Man.galatthadiipanii

Dear Phra Yuttadhammo,

Sorry, but the Mangalatthadiipanii is not a modern work, but a late
medieaval work written by Siri Mangala in the Lanna Kingdom in 1524.

When things become part of the Asian Buddhist traditions, the borders
between what is canonical and non canonical often blur. Thailand,
Cambodia and Laos (i.e. the countries part of old Siam) seem to have a
fairly strong apocryphal, or what Ole Pind calls a pseudepigraphical,
tradition, but it also exists to a lesser degree in Burma and Sri Lanka.

Many people here and in Thailand and Burma,even some learned monks,
actually believe that the Buddha came flying to their countries,
although the Canon and modern scholarship do not support this in the
least. To question these beliefs can meet strong resistance. A hilareous
example is the one about the German monk living in Burma who was
discussing the Jaataka stories with a Burmese monk. When the German monk
questioned the literal truth of the image of hare on the moon (found in
the jaataka in which the  hare/bodhisatta sacrificed himself by jumping
into the fire, this being so noble that his image appeared on the moon,
etc.) the Burmese monk accused him of harboring wrong views...

Best wishes,
                     Bh. Nyanatusita

>Honestly, I don't think it goes quite that far in this case; because of
>the scholastic background of the monk in question, I would bet that both
>quotes most likely come from one or another "lakh sutra" (foundation
>text) for the Thai Pali exams.  It makes sense, therefore, that the one
>quote exists in the Mangalatthadipani, because it is used as a lakh
>sutra for level 9 pali studies.  If I am correct, it is a modern work by
>a Lanna scholar, and supposedly takes parts of the tipitaka and puts
>them together in a cohesive fashion, based on the maha-mangala sutta.  I
>am surprised that the quote is in the Mangalatthadipani but not in the
>tipitaka itself, since it is put in the mouth of the Lord Buddha.  I
>can't imagine the author of the mangalatthadipani making it up in the
>modern day and getting away with it.  Unless he took it in turn from one
>of the more apocryphal Thai texts.
> 
>
nyanatusita wrote:

>>Dear Yuttadhammo,
>>
>>There are many Pali texts around in Thailand which are not part of the
>>Pali Canon and are not found on the CSCD, such as apocryphal jaatakas
>>(Pa~n~naasa-jaataka, etc), apocryphal suttas, works dealing with relics,
>>Thai subcommentaries called yojanaas, anthologies, etc. Quite a few of
>>these texts are little known and some maybe even unknown to western
>>scholarship. The quotations you  give are likely to come from some of
>>those texts.
>>Best wishes,
>>                         Bh. Nyanatusita
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