Konbaung Set Yazawin

The author of the chronicle, Maung Maung Tin (also known as Mandalay U Tin) was a British colonial official as well as a son of Konbaung royalty. Tin updated the chronicle to 1885, to the fall of the monarchy, relying mainly on the court records obtained from several members of the royal library and also on the papers seized by the British and kept in libraries.^[3] As almost all of the Konbaung Dynasty's records had been destroyed when the royal library was burnt by British troops soon after King Thibaw Min's surrender in 1885,^[4] Tin had to begin the collection effort of the surviving source materials still in possession of many court members. (His collection, which continued until the Second World War, eventually grew to over 4000 palace manuscripts, including records, drawings, plays, etc. His lifelong collection stored at his Mandalay home would however be destroyed in 1942 during the Japanese invasion of Burma. The house was burned by the retreating Chinese forces of the Allied forces.)^[5]

For the compilation of Konbaung Set, he used the surviving materials as well as several interviews with the surviving members of the court. The main consultants to Tin were:^[6]