This publication comprises a catalogue of Burmese, Pali, and Mon manuscripts in the collection of the “U Pho Thi” (Ūḥ Bhuiḥ Sīḥ) or Sādhujanapāsādikadhammacetī Library at Saddhammajotikārāma monastery in Thaton, Burma. The authors state that their work lists “five parabaiks (illustrated manuscripts on thick paper accordian style) and 785 palm-leaf manuscripts – the numbers of the manuscripts [in the catalogue] go up to 788, but three of them are lost” (p. xi).
The modern Ūḥ Bhuiḥ Sīḥ library, established by a wealthy merchant (Ūḥ Bhuiḥ Sīḥ) and his wife (Khaṅ Khaṅ Krīḥ) in the early twentieth century, is one of the most well-documented manuscript repositories in Burma. A majority of the manuscripts are colonial-era copies, and many of the most recent (into the 1930s) were sponsored by Ūḥ Bhuiḥ Sīḥ and his family (e.g. entries 348, 449.3, 493.1, 515.2, 516.1, 536). As the authors note (pp. x–xi), over the years “several handlists” to the collection have appeared, including a substantial printed catalogue (Lha Taṅ, Piṭakat samuiṅḥ khau piṭakat suṃḥ puṃ cā tamḥ, Yangon, 1940). Although an unpublished handlist prepared in 1998 by the Universities’ Central Library in Yangon – listing precisely 788 titles with indexing to the 1940 catalogue – is briefly mentioned (p. x), the authors do not explain how their own numbering system and title identifications depart, if at all, from the documentation established therein. Nonetheless, this catalogue by Pruitt, Ousaka, and Kasamatsu improves upon these earlier efforts by “add[ing] more detail” (p. xi). Certain Ūḥ Bhuiḥ Sīḥ manuscripts have also been microfilmed or digitally preserved by earlier projects. The production of the work under review was accessory to a new initiative to digitize the complete collection, and “the manuscripts in this catalogue are being made available on the website of the library of the University of Toronto” (p. xi). As of September 2019, this useful database is now online (https://mmdl.utoronto.ca).
The catalogue begins with an introduction that offers a condensed history of the library based on the 1940 catalogue. This is followed by a transliteration table (p. xiv) and list of abbreviations (xv). The Romanization scheme utilized is not a systematic transliteration insofar as it is incapable of unambiguously representing Sanskrit written in Burmese script, inconsistently employs superfluous conventions such as hyphenation and capitalization, and requires Burmese-script symbols to encode marks of tone. The main body of the catalogue (pp. 1–380) comprises the list of manuscripts. Each full entry describes the shelfmark, title, language(s), number of folios, foliation, physical dimensions, bundle decoration, lines-per-folio, script-size (“small”, “medium”, or “large” – a determination which would seem fairly discretionary), binding, wrappers, and date of compilation and/or copying. A section entitled “remarks” contains brief textual, paratextual, or codicological observations. Entries also receive a short transcription of “beginning text”. Entries do not always present parallel documentation in Burmese and Romanization, e.g. entry 723 where an authorial attribution is written only in Burmese, or entry 538.2 where only Romanization is given. The list of manuscripts is followed by a glossary (pp. 381–3), author index (pp. 384–8), list of “owners, donors, scribes” (p. 389), list of monasteries (p. 390), and title index (pp. 391–412).
The documentation of former donors or owners of manuscripts is partial. For example, a rather large quantity of the manuscripts belonged to a British Imperial subject, Moṅ Bha Tū, variously identified in the manuscripts as, e.g., a subdivisional officer (nay puiṅ van thok) or the township officer of Kyangin (left untranslated in entry 146). On a few occasions paratextual labels noting that a manuscript was owned by him are misread to imply that he was the “sponsor” of the copy (e.g. entries 1–5). In other cases (entries 33–34, 43, 74, 78, 88–90, 135, 146, 219, etc.), manuscripts bear labels attributing ownership to him, but these are not noted in the respective entries or in the list of “owners” (p. 389). Similarly, while Ūḥ Bhuiḥ Sīḥ and his family sponsored many copies, they are not mentioned in the respective entries as sponsors or in the list of donors.
Entries tend to remain silent about how cataloguers arrived at textual metadata, including authorial attributions and dates of composition. This diminishes the utility of the catalogue as a work of scholarly reference, since authors and dates are presented as authoritative when they are not critically and securely established. In some instances, the authors state that an attribution is reproduced from information written on slips of paper inserted into bundles by prior cataloguers (e.g. entry 464). Other cases are more opaque. For example, entry 163 gives the author “Rhaṅ Sāriputta (Da-la)” for a legal treatise that was not composed by any such person, and who is nowhere mentioned in the text itself. Dates are sometimes erroneously assigned. Thus, entry 139 was “[c]opied in Sakkarāj 1125 (A.D. 1763)”, but in fact this date refers to the year in which the text itself was created. In converting dates, the cataloguers appear to have simply added 638 to the Burmese year, without accounting for calendrical discrepancies. For example, in entry 37 the Burmese year 1232 is calculated as “A.D. 1870”, whereas the weekday and month furnished by the colophon (f. ghau.r) establish the copy date as Monday 30 January 1871. Moreover, the compilation of this collection of monastic vinicchayas is dated to 1145 (“A.D. 1783”), but this is merely the date of the first legal opinion recorded in the bundle (f. ka.v). There are many other decisions dated subsequently (e.g. 1785 (f. kha.r); 1806 (f. gū.r); 1826 (f. gho.v)). And authorship of this text has been attributed not to the author or compiler but rather to the last-mentioned monk responsible for the final ruling in the collection.
Despite such criticisms, this publication will help bring the Ūḥ Bhuiḥ Sīḥ collection to wider international attention. It is a welcome addition to the growing documentation on vernacular and Pali manuscripts and manuscript libraries in Burma.
