Title Search term

Title Search terms are the main components of titles, without ancillary terms or variant spellings found on manuscripts. Where possible, they are the Standard Thai equivalent of titles which are in Northern Thai, Tai Lue, Shan, etc.

Title Search terms for vernacular or bilingual texts are therefore romanised according to Standard Thai pronunciation rather than Northern Thai, etc. The romanisation system is based on the Royal Thai General System of Transcription, with the exception of จ, which is written as 'c' as a syllable initial consonant rather than 'ch.' Titles of monolingual Pali texts are romanised according to the Critical Pali Dictionary.

See the Resources section of the site for information about titles in the collection, and the system of rendering Northern Thai in Standard Thai script.

Category

Categories are the same as those used in the Preservation of Northern Thai Manuscripts Project (PNTMP), except for PNTMP Category 04 Monolingual Pali, which is now under 'Language.' Vinaya, Sutta, Abhidhamma, and Jataka also include related non-canonical texts.

Language

See the Resources section the site for information about languages in the collection.

Script

See the Resources section the site for information about scripts in the collection.

Ancillary term

Ancillary terms are components of titles as written on the manuscripts, but which are not included in the simplified Title Search terms. They include terms for genres of text, metric and poetical forms, and titles and terms of address, etc.

Material

Most manuscripts are palm-leaf, made from the leaves of Corypha umbraculifera. Sa or mulberry paper, made from the bark of Broussonetia papyrifera, is used extensively for Tai Lue and Shan manuscripts. Khoi paper, made from the bark of Streblus asper, is used for some leporello style books. Notebooks are mostly from the HHHWC Collection of handwritten copies made by local scribes in the early 1970s.

Author

Author is only recorded where clearly known for original works. The authorship of the majority of manuscripts in the collection is unknown, and the names of individual scribes who copied texts are not recorded in the digital library data.

Collection

PNTMP (Preservation of Northern Thai Manuscripts Project) contains greytone images of manuscripts microfilmed between 1987-1991.

DLNTM (Digital Library of Northern Thai Manuscripts) contains colour images of manuscripts directly digitised during the digital library project, starting in 2013.

DELMN (Dokumentarische Erfassung literarischer Materialien in den Nordprovinzen Thailands) contains greytone images of manuscripts microfilmed in the early 1970s.

HHHWC (Harald Hundius Handwritten Collection) contains colour images of manuscript texts copied into notebooks by local scribes in the early 1970s.

Code number

Each manuscript has a unique code number. The PNTMP and DLNTM collections use the same 11-digit system, while different 4-digit systems are used for the HHHWC and DELMN collections. See the Technical Details section the About page for detailed information about code numbers in the collection.