Toward a Semiotics of Buddhist Performance: Poietic, Esthesic, and Material Dimensions of Bitextual Sermons in Early Modern Southeast Asia

Chanted performances of bilingual sermons were the centerpiece of most Buddhist rituals in the Theravada world from the fifteenth to early twentieth centuries, and their prestige still holds power for many Buddhist communities today. Most are structured as interphrasal Pali-vernacular bitexts, where classical Indic phrases are followed by their translation into a local South or Southeast Asian language. Bitextual sermon manuscripts function as scripts or scores for chanted performance, not books for private study, and thus invite us to imagine their composition, reception, and performance over time. To unpack the many layers of chanted bitextual sermons, I engage a tripartite model for the semiotics of music as developed by Molino and Nattiez. By analyzing selected passages from seventeenth-century Pali-Khmer and Pali-Lanna sermons on monastic ordination, I chart new possibilities for the study of Buddhist genres of performance through the semiotics of poiesis, esthesis, and materiality.