State Seal of Myanmar

The previous state symbol of Burmese monarchs was the green peacock. Late kings of Konbaung dynasty adopted the circular State Seal bearing a peacock on the sun surrounded by the text: မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတံဆိပ်တော်.[4][5]

Government seal
Armiger	Province of Burma, British Indian Empire British Burma
Adopted	1886
Relinquished	1948
Crest	A royal crown proper
Blazon	Quarterly, I and IV Gules, three lions passant guardant in pale Or langued and armed Azure. II Or a lion rampant Gules armed and langued Azure within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules. III Azure a harp Or stringed Argent.
Supporters	On the dexter a lion rampant guardant Or langued and armed Gules, royally crowned Proper. On the sinister a Unicorn rampant Argent armed crined and unguled Or, and gorged with a Coronet composed of crosses patee and fleurs-de-lis, a chain affixed thereto passing through the forelegs and reflexed over the back Or
Motto	French: Dieu et mon droit, lit. 'God and my right'
Order(s)	Order of the Garter

Badge of Burma
(1939–1941), (1945–1948)

After being annexed by the British Empire, the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom replaced the place of State seal. After Burma was separated from India, the green peacock on a yellow was adopted as the national symbol and badge of Burma, in 1939. But the State Seal was still the coat of arms of United Kingdom.

State Seal of the State of Burma
(1943–1945)

The State of Burma, a Japanese puppet state, adopted the circular seal bearing stylized golden peacock as the State seal in 1943.

The current design of the State Seal was first introduced at the Constituent Assembly of the Union of Burma in 1947.[6]^: 8

State Seal of the Union of Burma
Armiger	Union of Burma
Adopted	1948
Relinquished	1974
Crest	A lion sejant Azure
Blazon	Azure, a map of Myanmar Argent between two areas, surrounded by a circle Gules that bears the State motto: သမဂ္ဂါနံ တပေါ သုခေါ
Supporters	Two lion sejant Argent
Motto	သမဂ္ဂါနံ တပေါ သုခေါ (samaggānaṃ topo sukho) ပြည်ထောင်စု သမတ-မြန်မာ နိုင်ငံတော်။ (• literally, "Union, President-Myanmar, State"; • formally, "Republic of the Union of Myanmar")

The State Seal of Burma, approved by the Constituent Assembly in 1947,[6]^: 8 contained the Burmese text ပြည်ထောင်စု သမတမြန်မာ နိုင်ငံတော်။ on the banner, which means "Republic of Union of Myanmar" (the same as the text in the current State Seal except the spelling of the word that mean President or Republic: သမတ), as well as three lions. Additionally, there was a circle surrounding the map of the country containing Verse 194 of the Buddhavagga in the Dhammapada in Pali: သမဂ္ဂါနံ တပေါ သုခေါ (samaggānaṃ tapo sukho), which translates to "Happy is the practice of those in harmony."[7] It was adopted at the independence of the country on 4 January 1948.

State Seal of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma
Versions
official colour
later interpretation
Armiger	Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma
Adopted	1974
Relinquished	1988
Crest	A mullet Or
Blazon	Or, a map of Myanmar Or in a field Sable surrounded by a pinion Or which is also surrounded by paddy ears Or
Supporters	Two lion sejant Or
Motto	ပြည်ထောင်စု ဆိုရှယ်လစ်သမ္မတ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် (• literally, "Union, Socialist President, State of Myanmar"; • formally, "Socialist Republic of the Union of Myanmar")
Earlier version(s)	1948-1974

The 1974 Constitution of the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma adopted a new State Seal[8] with Socialist symbols : a pinion (cogwheel) with 14 teeth, surrounding the map of Myanmar, surrounded by two paddy ears, the two artistic Burmese lions besides the branches: The left lion facing to the left and the right lion facing to the right, The words ပြည်ထောင်စု ဆိုရှယ်လစ်သမ္မတ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်, which means "Socialist Republic of the Union of Myanmar", on the ribbon banner at the bottom.[9] It was adopted together with the new State flag and the 1974 constitution on 3 January 1974. The original publications of 1974 constitution shows the State flag with full colours, but it shows the State seal only in white and black.[8] But in the official usage, it is always yellow and black.[10] The e-book version of the 1974 constitution from Myanmar Law Information System shows the blue State seal from Wikipedia in place of the State seal.

State Seal of the Union of Myanmar
Armiger	Union of Myanmar
Adopted	1988
Relinquished	2011
Crest	A mullet Or
Blazon	Or, a map of Myanmar Or in a field Sable surrounded by a pinion Or which is also surrounded by paddy ears Or
Supporters	Two lion sejant Or
Motto	ပြည်ထောင်စု မြန်မာ နိုင်ငံတော် (• literally, "Union, Myanmar, State"; • officially, "Union of Myanmar")
Earlier version(s)	1974-1988

On 19 October 1988, the State Law and Order Restoration Council enacted a law which replaces the expression "Socialist Republic of the Union of Myanmar" with the expression "Union of Myanmar".[11] The State Seal was modified as the country name in State Seal Law had been replaced: the words ဆိုရှယ်လစ်သမ္မတ ("Socialist Republic") were removed.[5]

In 2008, the Constitution of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar for Burma was approved by a referendum. In this new constitution, changes have been made to the State Seal. The new State Seal uses the colours red and gold/yellow. Also, the pinion and paddy ears have been removed and replaced with Eugenia sprigs and the words on the ribbon have been changed to ပြည်ထောင်စု သမ္မတ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် which translates "Republic of the Union of Myanmar" .[12] The new Laws and Principles for State Seal were passed on 21 October 2010[13] (but were not enforced immediately) and the new State Seal was displayed on the television on that day's afternoon.[14] But the new state seal had not been adopted yet until 2011.[1] It was adopted on the day the 2008 Constitution came into force, on 31 January 2011.[2][15]

Peafowl symbolizes the race of the sun.[16]

The reason of the inclusion of 3 lions in the State Seal was given as follow:[6]^: 10

1. In the traditional view of ancient sages, the nature of lion gives the natures of bravery, diligence, extinguishing any size of danger with the same effort, purity and virtue. Such characteristics can make Myanmar honoured and they are the ones that Myanmar citizens should imitate.
2. Being surrounded by three lions means defending and protecting Myanmar. In the view of astrologist monks and persons, number three means "divisible by three" (end of all evil events).
3. Lion and Myanmar are regarded as compatible paring according to astrology.
4. Lion and traditional floral arabesques are inserted and decorated, so it is assumed as giving respect to an ancient traditional Myanmar culture appropriate for the modern Union of Myanmar.

သမဂ္ဂါနံ တပေါ သုခေါ (samaggānaṃ tapo sukho), which can be translated to "Happy is the practice of those in harmony," is from Verse 194 of the Buddhavagga in the Dhammapada.[7]

Ears of paddy are the symbol for cultivating class.[17]

Pinion (cogwheel) is the symbol for working class.[17]

Five-pointed star represents the revolution/resistance and the struggle for independence of Myanmar against colonialist and fascists.[18]

Eugenia sprig symbolizes victory.[19]

The map of Myanmar in the State Seal symbolizes the principal that the Sovereign power of the State is derived from the citizens and is in force in the entire country.[18]

Myanmar traditional floral arabesques are included to decorate the State seal as representation of ancient Myanmar traditions which are appropriate for modern Union of Myanmar.[6][5]

The then conventional long names of the State are included in the State Seals,

• The 1948 State Seal included the name "ပြည်ထောင်စု သမတ-မြန်မာ နိုင်ငံတော်။",[6]^: 9 which is the de facto long name sometimes appeared in some official documents, longer than the then official conventional long name "ပြည်ထောင်စုမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်".
  • For each words, "ပြည်ထောင်စု" means "union"; "သမတ" (old spelling of "သမ္မတ") means "president"; "မြန်မာ" means "Burma/Myanmar"; and "နိုင်ငံတော်" means "State".
  • When "သမတ/သမ္မတ" (president) and "နိုင်ငံတော်" (State) are put together, this combination means "republic".
• The 1974 State Seal included the then conventional long name "ပြည်ထောင်စု ဆိုရှယ်လစ်သမ္မတ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်".[8][9]
  • For each words, "ပြည်ထောင်စု" means "union"; "ဆိုရှယ်လစ်" means "socialist"; "သမ္မတ" means "president"; "မြန်မာ" means "Burma/Myanmar"; and "နိုင်ငံတော်" means "State".
  • When "သမ္မတ" (president) and "နိုင်ငံတော်" (State) are put together, this combination means "republic".
• The 1988 State Seal included the then conventional long name "ပြည်ထောင်စု မြန်မာ နိုင်ငံတော်".
  • For each words, "ပြည်ထောင်စု" means "union"; "မြန်မာ" means "Burma/Myanmar"; and "နိုင်ငံတော်" means "State".
• Current State Seal includes the current conventional long name "ပြည်ထောင်စု သမ္မတ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်".[2][18]
  • For each words, "ပြည်ထောင်စု" means "union"; "သမ္မတ" means "president"; "မြန်မာ" means "Burma/Myanmar"; and "နိုင်ငံတော်" means "State".
  • When "သမ္မတ" (president) and "နိုင်ငံတော်" (State) are put together, this combination means "republic".