A Study On People’s Cognition Status Of The Palm-Leaf Scriptures’ Value And The Influencing Factors In Dai Area

There are a lot of reserves of Palm-leaf scriptures in Dai area of Yunnan province of China, which include the Pali version and Dai version. Besides the Theravada Buddhism classics, many legends, poems and history were recorded as the content. In the process of social changes of Dai people, fusing with the local primitive religion, Theravada Buddhism has consolidated its predominance of religious belief in Dai and other ethnic minority area on the basis of alleviating social contradiction and comfort the public. At present, with the publication of The Complete Collection of Chinese Palm-leaf Scriptures in 100 volumes, the collection, organization and research on the scriptures in China have gradually attracted broad attention. Theravada Buddhism, represented by the Palm-leaf scriptures, has a long history and was imparted and inherited by Dai family, society and temples, which posed a profound cultural significance and practical impact on Dai society. Along with the tide of globalization and religious revival, Chinese society has made a rapid development, especially in the period of this century due to population mobility, construction of new countryside and urbanization. As a place that minority nations living together in the frontier of southwest in China, Xishuangbanna and other Dai areas have got rapid changes in their original social lives. Being the complex carrier of Theravada Buddhism culture and the traditional Dai culture, the Palm-leaf scriptures imparted and developed in Yunnan, and have become an important identification of traditional culture of Dai people and those ethnic minorities who believe in Theravada Buddhism. Therefore, it is academically important to know Dai people’s value cognition status and influencing factors of the Palm-leaf scriptures, which also has great practical significance for protecting, inheriting and developing the Palm-leaf scriptures and the outstanding traditional culture in Dai area. Meanwhile, it helps to provide the basis for protecting the cultural diversity of ethnic minorities in China, realizing the long-term coexistence of multi-culture and efficiently inheriting and carrying forward the traditional culture.This paper puts its focus on the cognition of people, who live in Jinghong city of Xishuangbanna, towards the Palm-leaf scriptures and its value as well as on the relevant factors that influence people’s value cognition for Palm-leaf scriptures. Firstly, detailed and quantitative analyses were done on the value of Palm-leaf scriptures to discuss Dai people’s value cognition status of it. Secondly, by adopting the statistical software, the basic data was analyzed to discuss the influencing factors that affect Dai people’s value cognition status of Palm-leaf scriptures, namely, if there is a correlation between those two groups who has heard of it and has never heard of it in terms of gender, nationality, age, education, and occupation. Thus, the paper would conclude the influencing factors that affect Dai people’s value cognition status of Palm-leaf scriptures.The analysis of the paper is based on three fundamental hypotheses. Firstly, the Palm-leaf scriptures obtain high awareness and are known to the public as well as taking the predominance in social life and production in Dai area. Secondly, people in Dai area universally regard the Palm-leaf as precious value, however, they are unable to inherit and carry forward the existing, rich traditional culture and religious culture yet. Thirdly, there is relevant correlation between Dai people’s value cognition of Palm-leaf scriptures and several formulated variables which specifically are gender, age, nationality, education and occupation.Questionnaire and interview are applied in this paper. The content of questionnaire mainly covers four aspects:ways in which people are exposed to the Palm-leaf scriptures, value recognition and evaluation, factors that influence the cognition evaluation, and expectations for the future inheritance. The data results in this paper are operated by SPSS software for statistical analysis.