"...On 16 September 1983, as Chief Librarian of the Universities Central Library (UCL) in Yangon, I acquired an extremely rare palm-leaf manuscript from a Middle School teacher from Pakkoku, U Tin Ngwe (U Tin Ngwe (1931-2004) later became Headmaster of a Middle School in Pakkoku). When U Tin Ngwe brought the manuscript to UCL, he told me that he had acquired it from a Buddhist monastery near Myaing, his birthplace about twenty-five miles northwest of Pakkoku. I first come to know of the existence of this manuscript about five years earlier, in November 1978, while I was in Pakkoku on one of many trips made to various parts of Myanmar in search of rare palm-leaf and paper parabike manuscripts. We used to go on manuscript search trips from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s and found many interesting and rare manuscripts that are now kept in UCL. The palm-leaf manuscript purchased from U Tin Ngwe is a record of a mission sent by the Myanmar king Maha-dam?-ya-za-d?-pat? (r. 1733-1752) to the Chinese Qianlong Emperor (r. 1736-1795) of the Qing Dynasty..."