Manuscripts of the Vat Xiang Muan in the Kuti of Sathu Nyai Bunchan Phothichitta Maha Thera (1920–1996)

With two exceptions (see below), the manuscripts of this corpus are palm-leaf manuscripts. Two-thirds of the 35 fascicles deal with religious themes, such as Sutras, Jataka tales, Buddhist chronicles, and Anisong (blessing) texts pertaining to the religious benefit derived from certain kinds of gift-giving (dāna). Apart from the relatively large number of mononlingual Pali manuscripts (7), all others are written in the Lao vernacular (or bilingual Lao-Pali), mostly in the Lao variant of the Dhamma script. The 12 manuscripts containing texts dealing with secular matters are mostly classified either under the category “white magic" (6) or “rites and rituals” (4). The manuscripts have been collected and personally used by Sathu Nyai Bunchan Phothichitta Maha Thera (1920–1996), the late abbot of Vat Xiang Muan, who was a gifted philologist but also interested in astrology and divination. Date of original material: Three-fifths of manuscripts (218) have colophons which record the date when the scribe had finished the writing process. The dates are given in Culasakaraja (CS), the “minor era”, in Myanmar also called the “Burmese era” which was widely used in Laos until the early 20th century. In some cases also the year of the 60-year-cycle is indicated in round brackets. Manuscripts from the second half of the 20th century are sometimes also dated in the Buddhist Era (BE).