Tossaphon Sripum

The Pali and Pali-vernacular non-classical jatakas—texts composed by local poets and modelled on the canonical Pali “Jātakatthavaṇṇanā”—in Central Thailand and neighboring Tai-speaking polities represent a critical mechanism of vernacularization, a process through which cosmopolitan religious traditions were adapted to local social and political conditions. This monograph examines the dual function of these texts: as a literary genre mediating between Buddhist ideals and Indigenous beliefs, and as a political instrument shaping pre-modern Thai/Tai conceptualizations of authority. While the Pali “Jātakatthavaṇṇanā” provided the doctrinal core, non-classical jatakas situated the Bodhisattva within local kinship-based political structures, affective landscapes, and ideals of legitimate rulership, revealing how Buddhist narrative served as a vehicle for the articulation of regional political culture.