SANDAMANI AND KUTHODAW PAYAS The Sandamani Paya is a cluster of slender whitewashed stupas built on the site of King Mindon's temporary palace- used while the new Mandalay Palace was under construction. King Mindon had come to power after the successful overthrow of King Pagan Min, an operation assisted by his younger brother prince Kanaung. Mindon tented to concentrate on religious matters and leave the niceties of secular rule to his brother, but in 1866 Prince Kanaung was assassinated in an unsuccessful revolt inspired by prince Myingun. The Sandamani Paya was built as a memorial to prince Kanaung on the spot where he was killed. The Sandamani Paya enshrines an iron image of the Buddha cast in 1802 by Bodawpaya and transported here from Amarapura in 1874. Around the stupa lies a large collection of marble slabs inscribed with commentaries on the Buddhist canon.   The Kuthodaw Paya is also known as the Maha Lawka Marazein Paya. The central stupa was modelled after the Schwezigon Paya at Nyaung U near Bagan. Building commenced in 1857, at the same time as the royal palace. The paya complex has been dubbed 'the world's biggest book', for standing around the central stupa are 729 marble slabs on which are inscribed the entire Buddhist canon, or Tripitaka. Each slab is housed in its own individual small stupa. It took an editorial committee numbering over 2000 to produce the original slabs. It has been estimated that, reading for eight hours a day, one person would take 450 days to read the complete 'book'. King Mindon convened the fifth Buddhist Synod and used a team of 2400 monks to read the whole book in a non-stop relay lasting nearly six months ! In 1900 a paper edition of the stone original was printed in 38 volumes, each with about 400 pages.