- Title
- Kammavaca (Book of Rules) manuscript
- Date Made
- 19th Century
- Medium
- Wood (teak?), cloth, lacquer, gold leaf
- Dimensions
- 1 1/2 × 23 × 5 in. (3.81 × 58.42 × 12.7 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2017.121.1
- Collecting Area
- South and Southeast Asian Art
- Curatorial Notes
Kammavaca (Book of Rules) is the Pali term for a ritual text consisting of a set of passages extrapolated from the Theravada Buddhist canon, the Tripitaka (Triple Basket), that relate to ordination, bestowing of robes, election of senior monks, designating sacred ground and days for fasting and meditation, dedication of monasteries, release from monastic vows, and other rules of Buddhist monastic life. These highly ornate manuscripts are generally commissioned by lay members of society as a work of merit, to be presented to monasteries when a son enters the Buddhist order as a novice or is ordained as a monk. Although these regulations were strictly observed in other Theravada Buddhist countries, only in Burma were the manuscripts of the Kammavaca given such preeminence and so lavishly adorned.
See Pratapaditya Pal and Julia Meech-Pekarik, Buddhist Book Illuminations (Hong Kong: Ravi Kumar Publishers and Hurstpierpoint, England: Richard Lyon – Chimera Books, 1988), pp. 207-208; and Sylvia Fraser-Lu and Donald M. Stadtner, Buddhist Art of Myanmar (New York: Asia Society Museum in association with New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015), pp. 198-199, no. 57.
- Selected Bibliography
- Little, Stephen, Tushara Bindu Gude, Karina Romero Blanco, Silvia Seligson, Marco Antonio Karam. Las Huellas de Buda. Ciudad de México : Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 2018.
- Little, Stephen, and Tushara Bindu Gude. Realms of the Dharma: Buddhist Art across Asia. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2025.