Fifth Buddhist council

The chief objective of this meeting was to recite all the teachings of the Gautama Buddha according to the Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhism and examine them in minute detail to see if any of them had been altered, distorted or dropped.

However, there were a number of other councils held in Ceylon and Siam between the fourth and sixth, so the total can be made up in other ways.

In 1871, King Mindon was responsible for the construction in Mandalay of the world's largest book, consisting of 729 large marble tablets with the Tipitaka Pali canon of Theravada Buddhism inscribed on them in gold.

The work was commissioned by King Mindon as part of his transformation of Mandalay into a royal capital.

Each stone tablet has its own roof and precious gem on top in a small cave-like structure of Sinhalese relic casket type called kyauksa gu (stone inscription cave in Burmese), and they are arranged around a central golden pagoda.