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41-407: The festival is usually celebrated in the preaching hall or sala of the local temple or wat , beginning early in the morning and lasting until midnight. The festival usually takes place yearly for three full days between February and April, during the fourth lunar month. The festival includes a procession of one thousand balls of sticky rice to the temple to symbolize each verse of the long chant.,;

82-411: A dialect continuum . Thai language is spoken by over 69 million people (2020). Moreover, most Thais in the northern (Lanna) and the northeastern (Isan) parts of the country today are bilingual speakers of Central Thai and their respective regional dialects because Central Thai is the language of television, education, news reporting, and all forms of media. A recent research found that the speakers of

123-565: A second language among the country's minority ethnic groups from the mid-late Ayutthaya period onward. Ethnic minorities today are predominantly bilingual, speaking Thai alongside their native language or dialect. Standard Thai is classified as one of the Chiang Saen languages—others being Northern Thai , Southern Thai and numerous smaller languages, which together with the Northwestern Tai and Lao-Phutai languages, form

164-533: A four-way distinction among stops and affricates . The maximal four-way occurred in labials ( /p pʰ b ʔb/ ) and denti-alveolars ( /t tʰ d ʔd/ ); the three-way distinction among velars ( /k kʰ ɡ/ ) and palatals ( /tɕ tɕʰ dʑ/ ), with the glottalized member of each set apparently missing. The major change between old and modern Thai was due to voicing distinction losses and the concomitant tone split . This may have happened between about 1300 and 1600 CE, possibly occurring at different times in different parts of

205-475: A sort of recitation of a text called "The Ten Thousand Malay" found in printed Lao version of the Vessantara Jataka. On the morning of the third day, after a ceremony in which respect is paid to the tevada who are asked to witness the merit-making ceremony, the procession of 1000 lumps of rice takes place without just the faithful and no monks. The three-day celebration focuses on monks who recite

246-465: A story of Upagupta. In the story, in the month of Sraban , the monk was at sleep in Mathura, when Vasavdatta - the city's diva or courtesan trips over and notices the monk. Enchanted by the handsome appearance of the monk, Vasavdatta invites him to go with her to her house. But Upagupta tells her that he cannot go with her at this point; when time comes, he will go. After a passage of seven months, when

287-530: A syllable that formerly began with a voiceless consonant (including glottalized stops). An additional complication is that formerly voiceless unaspirated stops/affricates (original /p t k tɕ ʔb ʔd/ ) also caused original tone 1 to lower, but had no such effect on original tones 2 or 3. The above consonant mergers and tone splits account for the complex relationship between spelling and sound in modern Thai. Modern "low"-class consonants were voiced in Old Thai, and

328-576: Is a Tai language of the Kra–Dai language family spoken by the Central Thai , Mon , Lao Wiang , Phuan people in Central Thailand and the vast majority of Thai Chinese enclaves throughout the country. It is the sole official language of Thailand . Thai is the most spoken of over 60 languages of Thailand by both number of native and overall speakers. Over half of its vocabulary

369-562: Is a great cult figure. In Myanmar he is known as Shin Upagutta . In Cambodia , he is known as Preah Uppakut. In the Lokapannatti Upagupta is sent by Ashoka to tame Mara during an en shrinement ceremony festival, afterwards he asks her to take the physical form (rupakaya) of Buddha so that everyone at the festival can see what Buddha looked like. Rabindranath Tagore in his poem 'Abhisar' collected in 'Katha' relates

410-579: Is also known in Isanas Bun Phawet (Bun Phra Wes), Bun Duan Sii (' Merit-making of the fourth month') or Thet Phawet in Isan . . The Thet Mahachat is very popular both in rural and urban communities in Thailand, often with dance and drama performances, as well as festive parades and processions through the towns. During this Buddhist festival the monks give a sermon about the entire text of

451-523: Is derived from or borrowed from Pali , Sanskrit , Mon and Old Khmer . It is a tonal and analytic language . Thai has a complex orthography and system of relational markers . Spoken Thai, depending on standard sociolinguistic factors such as age, gender, class, spatial proximity, and the urban/rural divide, is partly mutually intelligible with Lao , Isan , and some fellow Thai topolects . These languages are written with slightly different scripts, but are linguistically similar and effectively form

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492-580: Is invited to come from the Mekong River and enter a statue, which is then carried to the temple holding the festival. In the areas where there is no river, the spirit can be invited through normal water pipes, as in Vientiane in Laos. Upagupta is supposed to protect the ritual surroundings of the temple during the performance. Before the recitation of the Vessantara Jataka, other figures are invoked through

533-469: Is now customarily recited in the vernacular languages with some Pali stanzas interspersed throughout, but these cannot be understood by most laity. At the end of each chapter and before the following one, a hard-mallet pin piet ensemble customarily plays from a standard repertoire. Those who know the pieces can detect which chapter is about to start, even from a distance. Today, such complete performances are rare. The Vessantara Festival or Great Birth festival

574-598: The Bodhisattv āvadānakalpalatā by Kshemendra , the 10th-11th century Kashmiri poet . In Transmission of Light , Keizan describes Upagupta as a great teacher who helped many people. "Whenever anyone attained realization, Upagupta would cast a talisman four fingers in breadth into a cave. The cave was eighteen cubits by twelve cubits , and it was filled with talismans – that is how many people attained enlightenment." Thai language Thai , or Central Thai (historically Siamese ; Thai: ภาษาไทย ),

615-466: The Northern Thai language (also known as Phasa Mueang or Kham Mueang) have become so few, as most people in northern Thailand now invariably speak Standard Thai, so that they are now using mostly Central Thai words and only seasoning their speech with the "Kham Mueang" accent. Standard Thai is based on the register of the educated classes by Central Thai and ethnic minorities in the area along

656-644: The Sarvāstivādin tradition he is the fifth patriarch after Mahākaśyapa , Ānanda , Madhyāntika, and Śāṇakavāsin, and in the Ch'an tradition he is regarded as the fourth. Upagupta's teacher was Śāṇavāsa , who was a disciple of Ānanda , the Buddha's attendant. Due to the absence of his name in Theravada literature it is assumed that Upagupta was a Sarvāstivādin monk . In South East Asian countries and Bangladesh Upagupta

697-521: The Southwestern branch of Tai languages . The Tai languages are a branch of the Kra–Dai language family , which encompasses a large number of indigenous languages spoken in an arc from Hainan and Guangxi south through Laos and Northern Vietnam to the Cambodian border. Standard Thai is the principal language of education and government and spoken throughout Thailand. The standard is based on

738-640: The Thet Mahachat is associated to the birth of Vessantara, in Thailand, the Phi Ta Khon is another festival traditionally ascribed to a story of the Vessantara Jataka in which the Buddha in one of his past lives as a prince made a long journey and was presumed dead. The celebrations on his return were so raucous as to wake the dead. Khamsing Srinawk 's 1969 story Dark Glasses depicts

779-662: The Burmese historical chronicle Maha Yazawin, the arahan Shin Upagutta is another important figure in the Burmese version of the Vessantara Festival. During the Boun Pha Vet in Laos, for 3 days and 3 nights, the monks take turns to read about the life of King Phavet. In Laos, as well as in Isan, a long painted scroll held aloft by young and old and accompanied by drums and dancers, is taken in procession from

820-555: The Khmer system first before the Thai borrowed. Old Thai had a three-way tone distinction on "live syllables" (those not ending in a stop), with no possible distinction on "dead syllables" (those ending in a stop, i.e. either /p/, /t/, /k/ or the glottal stop that automatically closes syllables otherwise ending in a short vowel). There was a two-way voiced vs. voiceless distinction among all fricative and sonorant consonants, and up to

861-596: The Matsi episodes elicit great sadness as Matsi mourns the loss of her children while the Jujuaka episodes elicit gales of laughter when Jujaka is shown to be a buffoon. The celebration of the Vessantara Jataka varies from region to region throughout the ritual calendar. While it has lost its traditional importance in some areas, in others it has gained in popularity. According to the Angkorian inscription No. K. 485, which

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902-491: The Thai-speaking area. All voiced–voiceless pairs of consonants lost the voicing distinction: However, in the process of these mergers, the former distinction of voice was transferred into a new set of tonal distinctions. In essence, every tone in Old Thai split into two new tones, with a lower-pitched tone corresponding to a syllable that formerly began with a voiced consonant, and a higher-pitched tone corresponding to

943-472: The Vessantara Jataka, accompanied by rituals and cultural performances. Because of its central role in the Thet Mahachat or Boun Pha Vet celebrations, the Vessantara Jataka is an important part of the traditional folklore in many areas of the Southeast Asian region. The tale of Phra Malai has traditionally been recited as a preface to the Vessantara Jataka festival in Thailand and Laos. Whereas

984-545: The dialect of the central Thai people, and it is written in the Thai script . Hlai languages Kam-Sui languages Kra languages Be language Northern Tai languages Central Tai languages Khamti language Tai Lue language Shan language others Northern Thai language Thai language Southern Thai language Tai Yo language Phuthai language Lao language (PDR Lao, Isan language ) Thai has undergone various historical sound changes. Some of

1025-586: The disappearance of a young girl lured to Bangkok, presumably to work as a prostitute, until she returns for the Vessantara festival, a ritual migration undertaken by the children of Northeastern Thailand. Upagupta Upagupta (c. 3rd Century BC) was a Buddhist monk. According to some stories in the Sanskrit text Ashokavadana , he was the spiritual teacher of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka . In

1066-409: The forest through the village lanes to the pagoda, bringing Prince Vessentara back to his city. In carrying the scroll, and performing the narrative, villagers create a visual and material universe conveying meanings beyond the written text. In Sri Lanka, verses of lament from the text Vessantara Kāvya are often recited at the corpse of a relative who just died, especially the verses of Madri mourning

1107-528: The local patois as pronounced in Guangdong Ayutthaya , the old capital of Thailand from 1351 - 1767 A.D., was from the beginning a bilingual society, speaking Thai and Khmer . Bilingualism must have been strengthened and maintained for some time by the great number of Khmer-speaking captives the Thais took from Angkor Thom after their victories in 1369, 1388 and 1431. Gradually toward the end of

1148-654: The loss of her children. This text was composed in Sri Lanka in the early modern period by a secular poet, and emphasizes abandonment and emotional desolation. The themes were very popular among the ordinary people, though the emphasis was very different than the earlier Buddhist texts. In Thailand, the Vessantara Jataka Festival is known as Thet Mahachat ( Thai : เทศน์มหาชาติ ), from Maha Jati or "Great Birth", in Central Thailand ,. It

1189-438: The main characters in the story. Today, Buddhists in a village around any given pagoda take turns to read out the total of 13 volumes of the Vessantara Jataka. The celebration starts with the parade of an ikat silk cloth featuring the story of Vessantara. The festival ends with a procession of all the participants around the pagoda carrying various offerings as if accompagnying Vassantara back to his kingdom. Mentioned in

1230-424: The month of Chaitra came, the city folks went to a festival out in the forest. In the lone city, Upagupta goes beyond the precincts and finds Vasavdatta severely deformed by a disease with pustules covering her body. The city people had cast her out of the city's wall. The monk nurses the woman with care - telling her that the time for their togetherness has come. Rabindranath adopted the story with some changes from

1271-551: The most significant changes occurred during the evolution from Old Thai to modern Thai. The Thai writing system has an eight-century history and many of these changes, especially in consonants and tones, are evidenced in the modern orthography . According to a Chinese source, during the Ming dynasty , Yingya Shenglan (1405–1433), Ma Huan reported on the language of the Xiānluó (暹羅) or Ayutthaya Kingdom, saying that it somewhat resembled

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1312-415: The period, a language shift took place. Khmer fell out of use. Both Thai and Khmer descendants whose great-grand parents or earlier ancestors were bilingual came to use only Thai. In the process of language shift, an abundance of Khmer elements were transferred into Thai and permeated all aspects of the language. Consequently, the Thai of the late Ayutthaya Period which later became Ratanakosin or Bangkok Thai,

1353-570: The process of listening to the nonstop sermon on the Great Birth at the temple; merit making to transfer it to the deceased relatives and the departure of a "caravan", buffaloes, and oxcart for sale in distant lands. A few days preceding the feast, stages are built to host to folk opera and popular dancing. A pavilion to store paddy contributions is constructed. The reception hall is decorated with painted cloths. Old women roll cigarettes, make betel-nut packets, and candles. The spirit of Upagupta

1394-519: The ring surrounding the Metropolis . In addition to Central Thai, Thailand is home to other related Tai languages . Although most linguists classify these dialects as related but distinct languages, native speakers often identify them as regional variants or dialects of the "same" Thai language, or as "different kinds of Thai". As a dominant language in all aspects of society in Thailand, Thai initially saw gradual and later widespread adoption as

1435-492: The royal vocabulary according to their immediate environment. Thai and Pali, the latter from Theravada Buddhism, were added to the vocabulary. An investigation of the Ayutthaya Rajasap reveals that three languages, Thai, Khmer and Khmero-Indic were at work closely both in formulaic expressions and in normal discourse. In fact, Khmero-Indic may be classified in the same category as Khmer because Indic had been adapted to

1476-454: The story of the second-to-last incarnation of Buddha as Prince Vessantara. The long chant consisting of a thousand verses, was originally recorded on fourteen sets of palm-leaf manuscripts. The monks recite the full story in vernacular language without intermission in a performance lasting between twelve and eighteen hours. The original text of the Vessantara Jataka sermon was entirely in Pali; it

1517-535: The terminology "low" reflects the lower tone variants that resulted. Modern "mid"-class consonants were voiceless unaspirated stops or affricates in Old Thai—precisely the class that triggered lowering in original tone 1 but not tones 2 or 3. Modern "high"-class consonants were the remaining voiceless consonants in Old Thai (voiceless fricatives, voiceless sonorants, voiceless aspirated stops). The three most common tone "marks" (the lack of any tone mark, as well as

1558-423: The two marks termed mai ek and mai tho ) represent the three tones of Old Thai, and the complex relationship between tone mark and actual tone is due to the various tonal changes since then. Since the tone split, the tones have changed in actual representation to the point that the former relationship between lower and higher tonal variants has been completely obscured. Furthermore, the six tones that resulted after

1599-453: Was a thorough mixture of Thai and Khmer. There were more Khmer words in use than Tai cognates. Khmer grammatical rules were used actively to coin new disyllabic and polysyllabic words and phrases. Khmer expressions, sayings, and proverbs were expressed in Thai through transference. Thais borrowed both the Royal vocabulary and rules to enlarge the vocabulary from Khmer. The Thais later developed

1640-440: Was found at Phimeanakas temple and composed by Princess Indradevi in the 13th century AD, the Vessantara Jataka was performed as a religious dance. This tradition of performances has not completely been lost from the Khmer tradition, as the Vessantara jataka is nowadays celebrated as a theatrical performance during the festival by non-professional actors. As the monks were proclaim each section, villagers are selected to dress up as

1681-470: Was once "one of the most theatrical of all the Buddhist festivals". Monks and novices were invited to perform the characters of the Vessantara story. Some of the scenes, especially the mismatched couple formed by Jujaka, the old Brahmin, and his young wife Amittada, are attractive for the public during the festival. The parts of the story in which Matrsi and Jujaka appear as extremes of tragedy and comedy:

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