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BY-NC-ND 4.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter 2021

Sealed Manuscripts in Laos: New Findings from Luang Prabang

From the book Exploring Written Artefacts
Volker Grabowsky
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110753301-033
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Abstract

This article discusses two palm-leaf manuscripts from the former Lao royal capital of Luang Prabang which contain royal decrees. Both manuscripts are dated from the mid-nineteenth century when the kingdom of Luang Prabang was still a tributary state of Siam. Attached to the manuscripts are well preserved royal seals authenticating and legitimising the royal decrees sent to provincial governors. The materiality and iconography of the seals as well as the contents of the decrees are analysed against the background of the use of seals in the manuscript culture of Laos and neighboring Tai speaking regions.

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston
Download chapter (PDF)
From the book
Exploring Written Artefacts
Exploring Written Artefacts

Chapters in this book (59)

Frontmatter
Contents
Introduction: In Honour of Michael Friedrich
‘Paleografia quale scienza dello spirito’: Once More on the Gǝʿǝz Inscription of Ham (RIÉ no. 232)
Multiple-Text Inscriptions in the Greco- Roman World
Engrave on the Heart and Wash Away Care
They Wrote on Clay, Wax, and Stone: Some Thoughts on Early Mesopotamian Writing
What about 3D Manuscripts? The Case of the Cuneiform Clay Tablets
How Were Bronze Inscriptions Cast in Ancient China? New Answers to Old Questions
What Inscriptions do not Tell You about Themselves: Chinese Cases
A New Standard Protocol for Identification of Writing Media
Mass Spectrometry-Based Proteomics and Metaproteomics Analysis of Ancient Manuscripts
Scientific Analysis of Leonardo’s Manuscript with Anatomic Drawings and Notes
Inscribed Gems: Material Profiling beyond Visible Examination
Humanities-Centred Artificial Intelligence (CHAI) as an Emerging Paradigm
How Can Research on Written Artefacts Benefit from Collaboration with Computer Science?
Notes on the Terminology for Print in Early Sanskrit Printed Books
Media Systems and Genre Conventions in Transition: A German Priamel Booklet from Nuremberg, c. 1490
About a Manuscript on Tea Found in Timbuktu, Mali: Mamma Haidara Collection, MS 125, Tārīkh al-shāy fī ’l-Maghrib
From Mouth to Ear to Hand: Literacy as Recorded Orality in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century German Courts
The Codex’s Contents: Attempt at a Codicological Approach
The Advantages of Comparative Codicology: Further Examples
About a Series of Late Medieval Moroccan Bindings
A Tale of Papermaking along the Silk Road
Cataloguing Arabic Manuscripts for the Project ‘Katalogisierung der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland’
Unravelling Multiple-Text Manuscripts: Introducing Categories Based on Content, Use, and Production
Chinese Character Variants in Medieval Dictionaries and Manuscripts
The Art of Astrological Computations: Conrad Heingarter and the Manuscript Paris, BnF latin 7295A
Magic in the Hebrew-Manuscript Collection of the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg: Observations on Cod. hebr. 252
Notes on a Central Asian Notebook
Creating an Original of a Greek Lexicon in the Middle Ages: Notes on the Manuscript Vaticanus Barberinianus gr. 70 of the Etymologicum Gudianum
A Multilayered Greek Manuscript of Learning: Some Glimpses into the Scribal Practices Evident in the Aristotelean Codex Vaticanus graecus 244
From ‘Task’ to ‘Title’? Japanese Linked Poetry and the Fushimono
Hidden Colophons
Sealed Manuscripts in Laos: New Findings from Luang Prabang
Naming the Author: The Taṇṭi Motif in the Margins of the Tamil Poetic Tradition
A Typology of West African Ajami Manuscripts: Languages, Layout and Research Perspectives
Forgery and Appreciation of Old Choir Books in Nineteenth-Century Europe
A Lesser-Known Member of Bessarion’s Milieu: The Scribe-Bishop Makarios
Enigmatic Calligraphy: Lettering as Visualized Hermeneutic of Sacred Scripture
Sailing-Ships and Character Illustrations in Three Javanese Literary Poetic Manuscripts
Peripatetic Readers and a Dancing Maiden: Marginal Multigraphic Discourse in a Medieval Latin Multiple-Text Manuscript
Textual Criticism and Early Chinese Manuscripts
Notes for an Ontological Approach within Manuscript Studies: Object Oriented Ontology and the Pothi Manuscript Culture
Collation in Early Imperial China: From Administrative Procedure to Philological Tool
Loss and Circumstances: How Early Modern Europe Discovered the ‘Material Text’
The Letters of Michael Psellos and their Function in Byzantine Epistolary Culture
Preaching with the Hands: Notes on Cassiodorus’ Praise of Handwriting and its Medieval Reception
Where did the Ngạn People Come From? Ritual Manuscripts among the Ngạn in Northern Vietnam
(Re-)Writing Jazz: The Manuscripts of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme
A Ritual Manual of Healing: The Body-Balance of the Four Elements and the Four Key Factors of Manuscript Production and Usage
The Volvelle and the Lingga: The Use of Two Manuscript Ritual Devices in a Tibetan Exorcism
‘Vu et approuvé’: Censorship Notes in Hamburg Prompt Books from the French Period
The Unusual Story of a Wandering Book and its Physical Metamorphosis
Joint Forces: A Handscroll by Zhao Mengfu and Guan Daosheng
Touched by a Tale of Friendship: An Early Nineteenth-Century Zidishu Manuscript
On Some Manuscripts of Hatifi’s Timurnama
Contributors
Indices
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