No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Beyond words: Going off script in Theravada Southeast Asia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2022
Extract
Accounts of Buddhism in Thailand, Burma and Cambodia offer detailed descriptions of ‘the power attributed to inscribed amulets, tattoos, and related forms of writing’ (p. 8). But earlier scholarship on Southeast Asia ‘often looked down on non-literary uses of script’, treating it as either a ‘non-Buddhist “cultural” accretion or the ignoble trappings of popular superstition’ (p. 8). Such judgements were based on an idealised conception of Buddhism that focused on canonical scripture, and congealed under colonial rule. Where Richard Fox finds a fruitful ‘indeterminacy’ in the aksara of Bali, colonial scholarship tended towards overdetermination, creating a rigid hierarchy of Buddhist scriptural forms. Pali, the language in which generations of monks had chanted, thought and wrote, was deemed ‘less than’ Sanskrit, but ‘more than’ the plethora of indigenous languages of the region.
- Type
- Short Essay
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The National University of Singapore, 2022
Footnotes
The author would like to thank Verena Meyer and Thiti Jamkajornkeiat.
References
1 Hallisey, Charles, ‘Roads taken and not taken in the study of Theravada Buddhism’, in Curators of the Buddha: The study of Buddhism under colonialism, ed. Lopez, Donald S. Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 31–61Google Scholar.
2 Veidlinger, Daniel, Spreading the Dhamma: Writing, orality and textual transmission in Buddhist Northern Thailand (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), pp. 24–5, 27Google Scholar, 50–51, 79.
3 McDaniel, Justin, The lovelorn ghost and the magical monk: Practicing Buddhism in modern Thailand (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Ibid., p. 21.
5 Fox, Richard, More than words: Transforming script, agency, and collective life in Bali (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018), p. 60Google Scholar.
6 Emiko Stock, ‘Croyances: Kirirom reveillé par la magie des yoans’, Cambodge Soir, 23–25 Jan. 2004, p. 12.
7 Srun, Khun, ‘I hate the word and the letter ត [Ta]’, trans. from Khmer to French by Christophe Maquet, and from French to English by Daniela Hurezanu and Stephen Kessler, in In the shadow of Angkor: Contemporary writing from Cambodia, ed. Stewart, Frank and May, Sharon (Honolulu: Hawai‘i University Press, 2002), pp. 90–91Google Scholar.
8 Fox, More than words, p. 10.
9 Ibid., p. 155.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., p. 157.
12 Chittiphalangsri, Phrae, ‘From plagiarism to incense sticks: The making of self and other in Thai translation history’, in A world atlas of translation, ed. Gamvier, Yves and Stecconi, Ubaldo (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2019), pp. 108Google Scholar.
13 Elkin, Lauren, ‘Foreword’, in Gansel, Mireille, Translation as transhumance, trans. Schwartz, Ros (New York: Feminist Press at City University of New York, 2017), pp. xiiGoogle Scholar.
14 de Bernon, Olivier, Yantra et Mantra (Phnom Penh: Centre Culturel et de Coopération Linguistique, 1998)Google Scholar.
15 Edwards, Penny, ‘Subscripts: Reading Cambodian pasts, presents and futures through graffiti’, in Expressions of Cambodia: The politics of tradition, modernity and change, ed. Ollier, Leakthina Chau-Pech and Winter, Tim (London: Routledge Curzon, 2006), pp. 223–36Google Scholar.