In 1191(1829) , Burmese scholars edited the ‘Glass Palace Chronicle’ in five parts and thirty eight sections, from the Chronicle that was written by Maung Kalæ, the son of the Sagaing wealthy person. This “Glass Palace Chronicle” aroused King Mindon's patriotism: he gave great importance to the chronicles of Burma and there is much significance to be found in the presentation of the arguments that he put to the various English missions.

The year 1218 (1871) was marked as the coming 2500th year of the Religion (sāsanā) and was designated for the holding of the Fifth Sangāyanā. Looking at the mere surface of this work we can say very definitely that King Mindon hoped to be regarded and honoured as the supporter of the Religion in a quite special way, beyond all other kings. 

If we look at the essentials, we will see that the rule was that there was a basic disposition to preserve the culture of Burma and the traditions of its peoples. King Mindon was a patriot and was well versed in the history of Burma and his plans were always to establish firmly the Buddhist religion, as being the basis of Burmese culture.

From the strength of the interest that he always took in the processes of history, King Mindon could compare the rules for the government of Burma (dhammena samena rajjaµ kæreti) that he had before him in the Chronicles with the actualities that had changed with the times; he wished to review the principles and to match them with this different time. 

We can easily find an example: in 1219 (1872) King Mindon made his plans for taxation with the intention of following the rule of not more than ten percent in accordance with this text of Athakathæ ‘tattha nipphannasassato dasamabhægaggaha¼aµ sassamedhaµ næma’ “the basic rule of taxation is that it must not be obscure or uncertain; it must be collected on a definite basis.”

In a similar way, changes were to be brought by stages into the methods of government. One point of the new vision is conspicuous. The economy of Burma, both in agriculture and trade, was based upon barter. 

As soon as intercourse with Europe began, it was seen that the outdated basis of the Burmese economy could increase production by the use of machinery and of a currency. 

Mints were established at Sagaing and at Shwetachaung; also weaving mills, rice mills, an arms factory, saw mills, sugar mills, indigo dying plants and others were set up to the number of more than fifty; we can call this the start of an industrial revolution for Burma.

က်မ္းကုိး ...

ဇာတကအ႒ကထာ၊ ၄။ စတုကၠနိပါတ္၊ ၃၀၂။ မဟာအႆာေရာဟဇာတ္၊ ႏွာ-၃-၈.၁၂၃

Itivuttatthaka. ဧကနိပါတ္၊ ၇။ ေမတၱာဘာဝနာသုတ္၊ ႏွာ-၈၉