King Mindon ordered the “book” to be made. The works started in 1860 and took 8 years to complete. The texts were copied from ancient manuscripts written on dried palm leaf, the letters chiselled out of the stone and inlaid with gold leaf. Each marble slab measuring 153 centimeters tall and 107 centimeters wide is enshrined in a structure called Dhamma ceti or kyauksa gu in Burmese, “gu” meaning cave.

The white shrines are lined in rows around the complex, with corridors in between wide enough to walk through. Each Dhamma ceti houses a single slab behind openable gates. The shrines have an entrance on all four sides with elaborately decorated arches over them and are topped with a hti, an ornamental spire. One more slab (no 730) tells the story of how the world’s largest book came about.

According to renown