On this day, the world’s largest book consisting of 730 large marble tablets with the Tipitaka (and other Buddhist texts) inscribed on them in gold, was opened to the general public in the Kuthodaw Pagoda in Myanmar (Burma). The marble tablets are about one and a half metres tall and about one metre wide and are inscribed on both sides, making a total of 1,460 pages. Each tablet stands vertically in a small cave-like structure, known as a kyauksa gu, with its own roof and a precious gem on top. The kyauksa gu are all arranged around a central golden pagoda. The work was commissioned by King Mindon as part of his transformation of Mandalay into a royal capital. In 2013, the Kuthodaw Inscription Shrines were inscribed onto the Memory of the World Register by UNESCO.
