The temple keeps its collection in a locked outbuilding, a haw trai, over a small pond, and is a typical assortment of Mon-language materials, similar to those of the other temples in this project. The majority of subject material is religious, including Abhidhamma texts, the Jātakas, the vinaya, and Pāli and Mon language commentaries. Unusually, the collection had a number of handwritten notebooks in Mon, which appeared to have been written by monks in past decades. These notebooks included some Pāli verses which may have been used in rituals.
Extent: 97 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: Since EAP 1133 in 2019, the collection has been cleaned, ordered, and organized along the same lines, and probably by the same people, as at Wat Khongkharam. The small tags attached to the bundles indicate the contents, although not in the same detail as the larger wrappers of Wat Khongkharam. The cabinets holding the books were not catalogued in any way.
Original institution reference: n/a.
