I have written a bit more about Pali and its protective uses and that should come out soon. I hope to post some ideas and questions in the new year and look forward to the comments/criticisms/suggestions.

Happy Holidays.

Take for instance, an inscription dated 1375 compares the Siam invasions of Burma to the Chola attacks on Sri Lanka:

“Just as in the Island of Ceylon where the Religion shone, (and where also) the heretics Klan had completely destroyed the land [,] so that the Island of Ceylon could revive and the Religion shine again only through the blessings of Sakra, Brahma, and all the deva and through the effort done by the great king Duṭṭhagamaṇī who was the recipient of the prophecy that he would become the right hand disciple of Maitrya, on Jambudipa where the Religion shone bright, the country of Mranmā was also completely destroyed by the heretic Syaṃ [diṭhi Syaṃ] and yet through the might and wisdom of Siri Tiriphawanāditdyāpawarapaṇitadhammarājā, who is powerful, majestic and shine[s] like sun and moon, who is a great just king, the donor of the golden monastery and who has a great faith in the Religion, (also known as) the great king Tryāphyā, Lord of the White Elephant, the grandson of the great just king Sihasīra, Lord of the White Elephant who ruled over all Mranmā and Syaṃ lands after conquering the 900,000 Khan soldiers, the heretic Syaṃ were suppressed and the Religion shone again so that the monks, the Brahmans and the laity both men and women could observe restraint and charity and work for their own prosperity so that Awa capital of the Mranmā land became as pleasant as the Tavatimsa (7 Feb 1375 ).” (Source: Than Tun, History 1300-1440, Luce, “The Early Syām,” p. 198 n.199, Duroiselle inscription list: L. 682(1-10) S. 737)

Also, how many times have I heard the ethnonym “Ai Man” in Maesai, a word that Tais in Burma use to refer to Burmans, with “Man” probably referring to the “Man Nat” that is “Mara” personification of evil. This ethnonym is commonly used everytime a certain Burmese fortune-teller with a big eye painted on his briefcase enters my mother-in-law’s house and pursues her around the room until he is able to pinch her rear-end after which he gets chased out with a broom stick.

The idea of ‘languaging,’ which some of the other commenters picked up on, is a fantastic one, which in my own internal dialogue I think of slightly differently, but which is very clearly expressed and useful here.

I think Justin’s point about the power of Pali (in spite of its style and its use in languaging) to unite merge very nicely with Jon Fernquest’s point that part of the power of unification is the obliteration of localities. I am working on something in my own work that follows a similar line of analysis, and see no contradiction here, unless one insists on a moral evaluation in favor of either the universal or the local.

Great job.

At the White Lotus booth at last year’s book fair at Sirikit convention center, I met a young female German Sanskrit student who was doing her intern at a Thai language commission whose function was to coin new words based on Sanskrit, or so she told me. Never seen anything written about this.

“it’s the sound of chanting”

Also the basis for Yantras, Mantras, and tattoos which use yantras. Yantras are exhaustively listed in this recent Siam Society arrival:

Filliozat, Jacqueline (2004) “Un Outil de Reference Pour Dechiffrer les Mantras et Yantras dans les manuscripts en Pali de la Peninsule Indochinoise,” in Du corps humain, au carrefour de plusiers savoirs en Inde.

Yantras came up in the online Pali study group at Yahoo Groups when someone asked about Pali calligraphy. Actually, I’m still not sure exactly what Yantras and Mantras are, but Bizot and Lagirarde have certainly written a lot of interesting books that deal with the subject. Skilling sure seems to have thoroughly explored protective chants in two Pali Text Society papers.

Steven Collins work Pali Imaginaire actually makes Pali literature interesting, but the only volume I found was at Chiang Mai Uni library. I donated a copy of Justin’s dissertation to the Siam Society a couple of weeks ago. Pali literature is a research area waiting to happen.

First, it’s the sound of chanting. The meaning is unknown to most listeners (but perhaps that’s the point). It has a very distinctive sound—I think that is because of the greater frequency of hard consonants (compared to modern spoken Thai), and the replacement of tonal cadence by a kind of gentle lilt. The “foreign-ness” of the sound conveys a kind of specialness.

Second, as the hybrid ‘Pali-Sanskrit’, it’s the language of derivation for names of all kinds. For a long time, this was a privilege of the court. But after Damrong and Chulalongkorn used this technique to Siam-ize placenames in the colonized regions, the practice became freely available. In the past two generations, Indic personal names have boomed in popularity.

Third, it’s available for spoof. When I was working in a Thai company, one standard of the year-end party was a satire on the management delivered as mock-Pali. Asani and Wasan’s Krungthep mahanakhon uses the same idea. TV comics used to do it too, but I haven’t seen it lately.

Doesn’t the word “localised” (geographically, temporally) capture this notion without the need of coining a new word, and isn’t this rather universal phenomenon, not limited to Southeast Asia?

“Pali is a language of power”

The only reason this isn’t blatantly obvious must be due to the ahistorical way that Buddhism is studied, especially in the west, as a search for timeless universal truths, not contingent, ever-changing, localised sets of beliefs, intimately tied to secular history. Everyone knows who Martin Luther and Cardinal Richelieu were, but Parakramabahu I? (See Michael Charney’s “Powerful Learning” for the 100-year fight over robe wrapping, not actually over that at all)

Andrew Huxley’s notion of limited access to a monastic lineage’s “bookchest” captures one way ion which power was actuated.

“…a language through which power has flowed and continues to flow.”

There is also an implicit localised humanities discipline waiting to be unlocked too, that Steven Collins Pali Imaginaire work outlines. There is a whole discourse on Buddhist kingship much of it located in the Jatakas, as Collin’s chapter six makes clear.

“Pali unites, scripts divide.”

And that is a power-laden political act in itself, obliterating the local.

There are two other points that I want to make in relation to his comments. First, maybe the way to put it is that Pali is a language of power. That is, it is a language through which power has flowed and continues to flow. But not all forms of power use the language, or this language in the same way in the current moment. Thus, in order to understand the value of Pali at any given moment in any particular place, it is necessary to understand the kinds of power that it actualizes.

Second, Justin made a comment a number of years ago at a conference that I think is well worth keeping in mind when thinking about Pali and its uses by people in Southeast Asian history. Pali unites, scripts divide.