Bottom cover from a Kammavacha: Buddhist Ordination Text (1800s): Art, History and Details

Bottom cover from a Kammavacha: Buddhist Ordination Text (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In premodern Burma, lay people commissioned lavishly ornamented manuscripts for ceremonial occasions, when officiants would read aloud from the text. Written in black lacquer, the text is in the language of Pali written in a Burmese script. It contains ordination rites and procedures for monastic ceremonies. The second to last page is covered with intricately drawn, winged celestial beings (nats) in gestures of praise. They fly amid intertwining vegetation—denoting bounty—that grows from serpentine forms that refer to rain clouds. Lionlike forms inhabit the space with them. The top and bottom covers are equally ornamented with jeweled floral patterning.

Object facts

• Title: Bottom cover from a Kammavacha: Buddhist Ordination Text
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Myanmar (Burma)
• Type: Manuscript
• Technique: Cover: lacquer, gilding, and glass appliqué on wood
• Dimensions: Cover: 13 x 57.2 x 0.9 cm (5 1/8 x 22 1/2 x 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Burmese Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1945.172.b

A detail from the museum

The Pali text of this manuscript is written in Burmese square script, which is also known as "tamarind seed script."

Collection credit

Edward L. Whittemore Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.