Burmese Palm Leaf Prayer Manuscript Pali Script

Description

Burmese Palm Leaf Prayer Manuscript Pali Script
also referred to as Paysar have fascinated authors and scholars to produce Pali literary and religious works for hundreds of years. The Vinaya, is the monastic code handed down by Theravada Budhism in Ceylon.
The influence of Ceylon on Burma has been in questions of monastic discipline and the code drawn up by the ancient Sinhalese theras, and has been carefully preserved by the Burmese fraternity in the letter and the spirit ever since its arrival in Burma in the eleventh century. A great deal of Vinaya literature, mostly explanatory and sometimes controversial, has grown up round the code from the time of the early commentators to the present day. The important works by Sinhalese authors on this subject formed the base of Burmese studies.
In 1879 a report on the subject was drawn up for the Government of India by Dr. Emil Forchhammer, Professor of Pali at Rangoon, who had begun a thorough search for manuscripts in monasteries and private collections. His premature death cut short a work full of promise. This and other reports of Forchhammer, on the archaeological remains of Arakan and Burma, are Government publications; and his studies of Buddhist law (published by Sir John Jardine with his own valuable Notes, 1882-3, and in the Jardine Prize Essay) are now extremely rare books, and the stores of knowledge they contain are not easily available.