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Spreading the Dhamma: Writing, Orality, and Textual Transmission in Buddhist Northern Thailand
How did early Buddhists actually encounter the seminal texts of their religion? What were the attitudes held by monks and laypeople toward the written and oral Pali traditions? In this pioneering work, Daniel Veidlinger explores these questions in the context of the northern Thai kingdom of Lan Na. Drawing on a vast array of sources, including indigenous chronicles, reports by foreign visitors, inscriptions, and palm-leaf manuscripts, he traces the role of written Buddhist texts in the predominantly oral milieu of northern Thailand from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Veidlinger examines how the written word was assimilated into existing Buddhist and monastic practice in the region, considering the use of manuscripts for textual study and recitation as well as the place of writing in the cultic and ritual life of the faithful. He shows how manuscripts fit into the economy, describes how they were made and stored, and highlights the understudied issue of the "cult of the book" in Theravâda Buddhism. Looking at the wider Theravâda world, Veidlinger argues that manuscripts in Burma and Sri Lanka played a more central role in the preservation and dissemination of Buddhist texts. By offering a detailed examination of the motivations driving those who sponsored manuscript production, this study draws attention to the vital role played by forest-dwelling monastic orders introduced from Sri Lanka in the development of Lan Na’s written Pali heritage. It also considers the rivalry between those monks who wished to preserve the older oral tradition and monks, rulers, and laypeople who supported the expansion of the new medium of writing.
- GenresBuddhism
Hardcover
First published September 1, 2006
3 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 5, 2024
Combines a strong traditional academic grounding in Southeast Asia studies with a media studies, especially book history perspective to result in not only a proper academic treatise about Northern Thailand, but a fresh reading on Thai studies and Southeast Asian studies too.
Academically rigorous with detailed references to primary sources. Yet full of random human moments like how a scribe in 19th century Northern Thailand complains that he really does not like writing.
That to commission by scribes a copy of the Buddhist equivalent of the Bible, would cost just the outer panels of a Buddhist religious building. Yet a king commissioning a copy like that was so rare that when one did he was praised highly in the historical records.
Or that the longer the text, the less magical powers it's believed to have. So that ironically the complete Pali Canon might have been the weakest magical artifact for some circles.
It links nicely with Blair's Too Much to Know. That a lot of how the West love writing and reading so much is because they are aware of the collapse of a globe spanning empire like the Roman Empire. That their beloved religious leader was executed as a cultist while still young. When whom you miss is as dead as a door nail, and his friends mostly died young too as basically cultists in a calculating Empire, and much more of this wisdom of the ancients, lost, all they could rely on is the written word.
Deep jungles, mountains, monsoon rain, etc. of Southeast Asia did not present such conditions. China seemingly never collapses for real. India seems to not care about time. The difficult terrain of Southeast Asia not presenting much opportunity for grand wars and grand empires.
The Buddha died of food poisoning when he was old. He said all he wanted to say. His followers all had ample time to get to know him and remember him. And there probably was a lot of them. The whole thing pretty much did not need written records. Word of mouth was enough. Also, back then writing was an untested technology kind of like AI today. Many wanted to see the bugs fixed first before adoption.
Writing existed, but it was more like a backup put in a safe than something you read regularly. There were groups who liked writing and reading but they were a small group.
That is until Southeast Asia finally found ways to have decisive wars despite the difficult conditions. The Shan sacked Awa. The Burmese fought back and made sure they never have their own polity until today with the civil war. The Burmese sacked Ayutthaya and Lan Na. The Tai speakers united and sacked the Burmese capital. And so on.
Like the West, after such post apocalyptic conditions, plus the threat of colonization by industrialized West, the Tai speakers took writing seriously, and the rest was history.
The book deals well with the basic philosophical question of media studies: media maketh man or man maketh media?
Challenging the claim that humidity and no paper doomed southeast Asia to barbaric literacy, a close examination of the surviving primary evidence lead to the argument that, well, the Palm leaf manuscripts are well, from Southeast Asia, made for Southeast Asian conditions, and they worked as designed, and even the oldest surviving one is in great condition even in not so careful safekeeping, then maybe there weren't many books surviving because they weren't written in the first place?
It's common sense in media studies now that it's not climbing the stairs. Oral then writing, then printing, each step higher than the last. Rather they coexist.
But Veidlinger's command of the primary sources show how such coexistence looked like in practice in Northern Thailand.
Veidlinger encapsulated it well in a memorable anecdote, to bless the new planted rice, two monks recite two different stories of the Buddha's previous lives. At the same time. So that no one can understand what they are saying. So that it becomes magical. And this is accomplished thanks to the written records. If they both recited from memory they would confuse each other. They were both reading from texts out loud so they have the text in front of them to keep them focused and keep track of their progress. Yes, it's an oral culture. No they are not barbarians, they had writing.
All humans are humans.
As William Gibson wrote, the street finds its own use for things.
Academically rigorous with detailed references to primary sources. Yet full of random human moments like how a scribe in 19th century Northern Thailand complains that he really does not like writing.
That to commission by scribes a copy of the Buddhist equivalent of the Bible, would cost just the outer panels of a Buddhist religious building. Yet a king commissioning a copy like that was so rare that when one did he was praised highly in the historical records.
Or that the longer the text, the less magical powers it's believed to have. So that ironically the complete Pali Canon might have been the weakest magical artifact for some circles.
It links nicely with Blair's Too Much to Know. That a lot of how the West love writing and reading so much is because they are aware of the collapse of a globe spanning empire like the Roman Empire. That their beloved religious leader was executed as a cultist while still young. When whom you miss is as dead as a door nail, and his friends mostly died young too as basically cultists in a calculating Empire, and much more of this wisdom of the ancients, lost, all they could rely on is the written word.
Deep jungles, mountains, monsoon rain, etc. of Southeast Asia did not present such conditions. China seemingly never collapses for real. India seems to not care about time. The difficult terrain of Southeast Asia not presenting much opportunity for grand wars and grand empires.
The Buddha died of food poisoning when he was old. He said all he wanted to say. His followers all had ample time to get to know him and remember him. And there probably was a lot of them. The whole thing pretty much did not need written records. Word of mouth was enough. Also, back then writing was an untested technology kind of like AI today. Many wanted to see the bugs fixed first before adoption.
Writing existed, but it was more like a backup put in a safe than something you read regularly. There were groups who liked writing and reading but they were a small group.
That is until Southeast Asia finally found ways to have decisive wars despite the difficult conditions. The Shan sacked Awa. The Burmese fought back and made sure they never have their own polity until today with the civil war. The Burmese sacked Ayutthaya and Lan Na. The Tai speakers united and sacked the Burmese capital. And so on.
Like the West, after such post apocalyptic conditions, plus the threat of colonization by industrialized West, the Tai speakers took writing seriously, and the rest was history.
The book deals well with the basic philosophical question of media studies: media maketh man or man maketh media?
Challenging the claim that humidity and no paper doomed southeast Asia to barbaric literacy, a close examination of the surviving primary evidence lead to the argument that, well, the Palm leaf manuscripts are well, from Southeast Asia, made for Southeast Asian conditions, and they worked as designed, and even the oldest surviving one is in great condition even in not so careful safekeeping, then maybe there weren't many books surviving because they weren't written in the first place?
It's common sense in media studies now that it's not climbing the stairs. Oral then writing, then printing, each step higher than the last. Rather they coexist.
But Veidlinger's command of the primary sources show how such coexistence looked like in practice in Northern Thailand.
Veidlinger encapsulated it well in a memorable anecdote, to bless the new planted rice, two monks recite two different stories of the Buddha's previous lives. At the same time. So that no one can understand what they are saying. So that it becomes magical. And this is accomplished thanks to the written records. If they both recited from memory they would confuse each other. They were both reading from texts out loud so they have the text in front of them to keep them focused and keep track of their progress. Yes, it's an oral culture. No they are not barbarians, they had writing.
All humans are humans.
As William Gibson wrote, the street finds its own use for things.
Displaying 1 of 1 review