Title: Spreading the Dhamma : writing, orality, and textual transmission in Buddhist Northern Thailand /
Authors: Veidlinger, Daniel M.
Publisher: University of Hawaiʻi Press,
Year: 2006
Subjects: Buddhism Thailand, Northern History.; Communication Religious aspects Buddhism; Pali literature Thailand, Northern History and criticism.
Abstract: "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."--BOOK JACKET.