The Medium Is the Message

The Medium Is the Message

Episode #465: In a rich discussion on Buddhist manuscript cultures in Southeast Asia, Professor Volker Grabowsky and Dr. Silpsupa Jaengsawang explore how handwritten texts—especially those on palm leaf and mulberry paper—carry spiritual, cultural, and scholarly significance. They distinguish literature from manuscript study, which emphasizes the importance of materials, format and scribal context as much as the content.

Manuscripts, they argue, are not just vessels of content, but cultural artifacts, and often used as sacred objects in monastic rituals. In Theravāda traditions, monks often preach from memory, andholding a manuscript mainly to symbolically evoke the connection to the Buddha’s teachings. They explain how traditional manuscript forms can also be used to convey secular content—such as histories and political commentary—and sometimes serve as tools of cultural preservation, such as in the Tai community in China.

The scholars highlight the many challenges of preservation due to the deleterious effects of a tropical climate and natural disasters, as well as the social barrier of restricted access to manuscripts for women. Another challenge to preservation is the declining knowledge of traditional scripts in the modern world.

Digitization efforts like the Hamburg-based Digital Library aim to safeguard these texts, but both scholars insist on the need for public engagement. The pair concludes that manuscript traditions persist not as relics but as dynamic forms coexisting with print and digital media—integrating past, present, and future in a living continuum of cultural practice.

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Nothing To Lose But Exploitation

Nothing To Lose But Exploitation

Episode #483: “I particularly look from Marxist feminist perspectives,” says Ma Cheria, a Myanmar-born researcher now living in exile in Chiang Mai. Her work examines how capitalism and patriarchy com...

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Untangling Myth from Memory

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Episode #482: “My main mission, so to speak, is to clarify the differences between the many rumors about Myanmar... the myths going on both inside and outside the country, which are all very much rela...

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No End of History

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Episode #481: Toby Mendel, a lawyer with the Centre for Law and Democracy, has spent over a decade working on freedom of expression and democratic reform in Myanmar. He recalls the Thein Sein years (2...

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No Safe Passage

No Safe Passage

Episode #479: “Thailand is not about people, it's about diversity. People are a very important resource to build a country, no matter where you're from, or who you are, right?” Born in Thailand’s Deep...

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The Space Between

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Episode #478: The second episode in a five-part series, these conversations were recorded at the 16th International Burma Studies Conference at Northern Illinois University, where scholars, students, ...

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Welfare State, DIY

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Episode #477: “I found Myanmar a really interesting case study,” says Gerard McCarthy, a political sociologist and author of Outsourcing the Polity. His work explores how deeply divided,impoverished s...

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The Revolution Will Not Be Meditated

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Episode #476: Minnthonya, a deeply committed Burmese monk, recounts his remarkable journey from traditional monastic education to becoming a key figure in Myanmar's resistance movements. Initially dra...

29 Jan 2h 20min

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