General considerations

Regional distinctions

From the point of view of its “classical” literatures, Southeast Asia can be divided into three major regions: (1) the Sanskrit region of Cambodia and Indonesia; (2) the region of Burma where Pali, a dialect related to Sanskrit, was used as a literary and religious language; and (3) the Chinese region of Vietnam.

There are no examples of Chinese literature written in Vietnam while it was under Chinese rule (111 bcad 939); there are only scattered examples of Sanskrit inscriptions written in Cambodia and Indonesia; yet most of the literary works produced at the court of Pagan in Burma (flourished c. 1049–1300) have survived because the texts were copied and recopied by monks and students. But in the 14th–15th centuries, vernacular literatures suddenly emerged in Burma and Java, and a “national” literature appeared in Vietnam. The reasons behind the development of each were the same: a feeling of nationalistic pride at the final defeat of Kublai Khan’s invasions, the desire of the people to find solace in literature amidst change and struggles for power, and the lack of wealth and patronage to channel artistic expression into building temples and tombs. In Vietnam and Java literary activity centred on the courts; but in Burma the first writers were the monks and, later, the laymen educated in their monasteries. In the new Burmese kingdom of Ava (flourished after 1364), the Shan kings were proud of their Burmese Buddhist culture, and they appointed the new writers into royal service, with the result that courtiers became writers also. The Tai kings of Laos and Siam led their courts in learning Pali from the Mon, whom they had conquered, and Sanskrit from the Khmer, whom they harassed; nevertheless, seized with national pride and influenced by the Burmese example, they developed their own vernacular literature. But Cambodia itself declined. Although the monks in the Theravada Buddhist (i.e., the Southeast Asian form of Buddhism) monasteries produced a few works in Pali, no vernacular literature emerged until finally Khmer-speaking people (those living in the area comprised approximately of modern Cambodia) were borrowing many words from the Tai.

For its vernacular literatures, Southeast Asia can be divided into (1) Burma; (2) Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia; (3) Vietnam; (4) Malaysia and Indonesia; and (5) the Philippines (which produced a vernacular literature only in the 20th century, after the imposed Spanish and English languages and literatures had made their impact).

Prestige of the writer

During the time of the kings, a Southeast Asian writer enjoyed patronage and a prestigious position in society. He could not, however, make a living by writing as a profession. Manuscripts had to be written by hand, and only in the case of famous works might one or two duplicates be made, again by hand. There was no question of selling the manuscript. A writer could only hope to attract the notice of his king and obtain a monetary reward or a royal office. By the time that printing presses were introduced, in the colonial period in the 19th century, the kings were gone and with them their writers. Colonial rule overwhelmed and destroyed vernacular literary traditions, leaving intact only oral literatures in the forms of folktales and folk songs. Literary criticism, as understood in Western cultures, had never been known, either in the ancient or modern literatures of Southeast Asia. Apart from a few stray writings on versification, therefore, no works of literary criticism or literary history existed until the colonial period. Even then, the interest of European scholars was chiefly confined to archaeology, and only a few made the attempt to study some special type or period of a vernacular literature (for example, vernacular versions of the Ramayana, the great Sanskrit epic of India, or of 14th-century Javanese verse). There is a work in French dealing with Thai literature and a work in Burmese dealing with Burmese literature; but apart from these no study of any Southeast Asian literature as a whole has yet been made. For this neglect, native scholars are much to blame.

Pre-European colonial period


The Burmese borrowed many words from Pali but not to the extent that the Indonesians, the Khmer, and the Thai borrowed Sanskrit words. The Burmese language was monosyllabic and tonal, and since there was no accent or stress, the feature that distinguished verse from prose was the regular occurrence of rhyme. They modeled their literature not on classic examples from Pali or Sanskrit but on their own traditional folk songs.

The 15th century

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Southeast Asia: Fact or Fiction?

In the 15th century, four types of verse existed: (1) pyo (religious verse), which retold stories of Buddha’s birth and teaching and were taken from the Jatakas (a collection of folktales adapted to Buddhist purposes and incorporated into the Pali canon), to which were added imaginative details and a Burmese background; (2) linkar (shorter religious verse), or a devotional poem, characterized by a metaphysical flavour comparable in many ways to that which informs the work of the early 17th-century English poets George Herbert and Robert Herrick; (3) mawgoon (historical verse), half ode, half epic, written in praise of a king or prince and developing out of military marching songs; (4) ayegyin (lullaby), an informative poem usually addressed to a young prince or princess and written in praise of his royal ancestors.

Literature in the 15th century is dominated by three monks: Shin Maha Rahta Thara, who wrote for the court of Ava, and Shin Maha Thila Wuntha and Shin Uttamagyaw, both of whom were of village stock and did not go to court but remained on in their village monasteries. Shin Maha Thila Wuntha, in the closing years of his life, turned to prose and wrote a chronicle history of Buddhism. In this period several courtiers, both men and women, also began to achieve some literary success, and the genre called myittaza (epistle) first evolved, which is a long prose letter written by a monk and addressed to the king to advise him of his duties.

The 16th century

In the 16th century, the Burmese conquered Siam, and their subsequent knowledge of Thai romantic poems gave rise to a new verse form called the yadu (the seasons). They borrowed only the theme, however, and not the form, and they developed it as an emotional poem, passionate, yet with something of the cool intellectual strength of the poems of the English metaphysical poets John Donne and Andrew Marvell. The most famous writers of the yadu were two court poets, Phyu and Nyo; a general of the army called Nawaday; and Natshinnaung, king of Toungoo. The wide popularity of the poems eventually gave rise to a mock-heroic form called yagan (“Kick the yadu”).

Golden age of literature

In the early years of the 18th century, U Kala compiled a history of Burma, written in precise and clear prose; the closing years, which coincided with the establishment of the third Burmese empire, saw a great period of literature. The Thai court, brought as captives to the Burmese capital, introduced to the Burmese poetic romances and their Rama play (based on the Ramayana). Contact with the Thai stimulated the growth of a Burmese court drama and led to the appearance of Burmese court romances in poetic prose. The king’s treasurer, however, made fun of the Thai importations and wrote the Rama Yagan, in which the high romance and courtly elegance of the 4th-century-bc Ramayana (“The Life of Rama”) were given a rustic setting, with hilarious results. From the quiet of their monasteries, the monk Awbatha wrote a novel-like rendering of the Ten Long Jatakas and the monk Kyeegan Shingyi wrote homely, pithy, and sometimes even humorous myittaza (“epistles”) from villagers to their relations in the cities.

The defeat suffered by the Burmese in the Anglo-Burmese War of 1824–26—their first defeat since the time of Kublai Khan in the 13th century—introduced a note of melancholy to Burmese literature. During this first half of the 19th century, many of the new melancholy lyrics were set to music. Two great writers were a product of this period: the dramatist U Kyin U and the courtier U Pon Nya, the greatest writer of the time, whose plays, epistles, and songs are full of humour and zest for life.


Until 1824 Thai literature was entirely the province of the king and his court: the king maintained a corps of writers, and it was the custom to attribute authorship of any literary work to the king himself. Thai vernacular literature began with verse, based on Sanskrit models but relying on an elaborate rhyme scheme because the Siamese language was tonal. The two earliest known poems were Yoon Pai (“The Defeat of the Yoons”), an epic-ode having similarities to the Burmese mawgoon genre, and Mahajati (“The Great Jataka”), a poem stressing ethical ideas, similar in form to the Burmese pyo. Both poems, written during the period 1475–85, give ample proof that Thai writers, using Sanskrit, Khmer, and Burmese models, could nonetheless produce a truly Thai work.

Southeast Asian arts
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