Le chercheur et son filon… Une richesse à partager ? Production et circulation de savoirs : usages et valeurs d’un manuscrit arakanais (Birmanie)

• Main Author: Alexandra de Mersan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université de Provence 2014-09-01
• Series: Moussons
• Subjects: Arakanese; Burma/Myanmar; manuscript; knowledge; rites and ceremonies; territory
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/moussons/2887

Learning that I was working on Arakanese tutelary divinities, the historian Jacques Leider kindly introduced me to an ancient manuscript in the Indochinese collection (Fonds Indochinois) of the National Library in Paris. This manuscript describes the foundation of villages subsequent to the region’s re-conquest by the King of Arakan at the beginning of the fifteenth century through a process, which called on a diverse range of practices (divinatory, magic and religious, the reading of omens, spirit cults, and so on), which in turn revealed an original conception of territory. The article deals with the conditions of the manuscript’s elaboration and the exploitation of vernacular sources of this type, and more generally of locally produced documents, in establishing the anthropologist’s fund of knowledge and one’s subsequent use of it. In this case, it is sooner a question of multiple uses. Starting from an analysis based on extensive research that focused on contemporary documents, the article describes the contents of the manuscript, themes and questions raised, and what it reveals about values, practices and representations of the society under review. Finally, the different seams that were followed and mined are described, and the broader question that arises of the “value” the scholar accords to a given document is discussed.