Commented reading of the version of "The Epic of Chuang [Cheuang]" from the Maspero Collection [pages 1 to 4b], part 1 of 2

"The Epic of Chuang": a version from the Maspero Collection. From page 1 to page 4b. Note: Maspero conducted his fielworks in the 20's. About this epic, see: [i] Ferlus, Michel. 1979. "Le récit khamou de Chuang et ses implications historiques pour le Nord-Laos", in Asie du sud-est et monde insulindien, vol. 10, no. 2-4; [ii] Chamberlain, James. 1990. "Thao Hung or Cheuang: A Tai Epic Poem", in Mon Khmer Studies, vol. 18-19, pp. 14-34. Here are excerpts from Chamberlain [1990]: "Today, due in part no doubt to its highly difficult vocabulary and style, the text remains obscure and its value unrecognized. Yet, the epic of Thao Hung or Cheuang is perhaps the most important piece of literature from the Southeast Asian mainland, as monumental to the study of Southeast Asian civilization as the Ramayana is to India or the Iliad is to the West. [...] For students of history, the work represents a detailed account of a place and period in Southeast Asian history that is a virtual vacuum in our knowledge, but a place and period that was undoubtedly the site of great upheavals as the pre-Buddhist Tais migrated westward from northern Vietnam through northern Laos, to northern Thailand, Burma, Yunnan, and Assam, conquering the older Austroasiatic populations as they went. To students of comparative Tai linguistics, Cheuang is outstanding for its sparse use of Indic vocabulary, representing a source of unusually diverse pre-Buddhist Tai lexical items as well as providing an excellent example of poetic rhymes indicating composition prior to the devoicing sound shift that spread over East and Southeast Asia. [...] In essence, Cheuang is the most comprehensive account available of ancient Tai civilization, and as such it is a wealth of information [...] for the entire Tai-speaking world [...]."