In Burma, the Code was revised "to support Burmese customary law with explicitly Buddhist scriptural justifications" by 1640.
[note 1] Wareru, who had proclaimed king of what used to be the Martaban province of the Pagan Empire only since 1287, set out to compile a customary law book in Mon, the main language of his nascent kingdom.
[1] The compilation was part of a wider regional pattern in which the former lands of the empire as well as its neighboring states produced legal texts modeled after Pagan's, between 1275 and 1317.
[note 2] The Code is in part based on the 12th century Pagan period law treatise Dhammavisala Dhammathat.
It is mainly Burmese customary law, tempered with Buddhist justifications, and organized in the mold of the ancient Hindu Manusmriti treatise.
[7] According to Huxley's analysis of the four early Burmese dhammathats including the Wareru, the parts borrowed directly from the Manusmriti quantitatively amounted to "between 4% and 5%".
[9][10][note 5] Nonetheless the Code is not completely free of Hindu influences; for example, it reiterates "to a certain extent" about the "privileges of the higher castes, of Brahmans" in particular.
[note 8] The British colonial period scholars call the Wareru Dhammathat "the earliest law-book in Burma still extant".