The Pali Language. T. Y. Elizarenkova and V. N. Toporov. Central Department of Oriental Literature, Nakua Publishing House, Moscow. 263pp. £3.00.

This article examines a poem in the Kaludayittherapadanavannana which expands on the poem attributed to Kaludayitthera in the Theragatha; the poem in the Kaludayittherapadanavannana did not make it into the final canon. The hypothesis of this paper is that the poem may be a popular Dravidian song adapted to Buddhist use and translated into Pali, and this is the primary reason it was excluded from the canon. This conclusion is based on several factors. 1) The author of the (...) class='Hi'>Pali poem was not well versed in the Pali language and made constant mistakes in translation. 2) Gratuitous repetition; the poem itself is not very good poetry, containing the kind of needless repetition one associates with a popular song. 3) 13.4% of the words in the poem are direct lifts from Dravidian words; this compares to only 3.9% of the words in the Theragatha poem itself, of which this poem is an extension. While this does not prove that the source was a Dravidian poem, it raises the probability quite significantly. In addition, this kind of literature—making lists of biota in the natural world for comparison, personification and poetic effect— is common in Dravidian Sangam literature. 4) The poem contains wrong or awkward phrases in Pali which can be better understood as Dravidian imports, and 5) an extensive and growing body of linguistic evidence shows that the adoption of Dravidian terminology into Buddhist thought and practice was not an uncommon occurrence. It has long been assumed that the Buddha spoke more than just Indic languages, and that his oral teachings in Dravidian or Munda languages were lost. Although this poem is probably not in itself a teaching of the Buddha, but a popular Dravidian song adapted for Buddhist purposes, its analysis is the first attempt to show that some Pali transmissions may be adaptations or translations of indigenous languages; the ramifications and conclusions of such a hypothesis, if proven, open up a whole new area of Buddhist studies, i.e., the transmission of the Buddha’s teachings through indigenous, non Indo-Aryan languages. (shrink)

This article highlights the central importance of Pāli phonetics in Theravāda Buddhism. In doing so, I focus on a single yet fundamental point of contention regarding the number of sounds in the Pāli language from the twelfth to fifteenth century. I argue that this debate on the number of sounds was of central concern due to the importance of Pāli pronunciation in the ritual sphere, the development of new regional monastic identities, and the introduction of regional scripts. In tracing (...) this debate between two competing systems of Pāli grammar I show that these developments in the phonetic description of the Pāli language reveal the use and adaptation of Sanskritic phonetics in order to differentiate Pāli from Sanskrit, the Prakrits, and its surrounding vernaculars. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Encounters with Ovid: Gavin Douglas’s The Palis of Honoure and Derek Walcott’s “The Hotel Normandie Pool” CAROLE E. NEWLANDS In sixteenth-century Rome, humanist scholars of ancient material and religious culture were exploring the ruins and inscriptions of ancient Rome with a copy of Ovid’s Fasti in hand.1 In London at the same time, Shakespeare was entertaining audiences and inspiring other poets with plots and characters drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. (...) Reception studies of Ovid often focus on these great metropolitan centers. In this article, however, I will explore transformative encounters with Ovid by two poets living on the geographical margins: Gavin Douglas, the Scottish poet whose major work, the Eneados, completed in 1513, was the first translation of Virgil’s Aeneid in the British Isles, and Derek Walcott, the Caribbean Nobel-prize winning poet best known for his epic poem Omeros, published in 1990. As a poet of a small northern country that had fraught political and cultural relations with its much more populous neighbor, England, Douglas can be considered to some extent, like Walcott, within a postcolonial critical paradigm. For despite their stark differences in geographical locale and in period of time, these poets have significant commonalties. Both men were natives of places geographically distant from the major metropolitan center of London. Both were also classically learned poets. They thus shared anxieties relating to their temporal distance from Graeco-Roman culture as well as to their physical distance from the powerful English-language literary center of their day. And significantly, both Douglas and Walcott present transformative visions of Ovid in indiarion 26.3 winter 2019 vidual, early poems, The Palis of Honoure and “The Hotel Normandie Pool” respectively. These imagined but direct encounters with the Roman poet occur in poems before Douglas and Walcott composed the works for which they are chiefly known, in Douglas’s case the translation of the Aeneid, and in Walcott’s Omeros. Ovid appears in both the Palis of Honoure and “The Hotel Normandie Pool” initially, at least, as an outsider, a poet of exile, but not, however, as a self-pitying poet in decline or, as recent scholarship would have it, as a skilled manipulator of the tropes of poetic decline.2 Rather, in Douglas’s and Walcott’s poems Ovid is a figure who authorizes marginality as a vital source of poetic re-creation. As both insider and outsider Ovid can offer positive redirection to these authors whether within or beyond their geographical boundaries. Through their visions of Ovid, both Douglas and Walcott are offered the possibility of personal change and generic innovation. For each poet the encounter with Ovid is a form of poetic initiation that leads him to his more ambitious work in the heroic genre. gavin douglas’s THE PALIS OF HONOURE i will start with Gavin Douglas (c. 1474–1522). Douglas is generally classed as one of the “Makars,” a term used to refer to a cluster of brilliant, experimental Scottish poets of the late 15th and early 16th century. Among these were Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, and Gavin Douglas, three poets who thrived under the rule of King James IV of Scotland, an active patron of the arts who sought to make his court a center of cultural excellence that would rival the English court.3 Douglas’s Palis of Honoure is a youthful, ambitious poem, composed in 1502, twelve years before his major achievement, his translation of the Aeneid.4 Dedicated to King James, The Palis comprises 2169 decasyllabic lines with several demanding rhyme schemes.5 It is written in a manner that combines the “aureate” style, that is elegant and Latinate, with down-to-earth Scottish vernacular 74 encounters with ovid diction and forms of expression, and it is also suffused with Ovidian myth and concepts.6 Its format derives from the medieval dream vision, a form employed notably, for instance, by Douglas’s famous English predecessor Chaucer.7 Scholars tend to find The Palis of Honoure less polished than Douglas’s mature work, the Eneados. Conor Leahy, however, describes the youthful poem as bold and dynamic: “In the hundred years following the death of Chaucer, no other dream vision... (shrink)

Theravada Buddhist sermons in palm-leaf manuscript collections in South and Southeast Asia are frequently bilingual, including portions in the classical language of Pali and a local vernacular, such as Burmese, Sinhala, or Thai. These bilingual sermons prove to be ideal subjects for exploring how Buddhist scriptures function as kinetic, interactive processes of performance and reception. This paper draws on three examples of Pali-Khmer sermons composed in Cambodia between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The three bilingual texts or (...) “bitexts” analyzed in this article each follow a different format: rearranged phrasal gloss, selective sentence gloss, and vernacular expansion. These formats draw on the pan-Theravada technology of the bitext to create a dynamic oscillation between Pali and Khmer passages, amplifying patterns established by differential practices of listening and recitation. The key medium in this process is language, which serves as a fluid intermediary that makes the relational activity of scripture possible. (shrink)

While seeking novel food sources to feed the increasing population of the globe, several alternatives have been discussed, including algae, fungi or in vitro meat. The increasingly propagated usage of farmed insects for human nutrition raises issues regarding food safety, consumer information and animal protection. In line with law, insects like any other animals must not be reared or manipulated in a way that inflicts unnecessary pain, distress or harm on them. Currently, there is a great need for research in (...) the area of insect welfare, especially regarding species-specific needs, health, farming systems and humane methods of killing. Recent results from neurophysiological, neuroanatomical and behavioral sciences prompt caution when denying consciousness and therefore the likelihood of presence of pain and suffering or something closely related to it to insects. From an animal protection point of view, these issues should be satisfyingly solved before propagating and establishing intensive husbandry systems for insects as a new type of mini-livestock factory farming. (shrink)

Bernhard and Young (Journal of Academic Ethics, 7, 175-191, 2009) allege that a myth of confidentiality plagues research in North America because of the absence of statute-based legal protections and the requirements of some REBs to limit confidentiality to the extent permitted by law. In this commentary we describe statute-based protections for research confidentiality available in the United States, clarify the legal situation regarding research confidentiality in Canada, and explain that REBs that require confidentiality to be limited by law are (...) imposing a doctrine that is not required by the TCPS and may violate researchers’ academic freedom. The paper laments how excessive REB risk aversion and inaction by the granting agency Presidents has created a situation where some REBs are encouraging researchers to download research risks to research participants and forcing researchers to choose between exposing themselves to the prospect of going to jail to protect confidentiality, watering down their research objectives, or conducting vanilla research rather than engaging in controversial and/or sensitive areas of study. The paper urges the granting agency Presidents to seek legislative change to protect research participants who provide information that could cause them harm if their identity were to be revealed. (shrink)

Resumen El artículo busca presentar los fundamentos de una teoría de la desigualdad en Husserl a partir de una ampliación del concepto, proveniente de la ética husserliana, de destino. En las dos primeras secciones, presento las principales conclusiones de la ética de Husserl, incluyendo lo que hasta ahora la literatura ha entendido como el concepto de destino (que caracterizo como «destino natural»). Posteriormente, basándome en textos póstumos de Husserl, sugiero la necesidad de ampliar el ámbito del destino a su dimensión (...) social (lo que he denominado «destino social»), lo que hará posible apreciar que la desigualdad es un problema central para las preocupaciones prácticas de Husserl. Finalizo mostrando un sentido en que el destino social tiene cierta preeminencia sobre el destino natural. (shrink)

This article offers a state of the art of research on Husserl's political philosophy. I begin my work outlining historical and systematical reasons about why this area is not only underdeveloped but also that its discoveries are not systematized. Then, I indicate that there have been two major tendencies on how to understand Husserlian political philosophy, on the one hand, as an ontology of the political world and, on the other, as a branch of social ethics. I detail the main (...) contributions that have been offered in both tendencies and I argue why only the second of them can be considered in a strict sense the political philosophy of Husserl. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to show how culture – shared norms and values – is challenged and used to facilitate cooperative behavior within the context of farmer field schools (FFS) in central Luzon, Philippines. The success of the FFS is primarily associated with cultural norms that encourage experiential and collective learning and eventually lead to the adoption of integrated pest management (IPM) methods among the farmers. The study was conducted in central Luzon, the rice granary region of the (...) Philippines, from 1992 to 1995 and again in 1999. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed. Results indicate that a keen understanding of Filipino culture and values is essential if FFS is to be successful and if farmers are to successfully learn and practice IPM. (shrink)

The purpose of this study is to train an artificial neural network model for predicting student failure in the academic leveling course of the Escuela Politécnica Nacional of Ecuador, based on academic and socioeconomic information. For this, 1308 higher education students participated, 69.0% of whom failed the academic leveling course; besides, 93.7% of the students self-identified as mestizo, 83.9% came from the province of Pichincha, and 92.4% belonged to general population. As a first approximation, a neural network model was trained (...) with twelve variables containing students’ academic and socioeconomic information. Then, a dimensionality reduction process was performed from which a new neural network was modeled. This dimension reduced model was trained with the variables application score, vulnerability index, regime, gender, and population segment, which were the five variables that explained more than 80% of the first model. The classification accuracy of the dimension reduced model was 0.745, while precision and recall were 0.883 and 0.778, respectively. The area under ROC curve was 0.791. This model could be used as a guide to lead intervention policies so that the failure rate in the academic leveling course would decrease. (shrink)

Conflict is inevitable within congregations and can contribute to their growth or decline, depending on how the leadership in a congregation handles a conflict. The Dutch Reformed Church in Africa, Orange Free State (DRCA OFS) has, for over a decade, experienced growing internal conflicts within its leadership in the various structures of the church. Some of these conflicts have culminated in physical violence and litigations. This article aims to analyse the emerging conflict situations within the leadership in the various structures (...) of the DRCA OFS. The leading research question is: What are the dynamics of conflict situations of the leadership in the various structures of the DRCA OFS? (shrink)

1. (no separate title) -- 2. Khristii︠a︡nska antropologii︠a︡. Filosofii︠a︡ na morala i khristiia︡nskata etika.

Research confidentiality in Britain is under attack. Indeed, in some quarters the ‘Law of the Land’ doctrine that absolutely subjugates research ethics to law is already a fait accompli. To illustrate the academic freedom issues at stake, the article discusses: the Cambridge Psychology Research Ethics Committee’s ban of interview questions about a research participant’s involvement in criminal acts; the awarding of damages against Exeter University when it reneged on its agreement to uphold a doctoral student’s guarantee of ‘absolute confidentiality’ in (...) his research on assisted suicide; and the controversy around the UK government’s attempt to obtain confidential records from the Belfast Project − an oral history of paramilitaries involved in the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The article urges British researchers to practice – or, at least, defend the academic freedom of their colleagues to practice – the ‘ethics-first’ doctrine of strict confidentiality that several North American disciplinary associations encourage. (shrink)

Although in the US there have been dozens of subpoenas seeking information gathered by academic researchers under a pledge of confidentiality, few cases have garnered as much attention as the two sets of subpoenas issued to Boston College seeking interviews conducted with IRA operatives who participated in The Belfast Project, an oral history of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. For the researchers and participants, confidentiality was understood to be unlimited, while Boston College has asserted that it pledged confidentiality only “to (...) the extent American law allows.” This a priori limitation to confidentiality is invoked by many researchers and universities in the United States, Canada and Great Britain, but there has been little discussion of what the phrase means and what ethical obligations accompany it. An examination of the researchers’ and Boston College’s behaviour in relation to the subpoenas provides the basis for that discussion. We conclude that Boston College has provided an example that will be cited for years to come of how not to protect research participants to the extent American law allows. (shrink)

As the title of the present article shows, it highlights the three philosophically integrated areas – (1) pramāṇa-epistemology (theory of comprehensive knowledge involving both perception and inference), (2) logic (although a part of pramāṇa-epistemology, it has two modes, namely, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning), and (3) language (or semantics, i.e. the double negation theory of meaning, which falls under inference). These are interconnected as well as overlapping within the Buddhist mainstream tradition of the process philosophy as opposed to the (...) substantialist philosophy. The same is the case with the three celebrated Buddhist thinkers – Vasubandhu, Dignāga (also spelt as Diññāṇa), and Dharmakīrti – who develop their radical and critical views focusing on these areas in historical-cum-philosophical order. It is worth noting that within the same mainstream Buddhist tradition, each one of the three thinkers picks up the problematic issues from their predecessors – from the Buddha to their immediate predecessors respectively – for their solutions against the backdrop of the two conflicting mainstream traditions – Buddhist and non-Buddhist. The central focus of these thinkers is first to identify the crucial issues, doctrinal principles, terminology, and methodology in their own ways and conceptual frameworks, which generate not only the mutual conflicts in the course of dialogues but also strengthen their positions by means of their new radical ideas, innovations, terminologies, methodologies, and doctrinal principles. As a result, the three selected areas and their crucial issues are explained, elaborated, and interpretated for better understanding. All of which are rooted in the Buddha’s path of wisdom, ethics, and liberation from the human predicament (duḥkha-nivṛtti). In this grand project of the deepest concerns, the Buddha utilized multiple strategies like understanding and controlling the problematic nature of the mind (Pāli citta, manasa) and its concomitance (Pāli cetasika, dhammā) by means of the concentrative meditation (Pāli jhāna, Sanskrit (hereafter Skt., dhyāna), cultivation of knowledge (Pāli vijjā, Skt. vidyā) and conduct/moral purity (Pāli caraṇa, Skt. ācaraṇa), destruction of afflictions/defilements (Pāli kilesa, Skt. kleśa), critical and logical thinking with valid arguments, and so on. His disciples also treat him as the possessor of valid method, arguments, meaning, practice, and purpose (Skt. pramāṇabhūta, the term used by Dignāga). He believed in the common humanity as the community of sufferers and the autonomy of every human being (Pāli attakāra), but strongly rejected the hierarchy of humanity on the basis of caste, birth, and dogmatic religious identity. For these reasons, following the Buddha and his celebrated followers like Vasubandhu, Dignāga, and Dharmakīrti, my task in this article is how to clearly and elaborately discuss the above identified issues and theories, first to understand them for myself and then logically prove the whole process of knowledge and the designed purpose through communication to those who have the intention to hear and understand the framework of common language for their benefits. I wish the readers like students and young teachers benefit from my research work. Further, since my learning of the Tibetan language is zero, but comfortable in Sanskrit and Pāli, I have been heavily dependent on three great modern thinkers who have widely written independently and also translated the Buddhist Tibetan texts, which were translated from the original Sanskrit texts now lost, into English in the areas of Buddhist epistemology, logic, and semantics. These modern scholars are Masaaki Hattori, Shoryo Katsura, and Richard Hayes. Besides them, I have also little benefitted from some other scholars who have worked in the same areas. (shrink)

In “Advisory Opinion on Confidentiality, Its Limits and Duties to Others” the Canadian Interagency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics (PRE) articulates a rationale for a priori limitations to research confidentiality, based largely on putative legal duties to violate confidentiality in certain circumstances. We argue that PRE promotes a “Law of the Land” doctrine of research ethics that is but one approach to resolving potential conflicts between law and research ethics. PRE emphasises risks that have never materialized, and ignores jurisprudence on (...) challenges to research confidentiality. When we examine what the courts have actually done with research-based claims of privilege, we find they clearly recognize and affirm researchers’ ethical obligations to maintain strict confidentiality and protect research participants. Ironically, the one exception – where the court ordered that information be disclosed – occurred precisely because the researchers had limited confidentiality. The passive approach PRE espouses leaves vital questions about what protecting confidentiality to the “full extent possible in law” means, and leaves the impression that academics should accept whatever limitations the courts may impose without participating in the courtroom dialogue determining where those limits are drawn. In contrast, we believe confidentiality is so important to the protection of research participants and the integrity of the research enterprise that it is worth fighting for. The “ethics-first” doctrine of “strict confidentiality” we describe adheres to the social sciences’ and humanities’ longstanding commitment to research confidentiality and duty to the research participant. (shrink)

Rice crop diversity hasdecreased dramatically in the recent past.Understanding the causes that underlie theevident genetic erosion is critical for thefood security of subsistence rice farmers andbiodiversity. Our study shows that farmers inthe northeastern Philippines had a markedreduction in rice diversity from 1996 to 1998.The ultimate causes were a drought resultingfrom the El Niño phenomenon in 1997 andflooding due to two successive typhoons in1998. The proximate causes, however, includedlocal water control factors, limitations in thehousehold and village-level seedinfrastructure, farm location in relation (...) tothe goods and services necessary to obtainseeds, policies and programs of the Departmentof Agriculture, and the characteristics of therice varieties themselves. The implications ofour study are that genetic erosion is notalways the result of purposeful acts by farmersnor is it necessarily gradual. Improvingon-farm seed technology will stabilize the seedproduction, distribution, and use system andthereby enhance household food security.Ultimately, rice diversity will be improvedonly if diversity is a safe and viable optionfor farmers. Therefore, public policy thatsupports farmers who maintain a diverse set ofcultivars is critical for any on-farmconservation strategy. (shrink)

People may exhibit two kinds of modifications when demonstrating action for others: modifications to facilitate bottom‐up, or sensory‐based processing; and modifications to facilitate top‐down, or knowledge‐based processing. The current study examined actors' production of such modifications in action demonstrations for audiences that differed in their capacity for intentional reasoning. Actors' demonstrations of complex actions for a non‐anthropomorphic computer system and for people (adult and toddler) were compared. Evidence was found for greater highlighting of top‐down modifications in the demonstrations for the (...) human audiences versus the computer audience. Conversely, participants highlighted simple perceptual modifications for the computer audience, producing more punctuated and wider ranging motions. This study suggests that people consider differences in their audiences when demonstrating action. (shrink)

BackgroundStructured, systematic methods to formulate consensus recommendations, such as the Delphi process or nominal group technique, among others, provide the opportunity to harness the knowledge of experts to support clinical decision making in areas of uncertainty. They are widely used in biomedical research, in particular where disease characteristics or resource limitations mean that high-quality evidence generation is difficult. However, poor reporting of methods used to reach a consensus – for example, not clearly explaining the definition of consensus, or not stating (...) how consensus group panellists were selected – can potentially undermine confidence in this type of research and hinder reproducibility. Our objective is therefore to systematically develop a reporting guideline to help the biomedical research and clinical practice community describe the methods or techniques used to reach consensus in a complete, transparent, and consistent manner.MethodsThe ACCORD project will take place in five stages and follow the EQUATOR Network guidance for the development of reporting guidelines. In Stage 1, a multidisciplinary Steering Committee has been established to lead and coordinate the guideline development process. In Stage 2, a systematic literature review will identify evidence on the quality of the reporting of consensus methodology, to obtain potential items for a reporting checklist. In Stage 3, Delphi methodology will be used to reach consensus regarding the checklist items, first among the Steering Committee, and then among a broader Delphi panel comprising participants with a range of expertise, including patient representatives. In Stage 4, the reporting guideline will be finalised in a consensus meeting, along with the production of an Explanation and Elaboration document. In Stage 5, we plan to publish the reporting guideline and E&E document in open-access journals, supported by presentations at appropriate events. Dissemination of the reporting guideline, including a website linked to social media channels, is crucial for the document to be implemented in practice.DiscussionThe ACCORD reporting guideline will provide a set of minimum items that should be reported about methods used to achieve consensus, including approaches ranging from simple unstructured opinion gatherings to highly structured processes. (shrink)

First published in 1982. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This article focuses on the under-researched Buddhist textKathāvatthu(“Points of Controversy”) and aims to better determine its place within Indian philosophy. We consider how the text was compiled, its contents, and main characteristics (such as its genre, its classification lists –mātika). To understand some of those characteristics, we suggest viewing them as shared with the whole Pali Canon (a large body of heterogeneous texts, of which theKathāvatthuis part). This article also illustrates the issues of translating religious and philosophical texts from (...) the Pāli language. Particularly, we highlight that theKathāvatthubelongs to the part of Pāli Canon known as theAbhidhamma Piṭaka, and consider how this influences the philosophical discourse presented in this text. We analyze the historical and philosophical content of theKathāvatthu. We argue that such content of this work is consistently revealed in the discussion of issues controversial for the schools of Early Buddhism. At the beginning of the text, there are the most significant questions for Early Buddhism (about the subject (pudgala), about the one who has reached perfection –arhat). As we get closer to the end of the text, the importance of the issues discussed diminishes. Its final part contains the latest questions. The discussion in each question depends on the logical method of the eight refutations, the use of lists (mātika), and the position of the Theravada school to which the final version of the text belongs. In the article, special attention is paid to the determination of theKathāvatthugenre. We conclude that the genre of this work can be considered as a unique example of religious and philosophical dialogue in Early Buddhist literature. (shrink)

The papers collected in this volume exemplify some of the trends in current approaches to logic, language and computation. Written by authors with varied academic backgrounds, the contributions are intended for an interdisciplinary audience. The first part of this volume addresses issues relevant for multi-agent systems: reasoning with incomplete information, reasoning about knowledge and beliefs, and reasoning about games. Proofs as formal objects form the subject of Part II. Topics covered include: contributions on logical frameworks, linear logic, and different (...) approaches to formalized reasoning. Part III focuses on representations and formal methods in linguistic theory, addressing the areas of comparative and temporal expressions, modal subordination, and compositionality. (shrink)

In the Indian philosophical debate, the relationship between the structure of knowledge and external reality has been a persistent issue. This debate has been particularly prominent in Buddhism, as evidenced by the earliest Buddhist attestations in the Pāli canon, where reality is described as a perceptual defection. The world (loka) is perceived through cognition (citta), and the theme of designation (paññatti) is central to the analysis of the Abhidhamma. Buddhism can be viewed as navigating between nominalism and cognitive normativism, as (...) it deconstructs language, which is seen as an obfuscating element that separates the subject from the world. In this article, we explore these issues through a philosophical dialogue between Early Buddhism, Abhidhamma, and Madhyamaka, utilizing methodological tools from Western philosophical traditions, both ancient and modern. We engage in a clash between nihilism and absolutism, in search of the substantiality of entities, which, behind the emptiness of conventional designations, conceals a complex fractal network of pansematism. (shrink)

In the late first and early second millennia, mainland Southeast Asians created sophisticated techniques to accurately and efficiently render Pali into local vernaculars, including Burmese, Khmer, Khün, Lanna, Lao, Lü, Mon, and Siamese. These techniques for vernacular reading, parallel to approaches for reading Latin in medieval Europe and Literary Sinitic in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, led to the development of bitexts that contained a mix of Pali and vernacular material. Such bitexts, arranged in both interlinear and interphrasal formats, (...) gradually allowed second-millennium Southeast Asian writers to sprout a vernacular literature from the established branches of Pali genres. Bitexts themselves formed the basis for a new literary style that stemmed from the techniques of vernacular reading, a style that set the standard for belles-lettres until the early twentieth century. The spread of Pali-vernacular bitexts in Southeast Asia allowed for the literary elevation of the vernacular without renouncing the cosmopolitan idiom of Pali. To support these arguments, this article draws on some of the earliest examples of bitexts in Central Thailand and Northern Thailand. These include a hitherto undeciphered form of manuscript annotation in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century Siam; two of the oldest palm-leaf documents surviving in any Tai language, from sixteenth-century Lanna; and the oldest known Pali-Siamese literary work, thought to be composed in 1482. These bitexts provide detailed evidence for vernacular reading and the emergence of vernacular literature in mainland Southeast Asian in general and Thailand in particular. (shrink)