Tai Manuscripts and Early Printed Books at the Library of Congress
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Abstract
This article provides a comprehensive survey of Tai manuscripts held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., USA. New items in the collection are highlighted. Some sense of the scope of the collection is also provided. The collection represents an important resource for researchers and the scholarly community. More importantly, it is a vital historical repository of the varied, but interrelated textual traditions and mental worlds of the Tai peoples.
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, see the special issue of the journal Manuscript Studies (Vol 2, Nr. 1, 2017). On the Buddhist manuscript tradition in general, see Stephen C. Berkwitz, Juliane Schober and Claudia Brown, eds., Buddhist Manuscript Cultures: Knowledge, Ritual, and Art (London: Routledge, 2009).
For an excellent guide to the Khǭm (and Tham) script, see Kannikā Wimonkasēm, Tamrā rīan ʻaksō̜n Thai bōrān: ʻaksō̜n Khō̜m Thai, ʻaksō̜n tham Lānnā, ʻaksō̜n tham ʻĪsān (Bangkok: Phāk Wichā Phāsā Tawanʻō̜k, Khana Bōrānnakhadī, Mahāwitthayālai Sinlapākō̜n, 2552 [2009]). This was an extremely valuable resource for this project.
Henry Ginsburg, Thai Manuscript Painting (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1989), p. 11.
Bonnie Brereton, Thai tellings of Phra Malai: texts and rituals concerning a popular Buddhist saint (Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University, 1995).
Naomi Appleton, Sarah Shaw and Toshiya Unebe, Illuminating the Life of the Buddha: An Illustrated Chanting Book from Eighteen-Century Siam (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2013), p. 7.
Henry Ginsburg, Thai Art and Culture: Historic Manuscripts from Western Collections (London: The British Library, 2000), p. 120.
Ginsburg, Thai Manuscript Painting, p. 22, p. 26.
Jana Igunma, “Aksoon Khoom: Khmer Heritage in Thai and Lao Manuscript Cultures” Tai Culture vol. 23, p. 4.
Nidhi Eoseewong, Pen and Sail: literature and history in early Bangkok including the history of Bangkok in the chronicles of Ayutthaya (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2005).
Ginsburg, Thai Art and Culture, p. 40.
Jo-Fan Huang, “A Technical Examination of 7 Thai Manuscripts in the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries” 2006. Available online: http://cool.conservation-us.org/anagpic/2006pdf/2006ANAGPIC_Huang.pdf (accessed 1 August 2019).
There have been some valuable studies of the Tai-China border area from Chinese sources. See for example C. Patterson Giersch, Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). There is also a fascinating study of an early Tai polity on the Sino-Viet border: James Anderson, The Rebel Den of Nung Tri Cao: Loyalty and Identity along the Sino-Vietnamese frontier (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007).
Volker Grabowsky, Keynote Address, Third International Conference on Lao Studies, Khon Kaen, Thailand, June 2010.
For one innovative study of the Chinese Tai borderlands, see Foon Ming Liew-Herres and Volker Grabowsky, Lan Na in Chinese Historiography: Sino-Tai Relations as Reflected in the Yuan and Ming Sources (13th to 17th Centuries) (Bangkok: Institute of Asian Studies, Chulalongkorn University, 2008).
For the case of a Tai principality caught between British and French colonialism, see Volker Grabowsky, “Introduction to the History of Muang Sing (Laos) prior to the French Rule: The fate of a Lu Principality, Bulletin de l’Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient, 86 (1999). See also Andrew Walker, “Borders in Motion on the Upper-Mekong: Siam and France in the 1890s” in Yves Goudinea and Michel Lorrillard (eds.), New Research on Laos (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2009).
Foon Ming Liew-Herres, Volker Grabowsky and Renoo Wichasin, Chronicle of Sipsong Panna: History and Society of a Tai Lu Kingdom, Twelfth to Twentieth Century (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2012).
Much of this work has been digitized and made available online. For Laos, see the Digital Library of Lao Manuscripts: www.laomanuscripts.net; for Northern Thailand, see the Digital Library of Northern Thai Manuscripts: www.lannamanuscripts.net. David Wharton and Harold Hundis have been at the forefront of these efforts for many years doing invaluable work to preserve many manuscripts that would otherwise be lost.
Bounleuth Sengsoulin, “Buddhist Monks and their Search for Knowledge: an examination of the personal collection of manuscripts of Phra Khamchan Virachitto (1920-2007), Abbot of Vat Saen Sukharam, Luang Prabang,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Hamburg, 2016). See also David Wharton, “Language, Orthography and Buddhist Manuscript Culture of the Tai Neua – an apocryphal jataka text in Mueang Sing, Laos” (Ph.D. diss., Universität Passau, 2017). For an excellent treatment of many aspects of Lao manuscript culture, see Bounleuth Sengsoulin, “The Manuscript Collection of Abbot Sathu Nyai Khamchan at the Monastery of Vat Saen Sukharama (Luang Prabang, Laos)” Manuscript Cultures no. 8, 2015.
On Chiang Mai, see Daniel Veidlinger, Spreading the Dhamma: Writing, Orality and Textual Transmission in Buddhist Northern Thailand (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2006). On the Mahāvaṃsa tradition, see the works of Stephen C. Berkwitz.
Michel Lorrillard, “Scripts and History: The Case of Laos” in Masao Kashinaga, ed., Written Cultures in Mainland Southeast Asia (Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 2009).
Justin McDaniel, “Notes on the Lao influence on Northern Thai Buddhist Literature,” in K. Nettavong, D. Kanlaya, D. Wharton, and K. Yangnouvong, eds., The Literary Heritage of Laos: Preservation, Dissemination and Research Perspectives (Vientiane: National Library of Laos, 2005).
David Wyatt, Reading Thai Murals (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2003), p. 12, p. 20.
Akiko Iijima, “A Historical Approach to the Palm-Leaf Manuscripts Preserved in Wat Mahathat, Yasothon (Thailand),” in K. Nettavong, D. Kanlaya, D. Wharton, and K. Yangnouvong, eds., The Literary Heritage of Laos: Preservation, Dissemination and Research Perspectives (Vientiane: National Library of Laos, 2005).
J.C. Eade, The Calendrical Systems of Mainland South-East Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1995).
Cf. Herbert R. Swanson, “Prelude to Irony: The Princeton Theology and the Practice of American Presbyterian Missions in Northern Siam, 1867-1880” (Ph.D. thesis, Melbourne College of Divinity, Melbourne University, 2003). This source can be accessed online at: https://www.herbswanson.com.
Another sign of this is the use of Western names for well-known places like Bangkok. That a subject of the Kingdom of Siam would refer to Bangkok this way would be highly unusual. “Bangkok” is commonly known in Thai as กรุงเทพ.
Collins was still there as late as 1903. See for example Presbyterian Church, The Sixty-Sixth Annual Report of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (New York: Presbyterian Church, 1903), p. 293, p. 298.
There are signs the author did not understand basic expressions of the Northern Thai (and Lao and Siamese) language: use of the verb “to come/มา” where it should be “to go/ไป” in a mistaken attempt to follow English usage of the words rather than Tai usage; lack of numerical classifiers; and misspelling of common words (e.g. ไป is written as ไพ which itself may be an error that arose in the process of transcription).
The date of the work on the title page is also written using a neologism likely invented by the missionaries, but which never had any currency in Tai languages.
Herbert R. Swanson, “This Heathen People: The Cognitive Sources of American Missionary Westernizing Activities in Northern Siam, 1867-1889” (M.A. thesis, University of Maryland, 1987), chapter one. This source can be accessed online at: herbswanson.com.
Sai Kam Mong, The History and Development of The Shan Scripts (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2004).
Peter Koret, “Books of Search: The Invention of Traditional Lao Literature as a Subject of Study” in Grant Evans (ed.), Laos: Culture and Society (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1999).
According to the current owner, Surapan Puangpakdee, Lūk Sǭ Thammaphakdī opened in 2472 [1929] and started printing palm leaf manuscripts in 2480 [1937]. Postcards followed in 2496 [1953]. This information was provided by Nhischanun Nunthadsirisorn who personally spoke with the current owner.