Arthid Sheravanichkul
Department of Thai, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
Ānisaṃsa or Anisong is a huge corpus of texts asserting the benefit of meritorious acts widespread in the northern, northeastern, and central parts of Thailand. The majority of these Ānisaṃsa is about the benefit of gift-giving (dāna), which apparently reflects the importance of gift-giving in Thai culture and Thai traditions. In the Ānisaṃsa texts, telling narratives is a significant technique used to illustrate the benefits of gifts. This paper aims to explore the sources and the plotlines of these narratives; how they function in the Ānisaṃsa texts; and how they relate to jātakas in the Paññāsa Jātaka and convey the teachings of dāna in both worldly and otherworldly levels.
(Presented in the International Conference – Buddhist Narrative in Asia and Beyond, 9-11 August 2010, Imperial Queen's Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University with support from The Thailand Research Fund (TRF), in co-operation with Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Institute of Asian Studies, The Confucius Institute, Chulalongkorn University and l’École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO))