Bonnie Pacala Brereton, Thai Tellings of Phra Malai: Texts and Rituals Concerning a Popular Buddhist Saint Tempe: Arizona State University Press, 1995.
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Thanks, @Khemarato.bhikkhu
This was the one I found as well. It is print only, and not currently available via the online stores Iāve checked. Iām hoping one of my friends who teaches at a university might be able to access it.
Thanks!
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None that I know of. Thereās no end of academic papers on it, both manuscript studies and anthropological accounts of its cultural influence in Thailand and Laos, but I havenāt heard that any version of it has ever been translated in full into any European language.
However, Iāve sent an email to a friend at Thammasat University whoās much better informed than I about such matters, so Iāll let you know later if Iām wrong.
In the meantime, hereās a rather beautiful recital of it. To skip the intro, fast forward to about 7:30
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So, I was wrong. My Thammasat friend referred me to the Bonnie Brereton book referred to above by Ven Khemarato. I was already aware of the book, but some reason I had been under the impression that it was just a study, not a translation. That it really is a translation was later confirmed by Dr Brereton herself after I contacted her on Facebook:
āThe book contains a translation of the entire Phra Malai Kham Luang, as well as comparisons with some of the other versions.ā
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Thank you for all your research, @Mumfie! And the performance you linked. I really appreciate it. 
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I was not able to locate a copy of Bonnie Pacala Breretonās book with the Phra Malai translation. (At least not one in a library I had access to. There seems to be one in Australia. But the more local University of Victoria false positive turned out to be a review of her book.)
However, I did just discover that Ms. Breretonās PhD thesis, which has a translation, is available online. If anyone is interested, here is the link to the page where you can download the pdf. The translation is at the very end of the thesis.
The Phra Malai legend in Thai Buddhist literature: A study of three texts.
So Iām very excited that I can read this work when I get home this evening!
Thank you for your help, @Mumfie and @Khemarato.bhikkhu! Sadhu!
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Me too! Excellent find! Thanks for sharing 
Seriously a huge problem in online bibliographies.
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Yāall might want read slower, just saying. The point is
In fact Iāve written a novel, a historical novella, an illustrated fable, and a bunch of short stories. Theyāre awesome, ignore the haters!
Go for it. Buddhism is dying of po-faced dullness, we need more creativity.
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I havenāt followed this in depth, but this is a great topic and one Iāve thought about as well.
While much of the zeal and interest for conlanging and worldbuilding has been drained of me, I do feel tempted from time to time to do some. Mostly to express the unique Buddhist worldview mixed with my personal experiences, interests, and background.
I feel that this type of stuff would (or is) often dismissed as āfantasy worldsā to get trapped in āpapaƱca,ā particularly as a monastic aspirant. And I agree to some extent; it certainly consumes lots of mental space when not held properly. But on the other hand, it can be a gentle outlet for expression that opens the heart for practice and connection with my surroundings. For example, to have a personal language baked with my own forms of grammar and metaphor, and to then compose poetry or journal in it supported by constructed narratives with particular morals and ideals can be truly freeing. A little bit from time to time, and that side of the mind is satisfied, more able to let go. Or maybe itās all useless rambling!
One thing I heard a teacher once say that has stuck with me: the highest level of devas are related to creation. Creating fine art is much more refined than being a zombie for coarse sensual pleasures. It may not be jhÄna, but if we are going to be letting go of sensuality, maybe a gradual strategy is from creating rather than consuming and feeding off of it. In fact, Iti 95 mentions this distinction. While ultimately these must be given up, they are still greater.
MettÄ
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Me too! I really donāt feel like devoting the time and effort to making a major effort. But for me, writing short things, more or less like a fable or fairy story, is almost effortless. It comes, maybe it percolates for a while, then I sit down, and 30 minutes later itās done. Most of the chapters in Harbingers were written in this way. The chapter of the bushfires was written in 20 minutes before the bell for dana one day; I was in Belgium and Australia was on fire, and it just came out.
Of course there is revision and so on, but the basic creation is all there.
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I for one will welcome the Theravada-ku.
To reply to OP: the monks I have the most issue with are the ones who support war and ethnic conflict and the ones with big bank accounts. Then the ones who arenāt meditators. These days I would be very unwilling to stay in a monastery where the leaders arenāt meditators.
Sometimes, in the course of a meditative life, which might last decades, there might be events so grand or troubling that they call for some type of response: whether it is artistic, intellectual, or otherwise. I think of Korean poet Ko Un, who saw half his generation die in war and later drank poison, but survived. The title of a recent anthology, āSorrowful First Personā, really sums up his art.
There is probably a place for another type of artistic orientation, āLiberated First Personā, in monastic life. If someone says something, anything really, and if that has come from the crucible of a personal, felt, awakened experience, there is likely a strong dhamma case for recording that.
The same for other works and snippets that are heading toward liberation.
I myself have been deeply impacted by such work and frequently recall it as a source of inspiration. I remember even lines I saw accidentally once on the back of a book of poetry:
These poems cost a hundred dollars for anyone who owns a house,
Ten dollars for anyone who owns a car,
And are free for the followers of the Buddha.
Or a stray line from Wikipedia:
the love object of the Buddha is sentient beings
A Tang dynasty classic:
Where, before me, are the ages that have gone?
And where, behind me, are the coming generations?
I think of heaven and earth, without limit, without end,
And I am all alone and my tears fall down.
Or Ko Unās take on the matter in āFlowers of the Momentā
Some say they can recall a thousand years
Some say they have already visited the next thousand years
On a windy day
I am waiting for a bus
This kind of inspired writing is part of the intellectual heritage of humanity, if it comes to you, it is a free gift, why not share it?
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Please expand on this a great deal, preferably essay length or more 
Iām still having a hard time prying apart the wholesome and unwholesome aspects of creating and appreciating art. Obviously thereās more to it than just sensuality bad, even from the most orthodox of scriptural views, but following that line of inquiry further could be risquĆ© or even dangerous (as is the case with most thoughts worth pursuing).
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I think itās a double-edged sword. Well, itās not the creative writing itself thatās the issue but the author and readerās attitude. So, authors can churn out stories and books ad nauseam to earn a living. They learn how to recombine character types, plot types, perspectives, and so on to recreate the same thing over and over while pretending to be create new things. And readers often gobble up as much fiction like eating snacks. It all becomes a dull habit, I think, at a certain point, just craving the same basic content over and over. Thus, we get endless waves of the same stuff that goes on for years. How many vampire books or romance novels does the world really need? Thereās plenty already.
So creative writing isnāt always creative.
On the other hand, there are writers who are doing more than pushing out endless variations on a theme for the sake of earning a living. They are actually using fiction as a way of conducting thought experiments. They take a set of characters and put them in situations. Maybe the author is exploring cultural issues, ethical issues, political issues. Science fiction, creative science fiction I mean, can be seen as modern writers trying to make sense of what this whirlwind of new technology is really doing to humanity, or how humanity can or will evolve in the midst of it. Many scifi stories are really examinations of what is human by taking characters and putting them into the future. Etc.
So, on a societal level, that kind of fiction serves a purpose. Itās probably the same purpose that ancient storytellers had who sat around fires tell imaginary tales that today we call mythology. Itās a way human beings process how to live life without necessarily going out and doing things. Stories are often thought experiments that try to work out the meta-problems of being human, I think. As such, they can be quite Dharmic in the sense that they can help a person development the powers of discernment and wisdom. Not to mention get exposed to ideas that might not occur to them.
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This brought to mind Nick Caves recent thoughts on chatGPT writing songs:
What makes a great song great is not its close resemblance to a recognizable work. Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It is those dangerous, heart-stopping departures that catapult the artist beyond the limits of what he or she recognises as their known self. This is part of the authentic creative struggle that precedes the invention of a unique lyric of actual value; it is the breathless confrontation with oneās vulnerability, oneās perilousness, oneās smallness, pitted against a sense of sudden shocking discovery; it is the redemptive artistic act that stirs the heart of the listener, where the listener recognizes in the inner workings of the song their own blood, their own struggle, their own suffering.
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I donāt know if folks who donāt read scifi really grok the extent to which the people who built modern tech did read it, and set out to build what excited them as kids.
Thanks for the link, awesome writing by Nick as always.
(It seems unsurprising that ChatGPT should fail to achieve what the very best writers do. Its real niche will be elsewhere: bland news copy reporting sports results or weather, or generating legalese, or making instruction leaflets, or faking academic articles for journals. And the writers affected will be those who do this kind of work; for example, interns at a news outlet who cut their teeth writing basic copy.)
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You mean like those Star Trek: Next Generation tablets everyone is carrying around now? Yeah - leave it to people to miss the point. Instead of evolving into a more civilized society sans money, they pile up obscene hordes of cash selling real life replicas of TV show props.
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On the same themeā¦at some point, writing also becomes work: to learn a genre, to read other examples, to maintain professional connections, etc. One also needs distribution channels and a publicist.
I found this out when I received a low key literary award for fiction in my late teens (i.e. the kind where you have a reception where āindustry peopleā are there). Everyone was very interested in me and what I did: I felt like the only hobbyist in a room of professionals, I didnāt know the right people, I had studied the wrong thing, and I was just generally an awkward outsider. Apparently, you are meant to have a ācircleā and it seemed that everyone else had also completed writing courses and retreats. I couldnāt really imagine having that level of literary engagement as a nun-oneās ācircleā is inevitably monastic.
I really wonder where the composers of the canon learned metre from: was it part of their previous secular education? I never learned English metre at school, unless you had a strong English education, I wonder how it would be possible to get this education later.
So while it may be possible to ādo literatureā as a monastic, it is likely much harder to ābe literaryā as there is another profession for this.
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I fed your paragraph into ChatGPTās āsummarize for a second graderā and it said:
It definitely lost some meaning, like thinking you said it would āhelpā interns. So those interns may be safe for a bit longer. 
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Yeah thatās definitely a self-interested edit.
One unnoticed thing is that ChatGPT tends to be pretty innocuous, bland rather than evil. They must have done a lot of work to remove and eliminate hate.
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My very unscientific approach to tempo and rhythm is to re-read what I wrote, in a slow but constant speed. This reveals any extra syllables or clumsy pacing. From there, I re-work the sentence until Iām satisfied. This is woefully untechnical and time consuming and Iām probably failing miserably, but if I donāt see it Iām happy
I havenāt made time to respond to the great answers in this thread, but in short, Iām really enjoying the contributions and spin-offs. Sadhu!
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