[Tlc] New Publication

[justinm at ucr.edu]

Here is another great new book from a TLC member.
Thanks,
justin

Spreading the Dhamma: Writing, Orality, and Textual
Transmission in Buddhist Northern Thailand

by Daniel M. Veidlinger

Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory (University of
Hawaii Press)

"There is really nothing like this book. It addresses issues
of current interest in Buddhist and cultural studies such as
textual community, literary and material culture, and the
relationship between oral and written texts. It also brings to
scholarly and public attention a period and area of the world
that has been understudied and is deserving of more
attention." —Donald K. Swearer, Harvard Divinity School,
Harvard University

"Spreading the Dhamma is an ambitious and stimulating
contribution to the study of Buddhist textual practices in
southern Asia. It should provoke further comparative research
on the history of writing technologies and attitudes towards
writing within the Pali-using Buddhist world." —Anne M.
Blackburn, Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University

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.

Daniel M. Veidlinger is assistant professor in the Department
of Religious Studies at California State University, Chico. 

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
2617 Humanities Building
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu