The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

422 REVIEWS
In his lengthy article on manners and customs of the Chinese people
as gleaned from historical narratives and novels, Chaokhun Indra provides
the reader with insight into Chinese attitudes and concepts ranging from
art of healing, suicide and law to the role play of the Emperor officials
and women. But, as important, the author provides a framework for
literary analysis that might be profitably applied to the novels of modern
day Thailand or the poetry of Sun thorn Pu.
This volume bas value not only in the wealth of academic information
provided but in presenting the portrait of a /a rang nobleman scholar
who might well serve as a model for the western harbingers of modernization
who continue to descend on Siam.
William J. Klausner
Asia Foundation,
Bangkok
v
Suthiwong Phongphaibun, mu~~"
137 pp., illus.
(Nang Talung) (Bangkok, no date),
In this admirable study, the southern Thai shadow play called Nang
Talung, perhaps the most charming of all popular Thai dramatic forms,
is sympathetically and exhaustively examined. Khun Suthiwong's study
offers a detailed description of all aspects of the southern shadow play,
its origins and relationships with the Malay and Javanese forms, its
content- the conventions of invocation, verse forms, plot, etc., and the
social context of performance, that is, the customs attached to it. The
highly limited evidence for what we know of the origins of Nang Talung
is judiciously weighed, and the author offers his own opinion, that this
Thai form of shadow play is most likely external in its origins, deriving
from Malaya and Java, judging from Indic elements in the invocation
and in the plot con tent. A detailed comparison is offered between the