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This page lists 88 manuscripts from Thailand from the Southeast Asian Rare Book Collection. These include manuscripts from different parts of Thailand: including Central Thailand, Northern Thailand and Northeast Thailand. The texts are in different scripts and languages. Please see each catalog record for more detail. Many subjects are covered including Buddhism, literature, medicine, astrology, history and more. For a more descriptive treatment of these manuscripts please see the Tai manuscripts guide and a related blog.
This page also lists rare books from Thailand, including many Christian missionary works. There are 29 titles listed on the "Thai Christian rare books" tab on the Thai rare books box of this page. These date from 1839 to 1950, spanning an important time in modern Thai history. The earliest works date to within a few years of the introduction of Western printing to Thailand by missionaries. The works range from popular texts and catechism to translations of the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible.
For rare Thai books, the collection includes several early dictionaries such as an early example of a printed Thai-English language lexicon, possibly intended for use by Western merchants to conduct business in the mid-nineteenth century (which has been digitized and is available to view online). The collection also includes the first Western-style printing of the Tripitaka in Thai script, which was donated to the Library in 1905 by King Chulalongkorn.
Notable ephemera collections include the Sērī Thai collection and the USIA Cold War-era Thai collection. The Sērī Thai collection includes hundreds of pages of political documents, radio broadcast transcripts and works on politics and political fiction. It was donated by Kenneth Landon, US expert on Thailand and former missionary to Thailand. Landon worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and was involved in the Sērī Thai movement.
For additional resources on these texts, please consult the following work. The journal cited below links to fuller bibliographic information in the E-Resources Online Catalog.
| Title | Call Number | Date |
|---|---|---|
| Communism or Freedom series, USIA Cold War-era Thai collection, 1965-1968 (catalog record, online version) | SEA MSS 5 | 1965-1968 |
| Explanatory notice on the display of ancient warfare, representing the attack of the Burmese stronghold by the Siamese during their expedition against Tavoy in the year B.E. 2330 (1787 A.D.) / by the Committee of the Military Tournament for the Year B.E. 2465 | DS33 SEA Deck 50 Cage 7 | 1922 |
| Sērī Thai Collection | uncatalogued | 1940s |
| [Thai invitation to the palace, for H.M. Smith] | uncatalogued | 1936 |
| [Thai language letters and diplomatic notes of John Barrett, US ambassador to Thailand, 1894-1898] (see further MSS papers and P&P holdings) | uncatalogued | [1894-1898] |
| [Thai script metal moveable type] | uncatalogued | n.d. |
| USIA Cold War-era Thai collection, 1951-1969 | SEA MSS 5 | 1951-1969 |
