Kuthodaw Pagoda

Kuthodaw Pagoda, at the foot of Mandalay Hill, is a white-walled complex housing 729 marble tablets, each one inscribed on both sides with a page from the Tipitaka — the complete canonical texts of Theravada Buddhism. They were carved in 1860 at the order of King Mindon and represent one of the most extraordinary acts of religious scholarship in the Buddhist world.

Each tablet is housed in its own small white stupa (kyauksa gu), arranged in rows across the compound like a stone forest. The central golden Kuthodaw stupa is a copy of the Shwezigon Pagoda at Bagan. The pagoda is directly north of the royal palace and makes a natural first stop before climbing Mandalay Hill behind it.

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A story
The 729 stone tablets at Kuthodaw are sometimes called the World's Largest Book — and the claim is defensible. Each slab inscribes one page of the Tipitaka, the complete Pali Buddhist canon, carved so that a monk reading at a normal pace would need 450 days to read the whole text aloud.