Over the years of studying the magical powers of words in the Burmese Buddhist context, I spent much of my research on the inner workings of the letter and phrase combinations and how the correct construction, combination and usage of these words, known in Burmese as inn, aing, and sama made for a potent prophylactic against a host of maladies. So focused had I been on the words that I had not taken the time to consider the individual letters, in and of themselves, before they went on to be combined into esoteric phrases and diagrams. Moreover, I had devoted my research to examining the ways Burmese words were predominantly seen to protect, purify, and even attack, but had never considered other ways in which letters may ‘do’ things, as Fox points out: namely, ‘represent cultural identity’; ‘embody and transmit knowledge’; ‘animate and enable’; ‘render things usable and so nameable’; ‘turn on their user’; and ‘both incur and pay debts’.Footnote ¹ While I cannot address each of these points in this short essay, I would like to discuss how Fox's book helped me to discover new ways of interpreting how letters and words may transfer their powers to people and things (‘embody and transmit knowledge’), as well as encouraging me to look into concepts of how, and if, letters can be considered ‘alive’ (‘animate and enable’) in the Burmese context.

Regarding matters of interpreting the embodiment and transmission of knowledge, for instance, there are Burmese Buddhist wizards in Myanmar known as vijjādhara, ‘masters of wisdom’. I have always understood such wisdom to mean a proficiency in knowledge and expertise of an esoteric nature that somehow imbues its power into letters, diagrams, and animate and inanimate objects. I say, ‘somehow’, because the exact mechanism(s) for how such transference takes place is hardly ever discussed in Burmese oral or printed accounts. Of utmost importance for those who engage with and wield such wisdom is that it works. Fox, however, gives us an insightful and interesting way of interpreting this transference of potency: ‘letters transfer knowledge, but this transfer of knowledge is itself a subset of a more fundamental, and inclusive, transfer of efficacy’.Footnote ² As in the Balinese context, the Burmese Buddhist wizards’ knowledge or wisdom is ‘less a form of abstract “information” and more a kind of power, or potency’.Footnote ³ Fox goes on to argue that this knowledge is also ‘a substance’ that is attracted to, and infused in, letters and objects inscribed with such letters.Footnote ⁴ Writing, wearing, ingesting, and/or saying (aloud or to oneself) ‘the appropriate combination of letters and images’ effects certain changes in the material world with this ‘knowledge’.Footnote ⁵

Moving on to the animating and enabling qualities of letters, Fox's book brought up the following questions for me: are Burmese letters—or akkhara—‘alive’? And if so, how? The concept of letters and letter combinations in the form of inn, aing, and sama being alive is something I had not come across regularly in my research. But digging a bit deeper into various popular sources, like magazines and online forums, I found instances of people discussing letters ‘coming to life’. The Burmese phrase, athek-win, which means something like ‘come alive’ or ‘infused with life’, is used in such contexts by Burmese Buddhists discussing ways of making letters and letter combinations potent for purposes of healing, attaining wealth, gaining supernatural powers, and a whole host of other matters related to one's general well-being. A letter becomes ‘athek-win’ when a person correctly performs a specific set of rites and rituals when engaging with these letters.Footnote ⁶ Letters, therefore, are not alive by nature but become animate (in ways similar to the Balinese context) ‘through their ongoing participation in a complex relationship—both internal to themselves and with others. This may begin with the linkage of their constituent elements and subsequent affixation to other’ letters.Footnote ⁷ This extends to other inanimate objects as well. Images of the Buddha or revered saints, amulets, ritual implements, etc., are infused with life after having undergone consecration or empowerment by people skilled in, to borrow Fox's term, ‘the transference of efficacy’.

The way the words are spoken, and even written, to make them ‘come alive’ must be done in accordance with strict rules that involve proper handwriting, and when spoken, pronunciation. The very act of writing out the letters in prescribed ways is what also allows the words to become potent. For instance, there is a well-known image of letters, called the ‘Buddha image of letters that protects against catastrophes’, that instructs the person intending to make use of the image to follow a long list of requirements that include writing the letters clearly and carefully in front of a statue of the Buddha while following a set of moral guidelines and chanting sacred verses. When this is completed, the image can be installed anywhere (in a home, office, restaurant, wallet, car, etc.) to ward off any bad luck, ill-omens, or generalised calamities that may pose a threat to a person or thing that falls under the protection of this image.Footnote ⁸

I wonder, though, if the Burmese case is different because potent and efficacious letters, words, and phrases used in Myanmar, and throughout Buddhist Southeast Asia, are taken directly from the Buddhist Pāli scriptures (Tipitaka). Such scriptures are highly valued by Burmese Buddhists because they are considered the words of the Buddha himself. These letters and words are efficacious due ‘to the supernatural power released by the recitation of the text: the words of the Buddha are powerful in themselves’.Footnote ⁹ The power of the Buddha is locked within these letters and words and is liberated when written and chanted. This power is even more efficacious if the letters and words are written or chanted by a morally upright person and done in accordance with strict rules laid out in manuals and by other religious professionals. Knowing the meaning of what is being chanted has no bearing on the effectiveness of the letters or words’ power whatsoever. Such power ‘lies in their sound and in their role in a protective ceremony, and less (or not at all) in their semantic meaning. In fact, their meaning often has nothing to do with their role and result in a ritual’.Footnote ¹⁰

As one can see from the brief discussion above, the comparative potential of Fox's book is great. Scholars of religion in Southeast Asia can draw upon the book to consider comparative studies from transregional, historical, and ethnographic perspectives. Indeed, the book also offers a model for how scholars may wish to examine similar uses of numbers in Southeast Asia. Like letters, numbers, and the combination thereof, are thought to act in similar ways for healing, sorcery, and self-defence.