| State Seal of Burma ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်အထိမ်းအမှတ်တံဆိပ် |
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| Details | |
| Armiger | Republic of the Union of Myanmar |
| Adopted | Adopted in 2008 with the Constitutional Referendum |
| Use | On all official documents and letters issued by Government of Burma |
The state seal of Burma (Burmese: ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်အထိမ်းအမှတ်တံဆိပ်) is used in all official government documents, including publications.
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The coat of arms has two chinthe (mythical lions) facing opposite one another, and at its center is a map of Burma. The coat of arms is surrounded by traditional Burmese flower designs and a star at its top. The new State Seal, as stipulated by Chapter XIII of the 2008 Constitution, was adopted in the 2008 Burmese constitutional referendum.
The original coat of arms contained the Burmese text ပြည်ထောင်စုမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် on the banner, which translates "Union of Burma", as well as three chinthe (the chinthe at the top was replaced by a star). Additionally, the cogwheel was a circle surrounded by Verse 194 of the Buddhavagga in the Dhammapada in Pali: သမဂ္ဂါနံ တပေါ သုခေါ (samagganam tapo sukho), which translates to "happiness through harmony" or "well-being through unity."
However, during Ne Win's Socialist rule, the 1974 Constitution adopted a new state seal with the following changes: the coat of arms was modified to accommodate Socialist symbols: a cogwheel, a star at the top, and dual olive wreaths.[1] The words on the banner were also changed to ပြည်ထောင်စု ဆိုရှယ်လစ်သမ္မတ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်, which translates "Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma." In 1988, when the State Law and Order Restoration Council staged a coup, the words ဆိုရှယ်လစ်သမ္မတ ("Socialist Republic") were removed.
The previous state symbol of Burmese monarchs was the green peacock. The use of the green peacock was continued during British colonial times and the State of Burma. The peacock also featured on Burmese rupees as a national symbol.
In 2008 a new constitution for Burma was adopted in a controversial referendum. In this new constitution, changes have been made to the coat of arms. The new coat of arms removes the colors blue and dark gold/orange and instead just uses the colors red and gold/yellow. Also, the cogwheel has been removed and replaced with laurel or olive branches and the words on the central portion of the scroll have been changed to ပြည်ထောင်စု သမ္မတ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်.[2]