Details

Subjects:

Heaven -- Buddhism.
Heaven.
Buddhism.
Hell -- Buddhism.
Illumination of books and manuscripts, Thai -- Specimens.
Illumination of books and manuscripts, Thai.

Form/Genre:

Facsimiles.
Folded books.
Illuminations (visual materials)
Manuscripts, Thai.
Manuscripts.
Specimens.

Language:

In Pali with note and colophon in Thai (Pali in Khom script; Thai in Thai script).

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web
text file

Summary:

Illustrated manuscript of the popular story of Phra Malai, a monk who visits heaven and hell, preceded by the short text Abhidhamma chet kamphi. A note in the text of the manuscript advises the monk after finishing the previous three prayers to take and break and drink hot tea (f. B12).

Contents:

1. f.A02-A05: Abhidhamma chet kamphi
2.f.A05-46B: Phra Malai.

Notes:

Title for manuscript from title for predominant work supplied by Justin McDaniel (viewed on December 23, 2015)
Written in 10 lines per folio.
Written on khoi paper; folded concertina- or accordion-style.
13 illustrated folios with images of deities (f. A02-A04) and episodes from the Phra Malai (f. A06, A26-A27, A41, B12-B13, B26-B27, B37, B46).
Attached covers with a border formed of additional layers of heavy paper; shiny patches from former lacquer or glue?
Written in central Thailand, probably in the 1870s or 1880s (Justin McDaniel).
Dimensions of original manuscript: 13.5 x 69.0 cm.
Reproduced from the original with permission of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) license.
Electronic reproduction. Philadelphia, Pa. : University of Pennsylvania Libraries, 2015.

Penn Provenance:

Donated to a monastery for a funeral by a woman nicknamed Older Sister Nu (mouse; colophon in pencil, f. B47).
Gift of the Estate of Elizabeth Lyons, Keeper of the Asian Collections, University Museum, 1989.

Cited as:

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology 89-13-251.

Contains:

Abhidhamma chet kamphi.