Sarsikyo: “Sarsikyo: Woven Buddhist Ribbons Of Myanmar” Book Released

Launching Ceremony of the book named “Sarsikyo: Woven Buddhist Ribbons of Myanmar” by Ambassador Vanessa Chan took place at Myanmar Book Centre on Saturday.

Vanessa Elisabeth Chan Yuen Ying is the current Singapore’s Ambassador to the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. She graduated with a bachelor of Arts in Law (Honours) from the University of Cambridge, England in 1988. This is the very first book by Ambassador Chan, and her goal in writing this paper is to help stimulate further interest and study of these important traditional artifacts, unique to Myanmar.

Ambassador, Embassy of the Republic of Singapore, H.E. Vanessa Chan said “This is a project that has been going on for about 10 years now. It’s about revival and encourage of the study of Sarsikyo which are the ribbons used to tie around pe sar of the Pitakat. So, I got interested in about 10 years ago, and I discovered that the last waver have died in 1994. So, I became interesting not just in studying them and also trying to bring them back.”

The book mainly highlights about the Myanmar Traditional Sarsikyo waving. Sarsikyo are long, tablet-woven ribbons in Myanmar. They were originally used to tie up pe sar of the Buddhist Scriptures. Sarsikyo often contains information about the donors and the contexts of the donation.

Ambassador, Embassy of the Republic of Singapore, H.E. Vanessa Chan said “This book is the one of about 10 years research into Sarsikyo what they were, what they are about, who the weavers were as much as we can and it also translation into modern Burmese and English of 190 Sarsikyo from my own collection. So they can be studied by other scholars because these are actually important historical documents. They go back several centuries. A lot of them have extremely important historical information about the donors who they were, where they lived and what they did.”

Dr. Ye Myint said “Although there were many Sarsikyo in Mindon Min dynasty, there is little left now. They represent history as well as culture, religion, politics and literature of that time. Sarsikyo were also woven and written by Rakhine and Mon. I would like to urge the youths to preserve our Myanmar weaving writing art, Sarsikyo.”

Many of Sarsikyo contain significant historical information, and are as worthy of historical and linguistic study as bell inscriptions, rock inscriptions, pe sar and parabaik.