A unique Mon funeral book located at Wat Koh temple in Samut Sakhon, Thailand, has been fully digitised through the Endangered Archives Programme at the British Library, London (reference no. EAP1432/1/18). It contains text passages from the Parivara, a part of the Vinaya-pitaka, written in Mon script. This uniquely illustrated manuscript dates from the 19th or early 20th century. The paintings in central Thai style of the Rattanakosin period (1782- ) depict funeral scenes and practices of morbid meditations to highlight the importance of caring for the dead in Buddhist Southeast Asia.


Scene of Buddhist monks in morbid meditation with corpses set in a natural environment, including a large lizard. EAP 1432-1-18 f.96

This folding book consists of 97 folios with black lacquered covers made from mulberry bark paper, and it contains text in Pali language written in black ink. The text opens with the phrase "yante bhagavatā jānatā passatā ’arahatā samma sambuddhena" and relates to the Buddhist text Parivara. It is the last part of the Vinaya-pitaka (monastic discipline) of the Pali Buddhist canon of the Theravada tradition. Mon script is used by people of the Mon ethnic group in Thailand and Burma (Myanmar). Mon language was the lingua franca in the Mon kingdoms in mainland Southeast Asia, e.g. Dvaravati, Haripunjaya, Thaton and Hanthawaddy, from the 7th to 18th century. It was also in use in the Burmese Kingdom of Pagan (9th to 13th century).


First folio of text in Mon script between decorative borders with floral pattern. EAP 1432-1-18 f.4

While the text in this manuscript provides analyses and interpretations of Buddhist monastic rules and offences, the illustrations reflect on death, including violent and untimely death, and funeral traditions. The painting style follows the tradition of 19th-century central Thailand suggesting that the painter was trained in Thailand (formerly Siam). The folio shown below depicts the tragic event of a woman being killed by a tiger. She may have been collecting fruit in a forest as her basket and a knife are scattered on the ground. A man with a machete is seen making a gesture of grief - possibly her partner or a relative shocked about the woman's violent death.


Scene of the violent death of a woman. EAP 1432-1-18 f.3

The following painting refers to the practice of corpse meditation which goes back to the earliest teachings of Buddhism. It is based on a text on "nine charnel ground observations" about meditations on the nine states of decay of the human body. Illustrations of corpse meditation often follow a similar structure: there are bloated, blue or festering corpses on the ground, usually with bulging eyes and a painful facial expression. Stray dogs or wild animals can be seen gnawing on one corpse which is wrapped with a bamboo mat. Next to the corpses are monks, one sitting in meditation and another transferring merit to the deceased by holding the pamsukula cloth. This cloth is made from discarded material to be used as a dust-heap cloth in funeral rites. Symbolising humility and detachment from worldly luxuries, it is often transformed into a robe for monks practising Kammathana (insight) and morbid meditations.


Two monks in corpse meditation, one of them transferring merit to the deceased by holding the pamsukula cloth. EAP 1432-1-18 f.10

The illustration on the folio shown below is a continuation of reflections on the decay of the human body. Scattered on the ground are three bodies and a skeleton, with a lizard gnawing on the woman's body. Blood emerging from the mouths of the dead woman and her baby suggests that they may have been victims of an attack or conflict, or a deadly disease. As before, next to the bodies are monks in meditation and holding the pamsukula cloth.


Another scene of two monks in corpse meditation, one of them transferring merit to the deceased by holding the pamsukula cloth. EAP 1432-1-18 f.30

The uniqueness of this manuscript is owed to its rare illustrations of funeral traditions. The next painting depicts grieving people attending a vigil beside the body of a deceased person. Two men are placing the body, wrapped in white clothes, on a mat before four monks. Traditionally, four monks would chant text passages from the Abhidhamma and the sacred syllables ‘ci ce ru ni’ (representing heart, mental concepts, form and Nirvana), and often they would recite the legend of the monk Phra Malai during the wake on the night following a person's passing. Phra Malai is said to have travelled to the Buddhist heavens and hells, and the story is a reminder to make merit and do good deeds while one still can.


Scene of a vigil with four monks chanting sacred Buddhist texts. EAP 1432-1-18 f.67

On the following folio one can see another step in the funeral procedures: two men are cleansing the face of the deceased with fresh coconut water, which is regarded as the purest liquid which has never come in contact with the impure. It is a symbol of hope for the deceased to be reborn in a fortunate existence. The sacred space is protected by colourful curtains and a canopy (pedan) with a protective yantra drawing to keep evil away.


Cleansing the face of the deceased. EAP 1432-1-18 f.76

The next step of funeral procedures is depicted in the scene below, with four men who are placing the deceased in a coffin. After the cleansing ritual, the body is wrapped in white cloth before the deceased goes on a final journey, the cremation. In the Buddhist tradition, the body is seen as a temporary vessel for the soul or life essences, and cremation is considered a way to release the soul from the body, allowing it to move on to the next life. The illustration also shows a man kneeling on the floor, with offering trays by his side. He is gesturing towards another man with a prisoner's cangue and a machete to stop him from entering the sacred space.


Placing the body of the deceased in a coffin. EAP 1432-1-18 f.84

The last illustration below depicts the cremation. The coffin, placed on an elaborately decorated stand made from fresh bamboo, has been set on fire. Apart from the funeral assistants, everyone else is dressed in white clothes, symbolising purity and detachment from worldly possessions. They are mourning family members and friends of the deceased. A Brahmin priest and three men with an offering tray and a water vessel are preparing for the water pouring ritual to transfer merit to the deceased and their ancestors. Three women and a child have shaved their hair to show respect to the deceased, and to begin the grieving process which signifies a shift from worldly concerns to spiritual contemplation.


Illustration of a cremation with mourners, a priest and funeral assistants. EAP 1432-1-18 f.91

This manuscript has been digitised as part of the Endangered Archives Project Recalling a trans-local past: digitising Mon palm-leaf manuscripts of Thailand. Part 2 (EAP1432) led by Dr Patrick McCormick. Over 900 manuscripts with about 38,000 folios, including 35 illustrated manuscripts, have been digitised and made available online to give free access to anyone who wishes to study these rare and largely under-researched materials.

Further reading and references
Igunma, Jana: Thai funeral rites and ceremonies (British Library, Asian and African Studies blog 2017)
Igunma, Jana: Morbid meditations in Thai manuscript art (British Library, Asian and African Studies blog 2014)
McCormick, Patrick: Recalling a Trans-local Past: Thailand’s Mon-language Manuscripts (15/02/2025) (SEA Junction, 2025)

Jana Igunma, Henry Ginsburg Curator for Thai, Lao and Cambodian

The previous blog post in this series on the provenance of the Colebrooke Collection of Sanskrit manuscripts in the British Library related how Colebrooke, along with the pandits Citrapati and Bābūrāma, became entangled in accusations of corruption. This final blog post evaluates the Colebrooke Collection.

Colebrooke arrived back in Britain in 1815 and devoted most of the remainder of his life to scholarly pursuits. Accompanying him was his collection of manuscripts which, in 1819, he offered to the directors of the East India Company for their library in London. The directors accepted Colebrooke’s offer, and sent a letter expressing their gratitude:

Sir,   
I have had the honour to convey to you by command of the Court of Directors of the East India Company their thanks, for the valuable collection of Oriental manuscripts which you obligingly presented for their acceptance and which, they have ordered to be placed in the Library at this House under the denomination of the “Colebrooke Collection.”   
I have now the honour to express to you the wish of the Court to have your bust for the purpose of being placed in the Company’s Library as an appropriate accompaniment to that Collection.
(Letter from the Court of Directors of the East India Company to Colebrooke, 13 May 1819. IOR/E/1/255/633).

Colebrooke assented, and the bust was executed by Sir Francis Chantrey (1781–1841). At the time of this commission, Chantrey had built a reputation as Britain’s leading portrait sculptor. Among the people he had depicted in portrait busts were famous figures of the time, including Horatio Nelson, William Pitt, James Watt, and Sir Joseph Banks. He had also completed several major public commissions, including monuments in St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, and a statue of King George III which was installed in the Guildhall, London.

This was not the first commission Chantrey had received from the East India Company, and he would collaborate with them throughout his career, producing statues and monuments to prominent Company representatives for display in both Britain and India. This was therefore a high honour for Colebrooke, and testifies to the esteem in which he was held by the directors.

Henry Thomas Colebrooke, draped bust. Sculpted by Francis Chantrey in 1820. British Library, Foster 435.

In 1982, the collections of the India Office Library (as it was then called), were deposited with the British Library. When the BL was moved to its present site, in St Pancras, the bust of Colebrooke was placed at the entrance to the Asian and African Reading Room, where it stands today.

In contrast, when it comes to the pandits who had originally produced the manuscripts in the Colebrooke Collection, we are left without any visual record. Indeed, it is difficult to find portraits of any pandits from this period, and those we do have rarely depict identifiable individuals.

Watercolour of a man with inscription reading ‘Pundit.’ British Library, Add Or 999.

For example, this watercolour painting, with the inscription ‘pundit’, was produced in Calcutta in 1805. Images like this were produced by local artists for Western patrons, and were mostly taken back to Britain. This is from a set of sixteen paintings, each one featuring a different personality, including a Muslim ascetic, a water carrier, a dancing girl, a Georgian man, and several soldiers. As the variety of this list suggests, these were not paintings of specific individuals, but rather general types or occupations of people who were considered novel or interesting to a Western audience. We are therefore left with only generalised portraits of ‘typical’ pandits, and little sense of them as individuals.

In these blogs we have been able to recover something of the stories, and even occasionally the voices, of two of Colebrooke’s pandits: Citrapati and Bābūrāma. They lived during a period when the EIC was trying to establish itself as a competent government in South Asia and were in need of pandits to teach them the local languages and customs, and to help them establish systems of administration adapted to local needs. This brought opportunities for pandits in the service of the new rulers. However, as the case of Citrapati shows, their position was insecure. Pandits were often distrusted by the British, and in an atmosphere of scandal and suspicion, they could easily be made a scapegoat.

Two years after arriving back in Britain, Colebrooke published Algebra, with Arithmetic and Mensuration, from the Sanscrit of Brahmegupta and Bhàscara, a work based in large part on a manuscript first copied for him by Citrapati in 1790. Citrapati and Bābūrāma had joined Colebrooke early in his career and were responsible for collecting, copying, and compiling a large part of his collection. Bābūrāma had also acted as librarian for Colebrooke, and produced the first catalogue of the collection.

Figures like Citrapati and Bābūrāma are central to the stories behind many of the BL’s Asian and African collections, and it is important that these stories are uncovered and given the prominence they deserve. There are certainly challenges involved - unlike their British counterparts, pandits were not commemorated for their collecting or scholarship, and they did not have the status of those, like Colebrooke, whose voices and activities were regularly recorded in the official archive. However, traces do remain. In particular, the India Office Records and Private Papers contain a wealth of material, through which we can piece together something of the backgrounds, voices, and achievements of these figures. Pursuing this sort of provenance research is vital if we are to have a more complete picture of the British Library’s collections.

This is the fifth in a series of five blog posts on the provenance of the Colebrooke collection of Sanskrit manuscripts in the British Library. The first post introduced the Colebrooke family and the East India Company; the second post focused on Colebrooke's manuscripts on Hindu law; the third on Colebrooke and the pandits; while the fourth considered accusations of corruption against Colebrooke and his pandits.

Works Consulted
Colebrooke, Thomas Edward, The Life of H. T. Colebrooke (London: Trübner, 1873).
Letter from the Court of Directors of the East India Company to H. T. Colebrooke, 13 May 1819. British Library, IOR/E/1/255/633.
Francis Legatt Chantrey (artist), draped bust of Henry Thomas Colebrooke, 1820. British Library, Foster 435.
Watercolour of a man with inscription reading ‘Pundit.’ British Library, Add Or 999 (Part of a set of sixteen drawings bound into a volume depicting occupations in Bengal, c. 1805. British Library, Add Or 993-1008

David Woodbridge, Provenance Researcher Sanskrit Collections (REAP pilot project 2023-2025)

Historical background: Mamluk and Mongol military rivalries in the 13th century 

The Mongol army’s capture of the ‘Abbasid capital of Baghdad in 1258 was a pivotal moment in Middle Eastern history. After the dust of this battle had settled, the pillaging and destruction of the city’s libraries became a literary trope, amplified in Arab historiography and cultural memory. 

One of the lesser-known as aspects of this famous conquest is the participation of the army of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. Anticipating the Mongols’ dominance, the Kingdom had entered into an unequal political alliance – more accurately a vassalage – with them, against their mutual enemies, the newly-established Mamluk rulers of Egypt. The Armenian king Hethum I (1213-1270) himself travelled to Mongolia to pledge his services and be recognised for his loyalty.

Hethum I (seated) in the Mongol court of Karakorum, 'receiving the homage of the Mongols', from a manuscript copy of La flor des estoires d'Orient (Fleur des histoires de la terre d'Orient), by Hayton/Hethum of Corycus (nephew of King Hethum I of Armenia), composed in 1307 CE (British Library Add MS 17971, f. 23r).

Equine medicine in war and peace 

Against this historical backdrop, a text recently catalogued for the British Library-Qatar Foundation Project in two copies (Or. 9823, dating to c. 15th century; and Or. 3133, copied 1854), contains historical perspectives on the looting of Baghdad’s caliphal library and the complex nature of Armenian political relationships in the 13th century. On a more intimate level, it also hints at the tale of a nameless Armenian surgeon; an otherwise anonymous prisoner of war whose linguistic and medical prowess gave him a tiny footnote in the history of equestrian medicine in the Middle East.  

This text, elaborately entitled The Matching Pearls Concerning the Knowledge of Precedents (al-Durr al-muṭābiq fī ʻilm al-sawābiq) in Or. 9823 and Formulary of equine medical science (Aqrābādhīn fī ʻilm ṭibb al-khayl) in Or. 3133, is a manual on the characteristics of horses and the treatment of equine diseases and injuries, in 182 or 183 short chapters.  

The work’s preamble and the beginning of the first chapter relate piecemeal a convoluted and rather confusing transmission history. This account, which varies in small but important details in different extant copies, explains that the text had originally been encountered in the Armenian language, and contained many pharmacological terms that could not be understood, until ‘a surgeon from among the captives with understanding of the terminology was found, who translated it into Arabic – that man was valued and expert in his craft.’

Introduction and start of first chapter of al-Durr al-muṭābiq fī ʻilm al-sawābiq (British Library Or. 3133, f. 1v).

The text goes on to state that ‘the Armenian king, in the service of the [now-]vanquished enemy [the Mongols], had taken the Arabic book from the library of the caliphal treasury in Baghdad, and translated it into the Armenian pen (‘qalam’, in Or 9823, or ‘took it to the Armenian realm [‘iqlīm’, in Or 3133] […] during the reign of Baybars’ (Mamluk sultan, ruled 1260-77).  

(British Library Or. 9823, f. 3r) 

The books of horsemanship and characteristics of horses  

The importance of horses to the Mongols and Mamluks, as to most medieval societies, and therefore the desirability of having the best possible understanding of their care and breeding, can hardly be understated. The wealth of Arabic manuals on horsemanship, equestrian medicine, and on animal care in general copied over many centuries makes this clear. 

According to the version of the Armenian translator-surgeon’s explanation related in the text’s preface, it is a compilation of the tried and tested hippiatric knowledge of a certain wise individual, Muḥammad ibn al-Khalīfah [‘son of the Caliph’] Yaʻqūb. Given the content and structure of the Formulary, this name appears to be a corruption of Muḥammad ibn Yaʻqūb ibn Akhī Ḥizām, a famous horse trainer who, over 350 years earlier in Baghdad, had worked for the ʻAbbasid caliph al-Mu‘taḍid (ruled 892-902), and was the author of a voluminous and highly influential early Arabic hippiatric treatise, The book of horsemanship and characteristics of horses [or: and veterinary science] (Kitāb al-furūsīyah wa-shiyāt al-khayl [wa-al-bayṭarah]). 

The horse's good (ff. 22v-23r, left) and bad (ff. 62v-63r, right) points, from a copy of Kitāb al-bayṭarah, an abridgement of Kitāb al-furūsīyah wa-l-bayṭarah by Muḥammad ibn Yaʻqūb Ibn Akhī Ḥizām, attributed to Abū Muḥammad Aḥmad ibn ‘Atīq al-Azdī, dated 1223 CE. (British Library Or. 1523)

Consisting of two main parts subdivided into numerous short bābs, over the centuries Ibn Akhī Ḥizām’s Kitāb al-furūsīyah was abbreviated, edited, and translated under a wide variety of titles, with the name of its author frequently appearing in corrupted forms.i The text in Or. 9823 and Or. 3133 seems to be one of these spin-off works. But how did this Armenian surgeon – it is uncertain whether his expertise was as a horse veterinarian – find himself in the situation of back-translating the text into Arabic?  

Other names are also mentioned, further confusing the picture: a ‘philosopher’ named Saʻd al-Dīn ibn al-Ẓāhir al-ʻAjamī (‘the foreigner’ or ‘the Persian’) who participated in the composition of the text, and two individuals, Maḥbūb and his companion Abū al-Faraj, who translated it into Armenian (although the BL copies describe them working ‘from’ Armenian, this does not make sense, and another more detailed copy (Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Ms. Orient. A 2087, f. 8v), has them working ‘into’ Armenian). 

 

Translating on the battlefield 

After repelling the Mongols in 1260 at the battle of ʻAyn Jalūt, the Mamluks retaliated against the Mongols’ Armenian allies with a punitive campaign culminating in August 1266 at the Battle of Meri, where the Armenian army was defeated, the land pillaged, and many civilians subsequently enslaved. Could this have been the occasion of the text’s and/or the surgeon’s capture? Someone with medical skill and linguistic aptitude would have been a useful captive for the triumphant Mamluks, and a useful manual on horse care carried by a soldier or by the army’s veterinary retinue could have been part of the booty. 

However, the introduction to Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Ms. Orient. A 2087 additionally mentions the second battle of Homs of 19 Rajab 680 AH/ 3 November 1281 CE, when Mamluk forces under Sultan Qālāwūn (ruled 1279-90) again defeated the Mongols along with their Armenian military supporters. The Gotha copy describes how the Mamluk commander (and later, sultan) Lājīn assembled a group of Armenian prisoners to translate the book, but they could not understand all its pharmaceutical terminology, whereupon the surgeon was found (f. 2r). 

The Battle of Homs of 1281 in La flor des estoires d'Orient (Fleur des histoires de la terre d'Orient). (Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale MS 886, f. 27v [detail]).

 

Prisoner of history: the captured surgeon 

Either way, this text conjures a melancholy picture of the unfortunate surgeon, imprisoned in an encampment on the plains of Syria. forcibly thrust into the spotlight and obliged to transmit to his captors the secrets of this text on horses. However, probably unbeknown to them all at that moment, it had originally been composed in the same language it was now being translated into.  

And despite the inevitable realisation that the text was not a source of new knowledge but belonged to an already well-established tradition, the story of its transmission was clearly considered remarkable enough, even at the time, to have been preserved throughout its subsequent scribal history, right down to 1854, when Or 3133 was transcribed. 

Amuletic squares in British Library Or. 3133, f. 33r (left) and in British Library Or. 1523, f. 110v (right). 

Jenny Norton-Wright 
Arabic Scientific Manuscripts Curator, British Library / Qatar Foundation Partnership 

 

Bibliography 

Dum-Tragut, Jasmine, Kilikische Heilkunst für Pferde – Das Vermächtnis der Armenier (Hildesheim: Editorial Olms Verlag, 2005)  

Hayton/Hethum of Corycus, La Flor des estoires de la terre d’Orient, esp Book III: 'On the Tatar nation', in Recueil des historiens des Croisades, Documents Armeniens, vol. 2, edited by Jean Dardel (1906; Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1841-1906), pp. 147-219. English translation available at: https://www.attalus.org/armenian/hetum3.htm#26. 

al-Sarraf, Shihab, 'Mamluk Furūsīyah Literature and Its Antecedents', Mamluk Studies Review 8 (2004), pp. 141-200 (esp. pp. 148-52) 

Sbath, Paul, 'Manuscrit arabe sur la pharmacopée hippiatrique', Bulletin de l'Institut d'Egypte 14 (1931-2), pp. 79-81 and plates i-iii 

Shehada, Housni Alkhateeb, Mamluks and Animals: Veterinary Medicine in Medieval Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 118-20 and 169-70 

 

See also the research project Encounter in the Corpus of the Horse: Cultural Transfer and Knowledge Transfer between the Christian West and the Muslim East in Late Mediaeval Armenian Equine Manuals (Begegnung im Körper des Pferdes. Kulturtransfer und Wissensvermittlung zwischen christlichem Westen und muslimischem Osten in spätmittelalterlichen armenischen Pferdebüchern), at the University of Salzburg (2022-25).