Swift Family Collection of Palm Leaf Manuscripts, 1782-1898, undated

Summary

Creators:

Swift family

Abstract:

Collection includes 19 manuscripts written on palm leaves and 4 written on folded paper. Fifteen of the manuscripts are written in variants of scripts belonging to the family of Laos Tham or Northern Thai scripts; three manuscripts are written in Devenagari script, two in Khmer, and one each in Burmese, Tamil, and Thai. The texts represent a wide range of samples from the Buddhist Tripitaka as well as from the Hindu scriptures. A number of manuscripts from the Abhidhamma Pitaka and the Vinaya (the Mahavagga and Cullavagga sections), as well as Sutta Pitaka (Majjhima-nikaya, Anguttara-nikaya, and Jatakas) represent the Buddhist canonical texts. The Hindu scriptures are represented by, for example, the Visnupurana.

Extent:

23 boxes

Language:

Collection materials are in Thai tib Tibetan

Background

Scope and content:

From all 23 manuscripts, three manuscripts are written in folded paper. The rest are written in palm leaves. Their complete physical description is yet to be measured and described. Some of those manuscripts have a wooden title marker. This bookmark may or may not have the name or the date of the manuscript.

There are 15 manuscripts written in a variant of scripts belonged to the family of Laos Tham or Northern Thai scripts. Three manuscripts are written in Devanagari script, two in Khmer, and one each in Burmese, Tamil, and Thai. Those written in Laos Tham or Northern Thai scripts are likely collected from different regions, as their numeric characters belonged to a range of script variants, e.g., Mon, Yuan, and Lu. The scripts are often not easily identified, because they do not exactly match with the regular Northern Thai or Laos Tham scripts available in today's publications.

For example, Harald Hundius' studies reported in Phonologie und Schrift des Nordthai, Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden, 1990.

These scripts frequently follow some characteristics akin to the Mon script.

Some of those manuscripts have a date in their colophons. The earliest identified so far is dated 1782 CE (1144 Culla Sakka) and the latest one is dated 1898 CE (1260 Culla Sakka). However, the provenance and some titles of these manuscripts are yet to be identified.

The collections have a wide range of textual samples from the Buddhist Tripitaka as well as from the Hindu scriptures. A number of manuscripts from the Abhidhamma Pitaka and the Vinaya (the Mahavagga and Cullavagga sections) as well as Sutta Pitaka (Majjhima-nikaya, Anguttara-nikaya, and Jatakas) represent the Buddhist canonical texts. The Hindu title scriptures are represented by, for example, the Visnupurana.

Acquisition information:

Lloyd Wesley Swift, a 1930 graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, donated a collection of 16 sets of palm leaf manuscripts and one paper manuscript. Lloyd Wesley Swift wrote a Master thesis titled Factors influencing the succession of brush and grass communities in a delimited habitat , dated August 1930, stored at the Bioscience Library with a call number: SD8.S977. His gift letter dated 3 June 1976 has a letterhead saying that he is a Consulting Biologist. According to this letter, the gift was addressed to Dr. Henry D. Ginsburg, who was at the time a visiting scholar in the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies of the University of California at Berkeley. The origin of the Swift Family Collection manuscripts described in the following paragraphs is taken from this letter. This gift is generally known as The Swift Family Collection. Some of this collection of Buddhist palm leaf manuscripts from the mainland Southeast Asia figured prominently in "The Written Word Remains". This exhibition was a display of manuscripts and rare printed books from South and Southeast Asia assembled from libraries, faculty and private collectors. The exhibition was carried out in the Main Library from March to June 1977. After the exhibition, the collection of totally 23 manuscripts was eventually stored at the South and Southeast Asia Library. In 1997, some of them were displayed again in "A Hundred Harvests: The History of Asian Studies at Berkeley" Exhibition. The whole collection was sent to the Library Preservation Department in 2001 to be individually treated and boxed. The process of identification of each manuscript for the purpose of cataloging started in October 2002 and the results are presented here.

Rules or conventions:

Finding Aid prepared using Describing Archives: a Content Standard

Note:

The Library of Congress subject headings are assigned for all twenty-three pieces of palm leaf or paper manuscripts in consultation with Professor Justin McDaniel at the University of California, Riverside. The South/Southeast Asia Library owes special gratitude to Professor McDaniel for his special efforts.

The following gives a physical description of each manuscript. The number in front of the title of the manuscript is the sequence number of the manuscript. This number is written on top of the archival box, in which the manuscript is stored.

Location of this collection:

UC Berkeley, Bancroft Library

University of California, Berkeley, The Bancroft Library

Berkeley, CA 94720-6000, US

Contact:

510-642-6481

bancref-library@berkeley.edu

Website