Sarsikyo: Woven Buddhist Ribbons of Myanmar

Ms Vanessa Chan was accredited as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Singapore to the Republic of the Union of Myanmar in 2017. She was the Director-General of the International Organisations Directorate in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from January 2012 to June 2017. She was a Visiting Research Fellow at NSC, ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute in 2011.

Sarsikyo are lengthy tablet-woven dedicatory ribbons used originally to secure palm-leaf manuscripts of the Pitakas or sacred Buddhist scriptures when the latter were donated to monasteries as works of merit. Some were woven only with geometric patterns or figural decorations, but the most significant ones bear extensive woven texts, often in poetic form.

These ribbons, particularly the ones containing text, appear to be unique artefacts of Myanmar Buddhism. To the best of the author’s knowledge they were not known or used in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Tibet or India, though more research on this is needed. The texts of the ribbons were woven primarily by the Burmese ethnic majority in Burmese and Pali, but some are known to have been woven in Mon and Rakhine languages by the Buddhist Mon and Rakhine ethnic minorities and possibly also by at least some of the Shan, though the search for actual specimens of Shan-language sarsikyo is still ongoing. 

(Written by Vanessa Chan and extracted from SARSIKYO: WOVEN BUDDHIST RIBBONS OF MYANMAR)