Chronicle
ນິທານຂຸນບູຣົມ
Not translated into English
Anonymous · 1520
Synopsis
Thaen, the king of the sky, punishes with a flood the men who disobey him. From giant gourds, born of a vine, the peoples then emerge, and Thaen sends Khun Borom down to earth to govern them and teach them agriculture and weaving. His seven sons, born of his two wives, go off each to found a Tai kingdom, from Luang Prabang to Muang Phuan, with the prohibition against invading one another. The chronicle then follows the kings of Lan Xang, from Fa Ngum to Vixun.
Context
The text belongs to the genre of the nithan, a Lao word drawn from the Pali nidāna. Copied in tham script on latania leaves, it comprises four fascicles: the first three, which stop at the reign of Vixun, are dated to the first quarter of the sixteenth century, the fourth, which goes up to the death of Setthathirat, is later. Auguste Pavie received a manuscript of it in Luang Prabang in 1887, now at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Lao historians reread it in the twentieth century as the account of the birth of their people.
Who it is for
For discovering the account of the origins of the Tai peoples, readable in French in Dominique Menguy's translation.
Prizes and reception
A founding text of the Lao national narrative, it was taken up by the kingdom's historiography as early as the twenties.
Sources for this page 6
The pages consulted to check this page.