The temple keeps the collection in three cabinets in what is now an an airy auxiliary room above the central hall. Broken glass in the main cabinet meant that a certain amount of rat droppings and the like had accumulated among the bundles, some of which were chewed. 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. The collection also features a number of literary texts, one or two on music and lyrics, a few works of history, some on medical treatment, historical texts, and a few in the Khom script. Wat Pom had the largest collection of Mon-language texts printed at the Pak Lat press, although since many were duplicates, it could be that they were never distributed throughout the community.
Extent: 342 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: As at Wat Koh, there was no native system in place when we arrived. In the early 2000s, a local organization appears to have made at attempt to catalogue some of the collection, although they had not brought anyone literate in Mon, so their tags only provided information on the size of the manuscripts – under “Title,” they listed, “cannot be read.” 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 all, bundles on notecards, which I wrote in Mon since the local Thai sand Mons cannot read Mon. We thus left an informal catalogue of sorts in place, although a proper catalogue remains to be done. In the course of our work, we had to restring numerous manuscripts and replace many of the disintegrating wrappers with plain white cotton cloth. We also did our best to clean the cabinets.
Original institution reference: n/a.
