Abstract
In this thesis, I analyse a group of texts which all share the same core Pāli text, called the “Dhammakāya Gāthā” but have different writing styles and textual structure. I argue that these texts are best understood as forming a single textual family, which I call the Dhammakāya corpus. They appear on various documents including palm-leaf manuscripts, leporellos, inscriptions, and printed books. The Dhammakāya Gāthā has three parts. The first part (“personification”) identifies the knowledge and qualities or virtues of the Buddha with physical attributes of his body. This part, importantly, resembles the Thai Manorathapūraṇī located in the Sāgatatheravatthu. The second part (“glorification”) consists of verses in praise of the Buddha’s resplendent body qua the dhammakāya. The third section (“summarising”) exhorts those in the yogāvacara lineage—practitioners of spiritual discipline, i.e., meditators—to recollect the dhammakāya.
A number of documents containing the Dhammakāya Gāthā, recorded in Khom, Tham and Mūl and Thai scripts, have been found in Central Thailand, Southern Thailand, North-eastern Thailand (Isan), Northern Thailand (Lanna) and Cambodia. Many of these are identified for the first time in this thesis. The Dhammakāya corpus contains a wide range of content including the Dhammakāya core and its paratexts (i.e., the commentarial exegesis, annotations, and ritual instructions), using a broad range of languages such as Pāli, Thai, Lao, Lanna, and Khmer. The earliest datable version of the Dhammakāya Gāthā is the “Braḥ Dhammakāya inscription,” an engraved stone slab from the Stūpa of Wat Suea, Phitsanulok, Thailand, dated to 1549 CE.
In this PhD thesis, I transliterate, translate, and examine the texts in the Dhammakāya corpus in order to understand the doctrinal meanings underlying the Dhammakāya Gāthā and demonstrate how the text circulates, forms, develops, transmits, and functions to fulfil parts of the core practices of Theravāda adherents within the cross-cultural sphere of Tai-Khmer Buddhism, including meditation, consecration rites for Buddha images and Stūpas, commentarial exegesis, and protective chanting. I also use an ethnographic approach to determine the social life of the Dhammakāya texts, which are used during the ritual consecration of Buddha images and Stūpas in Central Thailand, Isan, Northern Thailand, and Cambodia.
I argue that close analysis of the texts as a single corpus enables us to identify the intertextuality that links the Dhammakāya text, other Buddhist texts, and Buddhists together. It also helps us to understand the formation, development, circulation, and transmission of the text through a broad range of Buddhist practices and manuscript culture within the more limited historical context from the Ayutthaya to the present.