Assistant Professor Dr Thaneerat Jatuthasri
Department of Thai, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
The Panji story originated in East Java and subsequently spread to many regions of Southeast Asia. The story has been acknowledged as part of world heritage by UNESCO since 2017 when the collections of Panji manuscripts were included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. The Panji story was introduced to Thailand around the eighteenth century, at which time two Thai Panji versions were first composed, titled Inao, or Inao Lek, and Dalang, or Inao Yai. The two Inao stories have flourished and been a part of Thai arts and culture since. To this day, the two stories remain alive as a part of Thai cultural heritage. Of the two stories, the version titled Inao is more popular than Dalang, as many new productions of the Inao have appeared, for example, as novels, TV series, stage plays and pop songs, together with traditional representations. This paper aims to explore the continuation of the Inao tradition in contemporary Thai society by examining how Inao is presented and reinterpreted in order to survive in the modern context. The paper also discusses why the theme is still popular and significant in contemporary Thailand.
(Presented in the 2019 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum : Panji/Inao – Preserving and Reviving the Shared Heritage of Southeast Asia, 20 June 2019, W Bangkok Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies and Department of Thai, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University)