Cosmologies and Biographies

This is an important and ground-breaking study of rare Siamese manuscripts of two kinds, biological and cosmological. Beautiful in themselves, they are produced under unusual conditions and no one of these manuscripts is like another, though they draw on a common pool of rituals, actions and stories. This fascinating publication closely examines and contextualizes a collection of 30 of the most striking and visually unique manuscripts of this kind known, in or outside Thailand.   These manuscripts are religious in nature, containing several genres of Buddhist texts including liturgical, narrative, historical, grammatical, psychological, ritual, and magical material, but, compared to other Thai and other Southeast Asian examples they are particularly strong in the realms of medical, biological and cosmological Thai thought. A recurrent feature is the story of Phra Malai, a monk whose travels to various heavens and hells are described and illustrated. Several rare medical manuscripts serve to reveal how mythology, biology, astrology, physiognomy and pharmacology are blended in the pre-modern Siamese/Thai tradition.   These and other such illuminated manuscripts were produced in 18th- and 19th-century Siam (as Thailand was then known) and are richly illustrated both with delightful and evocative depictions of the Buddha, Hindu deities, Bodhisattvas, nuns, monks, and laypeople, and with some grotesque and terrifying ones – they attest to a particular interest in corpses and their implications among some of their readers.   The author, who has both lived the Buddhist life in Thailand and researched in Thai monasteries, has extensive knowledge not only of the history but of the dynamic of Thai religion, studying not just older texts but continuing rituals and contemporary media. He was inspired to write this book by the very great value he saw in these particular manuscripts, a most unusual collection amassed with a discriminating eye.   The book consists both of an explanation and a detailed catalogue of this collection of exemplary manuscripts and of a fascinating introductory essay discussing the belief systems and activities they represent. Published by Paul Holberton Publishing