Forms of Sa-Paper Manuscripts in Sipsong Panna : หน้า 93/141

There are three forms of sa-paper manuscripts in the Sipsong Panna region. The first is the most common "ordinary wide-breadth manuscript", with a length of about 18cm, a height of about 25cm and the top bound with woven cords; each page contains 14 to 20 lines. The second is the "folding sa-paper manuscript." This form is also popular in the Sipsong Panna region. Pages are usually 30-45cm long, and 12-17cm wide. The page material is a dark sa-paper. The folded manuscript is similar in format to the "folding-flipping style" of the palm-leaf manuscripts, but there is room for 7 lines of characters inscribed on each page (for an example of this, see Tam XiangMeng ZongBu (召相勻与喃宗布) in volume 15 of The Complete Collection of Chinese Palm-Leaf Scripture). The larger format of this type makes it easier to read and manipulate, and this format is often favored by monks for ritual use in the Buddhist temples. The third type is the sa-paper manuscript, manufactured by a special process. Comrade Dao Jinping of Xishuangbanna State Ethnic Research Institute & Xishuangbanna State Palm-Leaf Culture Research Center, discovered another kind of sa-paper manuscript that is made by soaking it in various materials like cattle blood. Such manuscripts are deep brown/black in appearance and rough in texture. Two books of this kind, inscribed using ink made from gold powder and silver powder, and containing two versions of the sutra Karma Sayings (赑磨说), have been collected by the Xishuangbanna State Ethnic Research Institute. Such manuscripts are rather rare. According to the staff members at the Institute, the manufacturing processes used to produce these two manuscripts have been lost, and these two may be the only remaining examples of this type. There are four formats for the palm-leaf manuscripts in Sipsong Panna: 4-line, 5-line, 6-line and 8-line, of which the first three are comparatively common. For example, the five copies of the Agama Sutra (阿含经), where important doctrines of Theravāda Buddhism are recorded and which were found to be well preserved in the Sipsong Panna region, are all palm-leaf manuscripts. The formats are as follows: Volume 96 Ekottara-nikāya (增-阿含经） is in 4-line to 5-line format; Volume 97 Samyutta-nikāya (杂阿含经),