Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
l~
M. FORTES,
I
General Editors
J.
R. GOODY, E. R. LEACH, S,
J.
TAMBIAH
BUDDHISM AND
THE SPIRIT CUL TS IN
NORTH-EAST
THAILAND
S. J. TAMBIAH
Lecturer in Social Anthropology in the
University of Cambridge and
Fellow of Clare Hall
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1970
PREFACE
From 1960 to 1963 I spent three happy and rewarding years in Thailand
as a UNESCO 'expert' attached to the International Institute for Child
Study (now called the Bangkok Institute for Child Study). The Institute
was sponsored by UNESCO and the Government of Thailand. The greater
part of my time was devoted to participating in a programme of multidisciplinary research on problems wider in scope than the name of the
Institute implies. The project that engaged most of my time and effort
was the study, with the assistance of Thai colleagues and other UNESCO
experts, of three villages in their regional setting. The villages were situated
in the Central Plain, the North-east, and the North. My share of the
work was wholly devoted to anthropological investigations relating to
kinship, economy and religion. The material presented here pertains to
the north-eastern village and its region and was collected in 1961-2 (and
subsequently in the course of two long vacation trips made from Cambridge
in 1965 and 1966). I express my grateful and warm thanks to two successive
enlightened, energetic and stimulating Directors of the Institute, Professor
Hugh Philp and Dr Lamaimas Saradatta, for supporting the study in
every way, and to my other colleagues in the Institute, particularly
Mr Tahwon Koedkietpong and Mr Aneckun Greesang, whose field
assistance, co-operation, and friendship were invaluable in collecting,
translating and interpreting the information. Much insight was also gained
from my association with Mr Anders Poulsen, who has provided most
of the plates that adorn this book. I hope that by dedicating the book to
the Bangkok Institute for Child Study I can pay at least a fraction of my
debt to my colleagues in Thailand, to UNESCO, to the Government of
Thailand (particularly the Ministry of Education) and, most importantly,
to the villagers and monks of Baan Phraan 1V1uan who taught us something
of their culture with patience, kindness and accommodation.
I came to Cambridge in September 1963 and it was there that much
of the material was analysed and written up in first draft. In my writing
I have received much intellectual stimulation and guidance from my
friends and colleagues, particularly Edmund Leach (who has taught me
most of the anthropology I know) and Professor Meyer Fortes.
I am also deeply grateful to the Center for Advanced Study in the
Behavioral Sciences for affording me leisure, library facilities, editorial and
secretarial assistance in order that I could complete the book. The
meticulous and creative editorial assistance of Miss Miriam Gallaher is
73-108n2
v
:
'
Preface
remembered with admiration. Thanks are also due to the secretarial staff
in the Bangkok Institute, and in the Department of Anthropology at
Cambridge, for typing assistance given at various stages of preparation.
I thank my wife, Mary Wynne, for her patient and skilful editorial and
bibliographical assistance and moral support.
The text contains numerous names and concepts which originate in
the Sanskrit and Pali languages: their orthography follows the normal
conventions of romanization but omits all diacritical signs. There are
even more numerous references to Thai words, especially in the northeastern dialect, for which no proper system of transcription into the
roman alphabet has as yet been devised. I have therefore transcribed
these words as best I could, omitting all diacritical marks.
Cambridge
October 1969
S.J.T.
CONTENTS
page ix
List of tables
List of illustrations
xi
53
62
81
97
r
2
3
4
vi
vii
32
n6
141 t
152
179
1 95
223
252
263
285
312
327
337
35 1
98"
100
102
104
20'
I
0
18'
~.
Udom Rajadhani
18'
~
16'
14'
12
10
8'
98'
Fig.
100
102
- -
National boundary
104
106'
TBA
religious concepts that go with them, which are observed in the village
A second deviation from the beaten path consists in the attempt to see
today, have a wider generality in both time and space. There is a history
myth and ritual as two closely related domains and to examine their
of Buddhism from its origins in India until the present, and there is the dialectical relationship. Since Malinowski's 'charter theory of myth' we
spatial existence of Theravada Buddhism (which primarily concerns us
have had virtually no ethnographic analysis, let alone a fertile theoretical
here) not only throughout Thailand but also in the neighbouring countries
formulation, of the relation between myth and ritual. Levi-Strauss has
of Ceylon, Burma, Laos and Cambodia. Th.ese projections in time and space
a marginal interest in the problem, but he has progressively bec.ome
also apply to much of the other ritual complexes, though not with the
concerned with myth as an autonomous realm of thought.
same depth in time and spread in space as manifested by Buddhism. What
The relation between a collectivity of rituals seen as a system in its
are the implications of this immense backdrop to the anthropologist's stage?
own right (in terms of the arrangement of categories and symbols and
It could be said that the requirements of my exposition are threeofficiants) and the social structure and institutional environment of the
dimensional: to present the religion as a synchronic, ordered scheme of
people who practise the religion is another matter. This has been in
collective representations; then on the one side to demonstrate how the
the past, and still remains, an anthropological task par excellence. It is the
system of religious categories is woven into the institutional context and
kind of special illumination that an anthropologist can provide by virtue
social structure of the contemporary villagers; and on the other to relate
of his approach and method of study. In order to see this particular
the same system to the grand Buddhist literary and historical tradition.
linkage between ritual and society, it might at times be salutary for the
Let me deal with each of these aspects in tum.
~thropologist working in South-east Asia consciously to ignore the
It is right and proper for the anthropologist to assert that his first and
connections between his field data and the philosophical, doctrinal, and
foremost task is to document the religion as the present-day subjects live
_literary aspects of civilization, so that he can all the better understand the
it and to understand it in terms of' the subjects' own intellectual, moral
nexus between religious action and social context. This perspective is
and affective categories (and thereafter to seek to construct a scheme of
arrestingly conveyed by Leach's phrase 'practical religion', by which he
interpretation which reveals the principles underlying the -ideology and
means not theological philosophy, often greatly preoccupied with the life
behaviour he has witnessed and recorded).
hereafter, but religion which is 'concerned with the life here and now',
In order to present a synchronic picture of village religion I have in
religion whose components are meaningful not only because of internal
this book tried to see how the four ritual complexes are differentiated and
coherence but also 'because of their practical integration with the secular
also linked together in a single total field. In respect of each ritual complex
life of the religious congregation' (Leach r968b, pp. 1-3). This mode of
-and of all four together-I try to elucidate how religious ideas and
elucidation is the second major interest of this book.
constructs are ordered, what the symbolism and message contents of the
The third dimension is the relation between religious belief and ritual
action observed in the field and the corpus of Buddhist literature composed
rites are, how the officiants are distinguished, and so forth. The focus
is on the contrastive features of the four cults or complexes as collective
from classical times, that is, between the religious events of the present
representations, and in displaying these features I use four concepts:
and the grand historical events of Buddhist civilization. The study of
opposition, complementarity, linkage, and hierarchy.
religion from this perspective is quasi-anthropological, in the sense of
The framework and conceptual tools for my structural analysis of
demanding the skills and knowledge of other disciplines (e.g. Indology
and History of Religion) in addition to one's own.
ritual derive from many anthropologists (chief among whom are RadcliffeBrown, Levi-Strauss, Leach, and Turner) and from other fields of
Anthropologists have in recent years wrestled with this problem,
relevance to our subject (such as linguistics and information theory). In two
especially in respect of India. One school, stemming from Redfield and
his associates, formulated the question in terms of the relation and the
respects I can claim to have gone further than the previous contributions on
ritual. First, I have argued that, since much ritual includes the recitation
processes of interaction between two levels or entities-between the great
of words, we should perceive ritual as consisting of both 'word and deed'; - tradition of civilization and the little tradition of the village. This formulation and others which have replaced it-such as Higher Sanskritic
in any case since in Thai rituals the use of sacred words is an important
Hinduism versus Lower Popular Hinduism-have been mistaken in two
component, I have tried to interpret their role and the manner in which
important respects: first, insufficient regard was paid to the fact that the
they are integrated with ritual action.
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