Spreading the Dhamma is a significant contribution to Southeast Asian and Buddhist history, as well as to Thai historiography. We can analyze the specific innovations and questions raised by this study in terms of the historical picture put forward and the methodological approach advanced.

Daniel M. Veidlinger's historical picture offers up the following main points. Prior to the fifteenth century, the Lan Na region in northern Thailand was dominated by an oral culture; this culture was retained well into Lan Na's political and Buddhist “golden age” during the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. When Pali and then vernacular written texts appeared on the scene, they did so without eclipsing the importance of the oral culture. Moreover, the engine for the emerging written culture was to be found not in the vestiges of the Mon heritage in the region, nor in a fourteenth-century infusion of Sinhalese monastic orthodoxy. Rather, the engine was to be found in a second infusion of Sinhalese orthodoxy, during the early portions of the fifteenth century. The particular araññavāsī (forest-dwellers) monks associated with this second infusion placed a stronger emphasis on writing that appealed to kings and others hoping to enhance their political and social position. Strikingly, as the written, primarily elite culture emerged, it was not dominated by the use of manuscripts for study purposes. And, while devotional concerns such as the cultivation of merit and wisdom were associated with manuscript production, the written culture of the time did not focus on anything resembling the “cult of the book” found in other places in Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. Finally, the turmoil of Burmese rule (sixteenth to eighteenth century) seriously disrupted, though did not completely wipe out, Lan Na's oral and literary cultures.

In this historical picture, Veidlinger's attention to kings, their quest for power through Buddhism, and their efforts to draw on the written efforts of monks affiliated with Sri Lankan orthodoxy is not new. What is innovative is his effort to suggest that (1) where we would expect to find evidence of a robust written culture, we in fact do not; (2) the written culture that did exist during Lan Na's golden age was quite distinct from other Buddhist written cultures; and (3) there was simultaneously a rich oral culture in the region, functioning in various ways at various levels of society.

Methodologically, Veidlinger draws on Pali texts such as the Cāmadevīvaṃsa (composed in Haripuñjaya early in the fifteenth century by a monk from a Mon-derived order) and the Jinakālamālīpakaraṇaṃ (composed in Chiang Mai in the early sixteenth century and a product of a monk associated with the second infusion from Sri Lanka), vernacular Thai chronicles that fall under the categories of tamnam and phongsawadan, and epigraphical and archaeological evidence. In the process, he correlates close readings and interpretations of Pali terms and phrases (e.g., dhammaṃ uggaṇhi, “he took up the Dhamma”) and epithets (e.g., dhammadhara, “bearer of the dhamma,” and tipiṭakadhara, “bearer of the tipiṭaka”) with observations derived from scribal colophons as well as with other data about the “outsides” of the sources under scrutiny (e.g., the lack of evidence for libraries in Lan Na at particular points in its history). The methodological correlations lead him to remark, “[i]n the case of Lan Na, I will show that the general canvas is one of an oral society, on which the literary aspects stand out like dashes of color” (p. 18).

I am most compelled by the evidence that Veidlinger supplies for the distinctive character of Lan Na's written culture; in this regard, chapter 6, which looks especially but not only at scribal colophons, is an especially worthwhile read. As in other portions of the book, it is striking that seemingly routine information provided in manuscript colophons, and correlated with other information “on the ground,” is as revealing as it is. Yet the material explored in chapter 6 also allows Veidlinger to say the most about what spreading the Dhamma itself (rather than one's political power) entailed at the time.

Veidlinger's method is, as a whole, extremely helpful for orienting the reader to the world of northern Thai manuscripts and the technologies associated with them. However, I am less compelled by the evidence that Veidlinger's method furnishes for the transition in Lan Na from an oral culture to a culture still dominated by orality but increasingly leaning toward a mix of oral and written expression. Much of the difficulty that Veidlinger faces lies in the vast and complex array of languages, social groups, and polities over course of the historical period under consideration. And much of the difficulty lies in the linguistic complexities of the written materials that are the bedrock of his interpretations. Heavier validation is required to substantively defend his claims.

That being said, the most vexing and important historical and methodological questions raised by Veidlinger's study are whether it is possible to plot the transition from an oral culture to a mix of oral and written cultures as specifically as he does, and whether it is possible to do so in a way that allows the researcher to provide insight into the differences and interplay, if any, between and within those cultures. Veidlinger has pointed us toward some possibilities involved in the Southeast Asian case; it remains the task of future scholarship to move the state of inquiry further.