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Thai and Lao manuscript cultures revisited: Insights from newly discovered monastic collection in Luang Prabang
Prof. Dr. Volker Grabowsky, Asien-Afrika-Institut, Universität Hamburg ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. )
The Tai peoples form an ethno-linguistic group whose settlement area extends from the Malay Peninsula to southern China, and from northern Vietnam to as far as Assam in India. From their original areas in southeastern China, the Tai expanded between the seventh and thirteenth centuries to their present settlements in various waves of migration, displacing the indigenous Austro-asiatic populations (Mon, Khmer etc.) or assimilating with them. Through close contact with the older cultures of the Mon and Khmer, the Tai developed their own writing system, as did the Thai (Siamese) and the Lao, Tai Yuan (northern Thai) and Shan. Like of most of its Southeast Asian neighbors, it is based on a South Indian form of the Brahmi script called Pallava. Although its authenticity is disputed, the oldest evidence of the Tai script is on a stone inscription from Sukhothai dating to 1292. While the earliest evidence of Tai epigraphy date to the fourteenth century, the oldest surviving Thai palm leaf manuscripts date to the second half of the fifteenth century.
Two different scripts are found in the Siamese (Thai) manuscript culture, which for the most part covered the territory of the Ayutthaya Kingdom (1351–1767). Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the Cambodian Mul script was used for works written in Pali. It was also frequently used for religious texts in the vernacular (i.e. Thai). On the other hand, manuscripts with secular contents were only written in the Thai script. The Siamese manuscript culture thus differs from the manuscript cultures of the Burmese, Mon and Khmer, where Pali texts were always written in the respective script of the country.
Using two scripts also characterizes the manuscript culture of the Tai peoples living in the large valleys of the Southeast Asian highland. The various “secular” scripts of the Tai Yuan, Lao, Tai Khuen, Tai Shan Lu were contrasted with a “religious” script, known as the Dhamma script (tua aksòn tham). This script probably originated in the fourteenth century as an offshoot of the Mon script of Hariphunchai. In the course of the political and cultural expansion of the Lan Na Kingdom (North Thailand), which in the second half of the fifteenth century was the centre of Theravada Buddhist learning, it spread to the Shan areas, to Sipsòng Panna (Yunnan), and finally to Lan Sang (Laos, northeast Thailand).
Based on a decade-long research of manuscript holdings in various monastic repositeries in the old Lao capital of Luang Prabang, which has been the most important centre of Lao Buddhism for centuries and World Cultural Heritage since 1996, this keynote address seeks to re-evaluate our knowledge on the manuscript cultures of the Thai and Lao. Point of departure was the striking in 2010 of a collection of almost 300 ancient palm-leaf manuscripts and more than 80 leporello manuscripts, made of mulberry (sa) paper, in the kuti of Phra Khamchan Virachitto (1920–2007) who was an outstanding monk of Laos in the second half of the twentieth century. Phra Khamchan’s personal collection of manuscripts was left undocumented by the Lao National Library’s “Preservation of Lao Manuscripts Programme” in the 1990s, as it did not form part of the monastery’s library (hò tham), but remained restricted to the exclusive use of the late abbot himself
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Using the data-driven learning approach to facilitate the research writing of postgraduate students
Abstract
John Flowerdew
Universities around the world now face the growing challenges of remaining competitive in the international research arena. As a result, many doctoral (and even some Masters) students worldwide are now under pressure to publish internationally (e.g. Li, 2002). As users of English as an additional language, novice researchers often face linguistic difficulties or other disadvantages in getting their research published (Belcher, 2007; Curry, & Lillis, 2004; Flowerdew, 1999, 2000, 2001). However, support for research writing is still very often inadequate (Li & Flowerdew, 2009; Kwan, 2010). In this talk, I will focus on using a corpus-based approach to facilitate the research writing of post-graduate students.
I will begin by briefly introducing the concept of corpus-based approaches to writing (referred to as data-driven learning (DDL) (Johns, 1994)), which is an approach in which students use data-bases of language and search software (referred to as concordancers) to identify the most typical ways that expert writers write and then incorporate these findings into their own writing. I will provide an example task to show how this works. I will then review some of the literature on DDL, and highlight some of the key findings, with particular reference to DDL for research writing. I will then describe a project I have been leading during which half-day workshops have been delivered to over 500 PhD students from a great variety of disciplines across six Hong Kong government funded universities in order to help them improve research writing by using corpora. Hands-on activities and discussion in these workshops were designed to show the participants how they could solve lexical, grammatical, and discourse level problems with their writing using online free corpora such as the British National Corpus and off-line software (AntConc) with the discipline-specific corpora built by one of the project team members. I will show how students were guided step-by-step to start creating a corpus of their own using high-quality research articles in their own research domains. I will conclude by arguing that intensive introductory workshops can be an effective way of teaching post-graduate students to learn to write for publication purposes independently using the data-driven learning approach.
6th International Joint Summer School (2014)
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6th International Joint Summer School (2014)
Language, Media, and Development in East and South-East Asia
Bangkok, Thailand, August 16-27, 2014
Hosted by:
Graduate School of Language and Communication, National Institute of Development Administration, Thailand
Sponsored by:
National Center for Radio and Television Studies, Communication University of China, China
School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Introduction
Launched in 2009, the International Joint Summer School (IJSS), developed as an international non-commercial annual event, aims to provide both alternative perspectives towards communication and media studies and a platform for young scholars and students from around the world to exchange ideas and experiences. After 4 years (2009-2012) of being hosted by Communication University of China in Beijing, and in 2013 by Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, we are pleased to announce that the National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA) in Bangkok, Thailand will host this year’s IJSS in conjunction with its 6th Annual International Conference on Language and Communication (ICLC 2014).
Theme: Language, Media, and Development in East and South-East Asia
As the power structures of the world continue to realign in the early twenty-first century, attention is increasingly being drawn to the development of countries in the East and South-East Asian regions. What this development is and will lead to, of course, is a highly contested area, with the previous teleological and unidirectional models largely being rejected in favour of more culturally-relevant explanations. This is due to not only the actual development paths taken by nations such as the People’s Republic of China, but also the diverse international and regional influences that now structure the development of nations such as Myanmar. The legacies of both colonialism and communism also further complicate the picture, as the rhetorical and political-economic strategies that countries can draw on no longer comes from a unipolar core, and more critical views of nations’ history are easily developed.
The place of media, language, and culture in this region is one of the key drivers of innovation and development and thus deserves a closer study. The dominance of a non-indigenous language, English, in regional trade and politics, and increasingly education as well, is also of note. Multilingualism and international professional and educational experience are now almost mandatory for those entering the workplace in sectors as diverse as hospitality and manufacturing.
The Asian media-scape as well is increasingly multi-faceted, with the strengthening of both national media markets and the increase of cross-importation of cultural products. This unique political-economic structure facilitates both the strengthening of the regional media market as well as allowing it to achieve a distinctive relationship to the ‘core’ American media industry for content and media platforms alike.
It is an exciting time to take a step back and view the multitude of changes that have taken place in the language and media sectors over the last several decades. The different paths of development taken by different elements also deserve a critique, and one done from a comparative perspective cannot but enlighten us as to the respective benefits and drawbacks.
Confirmed lecturers:
Prof. Anthony Fung, Dean of School of Journalism and Communications, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Dr. Ji Deqiang, Communication University of China
Dr. Jesse Owen Hearns-Branaman, National Institute of Development Administration, Thailand
Asst. Prof. Alexander J. Klemm, Assumption University, Thailand
Asst. Prof. Hugo Lee, National Institute of Development Administration, Thailand
Asst. Prof. Nareenoot Damrongchai, National Institute of Development Administration, Thailand
Prof. Colin Sparks, Hong Kong Baptist University
Prof. Zhao Yuezhi, Canada Research Chair, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Asst. Prof. Zhang Lei, Communication University of China
Application
This twelve-day summer school is calling for participants who have interest in media, language, and/or development, especially from an East or South-East Asian perspective. Prospective participants are required to fill in an application form (see attachment) with other supporting documents (such as a CV, a personal statement, a detailed research proposal or an academic paper), which should be sent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by May 1, 2014. Early submission is recommended. Notification of acceptance will be sent on a first-come-first-served basis.
The IJSS is free of charge but all participants need to be responsible for their own travel costs and other relevant expenses.
5th International Joint Summer School 2013 - Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada:
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