PHRA MALAI KLON SUAT OF NAKHON SI THAMMARAT: A CONTENT COMPARISON

Abstract

     Phra Malai is a Buddhist text that tells about sin, merit, hell, paradise, and the world during the time of Phra Sri Ariya Maitreya. the future Buddha. The literature is renowned throughout Thailand. as numerous manuscripts are found all over the region. This research aims to investigate the characteristic and background of the three Phra Malai manuscripts found in different temples in Nakorn Si Thammarat province : namely, Wat Tha Pho temple, Wat Yai Chai Mongkhon temple, and Wat Suan Pan temple, and to compare the content of these three manuscripts to the printed version by the Fine Arts Department, Ministry of Culture. The study finds that all these three manuscripts are the white Siamese folded books called Samut Khoi or Bud, written in black ink in Pali and Thai language using Khom script and adorn with several illustrations. About the structure of the manuscripts, the Abhidhamma Chet Khamphi (the brief version of Abhidhamma), the Suat Chaeng prayer (the selected texts from the Vinaya, the Suttanta, and the Abhidhamma of the Tipiṭaka), or the Sahassanai prayer is placed before the Phra Malai text in each manuscript. The texts from all manuscripts studied are to be considered as the same version, namely Phra Malai Klon Suat, the version of Phra Malai in mix-metered verses in Thai language, with only insignificant differences in spelling found between each manuscript. While the content in each manuscript, despite being the same version of text, is different in quantity, but it can be cut or changed to fit the book's dimensions and page count so that all of the text fits on the designated page.