[Tlc] Justin's legacy at UCR

[Charles Keyes]

I think Justin may be too modest to post the article about the  
collection of Thai materials he made for UCR which appeared in the LA  
Times  last week (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-riverside-library12-2009jun12,0,6879247,print.story 
). But I know the TLC community will want to congratulate him on  
leaving such a significant legacy at UCR.

Biff
Charles Keyes

UC Riverside wants its Thai trove on the shelves
A Buddhist monk-turned-academic bought 12,800 rare books from a friend  
in Bangkok, doubling the school's Southeast Asian collection. A year  
later, getting them into the library remains a challenge.
By David Kelly

June 12, 2009

Justin McDaniel has spent decades prowling the remote corners of  
Southeast Asia in search of literary treasure.

He has scoured Cambodia, roamed the national library of Laos, picked  
over Burmese books in Myanmar and nosed about rural monasteries in  
Thailand.

Rare volumes of ancient wisdom and obscure religious texts have long  
been his quarry. He has hauled them back in jammed suitcases to UC  
Riverside's growing Southeast Asian library.

Yet nothing prepared the Buddhist monk-turned-academic for the mother  
lode he struck when a fellow bibliophile in Bangkok agreed to sell the  
university more than 12,000 rare books.

It's a virtual archive of Thai culture, taking in the full sweep of  
the nation's history, religious lore, art and anthropology. There's  
even a book on Abraham Lincoln, written in Thai.

"Every time I come down here, I can't believe we own this stuff," said  
McDaniel, a professor of religious studies, as he thumbed through a  
tattered 100-year-old volume of Buddhist children stories. "This is  
priceless."

The books have doubled the size of the college's Southeast Asian  
library on a campus that is now 40% Asian.

But actually getting them into the library isn't easy.

A year and a half after it arrived, the collection languishes in the  
locked basement of the Science Library, the victim of spending cuts  
and language problems.

The university has muddled along with three Thai-speaking volunteers  
and a part-time cataloger -- but so far they have sorted only about  
100 books. An employee who devised a Thai-language keyboard to  
organize the collection was reassigned because of budget constraints.

"We have people experienced in cataloging and some people who know  
Thai, but they are not the same people," said Manuel Urrizola, head of  
UCR's cataloging department. "Languages are always a challenge, but  
even when you don't have expertise, there are usually small numbers of  
books to deal with. Here you have one of the biggest collections in  
the U.S., but it came at the same time as the budget crisis."

Faculty members hope the collection will help attract students and  
international scholars to the university's growing Vietnamese,  
Laotian, Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian and Philippine study programs.

"The books are huge. We may not have the largest collection of  
Buddhist literature in the country, but we compete with the largest  
collections," said professor René Lysloff, interim director of UCR's  
Southeast Asian Studies Program. "We expect to be the first campus in  
Southern California to have an area study resource center in Southeast  
Asian studies."

Getting the books into the library would be a step in the right  
direction. McDaniel thinks that could take as long as two to three  
years -- not that it has dimmed his enthusiasm.

"Here are pictures of early Thai wildlife," he said excitedly, moving  
swiftly among the dimly lighted stacks and pulling books at random.  
"This is folk poetry. Usually these kinds of books are not translated;  
they are not deemed important enough. Here you are getting a glimpse  
of day-to-day life. You are seeing day-to-day art, not giant statues  
of the Buddha."

Given his background, it's not surprising the collection fell into his  
hands. It might even be karma.

Born in a Philadelphia row house, McDaniel, 37, was raised a strict  
Irish Catholic. His mother believed he was destined for the  
priesthood, but his heart tugged him east. After college, he headed  
for Thailand to teach English and AIDS education at an all-girls high  
school.

"I spent a lot of time in the temple in town," he said. "I wanted to  
be a monk in a rural place. I realized the only way I would know Thai  
Buddhism was if I submerged myself in it."

So he did, throwing himself into the ascetic life of the monastery. It  
was an exacting existence with strict mental and physical rules, such  
as sleeping with one's head four inches off the floor and celebrating  
the success of one's enemies. He meditated on a decomposing human  
corpse to sever his attachment to the physical body.

"That got the message across," he said.

When McDaniel finished his training, the head monk gave him a stack of  
palm leaves with Buddhist chants etched on them, some meant to ward  
off forest ghosts. The leaves sit in his cramped office, still  
smelling of incense.

McDaniel, who speaks Thai and has a doctorate in Sanskrit, returned to  
the United States and became a professor at UC Riverside. In 2006, he  
received a grant to buy $150,000 worth of books in Southeast Asian  
languages.

He thought immediately of a friend in Bangkok whose house contained  
one of the largest book collections he had ever seen.

"It was a nondescript building, but every single surface was covered  
in books," he said. "He had shelves in the middle of his living room."

His name was Thongchai Likhitpornsawan, which means 'literature from  
heaven' in Thai, McDaniel said.

The professor asked to buy his entire collection, but the 12,800 books  
Likhitpornsawan agreed to sell were just a fraction of it.

"He was pricing books at five cents, a dollar, five dollars," McDaniel  
said. "This was extremely rare stuff."

McDaniel spent $68,000 and the books arrived in late 2007, carefully  
boxed in Thai beer crates.

Tach Sirichai of Murrieta is one of the Thai volunteers helping to  
sort them.

"We are doing triage, finding copies likely to be the most useful,  
like art, religion and history, and cataloging them first," he said,  
standing among more than two dozen shelves of books. "I'm finding a  
lot of books from my past here."

Snagging the collection was McDaniel's legacy to UCR. He has accepted  
a teaching position at the University of Pennsylvania and is leaving  
this month.

"Now that we have the books and some people cataloging, I feel good  
about leaving," he said. "And I'm sure I will be seeing these books  
again someday."






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