Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
LITERATURE AND MYTHS
ClassicalLaoliteraturehasitsrootsintheJatakatales,acollectionof547storiesabout
the Buddha's previous lives. The tales recount the events and experiences which led to
his incarnation as Siddhartha Gautama, the prince who sought the meaning of life and
attained enlightenment. Penned in India and Sri Lanka, they spread with Buddhism to
Southeast Asia.
Of more direct impact on Lao literature were an additional fifty tales that employed the same
basic theme as the Jataka. Known as the
Panyasa Jataka
, these were perhaps composed by
the Mon and abridged by the Tai Yuan of Lan Na, a kingdom centred around Chiang Mai in
what is now northern Thailand. Contacts between Chiang Mai and Luang Prabang resulted
in the Panyasa Jataka arriving in Laos where the stories were modified and expanded. Even-
tually the Lao versions came to differ significantly from the Tai Yuan versions, in that the
former deviated from strict religious themes and became more entertaining, even to the point
of having some sexual content.
Two types of story emerged: prose and poetic. Prose stories contained much Pali, the lan-
guage of the Theravada Buddhist scriptures, and were written in a script called
phasa tham
,
or Dharma language. These would have been comprehensible only to monks who had studied
the language. Much more popular with lay-people were the poetic stories, written using the
Lao script and containing mostly Lao vocabulary. As Lao is a tonal language, these poems
did not rhyme as poetry composed in English sometimes does. Instead, tones and alliteration
were used to produce a rhythm. Both types of stories were recorded by writing on the fronds
of a certain kind of palm with a stylus, and some of the longer versions made use of hundreds
of palm leaves. These surprisingly durable palm-leaf manuscripts were kept in a special lib-
rary in the monastery grounds or sometimes in private homes. Occasionally, the stories were
copied anew, but there was no pressure on the scrivener, usually a monk, to remain true to the
original. The result was literally hundreds of versions and variations of these stories that not
only taught values but also contained a wealth of information about traditional Lao society.
During certain festivals, villagers would gather at the local monastery or in a private home to
hear the stories read aloud and in this way some favourites eventually emerged. The
Sang Sin
Sai
in particular is felt by many Lao to be the pinnacle of Lao literature. As with all of these
stories, the plot takes a back seat to the poetry itself and the author is obscure. Attributed to
“Pangkham”, the story is almost certainly the product of many authors and editors.
A tradition of oral folk tales known as
XiengMiang
, after the name of the central character,
were eventually transcribed as both poetry and prose. The stories seem to be almost the op-
posite of the Jataka-style morality tales: Xieng Miang is a lazy but clever trickster who en-
joys outwitting authority figures, especially the king. In a typical exploit he covets the king's
prized cat and so decides to kidnap it. Once he has the cat safely home, Xieng Miang teaches
