The temple keeps the collection in a large auxiliary room. Palm leaf and parabaik manuscripts are kept in two large wooden cabinets to the left of the shrine, while Mon-language books (printed at the Pak Lat press during the early to mid 20th century) are kept glass cabinets to the right, although with some recently printed Thai manuscripts. They keep the most valuable illuminated manuscripts elsewhere, under lock and key. Although the custodians told us that Wat Koh had come to serve as a repository for the whole area, when the colophons of individual manuscripts do mention location, they generally refer to Wat Koh itself. The majority of subject material is religious, including texts of the Abhidhamma, various Jātakas, vinaya, and all the usual Pāli and Mon-language commentaries used in teaching monks. Notable however is the large collection of medical treatment texts, horoscopology, works of literature, and a rare bundle of historical texts. Included also was a small but significant number of texts in the Khom script, both in Pāli and in Thai. We found one or two Burmese-language manuscripts and texts from the early 20th century, indicating a time when monks travelled between the two countries. These texts formed the religious and intellectual heritage of the community before Thai law forbade teaching in languages other than Central Thai and brought the Thai Mon monastic community under central control.
Extent: 290 manuscripts.
Custodial history: I include a generalized description for all four sites, since their stories are basically the same. Most of the texts appear to have been created in what is now Thailand, although a few texts may have either come from Burma or have been written by monks from Burma. Handwriting styles and the shape of certain letters – especially ṅa ṭa ṭha ra and ḷa differ markedly in the Thai Mon hand. Community elders also spoke of some texts having come from Burma, but agreed that the majority would have been created in Thailand itself. Although the colophons of some texts record the names of donors—usually either monks, or sometimes married couples—and may even name the scribe, the understanding of the time was that the texts existed in general circulation and so were neither the creation, nor the property, of any one person in the sense of the European “author.” A few manuscripts, and even the books from the Pak Lat press, say something like, “this is the original of Venerable X,” typically the abbot of a temple. Today, no-one reads the manuscripts, and the rooms in which they are kept are generally unvisited. Previously, however, monks and possibly some lay people would have used them somewhat like books, although they often unstrung them in the process—hence the bundles of scattered and random leaves which every temple had. Manuscripts also seemed to been lent and borrowed across temples. Manuscripts tended to be recopied over time, at least if there was an interested readership. We found many of the exact same texts—especially of the Abhidhamma or rules of the vinaya—repeatedly across temples since they would have been a suitable donation to a monk being ordained. At Wat Pom and Wat Koh, we found several “study bundles,” which contained nearly identical individual, unconnected chapters of various texts, apparently to help monks learn or possibly prepare for texts. It seems that there were texts held in a common library, while individual monks may have been given individual copies, sometimes marked with their names, although at this point, all the manuscripts are held in common.
Arrangement: There was no native system in place when we arrived. The collection was kept in bundles, so that I had to unwrap every bundle and go through the contents of each, a process which took a considerable amount of time. The previous survey under EAP 1133 only allowed us to see a fraction of the total contents. We worked out a system of tags to indicate which contents we would photograph and which we would not, and I wrote out the contents of many, though not quite all, bundles on notecards, which we left attached on the bundles. A proper catalogue of the collection remains to be done. It is crucial that whatever catalogue is made is in the Mon language and Mon script, since local Thais and Mons do not read Mon, and that the catalogue be put online. All previous cataloguing efforts that I am aware of are sitting on one person’s computer or have printed out and are mouldering away somewhere inaccessible. In the course of our work, we had to restring numerous manuscripts, replace the very many beautiful though badly disintegrating bundle wrappers with plain white cotton cloth, and clean the cabinets.
Original institution reference: n/a.
