Cosmologies and Biologies: Siamese Manuscripts of Death, Time and the Body

This is an important and ground-breaking study of rare Siamese manuscripts of two kinds, biological and cosmological. Beautiful in themselves, they are produced under unusual conditions and no one of these manuscripts is like another, though they draw on a common pool of rituals, actions and stories. This fascinating publication closely examines and contextualizes a collection of 30 of the most striking and visually unique manuscripts of this kind known, in or outside Thailand.

These manuscripts are religious in nature, containing several genres of Buddhist texts including liturgical, narrative, historical, grammatical, psychological, ritual, and magical material, but, compared to other Thai and other South-East Asian examples they are particularly strong in the realms of medical, biological and cosmological Thai thought. A recurrent feature is the story of Phra Malai, a monk whose travels to various heavens and hells are described and illustrated. A number of rare medical manuscripts serve to reveal how mythology, biology, astrology, physiognomy and pharmacology are blended together in the pre-modern Siamese/Thai tradition.

These and other such illuminated manuscripts were produced in 18th- and 19th- century Siam (as Thailand was then known) and are richly illustrated both with delightful and evocative depictions of the Buddha, Hindu deities, Bodhisattvas, nuns, monks, and laypeople, and with some grotesque and terrifying ones – they attest to a particular interest in corpses and their implications among some of their readers.

215 pages, colour, English, 24 x 1.7 x 28.1 cm

Softcover

Published in 2025

ISBN : 978-1-915401-15-1

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