a very similar situation in Sri Lanka, see Ñānatusita, Bhikkhu,
4

“Pali Manuscripts of Sri Lanka”

.14 His article gives a good idea of the number of Burmese
manuscripts in monasteries and libraries in Sri Lanka and the urgent need to preserve and
digitize them.
 In some ways it is more important to scan books than to photograph manuscripts as the poor
quality paper and the storage conditions mean that the books rapidly deteriorate. The paper
becomes so fragile it crumbles when pages are turned. And insect damage is much more
extensive for paper than palm leaves.

13 The collection can be searched on http://fpl.tusita.org/. The catalogue by Peter Nyunt has been published
(A Descriptive Catalogue of Burmese Manuscripts in the Fragile Palm Leaves Collection, 3 vols. Bangkok:
Fragile Palm Leaves Foundation and Lumbini International Research Institute, 2014).
14 In Paul Harrison and Jens-Uwe Hartmann, eds., From Birch Bark to Digital Data: Recent Advances in
Buddhist Manuscript Research. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2014.

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9. The First Collections to Be Digitized

 Dr Sunao Kasamatsu and Dr Yutaka Kawasaki from Japan and Aleix Ruiz Falqués joined me
in photographing manuscripts in large libraries in two monasteries ― one in Thaton and one in
Inle Lake ― in February 2013. We were helped by U Aung Moe Oo. Each of us used the
digital cameras we owned which gave uneven results.
 We went to two monasteries where we had obtained permission to take photos and make
scans: the Thar-Lay Monastery in Inle Lake and the U Pho Thi Library in the Sadhammajotika
Monastery in Thaton. The catalogue of the Thar-Lay collection says that there are 886
manuscripts in the collection containing 958 texts. Some 45 manuscripts with texts in Pāli date
between 1676 and 1800. The head Sayadaw was away when we went to the Thar-Lay
Monastery, and we learned that the keys to the cabinets with the manuscripts had gone missing.
Ven. U Sumano, the monk we had contacted beforehand, cheerfully agree to have a locksmith
come change the locks. Now there are three sets of keys, so in future it should be possible to
consult the manuscripts. The monk did all he could to help us with finding manuscripts, oiling
them, and taking photos.
 The collection of texts in the U Pho Thi Library is in Thaton, one of the cities in Myanmar
where monks go to prepare for examinations, and the Sadhammajotika Monastery is the largest
centre where they study. A wealthy layman named U Pho Thi donated the library that bears his
name in the early twentieth century in order to aid the monks in their studies. The library has
some 775 palm-leaf manuscripts; the exact figure will only be known once they have all be
photographed as some manuscripts are missing.
 A local group of lay people in Thaton support the library. U Kyaw Hlaing, the President of
the Suyangabhūmi Pariyatti Sāsanhita Trust, explained that the library was founded in 1923 by
4

a professor of Burmese literature, U Kyaw Tun, and a wealthy layman, U Pho Thi. The Trust s
main work is organizing Pāli exams. They provide lodging and food for monks and novices
who come to take the exams, and they organize the ceremony to announce the results.

10. Preparing and Conserving Manuscripts

 The members of the Trust had not worked with the manuscripts because they were afraid
they would not handle them correctly. Many of them are very enthusiastic about caring for the
manuscripts and photographing them, so much so that they bought our equipment from us
(computer, camera, and lights) in order to continue taking photographs on their own. Thanks
to U Nyunt Maung, the Trust members are now able to take care of the manuscripts efficiently.

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U Nyunt Maung was an Assistant Librarian at the Universities Central Library, Yangon, and is
a consultant to the Universities Historical Research Centre. He is still active after retiring from
his job as a librarian.
 U Nyunt Maung showed the helpers how to use lemon grass oil with powdered carbon to oil
the leaves. The oil helps preserve the leaves so they do not turn too brittle and protects them
from insects. The powdered carbon stays in the letters that are incised into the leaves with a
metal stylus and makes the text stand out. It is important to always rub the leaves in only one
direction as rubbing back and forth can result in broken leaves. At one point, when we ran out
of lemon grass oil, we used mineral oil with camphor dissolved in it. This is a technique I
learned from the conservation department of the oriental manuscript section of the British
Library many years ago.
 U Nyunt Maung also taught the helpers how to put the leaves in order. The numbering
system for manuscripts uses consonants and twelve vowels, each set being called an anga (for
4

example, ka, kā, ki, kī, ku, kū, ke, kè, ko, kō, kam, kā:). Each consonant is combined with the
4

vowels, and if they are all used up, a system of double consonants is used. The scribes did not
always number correctly, however, so there are a number of manuscripts where there can be
two leaves with the same number (usually made clear by adding the Burmese numbers 1 and 2
after the consonant with vowel). Texts might be moved from one manuscript to another and
renumbered, the original numbers crossed out or cancelled using a small circle and the new
numbers written beside the old ones. There were a few cases where leaves were put back in
the wrong manuscript. As titles are usually included in the right-hand margins of the leaves, it
is often possible to put the leaves back in the correct manuscript.
 U Nyunt Maung also instructed the members of the Trust about the cloth covers for the
manuscripts and the ribbons with text woven into them used to tie up the manuscripts.15 U Ye
Kyi from the Yangon Universities Central Library assisted U Nyunt Maung and helped with
taking the photos. He checked the manuscripts to insure that the leaves were in order and
helped turn the leaves for the photographs. He is also expert in wrapping the manuscripts.
 The Trust is now reorganizing the manuscripts, adding teak wood covers and cloth wrappers
to those that were bare palm leaves. They are also reshelving the printed books. They plan to
have the manuscripts oiled at regular intervals of approximately ten years.
 Work on photographing the manuscripts went much faster thanks to the division of labour.

15 The correct term for the woven ribbons is ca-thup-krui: (pronounced sa-to-gyo). Many people mistakenly
use the term sazigyo (cā-caññ:-krui:), but that term means a twisted string used to fasten the middle of a
palm-leaf bundle. I am grateful to U Nyunt Maung for this information.

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7. The easel and lights

The people taking the photos did not have to prepare the palm leaves or rewrap the
manuscripts when the work was done. This saved a considerable amount of time. Over the
years the manuscripts were not kept in order, so finding a specific text could be very time
consuming. Now, the manuscripts are all in order. The Trust is very happy to have a set of
photos as this will mean that when people want to consult a text, they can use the photos rather
than the actual manuscript. So there is less chance that the order will be disturbed, that the
manuscripts will be mishandled, or that manuscripts will go missing.

11. Photographing and Scanning Texts

 Markus Wörgötter, a professional photographer, gave us valuable information about the

equipment to use and how to set up a camera, computer, and easel to take photos. It is
important to use a camera with the proper lens as palm-leaf manuscripts are very wide so it is
essential that the edges and corners are kept in focus. Mr Wörgötter suggested we use a reflex-
camera with around 10 million pixels, with a fixed focal lens of 50-70 mm. Using ISO 100 or
200 is acceptable, but ISO 400 should be avoided as it will produce grainy images and reduce
the quality of the picture. He suggested using a colour-pad and small grey card to make it
possible to adjust the colour balance when editing images. We found this was mainly

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important for illustrated parabaiks, but not essential for palm-leaf manuscripts where the main
concern is the legibility of the text. We purchased the camera he suggested (Canon Eos
1100D) and used the diagram he sent (see below) as a guide when setting up the easel for the
manuscript, the studio lights, and the tripod with the camera at the correct angle.

 The computer program that came with the camera (Canon EOS Utility) meant we were able
to connect the camera directly to the computer, see the images on the screen, and adjust the
focus and other settings before taking photos. The photos could be checked immediately. We
took raw data and JPEG images. The raw data photos will mainly be important if photos need
to be edited. Again, this would mainly be the case for manuscripts with colour illustrations. It
did prove to be necessary to double check all the photos to be sure there were no mistakes such
as a hand in the way. To facilitate the use of computer programs, we now use a solid

8. The computer and camera

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background for the leaves. We started with black cloth, but now use bright green to make it
easier for a computer program to automatically crop the images of the leaves in the photos.
 We use a Fujitsu ScanSnap SV600 for scanning books. The program that comes with the
scanner will take care of cropping, correct curved page distortion, and save documents in
PDFs. The resolution was not high enough to use for palm-leaf manuscripts, however.

12. Accomplishing Our Objectives

 We are well on the way to fulfilling our mission. We should soon have all the manuscripts in
the U Pho Thi library photographed and a good number of printed texts scanned. As the files
will be copied and kept in several locations, they will be well preserved and easily available.
As can be seen from the list in the Appendix, a number of scholars around the world have
already benefitted from our project.
 The group responsible for the U Pho Thi Library are now in a position to care for their
collection. Our help has raised their awareness of the value of what is there. An article in a
Burmese newspaper about our project in Thaton resulted in people coming to see the
magnificent room housing the collection, including the gilded cabinets with small statues of
devas and a gilded ceiling with inlaid glass ornaments. Publicity about the library has also
brought in donations. A Mon monk who is working to preserve the Mon language and Mon
texts visited the library and was so impressed with the project that he made a donation.
 We were especially happy that the U Pho Thi Library group were able to buy our equipment
and continue taking photos when we were not there.

Appendix

 People who have used photos and scans of manuscripts and books in the U Pho Thi Library:
Dr Petra Kieffer-Pülz, Senior Researcher, Akademie der Wissenschaften und Literatur Mainz.
Manuscripts and editions of Pāli texts relating to Vinaya and grammar.
Dr Jason A. Carbine, Associate Professor, The C. Milo Connick Chair of Religious Studies,
Whittier College, California. Manuscripts of the Kalyānī Inscriptions.
4

Dr Alexey Kirichenko, Assistant Professor, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow
State University. Manuscripts connected with the eighteenth-century Burmese monk,
Venerable Atula.
Dr Alexandra Green, Henry Ginsburg Curator for Southeast Asia, Department of Asia, British
Museum. Illustrated parabaiks.

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 The Project to Digitize Manuscripts in Myanmar

Dr Raymond Catherine, Associate Professor, Art History, Northern Illinois University.

Illustrated parabaiks.
Ms Sinead Ward, Ph.D. candidate, School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
Kammavācā manuscripts.
Mr Aleix Falqués, Ph.D. candidate, Cambridge University. Manuscripts and editions of texts
on Pāli grammar.
Mr Chris Clark, Ph.D. candidate, University of Sydney. Manuscripts and editions of the
Apadāna.
Dr Anne Peters will be cross-referencing the manuscripts in our catalogue in future volumes of
the catalogue of Burmese manuscripts in Germany (Birmanische Handschriften, Verzeichnis
der Orientalischen Handscripften in Deutschland, Akademie der Wissenchaften in
Göttingen).
Dr D.C. Lammerts, Assistant Professor, Department of Religion, Rutgers University.
Manuscripts with Amarakosa texts.

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