University of Virginia Library

14
THE CO-EXISTENCE OF THE `BRAHMAN'
AND THE BUDDHIST MONK

The term for the sukhwan officiant, paahm, etymologically derives from
brahman; alternatively he is called maukhwan (expert in khwan rites). It is
the first term that acts as a cue beckoning us to investigate further.

The brahman and the bhikkhu were in their country of origin, India,
unaccommodating antagonists; the brahman did in time virtually eliminate
the Buddhist monk while incorporating in his religion some of the ethical
achievements of Buddhism. The questions that therefore spring to mind
are: How is it that the brahman and the bhikkhu can co-exist peacefully in
Thai society? What different circumstances experienced by the brahman
and bhikkhu in further India have made possible this co-existence? Finally,
what is the connection between the classical brahman priest and the contemporary
village paahm or maukhwan?

These are largely historical questions whose answers require us to map
the route travelled by the brahman and the bhikkhu from India, and to
note the successive transformations in their roles. The matter can hardly
be adequately treated in this book, but a few observations will be made
to give perspective to the problem that will ultimately interest us—the
complementarity of the roles of the paahm and the monk in contemporary
village religion.

In previous chapters we have, to some extent, discussed the path travelled
by Pali Buddhism from India to Ceylon and thence to Siam, but we
have had no occasion to discuss the brahman priest, who in fact travelled
along a different route: from India to Cambodia (Angkor) and thence to
Siam (especially to the kingdom of Ayudhya). The presence of the brahman
in these parts is intimately related to the political constitution of the
`Indianized states of Southeast Asia', to borrow an expression from
Coedès.

The Khmer (Angkor) civilization in its later stages shifted from Hinduism
to Buddhism, but its conception of kingship always remained as an
adaptation of Hindu ideas, and most of its court and royal rituals were
performed by brahman priests, who had originally come from India.
In Burma, too, the rituals of kinship were conducted by brahman priests,
while Buddhism was the pervasive national religion. Thailand, in its

Ayudhya period, heavily influenced by Angkor, similarly depended on
a brahman priesthood to conduct the royal rituals of installation and
coronation, first ploughing, the swing ceremony, top-knot cutting, etc.
(see Wales 1965).

The existence of brahmanical court rituals in Buddhist polities calls
up some fascinating questions, especially of comparison with institutional
patterns in India. One important difference is that these South-east Asian
kingdoms did not transplant to their soil a caste system at the same time that
they borrowed many cultural items. And it would appear that their underlying
social scheme was also different, for on their soil the `brahman' and the
`kshatriya' (secular ruler) combined in a new relation, different from that
in India. Dumézil postulated a tripartite division of Indian society in
which the first function was the role of the priest, which combined
magico-religious power and moral authority (mitra and varuna); the
second function was that of the warrior, who gave physical protection to
society; the third function belonged to the cultivator, whose role was to
maintain physical well-being. The superiority of the priest to the secular
ruler was fundamental to Dumézil's interpretation of classical Indian
society and mythology. Dumont, building upon the Dumézil foundation,
indicated that the Dharmasastras postulate three human ends—dharma,
artha and kama (duty, profit and pleasure). All are lawful activities but
they are graded in a hierarchy so that an inferior activity may be pursued
only so long as a superior one does not intervene. Dharma, conformity to
the world order, is more important than artha (power and wealth), which
in turn is above kama, immediate enjoyment. In terms of the social order,
dharma corresponds to the brahman priest, artha or temporal power to
the king or Kshatriya, and kama to the rest of society's ranks.

It is my thesis, which I cannot substantiate here but hope to establish
elsewhere, that in further India the relation between priest and king that
prevailed in India was reversed, and that this transformed relation between
a divinized king and the brahman priest can best be seen in the royal cult
of Devaraja in Cambodia. The same relation, or perhaps an even greater
elaboration of it, was the hallmark of the Buddhist polities of Burma and
Siam where the king, the focal entity in the society, united in his person
both Indra and bodhisattva, god and Buddha-to-be. Thus in Siam, for
instance, the king was divinized by a small number of brahmans, who
were employed as court ritualists but who did not represent the superior
values of dharma (morality) in relation to artha (force and power) of the
king. Kingship appropriated both these values, and also became the
protector of Buddhism as the state religion.

The court brahmans of Thailand played an elaborate role in the midnineteenth

century (Bowring 1857, pp. 308-9) and continued to do so
well into the twentieth. More recently their ritual functions have been
severely curtailed, but the brahmans still exist. Though originally brought
to Thailand from Cambodia and India, they married Thai women and
in time all the brahmans became thoroughly Siamese. The mantras they
use today are apparently in corrupted Sanskrit and Tamil. Although in
important respects quite unlike the Indian pure caste brahman, the Thai
court brahman prominently distinguishes himself from the Buddhist
monk by wearing the sacred thread and white ceremonial dress, his hair
long, and propitiating solely the deities Siva, Vishnu and Ganesh.

Quaritch Wales reports that apart from their presence in Bangkok the
court brahmans or their descendants are to be found in South Thailand
(e.g. in towns like Nakorn Sri Thammarat and Pattalung where brahman
temples exist). Apparently in times past there were brahman temples in
the ancient capitals and in the main provincial centres. Thus the village
paahm of today is very likely a development from this historical situation,
and he performs auspicious rites and the astrological function which
parallel the activities of the classical brahman priest. The situation in
Burma closely resembles that of Thailand.[1]

The paahm in Phraan Muan village is a lay ritual officiant, a householder
and a village elder, who performs auspicious rites in some ways reminiscent
of the classical brahman priest. He is no blood descendant of the court
brahmans of Thailand, but is in some ways a comparable entity. There is
some internal evidence in the content of the sukhwan ritual itself to suggest
its brahmanical connections.

Consider these features: the offerings are vegetarian and are called
kryang bucha, which derives from the classical Indian word puja. These
offerings are made to thewada (divinities), who in this ceremony are
called upon before the declaration of taking refuge in the Buddha, that is,
the deities in this context have a kind of autonomy, while at the same
time coming under the Buddhist umbrella. It is true that ahimsa—nonkilling
and non-violence—is a prime Buddhist value, as it is also a critical

brahmanical value. But the Buddhist ethic does not prohibit meat eating:
Buddhist monks eat meat and, more importantly, in Thailand meat is
a part of the food offering to the Buddha. Vegetarian offering in the
sukhwan rite thus directs our attention to a different order of facts, namely
the vegetarian/meat eating distinction of brahmanism. Consider also the
words in the text which as we saw contain brahmanical ideas of marriage,
and invoke the procession of Hindu deities. Yet also note that God Indra,
the Garuda and the Naga are elements of the Buddhist cosmology as
well, and that it is therefore possible to formulate a scheme in which the
features enumerated, which are reminiscent of classical Hinduism, can
also take their place in a Buddhist rearrangement of ideas. (For instance,
see the Sakka-Panha Suttanta (Rhys Davids, Vol. III, Part II, Ch. 21,
1910) for the myth of the conversion of Sakka (Indra) to Buddhism.)
Finally, we should not forget that sukhwan is performed for the candidate
for ordination as monk, as well as for the monk himself.

In other words, whatever the historical antecedents, I wish to employ
a strategy of analysis which is different from that used in the classical
method, which speaks of elements of Hinduism and elements of Buddhism
(and also fragments of Animism) co-existing as disparate entities and
historical residues in contemporary South-east Asian religions.

My departure from this kind of historical method consists in employing
a different approach to the interpretation of the anthropological data.
In the village of Phraan Muan there exist today two ritual functionaries—
the monk and the paahm; one is usually a young unmarried man undergoing
an ascetic regimen; the other is an elderly householder invested
with authority. If, for the sake of dramatizing the situation, we must
employ an historical idiom, here is a case of the brahman and the bhikkhu,
who were antagonistic and irreconcilable figures in India, co-existing in
a Thai village. What is their structural relation and what dynamically
links them?

The rest of this chapter is devoted to elucidating the following thesis.
There is a differential emphasis, but also a complementarity in the roles
of both these statuses. Dynamically considered, the Buddhist monk in
time becomes the paahm, via service and learning in the wat. This dynamic
succession is a fulfilment of the life cycle stages in the Thai village, and
is the Siamese transformation of the classical Hindu life cycle of four
stages. It also illuminates that total systemic character of the religion we
are seeking to understand, elements of which are related in dynamic
tension. These questions thus take us back to the conclusions of Chapter 8,
which dealt with the rewards of monkhood and the career of the literate
monk who gives up his robes.

This interpretation, formulated on the basis of village facts, is confirmed
dramatically at another level of facts relating to the court brahmans of
Thailand. Quaritch Wales (1931)—after commenting that, especially in
the reigns of staunch Buddhist kings, state ceremonies showed an intensified
`blending of the two religions, Buddhism and Hinduism'—presents this
valuable bit of information: `it is not surprising, therefore, to find that
the court "brahmans" are also Buddhists, and that before they can undergo
the ceremony of initiation and wear the "brahman" girdle, they must pass
through the novitiate as Buddhist monks. . .' (p. 57) (italics mine). It is
unthinkable in Thailand that a local brahman can be outside the Buddhist
faith, or that his rites and those of the monk can be mutually exclusive.

We can now deal with the village facts. The paahm or mau khwan, though
a lay ritual officiant, has special characteristics which link him to the
institution of monkhood, just as the sukhwan rites, although not performed
by monks themselves, are clearly allied to Buddhism. The elucidation
of these links will also illuminate why the paahm is so appropriate as the
officiant and the sender of the message at sukhwan rites. His social position
and moral qualities are an essential ingredient of the efficacy of the message.
In Phraan Muan village there were two recognized mau khwan (plus an
occasional performer). Both were respected elders, ex-monks, and literate
in the scripts in which sukhwan texts were written.

Literacy, which traditionally was an achievement of only a few, is an
essential requirement for the performance of the role. Each sukhwan
occasion has a special text appropriate for it written on a palm leaf; the
text is read at the ceremony, there being no recitation from memory or
improvisation of words. The officiants possess collections of texts which
they freely borrow from each other, for the texts themselves do not
constitute secret knowledge. It is the ability to read that restricts access
to them, and it is in part the personal qualities of the literate villager which
are crucial for village acceptance of him as an appropriate person to
perform the ritual. (See Tambiah 1968 a for details concerning texts and
scripts.)

The link with Buddhism and monkhood consists in the fact that the
paahm acquires his literacy during his service in the village wat as a novice
and monk. Temporary novicehood and monkhood enable the man who
spends sufficient time in the wat to assume ritual eldership as a layman.
This is the most valued `pay-off' for an ex-monk and it is linked to
literacy. In traditional times, that is before the establishment of government
schools in the 1930s, the rungs of the ladder of literacy were, first, service
as temple boy (dekwat), then novicehood, followed by monkhood. Literacy
was essential not only for conducting khwan rites but also for practising

indigenous medicine, the knowledge relating to which is also embodied
in texts.

Now, the interesting fact is that both the khwan ritual texts and the
medical texts were traditionally copied and transmitted by monks. The
wat and its monks were in fact the library and copyists. While a monk in
robes could ordinarily practise medicine, he did not perform khwan rites,
for they were not considered rites appropriate for him to perform. (The
monk, however, may himself be the celebrant in the rite.) The rites are
thus not strictly `Buddhist' ritual, but a monk, in preparation for his lay
life, could and did copy texts and could take them away when he gave up
his robes. This was quite in order because khwan ritual, as we have seen,
comes under the umbrella of Buddhism; it is in no way `antagonistic' or
opposed to Buddhism. Thus in a sense it was only the ex-monk who is
fit to be a lay ritual elder.

Not every monk, however, becomes literate and able to handle texts;
nor does every monk who acquires literacy become a lay ritual elder.
Apart from personal interest in becoming one, he must find a practising
paahm who will teach him the art of performing rites. Finally, it is not
until many years after leaving monkhood, when he is in his late middle age
and has attained the status of elder, that a man can appropriately perform
the khwan ritual.

The biographical details of the two widely respected paahm of Phraan
Muan village illustrate the principles of their recruitment and their passage
from monk to village elder.

Phau Tu (grandfather) Phan, over seventy years old, is the village's
most celebrated paahm; in addition he is village physician (mau ya), and
one of the lay readers of the Buddhist congregation, whose role is to
invite (aratana) monks on behalf of the congregation to give precepts, to
chant, to give a sermon, and to receive gifts presented by the laymen.
Finally, he is also a member of the temple committee, which organizes
village temple festivals and looks after the temple finances. This is indeed
a remarkable clustering of roles. From the age of twelve to sixteen years,
Phan was a novice in the village wat and became literate; at the age of
twenty-one he was ordained monk and remained in robes for three years.
He then resumed lay life and married.

When he was about thirty years old Phan studied medicine from his
mother's younger brother, and after his teacher's death began to practise
and became very successful. But it was only when he reached the age of
fifty that he was invited by a relative of his grandparental generation
(and who lived in another village) to learn from him the art of conducting
sukhwan, since he himself was too old to practise and wanted a successor.

In turn, Phau Tu Phan decided some twelve years ago that on account
of his age his ritual duties were more than he could shoulder alone, and
therefore picked a distant kinsman, Phau Champi, as his apprentice and
eventual successor.

Phau Champi, now fifty-nine years old, is the village's most respected
elder. He is a former village headman, had served both as novice and as
monk, is a leader of the lay Buddhist congregation and of the temple
committee. He was so obviously the right person to succeed Phau Tu
Phan as paahm.

Champi is a thoroughly literate person and versed in Buddhist lore
and village traditions. As a boy, from nine to fourteen years, he had
five years of schooling in the village school; at seventeen he became
a novice and served in the wat until he was twenty, when he was ordained
a monk. He gave up his robes after one year as monk. Although literate
and learned by village standards, Champi did not commence his ritual
activities as paahm until he was forty-six, when he was invited to become
Phau Tu Phan's apprentice. He had by then become a village leader.
He assisted Phan at khwan rites for some time before he began to perform
the ceremonies himself.

To sum up the structural relationship between the paahm and the
monk: the paahm invariably has been a monk in his youth, and it was
in the temple that he acquired his literacy; he invariably is also a leader
of the Buddhist congregation. Although the practice of khwan rites (and
medicine) requires literacy, only a few ex-monks become paahm in subsequent
lay life. Traditionally the art has to be learned from an existing
practitioner, and succession, although it may depend partly on kinship
factors, is more importantly associated with the achievement of a position
of eldership in the village, which is attained through piety and leadership
in Buddhist worship and temple activities.

We have seen that a way of capitalizing on the experience of temporary
monkhood is to become a lay ritual elder of the paahm, or mau khwan,
type. Literacy is critical for both monk and paahm because language in
itself plays a crucial role in Buddhist and khwan rites. But words do not
play the same role in Buddhist chants as in the recitations of the paahm.
The Buddhist monk recites sacred Pali chants which are largely not
understood by the congregation, nor indeed by many of the temporary
monks themselves; however, their recitation per se is supposed to confer
blessings and protection. The Pali words are sacred and effective because
they are the words of the Buddha and are recited by ascetic, disciplined
monks who lead a religiously valued life. The paahm or mau khwan
recites texts, the words of which are necessarily in the local language.

The words are expected to achieve their effects in the listener through
a charging of morale and a conveying of confidence and support by the
assembled village elders. I shall later, when I analyse the rites of affliction
connected with malevolent spirits, carry further this comparison of the
use of words by indicating still another use.

Monk and paahm, young man in robes and elderly householder, Buddhist
rites and sukhwan rites, all stand in a relation of reciprocity, which in
my view is an important interpretative point to be made in the study of
village religion. This ritual reciprocity is intimately connected with village
social structure. Seen in terms of their refraction in this social structure,
the institution of monkhood and the ritual proceedings in mortuary rites
represent the services of the junior generation to the senior generation, of
luug-laan (children and grandchildren) to phuu thaw (elders of parental
and grandparental generations). The sukhwan rites, on the other hand,
represent the reciprocity by which the elders perform vital ritual roles
vis-à-vis the junior generation, their successors in the social system.

The reciprocity may be elucidated as follows: village youth become
temporary monks before marriage to make merit for their elders and
community members. In effect, then, the older generation persuades its
youth temporarily to renounce its vitality and sexual potency and undergo
an ascetic regimen. In a sense it is the sacrifice of this human energy that
produces ethical vitality which can counter karma and suffering. The
young are appropriate agents because they are not yet householders.
They are the agents of merit-transfer to the old, who are facing imminent
death. And after the death of the elders, they continue to perform the
same role of transferring merit to them.

While the young are going through monkhood it is the elders and
householders who support them and who play the leading lay roles in
Buddhist rites. Although monks are segregated from their families, yet it is
their elders who mainly support them through gift giving. Womenfolk
cook and serve them food, and continue to nurture their brothers and
sons who are monks. Male elders organize collective rites and act as lay
ritual leaders in most village rites, except in the case of mortuary rites in
which the filial generations (luug-laan) are called upon to play the major
ritual roles, for it is they who will succeed the elders and it is they who
will remember the dead.

In the life-affirming khwan rites, the phuu thaw perform a vital ritual
service to their luug-laan. Here the parental generation initiates the young
into various statuses and helps them assume the role of successful householders.
They in fact transfer their protective power and authority to
their successors. There is a power in old age which the young must rely

upon in order to enjoy a prosperous life, just as much as there is a vitality
in youth which the old must transmute into bun (merit), long life and
good rebirth. I have documented in Chapter 2 the details of the pervasive
system of ordering of the village society in terms of five generational
categories which are extended to all persons: pu-ya-ta-yai (grandparents),
phau-mae (parents), phii-naung (older/younger siblings), luug (children)
and laan (grandchildren). We saw that these generational divisions are
collapsed into two hierarchical categories, phuu thaw (elders) and luug
laan (children/grandchildren), with the middle term sibling (phii-nuang)
or own generation being implicit. The conspicious feature of both kinship
and ritual obligations in the village is that they are phrased in terms of
these three generational concepts, which simply reduce for any adult
speaker into the superordinate and subordinate relationships indicated
as phuu thaw and luug-laan.

The pattern of participation of kin and neighbours in khwan rites
closely resembles household rites of a Buddhist merit-making kind in which
monks participate. Behind this formal similarity, however, there is a
difference in expressive idiom concerning assistance and giving of gifts,
which will be elucidated now.

MATERIAL TRANSFERS AND THE IDIOM OF TRANSFER

In terms of social participation, all sukhwan ceremonies are occasions
for the assembling of bilateral kin and neighbours, especially those of
phuu thaw status. A prime example in the village is the marriage ceremony.
The pattern of attendance here is similar to that in mortuary rites, which
have been described earlier. Both proceedings include the giving of small
gifts of cash by guests, and both are highlighted or concluded by collective
feasts. In a general sense, both illustrate the values of reciprocity and mutual
help, and the universal merit-making ethos of the village, though there is a
difference of emphasis. The ordination rite neatly combines both emphases.

It is useful to compare the transactions at a marriage ceremony and
those at a Buddhistic merit-making household rite to bring out the scale
of participation, the economic implications of material transfers, and the
idiom of such transfers.

Marriage prestations have an important economic dimension. Typically
the groom's parents have to make a unilateral payment or price (khadaung)
to the bride's parents at the wedding ceremony. (This is balanced out
by the bride's parents entertaining guests and giving initial residence
rights to the couple in their household, and by the prospective land
inheritance of the bride according to the bilateral inheritance system of

the village.) Elders, we have seen, act as witnesses and intermediaries; they
customarily give small cash gifts (of 1-2 baht) to the couple (ngoen pukkhan)
and the parents (ngoen phaudaung). These are looked upon as gifts that must
be returned on a strict reciprocity basis when the givers are the hosts at some
other ceremonial. All guests are feasted by the bride's parental family. No
monks participate in the usual wedding rites. Let me illustrate the economic
aspects of marriage expenditure by reference to two actual cases.

Case 1: bride from Baan Phraan Muan, groom from another village.
At the wedding there were twenty-eight guests from the bride's side, and
twenty-seven from the groom's. Khadaung (brideprice) was 1,000 baht
(about £20). Elderly guests gave the couple 88 baht and the parents of the
bride 34 baht. The bride's parents spent about 250 baht on food, liquor
and tobacco for the guests.

Case 2: groom from another village, bride from Baan Phraan Muan.
Khadaung paid was 809 baht; money contributed by elders to the couple
was 180 baht (ngoen pukkhan) and by the bridegroom's parents 150 baht
(ngoen somma). (The first is paid when elders bind the wrists of the young
couple (sukhwan rite), and the second is optional.) The bride's parents
spent 327 baht on feasting the guests; this sum did not include the rice,
which was drawn from household stocks.

As an example of a household's merit-making rite I choose the prasaat
peueng ceremony, which I have described in Chapter 11. This rite is
either conducted on the third day after cremation when the mortuary
rites are concluded, or it may be done at any time as a special merit-making
for the dead. The essence of the rite is the carrying of gifts in a prasaat
peueng or `wax palace' to the wat and presenting them to the monks (on
behalf of the dead) after first feasting them. The economics of this ritual
are illustrated in the following two cases.

Case 1: the headman of the village held a ceremony on behalf of his
mother, who had died unnaturally some years previously and had therefore
been buried. This ceremony was then part of the delayed `normal'
mortuary rites.

On the day the prasaat was constructed eighty persons (excluding
children) congregated at his house; thirty-three of them were his `kin'
(yad). Guests made cash gifts amounting to 79 baht (which of course
would be `repaid' later). The headman spent 250 baht (£7) on gifts for
the monks (robes, clothes, mat, pillow, etc., and 140 baht on cash gifts to the
officiating monks). His expenditure on food and drink for the guests and
monks was 499 baht (£10); he spent another 210 baht on entertaining the
village at night by engaging a maulum troupe (folk opera). His total
expenditure thus was 1,023 baht (approximately £20).

Case 2: this is a prasaat ceremony on a more modest scale conducted
by an ordinary village household three days after the head's wife died.
Forty-four `helpers' were present at the construction of the prasaat and
they contributed 34 baht. The household spent 81 baht on purchasing
gifts of robes, cushions and cosmetics for the monks, and spent 228 baht
on food and drinks. Total expenditure was 309 baht (£6).

Thus a merit-making ceremony conducted by individual households
is also a social event in which kinsmen and neighbours participate and
fulfil obligations. Although the pattern of village participation is similar
in marriage and mortuary rites, the former is conceived of as a context
in which elders come together, witness the event and give it legitimacy,
while the latter is conceived of as an occasion when community members
come together to give help and make merit in so doing.

Ritual and material transactions in rites of passage like death and
marriage, and at collective cosmic rites at the wat, stand in contrast to
contexts wherein villagers have dealings with supernatural agencies such
as the male guardian spirits of the village or female agents connected
with agriculture (goddess of the earth and spirit of rice). This is the
subject matter of the following chapters.