This paper aims at analyzing the dialectal features of Nôm characters used in the Sino-Nom version of Phật Thuyết Thiên Địa Bát Dương Kinh contained in the list of Sino-Nom documents preserved at Canh Phuoc Temple in Bangkok and brought to Japan by the late Professor Yumio Sakurai, from the viewpoints of historical phonology and lexicography. Analysis of the phonetic component of each character will show the features of Central and Southern dialects of the Vietnamese language. So far, a primary index of the Southern Nôm characters has been compiled by Vũ Văn Kính [1994] based on some famous literary works, such as Lục Vân Tiên, Dương Từ Hà Mậu, Nguyễn Hữu Huân tiểu truyện, Kim Thạch Kỳ Duyên, Ngư Tiều Vấn Đáp, etc. The documents in Sakurai’s list might provide a certain amount of additional data for the index.
