Ethnic Encyclopedia on Pattra Leaves

April 2010 witnessed more than 100 scholars from China, Thailand, Laos and Spain gather at Jinghong City, Xishuangbanna Autonomous Prefecture in Yunnan Province in southeastern China. They attended a ceremony in celebration of the publication of “The Complete Works of Chinese Pattra-Leaf Scriptures” in over 90 million words in 114 volumes of 110 titles. This huge project is not only a significant event in the history of the Dai ethnic people in southern China but also a spectacular undertaking in the history of Buddhism in China.

The Dai people have kept their Buddhist scriptures and other documentation on the leaves of pattra trees. All the ancient knowledge of the ethnic people is alive on the leaves. It would be hard to imagine in this era of computer and Internet and online reading that pattra leaves still serve as an important media for writing and reading. This tradition is kept alive in Xishuangbanna, a prominent tourist destination.

Xishuangbanna is home to the Dai ethnic people, tropical forest and Buddhism. Buddhist stupas and temples are a common sight. Buddhist monks and secular believers copy Buddhist sutras onto pattra leaves and read scriptures written on such leaves. This practice is more than tradition. The ethnic people treasure the writing media almost as much as scriptures. The pattra tree has palm-like leaves. It can be seen almost everywhere in Xishuangbanna. The tree is precious because of the leaves. In this part of the province, it rains six months a year. The hard waterproof pattra leaves are an ideal writing media. Words carved on pattra leaves with a stencil knife can be read in hundreds of years and a leave, after processed, can remain in good condition for 1,000 years. The abundance and quality of the leave makes it the most desirable media for writing. It is cheap, it is available everywhere, it does not need printing.

Pattra leaves became a writing media thanks to the introduction of Buddhism. Local records show that the Dai people did not learn to write for a long time. The Dai people committed Buddhism scriptures to memory. The Buddhism canon was passed on from generation to generation by word of mouth. It was in 1277 that a Dai monk first carved the words onto pattra leaves. The Dai monks created their own writing on the basis of Sanskrit and began to translate Sanskrit scriptures into their own language. Pattra leaves are used as paper. They are not just for Buddhist scriptures. They are also for other records and documentation.

There are thousands of volumes of pattra-leaf scriptures existing in Yunnan. Most of them are written in the Dai language whereas the rest is carved in the Laotian language, the Burmese language, the Thailand language and the Sinhalese language.

In the first fifty years of the New China, the national and local governments did their best to preserve the pattra-leaf scriptures. Special institutions came into being in charge of collecting, translating and publishing. In the fifty years, classical literary works in the scriptures were published. Research results on the scriptures were published. Music, dance, films were made on the basis of these treasures. The Dai medicine, one of the four major ethic medicines in China, has been carried on through the pattra-leaf system.

Though there were great achievements in preserving the rare ethnic Dai culture in the 50 years, the local government was sharply aware of two things: most of the documents had not yet been translated into Chinese and many were scattered across villages and not yet collected.

April, 2001 marked a big turning point in the preservation of the pattra-leaf documentation. The prefecture government and Yunnan University jointly held a forum on pattra-leaf scriptures at Jinghong, the prefecture capital of Xishuangbanna. A keynote speech entitled “A Synopsis of the Value of Pattra-Leaf Scripture of China” was sensational. The synopsis, for the first time, emphasized the importance of the pattra-leaf scripture, not merely as a precious cultural heritage of the Dai ethnic people, but as a treasure of national magnitude. After the forum, the synopsis was printed and distributed, paving the way to the establishment of the project of “The Complete Works of Chinese Pattra-Leaf Scriptures”.

This project was designed to translate the Buddhist scriptures and other documentation carved on pattra leaves into Chinese and publish them in 100 books. The project was sponsored by the Xishuangbanna Prefecture Government, financed by Hanhui Trade Company and published by the People’s Press. After nine years, the Dai encyclopedia was finally printed.

Each text in the complete works includes a photograph of a manuscript scanned directly from original leaves, the text in the old Dai script, the text in the new Dai script, the text in the international phonetic system, the verbatim Chinese translation, and the free Chinese translation.

Experts say that the greatest contribution of this project is that now China has Agama, a major sutra of Hinayana Buddhism preserved on the Dai pattra-leaves in Xishuangbanna.