Kuthodaw Pagoda — stupa
Image by tonywuphotography from Pixabay

Kuthodaw Pagoda

  • 2 min read
  • 22.005° N 96.113° E

Interesting facts

  • Each marble slab is about 1.5 metres tall, just over a metre wide and 13 centimetres thick, so the whole 'book' has 1,460 stone pages.
  • Every face carries 80 to 100 lines of rounded Burmese script; a scribe needed three days to copy one slab, and a mason carved at most 16 lines a day.
  • The marble came from Sagyin Hill, about 32 miles north of Mandalay, and was shipped to the city by river.
  • Carving began on 14 October 1860 in a large workshop shed near the royal palace, from a text checked by tiers of senior monks against palm-leaf manuscripts.
  • The inscribed shrines are laid out in three enclosures, with 42 in the innermost ring, 168 in the middle and 519 in the outermost.
  • British troops carried off nine bells from each small shrine, some 6,570 bells in all, during their occupation of the site.
  • The troops left after a Burmese revenue surveyor, U Aung Ban, petitioned Queen Victoria, who in 1890 ordered soldiers out of religious precincts.
  • The black ink that replaced the lost gold lettering was mixed from shellac, soot from paraffin lamps and straw ash.
  • In 1900 the text was printed in 38 volumes by Philip Ripley, a Burmese-born Briton raised at Mindon's court, who checked his proofs against the stones.
  • The pagoda's formal name is Mahalawka Marazein, while Kuthodaw, the name everyone uses, means 'royal merit'.

Why it is worth it

At the foot of Mandalay Hill, a golden stupa rises above a sea of small white shrines. Kuthodaw Pagoda – the "Royal Merit" – was built by King Mindon as part of the foundation of his new royal capital of Mandalay; its central stupa, gilded above the terraces, stands about 57 metres high and is modelled on the Shwezigon Pagoda near Bagan. Construction began in 1860, and the crowning umbrella, the hti, was raised in July 1862.

What makes Kuthodaw unique lies around it. In 729 small stupas, each a kind of stone shrine, stand marble slabs inscribed on both sides with the entire Tipitaka – the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism. Mindon, who later convened the Fifth Buddhist Synod, wanted the scriptures set in stone to last for five thousand years after the Buddha; the inscriptions were opened to the public in May 1868. Together they are often called the world's largest book, and in 2013 they were inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register. A 730th stone records how the whole work came about. Walking the long white rows, where the shrines repeat into the distance, is one of the most serene experiences in Myanmar.

The complex has survived hard times. After the British annexed Mandalay in 1885, troops were quartered in the religious precincts; when they withdrew, the pagoda had been stripped of its bells, jewels and marble tiles, and the gold ink had been scraped from the letters. A committee of monks and members of the old court organised the restoration from 1892, re-inking the texts in black, and it was then that the star flower trees were planted between the rows. Their jasmine-like scent still fills the enclosures, and families picnic in their shade. The southern approach passes through carved teak doors and a covered walkway; nearby stands the Sandamuni Pagoda, with its own field of inscribed slabs.

Getting there

The pagoda is at the foot of Mandalay Hill, about 4.5 km from the centre of Mandalay. Mandalay International Airport (MDL) is 36.3 km away by straight line.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Mandalay 7The Most Beautiful Places in Myanmar 18The Most Beautiful Stupas in Myanmar 5The Most Beautiful Pagodas in Myanmar 6The Most Beautiful 19th-Century Sacred Places 7The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Myanmar 12The Most Beautiful Pagodas 13The Most Beautiful Stupas 15The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

Kuthodaw Pagoda is a Buddhist stupa, located in Mandalay, Burma (Myanmar), that contains the world's largest book. It lies at the foot of Mandalay Hill and was built during the reign of King Mindon. The stupa itself, which is gilded above its terraces, is 188 feet (57 m) high, and is modelled after the Shwezigon Pagoda at Nyaung-U near Bagan. In the grounds of the pagoda are 729 kyauksa gu or stone-inscription caves, each containing a marble slab inscribed on both sides with a page of text from the Tipitaka, the entire Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

22.00460, 96.11280per Wikidata