Thai Tellings of Phra Malai: Texts and Rituals Concerning a Popular Buddhist Saint

Bonnie Pacala Brereton's Thai Tellings of Phra Malai is a specialist study of a popular Southeast Asian Buddhist text describing a monk's journeys to hell and heaven, combining textual translation with fieldwork on how the story is performed in Thai funeral and merit-making ritual. Its strength is bridging manuscript study and lived practice, showing how a canonical-adjacent narrative functions in actual communal ritual rather than only as literature. As a study focused specifically on Thai tellings, it is authoritative on that regional tradition and should not be read as covering the Phra Malai narrative's related but distinct versions and functions in Lao, Khmer or other Southeast Asian Buddhist contexts, which carry their own performance traditions Brereton's book does not attempt to survey.