The foot string passes through a metal ring behind the thigh.

– Yangon puppet has no such control strings. A string for knee directly arises from the knee.

– These are all the common strings in both places. Other strings meant for special purposes will not be the same.

– A special string to pin down the arms to the side of the chest is found in Mandalay puppets but not in Yangon puppet.

– A wooden/iron bar is fitted between lower thighs in Mandalay puppets. The bar is hidden under the skirt. This is to control the knee spread in dancing.

– No such bar in Yangon puppets.

– In Mandalay princess puppet, knee joints do not need a ‘patella’ as in a natural joint. But its abnormal ‘bending’ with knee pointing ‘backward’ is prevented by a special string mechanism behind the thighs.

– A ‘patella’ piece is fitted in front of the knee joint to prevent abnormal bending of knee. This is found in Yangon puppets.

– The princess puppet from Yangon can raise her knee and walk like natural. But the Princess puppet from Mandalay could not do like this. Instead it walks in a gentle way kicking her skirt back with each movement.

– So the Mandalay Princess can dance kicking back her skirt back, a beautiful stance or movement not found in Yangon counterpart.

– Zaw Gyi, Page-boy and Monkey have a narrower (waist) joints than those in Prince and Princess.

– In Yangon puppets, the waist joint is wider at the back than at the front as the strings used in joining are attached longer. So the joining strings at the back are longer than the front.

– “Zaw Gyi” (alchemist puppet) of Mandalay has a walking stick (rod or magic wand) dangling from its right hand, by means of a small metal ring (Aye-gwin). The rod is usually a ‘cane’ painted red. The left hand is provided with a string loop for admitting the tip of the cane rod. When the tip of the rod is to be freed, the right hand string is pulled up.

– This arrangement is not found in Yangon puppet, where the magic wand is covered with red velvet. This velvet hinders or made difficult to release the string loop.

– So when the Zaw Gyi from Yangon made a somersault, both hands are raised above the head.

– When Mandalay Zaw Gyi made it, the free wand dangling from the right hand is flung and thrown on to the right shoulder. A good balance and a lot of practice are necessary to accomplish this successfully.

– Horse Puppet. ( Mandalay horse is made up of only wood and all joints are made as usual.)

– Yangon horse puppet is provided with one special joint- (neck where a cane ring is fitted in

– between the two wood pieces. This facilitates the joint movement. Moreover outside of the joint is covered with a strip of cloth. Thus Yangon Horse puppet has a graceful movement of the neck better than Mandalay Horse.

– Three separate pieces made a leg in Yangon horse puppet. But Mandalay horse puppet has either 3 or 4 joints in its legs.

– Prince Puppet In Mandalay, a string is attached to the heel by passing through an “Aye Gwin” (small iron ring implanted into the heel). A long loop is attached and connected with its counterpart on another heel, making it a manipulating string loop like the other three, called “Thone-Bin Gyo”.

– This string on each side coming up from the heel goes up back of the thigh where the string passes through another Aye Gwin or a large safety pin attaches to the buttock.

– But in Yangoon puppet, no such arrangement exists but a string loop is employed instead.

– Heads of puppets like Rama, Orgre, Monkey, Minister, Garuda, Naga, Hermit, Deva etc. are all decorated with gold and glass mosaic in Mandalay. Mostly these are all painted in Yangon, with variation in each puppet troupe. Even velvet shoes decorated with sequins are worn sometimes.

Regarding the feet of the puppets, some are gilded, some with glass mosaic, some are painted, a wide variation existed in all Yangon and Mandalay.

– As for the head, natural human hairs are implanted into the head. But now artificial hairs or black threads are used instead. Even hair knots are now carved on top of head.

– Hair knots or hair-do is different to make and in these heads where natural hairs are used for hair-do, untidiness is a rule as redresing is difficult. Artificial hairs or black strings are easy to dress-up. Cotton threads are now found mostly used for hairs in Mandalay puppets.

– In Princes and Princess and other characters, sequins and embroidery are used for headbands, headdress, collar, shoulder cover, wrist-cover, pants, robes etc. Mandalay sequin-works are found more elaborate.

– Regarding necklaces, some used beads and some prefer to plastic garlands. More beads and longer necklaces are found being used in Mandalay puppets. 3 or more necklaces are used to decorate a puppet. Beads are hung down reaching lower than the level of hands.

– Yangon puppets are found decorated with less number of necklaces, and found shorter than the level of hands.

– Hooking up the beads with tip of hands. Mandalay puppets are purposely made with softer shoulder joint in order that the arms are easily used to facilitate hands in picking up the beads. Hands of Mandalay puppets can pick up beads using one or both hands. In order to do this successfully, vigorous exercise is made repeatedly by clapping both hands and bringing tip of both hands in the middle. Here the body is made steady; the swinging of the body is not necessary; the hands should be able to pick up the beads without the aid of the swinging body. To accomplish all these with ease, the shoulder joint is specially prepared “soft” and the number of beads many and longer.

– In contrast to this, Yangon puppets are found swinging the body in an effort to pick up the beads. Another point is that they never pick up beads with two hands.