Bangkok Post – “Faith beautifies everything”

‘If a serious error was made during the incision of characters, the entire page had to be discarded,” explained Em-orn Chawsuan, specialist in ancient languages at the National Library of Thailand (NLT), as she and her colleagues neatly laid out on the table before them the 10 palm-leaf manuscripts that constitute an impressive sample of the extraordinary profusion of Buddhist literary documents that preserve and propagate the Phra That Phanom Chronicle in the intricate Isan dhamma script.

In an austere, spacious room dedicated to historical documents in safekeeping at the NLT, Em-orn seemed to be completely in her element among the permanent exhibits featuring folding-book manuscripts (known colloquially as samut khoi), palm-leaf manuscripts and stone inscriptions.

No stranger to the content (often shrouded in recondite scripts that she meticulously deciphers for…