Anisong Texts in Palm-leaf Manuscripts on Rites of Passage: Buddhization of Innovative Ceremonies in Luang Prabang

Anisong is a religious textual genre of homiletic texts that are delivered by monks to lay audience for giving sermons. Rite of passage is one of the four kinds of religious occasions in which anisong sermons are involved; a preaching monk reads a suitable anisong text for liturgy. The core message of anisong texts in general is to promote gift-giving (dāna) acts and to relate Buddhist (non-) canonical reference. Having been discovered in several anisong manuscripts, birthday ceremonies, wedding ceremonies, and ceremonies organized for the promotion of ranks in monkhood, however, did not purely originate from Buddhist teachings because their conceptual activities are sometimes even run contrary to Buddhist doctrines that aim at detachment. The three ceremonies mentioned above were thus invented by new generations who aimed at the Buddhizisation of innovative ceremonies to gain merit by means of inviting a group of monks to give them anisong sermons. The ceremonies are evidenced in eighteen extant anisong manuscripts, dated 1678–1997 CE and found in Luang Prabang where anisong manuscripts and sermons more openly respond to modernity than it is the case in other regions of Laos and Thailand. The paper aims at investigating texts in the anisong manuscripts from Luang Prabang that were intended to facilitate the three ceremonies. The issue of whether non-canonical or canonical sources were applied in the manuscript texts and how they are involved in the ceremonies will also be discussed.