When Scripture Becomes Content: The Mangalatthadipani and the Reconfiguration of Sacredness in Thai Digital Buddhism
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Abstract
Scholars of digital Buddhism have long assumed that when sacred scripture migrates to online platforms, religious meaning is inevitably attenuated. This article challenges that assumption directly. We argue, instead, that the sacredness of the Mangalatthadipani, the canonical Theravāda commentary composed by Sirimaṅgalācārya, is not extinguished upon its passage from palm-leaf manuscripts to digital screens; rather, it undergoes a fundamental reconfiguration shaped by media logics, algorithmic authority, and the patterns of everyday religious engagement in digital life.
Drawing on a qualitative multi-method design — integrating textual analysis of the Mangalatthadipani as an ethical system, digital ethnography across twelve online platforms (YouTube, Facebook, and Buddhist websites) observed between 2023 and 2024, and discourse analysis of content referencing the Maṅgala Sutta— this study identifies three interconnected processes through which sacredness is transformed: the fragmentation of scripture into shareable content, the emergence of new interpretive authority structures driven by algorithmic visibility, and the formation of what we term “instant sacredness,” a mode of sacred encounter calibrated to the tempo and pressures of contemporary life. Unlike Classical hermeneutics assumes two parties: a text and a reader. Digital Hermeneutics, as this article develops the concept, insists there is always a third — the algorithm — whose invisible interventions condition what can be read, how it is encountered, and which fragments of meaning outlast the logic of platform circulation.
The conceptual framework of Reconfiguration of Sacredness proposed here challenges decline-oriented narratives by reconceptualizing digital Buddhism not as a degraded religion but as a living tradition actively negotiating its existence under platform conditions. This study advances Buddhist Studies and the sociology of religion by integrating Theravāda textual scholarship with theories of digital authority and the social construction of the sacred in mediated environments.
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