by Hla Min

Updated : May 2026

From U Tin Aung Lwin

• Collection of articles
• သင်္ချာပညာပေး
• Thanks. The postage is much more than the sales price of the book.

by Hla Min

Updated : May 2026

From U Tin Aung Lwin

• Collection of articles
• သင်္ချာပညာပေး
• Thanks. The postage is much more than the sales price of the book.

by Hla Min

Updated : May 2026

Democratic Burma

• Sao Shwe Thaik (1948 – 1952)
  Nyaung Shwe (ညောင်ရွှေ Yaunghwe) Sawbwa
  First President of Burma; Burma gained Independence on January 4, 1948
• Dr. Ba U (1952 – 57)
  Author : “My Burma”; Claimed that he was the first President to be elected according to the Constitution

• Mahn Win Maung (1957-62)
  He was arrested along with the Cabinet Ministers and high ranking officials in March 2, 1962.

Notes

• Sama Duwa Sinwa Naung was President-Elect when the Coup d’etat took place on March 2, 1962.
• The 17-man Revolutionary Council was led by General Ne Win.

BSPP Era

• U Ne Win (1974 – 1981)

• U San Yu (1981 – 1988)

• Dr. Maung Maung (1988 – 1988)

• U Sein Lwin (1988 – 1988)

Notes

• A new Constitution enforced the One-Party System rule by BSPP from 1974 to 1988.
• There was a mass protest for Multi-party Democracy System (promised by U Ne Win).

Post 1988

• U Thein Sein (2011 – 2016)

• U Htin Kyaw (2016 – 2018)
  Retired citing medical problems

• U Win Myint (2018 – )
  Arrested on February 1, 2022 by Power Mongers

Notes

• Another Constitution, which was ratified shortly after the devastating Cyclone Nargis, empowered the quasi-military Government

by Hla Min

Updated : May 2026

ရှေးခေတ် — ရုပ်ရှင် ကြော်ငြာ

လူထုအောင်သံ — ရုပ်ရှင်

ပြဇာတ် — ဦးနု

ရုပ်ရှင်ရုံ (တချို့)

• ရန်ကုန်
  New Excelsior (ဝဇီရာ)
  Carlton (ယုဇန)
• မန္တလေး
  Golden Cinema (ရွှေ)
• မော်လမြိုင်
  King Cinema (ဘရင့်ရုံ)
• ပုသိမ်
  Raphael Cinema
• စစ်တွေ
  Sittway Cinema (စစ်တွေ)

Notes

• U Nu wrote the play.
• It was prescribed as a text.
• Bo Ba Ko and Maung Maung Tar became famous actors.

Posts

• Actors & Directors
• Cinemas

by Hla Min

Updated : May 2026

Typewriters

Keyboard

Olympia was commissioned to produce typewriters for Burmese. It was not trivial to type Burmese and Pali characters. The red keys were used to type vowels; the carriage did not go forward. The black keys were used to type consonants. Back-spacing for half a step was necessary on the Standard Edition to type characters such as “tha gyee”. Manual dexterity was needed to type some “pa sint” characters. The Office edition had extra keys (e.g. tha gyee, common pa sint).

Producing Multiple Copies

Before the wide spread use of copiers (initiated by Xerox), special care is needed to print multiple copies. We miss the days when we had type perfectly or reasonably well on typewriters using messy carbons. Also, planning to cyclostyle double-sided printing (odd numbered pages first, then repeat with even-numbered pages).

Selectric

IBM produced Selectric typewriters. “Golf” ball-like character sets had to be installed/replaced.

Word Processing

Wang computers provided word processors for various languages. Ko Htay Aung (Victor, EC80) worked at Wang for a while on the Burmese language project.

The evolution has seen

• Type face / font families
• Keyboard (QWERTY, Dvorak, …)
• Unicode Support
• Utilities (Dictionary, Thesaurus, Spelling, Grammar / Usage)

Chinese characters

Chinese characters are used by Chinese, Japanese, Korean. To input them to a computer, various techniques were used. They include (1) large tablets containing the most common characters (2) three corner method (based on the horizontal, vertical and diagonal strokes in the character (3) Romaji (mostly used by Japanese (4) human user to select if there are ambiguities (e.g. in the three corner method).

Transliteration

Burma Research Society (BRS) used transliteration for its journals. For example, “k-o-l” combination represents “ko”. The scheme was used inputting Burmese on Macintosh.

Universities’ Computer Center (UCC) had projects to do Burmese word processing. Saya U Myo Min supervised a project for Ma San Yu Hlaing for “collation” (needed for sorting). Saya U Tun Aung Gyaw and his team (Ko Htay Aung, Ko Soe Myint, …) worked on Cromenco System Three for printing and processing. U Soe Win and team worked on Calcomp graph plotter.

Difficulties imposed by Higher Authorities

Myanmar Sar Ah Phwe မြန်မာစာအဖွဲ့ Burmese Language Commission) bowed to higher authorities to revise the spelling at least two times.

Fines were imposed on authors and publishers spelling the established way. (e.g. “Ta” တ) instead of the preferred way (e.g. “Tit” တစ်) despite the scholars pointing out the old inscriptions at “Bo ta htaung ဗိုလ်တထောင်” not “Bo tit htaung” pagoda.

CTK (Children’s Treasury of Knowledge) project was delayed to correct the spellings.

It was not easy to write in those days without facing censorship. It was taboo to quote “Dhammata ဓမ္မတာ” poem (by Ananda Thuriya). It was a crime to mention the “setting sun နေ ဝင်”.

by Hla Min

Updated : Apr 2026

BARB

• Burma Astro Research Bureau was formed around 1980s.
• Experts on Veda & allied subjects (e.g. Astronomy, Palmistry, Numerology) served as Researchers, Advisors & Teachers
• Courses : Basic & Higher Level
• Subjects : ဂဏိတ၊ ဖလိတ၊ သံဟိတ၊
• BARB published the “Jotisha Veda” Magazine. I wrote articles with my name and two pen names.
• BARB published Veda Calendar.
• Ad-hoc sessions at selected houses for Discussion & Live training sessions by Veda sayas — U Myint Sein, U Khin Aung Bo, U Than Htay, U Myint Lwin & Bogyi Kyaw Zan Hla.

Executive Committee

• U Myaing (President)
  Published Jotisha Veda Magazine
• Dr. Chit Swe (Vice President)
  Pioneer of Computer Systems & Applications in Burma;
  Founder & Director, UCC;
  Rector, RASU; Taught at RU, Thailand & Australia
  

• U Min Wun (Vice President)
  Member, Pyeikkadein Ah Kyan Pay Ah Phwe (ပြက္ခဒိန်အကြံပေးအဖွဲ့ ); Professor, Civil Engineering, RIT; Advisor, Regional College Project; Advisor, Bagan Restoration Project; Consultant, CalTrans
  

• U Kyaw Min
  Studied Architecture at MIT;
  Part-time Head of Architecture Department, RIT; Pen name : Pithuka Kyaw Min
• U Aye Win Kyaw
  Lecturer, Civil Engineering, RIT; Taught Astronomy at BARB & MARB; Family suffered Double Tragedy at Pyin Oo Lwin Clinic

• U Myint Sein
  SPHS64; B.Com (IT) in 1968;
  Ran family business; Principal, BARB : Requested me to provide programs for Vedic Calculations; Founder, IDEA Astrology; Visiting Professor, Taing Yin Say (တိုင်းရင်းဆေး ပညာ School of Indigenous Medicine); Expertise : Medical Astrology

• U Nyan Win (Secretary)
• U Tin Aung (Joint Secretary)
  Expertise : Phalita

• U Mya Sein (Treasurer) Engineer

• U Win Pe (Joint Treasurer)
  His ancestors published Myanmar Ephemeris

MARB

• After the demise of key EC members, BARB was reorganized.
• It evolved into Myanmar Astro Research Bureau with U Khin Aung Bo as President.
• MARB lost Saya U Myint Lwin early.
• After U Khin Aung Bo’s demise, U Kyaw Myint became President.
• Dr. Kan Nyunt (Bagyi Kan) is the oldest (but still very active) among the sayas and sayamas.

U Myint Sein

• Principal of BARB
• Friend from Primary School
• Requested me to develop programs for Veda calculations and predictions. I supervised two UCC students. Ko Win Latt (UCC) developed Win Horo. Ko Zaw Tun (UCC) developed a Prolog program for prediction.

• Visiting Professor at the School of Indigenous Medicine
• Founder, IDEA Astrology
• Passed away peacefully while watching TV at home
• It was good news & bad news for his son, who was back in Yangon to take examination for Master Mariner. He lost his father, but was present at his father’s last journey.

U Aye Win Kyaw

• Saya, Civil Engineering Department, RIT.
• Taught Astronomy at BARB & MARB
• Passed away at a hospital in Pyin Oo Lwin
• His son, who visited Saya, passed away earlier while taking a shower at the hospital.
• Double tragedy for the family.

U Khin Aung Bo

• President of MARB
• B. Ed
• Taught at GTI, BARB & MARB
• Expertise include Thanhita
• Fell backwards while reciting Pathan
• Hospitalized
• Passed away on May 13, 2020 at the age of 80.

U Myint Lwin

• Vice President, MARB
• Taught at BARB & MARB
• Expertise include Phalita
• Helped with the early Veda Calendar
• Passed away earliest among three sayas (in the photo)

U Than Htay

• Vice President, MARB
• Taught at BARB & MARB; Published books & notes on တြိစက္ကဇာတာ and ဒသာ
• Expertise include Ganita
• Medical Technologist

U Hla Win

• Vice President, MARB
• Member of “Myanmar Pyeikkdadein Ah Kyan Pay Ah Phwe.”
• Mechanical Engineer & Entrepreneur
• Busy not only with his work, but also with SPZP & HMEE
• Taught Veda courses (e.g. Research)

U Kyaw Myint

• Succeeded U Khin Aung Bo as President, MARB
• Textile Engineer
• Expert on Traditional Medicine
• Associate member, “Myanmar Pyeikkdadein Ah Kyan Pay Ah Phwe.”

Dr. Kan Nyunt

• Patron, MARB
• Elder brother of U Kyaw Myint
• Wrote / Translated many articles

Other Sayas

• Dr. Aung Myin Bo
• U Soe Thein
• U Thein Aung
• Daw Mya Mya Aye
• Daw Moe Moe (Venus)
• …

Lunch Gathering

• During my trips to Yangon, MARB Sayas would pick me up. U Hla Win would sometimes pick me up; otherwise, he would send his assistant or another saya.
• I would give a guest lecture.

• U Than Htay & U Hla Win were not present at the lunch gathering (shown in the photo) near the old MARB Office.
• Dr. Aung Myin Bo & his spouse picked us up (along with Saya Thae) to the new MARB Office.
• Tarot saya from Thailand (friend of Prophet Myat San) donated air conditioners for use at MARB Office / Training School.

Updates

GBNF

• Several Veda Sayas from BARB and MARB are now GBNF.
• Dr. Chit Swe passed away in Sydney, Australia
• U Min Wun passed away in California, USA

Status

• Win Latt is in Bangkok, Thailand
• Zaw Tun is in Singapore