Aims and objectives
The aim of this project is to identify the legal codes of the ancient kingdom of Lan Na (in the north of present-day Thailand), recorded in palm-leaf or mulberry paper manuscripts and stored in repositories of Buddhist monasteries. These handwritten copies generally date from the 18th and 19th centuries, although the original texts themselves may have been written at an earlier date. The legal corpus of Lan Na is an invaluable source of information for understanding the social, political and legal cultures of pre-modern northern Thailand, dealing with issues such as homicide, inheritance, servitude, the status of women and so on.
Starting with the collections already inventoried, the first step will be to identify the manuscripts listed in the seven provinces that belong to the Lan Na cultural domain, and to check their condition and availability. The project will then involve fieldwork to identify rare texts that have not been catalogued and are in danger of disappearing. This Pilot should be envisaged as the preliminary phase of a future digitisation project.
