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Tham script


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  • Variants

    • Dhamma script
    • Tua Müang script
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  • Sources

    • found: Work cat.: Sawing Bunčhœ̄m. Khūmư̄ kānrīan kānsō̜n ʻaksō̜n tham ʻIsān, 2004(a textbook on the Tham script historically used in the northeast region of Thailand for Buddhist writings)
    • found: Iijima, Akiko. Preliminary notes on "the cultural region of Tham script manuscripts," in Written cultures in mainland Southeast Asia, 2009:p. 15 (The script referred to as the Tham (Pali: dhamma) script in this essay is one of the Southeast Asian scripts of Indian origin and has been widely used in the northern part of mainland Southeast Asia. It presumably evolved from a preceding script of the Mon, the earlier inhabitants of present-day northern Thailand, and was adapted by the Thai speaking peoples, the latecomers into the region, for their vernaculars since 1465 at the latest, in addition to using it for Pali religious matters. It subsequently spread to present-day Laos, northeast Thailand, the Shan State of Burma and to the Sipsong Panna area in southwest China, and evolved into local variants. Despite the slight differences in their appearances, these derivative scripts, which are known by various names such as Lue, Khun, tham Lao, etc. are characterized by an identical system of writing. Since they all have primarily been employed for religious texts, they can collectively be called the Tham script)
    • found: Penth, Hans. On the history of Thai scripts, in Siam Society newsletter, v. 2, no. 3 (1986):p. 2 (This second borrowing of Mon letters resulted in the well-known Tham script of Lan Na and beyond.) p. 4 (Originally, the Tham script had been the local Mon script of Lamphun or Hariphunchai around 1250-1300 A.D. which the Chiang Mai Thais used for religious matters; the word is derived from "dharma" or "dhamma," pronounced "tham." Very soon, however, the Thais of Chiang Mai adapted that Dhamma or Tham script for their own Thai dialect, and they began to use the Tham script for secular purposes as well. Eventually, they used the Tham script throughout, for both religious and secular purposes, at the expense of Fak Kham which nearly died out)
    • found: Veidlinger, Daniel M. Spreading the Dhamma, 2006:p. 15 of introduction (With few exceptions, Lan Na inscriptions from the earliest times until well into the twentieth century are to be found in one of two scripts, the Fak Kham or the Tham script. The Tham, or Dhamma script, also known as Tua Müang (local letters), is far more rounded and, as its name suggests, was used mainly for religious texts in Pali, but was also adapted for the vernacular. Almost all palm-leaf manuscripts from the region employ this script, as well as many inscribed Buddha images and about 10 percent of lithic inscriptions. The Tua Müang script also developed out of the proto-Thai script but was apparently more heavily influenced by the Mon in use more recently at Haripunjaya)
    • found: Bǣprīan nangsư̄ phāsā bōrān, 2000(on writing systems of ancient Southeast Asian and South Asian languages, including the Tham script of Lānnā (the northern region of Thailand) and the Tham script of ʻĪsān (the northeastern region of Thailand))
    • found: Kannikā Wimonkasēm. Tamrā rīan ʻaksō̜n Thai bōrān, 2009(on three ancient Thai scripts, including Tham used in northern Thailand and Tham used in northeastern Thailand)
    • notfound: Coulmas, Florian. The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems, 1996;The world's writing systems, 1996;A history of writing, 2002;Campbell, George L. The Routledge handbook of scripts and alphabets, 2012;Scriptsource, via WWW, Sept. 8, 2017
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  • Change Notes

    • 2017-09-07: new
    • 2017-12-14: revised
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