The King of Siam's Edition of the Pali Tipitaka
By Robert Chalmers
Journal of The Royal Asiatic Society
1898, pp. 1-10
p. 1
Though four years have passed since the
publication, at Bangkok, of thirty-nine volumes of
the Pali Canon, under the auspices of His Majesty the
King of Siam,(1) it was not till a more recent date
that, thanks to His Majesty's _munificence, copies of
this monumental work reached the Royal Asiatic
Society, and other libraries in Europe, and so became
available for study by Western scholars. The recent
visit of the King to this country gave me an oppor-
tunity of discussing the genesis and circumstances of
the edition with H.R.H. Prince Sommot; and I now
desire to communicate to the Royal Asiatic Society
the information which I owe to the Prince's
scholarship and courtesy. The value of that
information will be recognized when it is stated that
Prince Sommot is Private Secretary to the King,
served on the Editing Committee, and is brother to
the Priest-Prince Vajirananavarorasa, who has edited
eleven out of the thirty-nine volumes already
published.
-----------
1. His Majesty has informed the Society that there
will follow in due course an edition of the
Atthakathas and Tikas.
p. 2
The first matter which I sought to clear up was
the purport of the Siamese preface prefixed to every
volume. This preface, though written in Siamese,
contains so con- siderable an admixture of Pali words
and idioms that it requires a sound knowledge of Pali
as well as Siamese for its comprehension. The
following is a translation:--
"Faustum Sit! Dated Saturday, the first day of
the fortnight of waning moon in Magha month of the
Mouse year, 2,431 years since the Buddha died.
"King Culalankarana, son of King Maha-Makuta, be-
thought him how all the teachings of the Buddha,
which the followers of the Buddha have learned and
fulfilled from earliest times till now, have all
sprung from the Tipitaka. From the beginning it has
ever been the wont of royal kings who were Buddhists
and professed Buddhism, to maintain the faith, to
support the Order, and to aid successive Councils,
first to purify the Canon (such has been the royal
custom uninterruptedly), and thereafter to compile a
book of the scriptures as the authoritative exemplar
and accepted standard for all Buddhist lands.
"In early times Buddhist kingdoms were still
inde- pendent; the king of each was a Buddhist, and
both endowed and supported Buddhism. This was the
case in many countries, to wit, Siam, Ceylon, Burma,
Laos, and Cambodia. When accident or injury befell
the sacred books, so that portions of the Canon were
lost, each kingdom was able and was wont to borrow
from others, and so to restore its own copy to a
complete state; and such exchange was mutual. But in
the present time Ceylon and Burma have come under
English dominion; the governors of those countries
are not Buddhists; they take measures to foster the
secular rather than the spiritual welfare of the
people; and they do not maintain Buddhism as did the
old Buddhist kings. Thus it has come to pass that
Buddhist priests have from time to time set up
different sects according to their own lights; and,
as the bad naturally outnumbered the good, the faith
has
p. 3
been perverted, now in one direction, now in another,
as seemed good to each one in turn. Cambodia came
under French dominion, so that the people there could
not maintain the faith in its full vigour. As regards
the country of Laos, which is in the kingdom of Siam,
the princes and people there professed a distorted
form of the faith, which included such errors as the
worship of angels and demons, and therefore cannot be
regarded as having authority.
"Thus, if the text of the Tipitaka is in doubt,
there is nowhere to be found that with which to
compare and amend it as before. Hence it is only in
Siam that Buddhism stands inviolate. It follows,
then, that the present is a fitting time to look into
the scriptures, to purge them, and to multiply copies
of them for circulation, so as to form an immutable
standard of true Buddhism for future times. Any word
or precept which the Buddha taught is indeed precious
and conducive to salvation from suffering; it is very
truth and beyond price; this it is that the wise seek
after in order that they may learn it, ponder it,
follow it, and profit thereby, according to the
measure in which they master it. Assuredly, too,
learners will not be lacking in times to come.
Wherefore the Buddha's teachings ought to be
preserved for posterity.
"It has been the custom in Siam, in past times,
to issue the sacred books as manuscripts written on
palm-leaves to make them durable. But the task was
laborious; even a single volume took a long time to
complete; and it was difficult to multiply copies for
distribution. Furthermore, it has always been the
Siamese custom to employ the Cambodian character,
which has thus come to be regarded as the essential
vehicle for Buddhist writings, whereas, in fact, the
character in which the texts are written is im-
material; any character can be used. Indeed, the
various other Buddhist countries-- Ceylon, Burma,
Laos, Cambodia --have been accustomed to use each its
own character.
"Such, then, were the considerations which led
His Majesty the King of Siam to conceive the plan of
examining
p. 4
and purifying the text of the Tipitaka, with a view
to printing it in Siamese character, some books in a
single volume, some in two or more. For His Majesty
failed not to see that such a plan must command
greater advantages than the writing on palm-leaves.
With a single setting-up of type, many hundreds of
copies can be struck off; and such printed copies are
more easy to carry and more convenient to consult,
since many fasciculi(1) can be comprised in a single
printed volume. While it is true that paper is less
durable than palm-leaves, yet with a single
setting-up of type the printing-press can strike off
a great number of copies, and these with care can be
preserved for centuries; multiplication of copies
can, therefore, readily be ensured. By these means
the scriptures can be diffused throughout Siam, and
this was seen by His Majesty to be a great advantage.
Consequently, His Majesty gave orders to print and
circulate the Tipitaka, feeling that this was a great
service to render to the Buddhist faith for the
future,
"Moreover, it was in contemplation to complete
the printing by the close of the twenty-fifth year of
the King's reign, and so to mark that Jubilee by
celebrating the happy consummation of so pious an
undertaking. It was beyond human foresight to know
whether His Majesty would survive until the date in
view; but the plan of collating, printing, and
distributing the Tipitaka seemed to His Majesty to be
conducive to the good of mankind, and to be a
meritorious work rightly conceived and calcu- lated
to ensure the fulfilment of his hope.
"So there came a Royal Order to Prince
Bhanurangsi- svangvamsa to be President of a
Committee to arrange for the printing of the
Tipitaka, and orders were given to issue invitations
to the Princes who were in the priesthood, and to
Abbots, and to the learned in each degree of the
clergy, to assemble and hear the King's wishes, and
then to divide among them the work of examining and
settling the text for the press.
-----------------------
1. i.e. twenty-four palm-leaves.
p. 5
"That work has now been done, as the King
desired, and may the merit which has been gained by
the fulfilment of the work of issuing these
scriptures be shared by all mankind! Long may the
work endure!"
Such, then, is the purport of this interesting
preface, prefixed to every volume. As above stated,
there are thirty-nine of these volumes, and the
contents, etc., of each, according to the Siamese
arrangement, are as follows:
p. 7
It will have been noticed that eight texts in the
Khuddaka Nikaya (about 1,300 more pages) remain to be
edited in order to make the edition complete.(1)
Their omission, I believe, was due solely to the
inability of the small body of editors to cope with
their task in its entirety before the King's Jubilee.
It is to be hoped that these omissions may be made
good forthwith, and that His Majesty will not leave
his building without a coping-stone.
I pass now to indicate some of the main features
of the edition. Chief of these is the fact that the
King of Siam has abandoned the exotic Cambodian for
the native Siamese character. To Europeans this may
seem a small matter; to the average Siamese it is a
revolution. Centuries ago, when the Siamese took
their Buddhism from Cambodia, they took with it the
Cambodian character; and the result has been to give
to the latter a sacrosanct significance in the eyes
not only of the unlettered but even of the cultured
Siamese. Thus it was a bold step to adopt the Siamese
character; and the disappearance of the old "sacred"
character marked a triumph for rationalism. To a
Siamese there is nothing sacred in the Siamese
character, and accordingly he can view the new
volumes printed in the Siamese character without any
of the superstition which gathered round the old MSS.
in the Cambodian character; he can tuck one of the
new volumes under his arm without the sense of
impiety which would assuredly have dogged him, had he
so treated the same scripture in Cambodian MS. Partly
because the edition is printed in the common
character, and partly because of the prestige which
the royal undertaking has given to Pali scholarship,
an impetus has been given to the study of Pali and
Buddhism in Siam which it would be difficult to
overestimate. One early fruit of the enterprise, and
a condition essential to its subsequent success, was
the establishment of the Pali
------------------
1. It has been questioned whether the Patthana as
edited is complete, owing to the absence of
manuscripts at one part. Whether this be so or
not, I am unable to say, as there is no Pali Text
Society's edition wherewith to collate the
Siamese.
p. 8
College, from which already there has sprung so
strong and universal a community of scholarship
throughout Siam that important national results may
follow in the direction of fixing the language and
fostering a literature.
The second, and to Europeans more important,
point is the nature of the materials used in settling
the text of the King's edition. A cursory glance at
almost any one of the volumes will show that the
editor had before him not only a local text but also
manuscripts in the Burmese and Sinhalese character,
together (it is gratifying to note) with the Pali
Text Society's edition. The editor not infrequently
appends a footnote indi- cating the variants of "Si"
(= Sihala = Sinhalese), "B" (= Bama = Burmese), and
"Yu" (=Yuropa =Europe, i.e P.T.S.). But, so far as I
have been able to ascertain, these variants, taken
from non-Siamese sources, are merely noted, and have
not been taken into serious consideration in the
settlement of the text adopted. That text, with
unimportant exceptions, has been settled from Siamese
sources. Rather more than a century ago the king who
in 1781 founded the royal city of Ratanako- sindra
(which we know by the less stately name of Bangkok),
caused the learned priests of his day to purge the
text of the canon,, and produce an authoritative
redaction. This was done, and some two or three
exemplars were prepared. It is from these and copies
made therefrom that the present Siamese edition has
been prepared by the scholars whose names appear on
the title-pages of the several volumes. It appears
that the learned editors did not feel themselves at
liberty to prepare what we should call a critical
edition of the Tipitaka; they restricted themselves,
very naturally and intelligibly, to restoring the
national redaction, and to removing the errors which
had marred the work of the last century..From the
European point of view this self-imposed restriction
is one of the most valuable features of this most
valuable edition. In the present Siamese redaction we
have no eclectic text pieced together from the
divergent recensions of Siam, Burma, and Ceylon; on
the contrary, we have
p. 9
a purely Siamese text, embodying to a very high pitch
of accuracy(1) the ancient traditions of Siamese
scholarship.
Space prevents my discussing in the present
article the characteristic features of the Siamese
recension now first made public. My conclusions are,
that the Siamese readings stand about midway between
the Burmese and the Sinhalese readings, the regular
divergences of which are indicated in the preface to
the Pali Text Society's edition of the Sumangala
Vilasini. In the case of a difficult passage or a
rare word, the authenticity of which is proved by
Buddhaghosa's com- mentary, it will not be found that
the Siamese text evades the difficulty, after the
Burmese fashion, by conjecturing an easier reading.
On the other hand, as Pali scholarship in Siam has
never been overshadowed by Sanskrit, the Siamese text
does not fall into the Sinhalese trick of introducing
Sanskrit sandhi. After collating some hundreds of
pages of the Majjhima Nikaya, I am disposed to regard
the new Siamese text as being on the whole nearer to
the original than any other text now available,(2)
though the value of the best Sinhalese MSS. (which
the Siamese edition cites) will always be recognized
by scholars in crucial questions of readings.
While these qualities in the King of Siam's
edition appeal more directly to an editor than to the
reader of an edited text, it has ether features,
which must evoke universal gratitude from Pali
scholars in Europe. To a Western eye it is a very
great gain to find the text intelligently divided
into punctuated sentences, with the component words
of each sentence duly separated one from another. The
difference in appearance is that between barbarism
and civilization. Another point is the excellent
scheme of
-----------------------
1. A table of errata (sodhanapatta) is prefixed to
each volume.
2. As a rule the readings of Buddhaghosa represent
the best standard for settling a Pitaka text. In
the following case we can go behind him to an
authority seven hundred years older, viz., to the
inscriptions sculptured on the temple of Bharhut.
The 83rd Sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya (like the
9th Jataka) relates to the king called Makhadeva
in Sinhalese MSS. and Magghadeva in Burmese MSS.
In the Siamese edition this king's name is spelled
Maghadeva, as it is at plate xlviii (2) of the
"Stupa of Bharhut." (Apparently, Buddhaghosa
follows the Sinhalese spelling.)
p. 10
transliteration which, with a paged table of contents
(kittanapatta), precedes the text of each volume.
With the aid of this very useful key to the Siamese
character, the Pali text can be read without
difficulty by European scholars, who will be grateful
for the consideration thus shown to their needs by
Siam.
The "get-up" of the volumes is not what it might
have been. Though the format is well chosen and the
binding is suitable, the paper is bad, and quite
unworthy of the great and lasting purpose of the
undertaking. Perhaps a slightly larger margin should
have been allowed, and it is a question whether the
title-pages should not have been in Pali.
But these shortcomings are too petty to mar the
signal success with which this editio princeps of the
Tipitaka has been produced in Siam. In Pali
scholarship the edition will always remain a great
landmark on the path of pro- gress, and an enduring
monument--alike in Europe and in Siam-to the Buddhist
King who conceived and executed so excellent an
undertaking.