Series about the Zelnik Collection


2013 Apr 03

The Hungarian Southeast Asian Research Institute has launched a new series of publications entitled Treasures from Southeast Asia in the Zelnik Collection. The series will present the most remarkable pieces of the collection consisting of several tens of thousands of objects through essays about them by experts, aimed at the general public. The first volume, Burmese Gold Plate Inscribed with a Section of the Pāli Canon, has been recently published. The 19th or 20th century gold plate, with its three-line inscription, is an outstanding piece of the Burmese section of the Collection, which has over a thousand objects. The Burmese script was read by the Orientalist Tibor Novák. He established that the inscription is a section of the Pāli Canon, the sacred text of Southern Buddhism, which is exceptionally important for Burmese Buddhism and concerns the relationships of cause and effect in the world. The book was presented on Wednesday at the Gold Museum by its editor, the Indologist Dr. Zsuzsanna Renner, the author Tibor Novák, Dr. Csaba Dezső, senior lecturer at the Faculty of Indo-European Language Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, and Géza Bethlenfalvy, Indologist.