The Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection contains 11 unique manuscripts from Laos covering topics such as history, literature, religion and especially Buddhism. They are written in different scripts ranging from modern Lao to more esoteric scripts such as Old Lao (Lao Būhān) and Tham. These manuscripts include the oldest dated Lao manuscript in the Library (a major work of Lao literature, the tale of Kālakēt), which was dated to 1832. Besides Lao manuscripts, this page also lists a Northern Thai manuscript of Buddhist prophecies due to the close connections shared by Laos and Northern Thailand before the 20th century and the fact that the Northern Thai manuscript is written in Tham script. For additional information about Lao and related manuscripts please see the Tai manuscript guide and a related blog.

This page also lists several Lao rare books from the colonial-era. These were created at the Buddhist Institute in Vientiane in the 1930s. They include pamphlets from the Luang Prabang prince (and future king) Savang Vatthana's tour of Cambodia in 1935. A related work from 1928 is an early draft of a major colonial-era Lao history, which includes extensive marginalia. These texts were donated to the Library by J. Thomas Rimer, a former Asian Division chief, from the libraries of French colonial-era scholars Paul Mus and Suzanne Karpelès, the latter of whom helped establish the Buddhist Institutes in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Vientiane and Luang Prabang, Laos. The texts are notable for being some of the earliest printed texts using Western printing, including a Lao-language text printed in Laos in 1930.

One notable Northern Thai rare book is the Nangsư Sīlōm fāk tǣ mư̄ang nǭk -- mālā phǭ lǣ mǣ which may be the earliest printed text using Western printing in Chiang Mai. It was printed in 1892 by American Presbyterian missionaries. The text was printed in Tham script.

From the post-colonial Royal Lao Government-era (1945-1975), the collection includes a rare political memoir handwritten by a former prime minister of Laos, Phoui Sananikone (in office 1950-1951, 1958-1959). For more information about this work please see the following blog. There is a related ephemera collection, the USIA Cold War-era Lao collection.

Another rare text in the collection is a Hmong-language primer called "Vis Pheej Ntug." The Hmong have used multiple scripts to write their language, of which four are held by the Library of Congress (including Romanized Popular Alphabet, Pahawh and Lao scripts). The "Vis Pheej Ntug" is written in a unique script, the ntawv puaj txwm script. This was created by a Hmong religious movement called “Kev Cai Is Npis Mis Nus.” The movement was founded by a 19-year-old man named Tswv Mis Nus. He wrote the text and created the script in the years 1962-1963 (3-4 years after the more well-known Pahawh script was created).

For an additional resource on these texts, please consult the following work. The journal cited below links to fuller bibliographic information in the E-Resources Online Catalog.

• Wolfson-Ford, Ryan, "Tai Manuscripts and Early Printed Books at the Library of Congress," Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 107, Pt. 2, (2019): 135-154.