{
 "schema": 1,
 "id": "shway-yoe",
 "type": "person",
 "names": {
  "name": "Shway Yoe",
  "aliases": [
   "Sir James George Scott"
  ],
  "said": "A colonial officer writing under a Burmese pen name"
 },
 "region": [
  "mainland-southeast-asia"
 ],
 "facets": {
  "role": "recorder"
 },
 "when": {
  "from": 1851,
  "to": 1935,
  "label": "The Burman: His Life and Notions, 1882"
 },
 "text": {
  "what": "The Scottish administrator who wrote the fullest English description of Burmese tattooing, under a Burmese pen name, in 1882.",
  "story": "James George Scott went to Burma as a journalist, stayed as an administrator, and published *The Burman: His Life and Notions* as \"Shway Yoe\" — a Burmese name, on a book about Burmese life, by a man who then spent decades extending British rule over the Shan States and compiling the *Gazetteer of Upper Burma* that this site also quotes.\n\nThe chapter on tattooing is the best single source on the *htoe kwin* in English. It is also written by the administration. Both of those are true at once, and this site cites the detail while naming the hand.\n\n*Inference —* the pen name is the thing to keep in view. A book that speaks as a Burman, written by the officer annexing the Shan States, is the whole problem of the colonial record in one byline."
 },
 "text_th": {
  "what": "ข้าราชการชาวสก็อตผู้เขียนคำบรรยายการสักของพม่าที่ละเอียดที่สุดในภาษาอังกฤษ ภายใต้นามปากกาพม่า เมื่อปี 1882"
 },
 "kin": [
  {
   "to": "htoe-kwin",
   "as": "What he described.",
   "rel": "tradition"
  },
  {
   "to": "who-wrote-it-down",
   "as": "And the problem with it.",
   "rel": "issue"
  }
 ],
 "sources": [
  "s:shway-yoe",
  "s:gazetteer-1"
 ],
 "provenance": {
  "default": {
   "tier": "cited",
   "source": "s:shway-yoe"
  },
  "fields": {
   "text_th": {
    "tier": "inference",
    "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated"
   }
  }
 },
 "confidence": "high",
 "tags": [
  "colonial-record",
  "start-here"
 ],
 "updated": "2026-09-19",
 "kin_in": [
  {
   "from": "htoe-kwin",
   "type": "tradition",
   "name": "Htoe kwin",
   "as": "Who wrote it down, and what that costs the record."
  },
  {
   "from": "mandalay",
   "type": "place",
   "name": "Mandalay",
   "as": "The observer."
  },
  {
   "from": "who-wrote-it-down",
   "type": "issue",
   "name": "Who wrote it down",
   "as": "The clearest case."
  }
 ]
}