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19
A KALEIDOSCOPIC VIEW OF
THE RELIGIOUS FIELD

Thus far four ritual complexes have been examined, both independently
and in respect of their mutual links. The ritual complexes are: Buddhist
ritual (i.e. rites conducted by monks), khwan rites, cult of the guardian
spirits, and rites addressed to the malevolent spirits. The aim of this
chapter will be to co-ordinate the salient features of these complexes in
order to present the totality as a field.

There are several possible ways of presenting the distributional
features of the total field. We might view it as a spectrum in which the
four ritual complexes arranged side by side form a succession of dominant
colours which, however, overlap at their margins. Or we could view the
field as a circle divided into four sectors, each representing a ritual
complex. The sectors could again be divided into segments to represent
the components of the complex, and these segments of the same order
could be contrasted.

Ideally, a total field is best displayed in terms of the linguist's notion of
hierarchy, which is made up of successively larger units at more comprehensive
levels (e.g. a lexical hierarchy ranging upwards from morpheme to
word to phrase or sentence, etc.), or a taxonomic hierarchy of successive
inclusion of units. This kind of representation cannot be achieved with
our data. One primary reason for this may be that anthropology has not
discovered as yet the kind of universal categories of ritual from which
by transformations the higher levels are built. But there is also another
reason why the empirical data, as identified now, do not quite build up
into a neat hierarchical scheme. The ritual complexes not only portray
oppositional features but also share similarities and complementarities.
Hence they cannot be neatly pigeon-holed, and their contrastive features
have to be displayed on several frames of a shifting character.

It is indisputable that the ritual complexes exhibit patterns of contrastive
features and it is therefore worthwhile to display their distribution on
several dimensions. I have frequently used, in previous chapters, concepts
such as opposition, complementarity, linkage and hierarchy (in the sense
of differential evaluation) to describe these contrastive features. I shall
attempt now to present them in a concise and formal manner.

Fig. 5 The religious field

A. Primary religious concepts and fields of socio-religious interest

B. Supernatural personifications relating to A

C. Ritual specialists associated with B

D. Rites conducted by C

E. Scale of social participation in D

Figure 5 essays a picture of the total field using the circle and sector
mode of representation. It is composed of five concentric circles divided
into four sectors. Each sector represents a ritual complex (1-4), which is
named at the rim of the outermost circle. It is convenient to treat each
concentric circle as a band (A, B, C, D, E). Thus each of the 4 sectors
(ritual complexes) has 5 segments or portions of bands, which are its

components, and which if systematically compared will provide us with
the contrastive features.

Band A is the innermost circle and is used to represent the primary
religious concepts of the villagers. Bun (merit) and baab (demerit), khwan
(spiritual essence associated with the maintenance of life) and winjan
(spiritual essence that persists after death), are two pairs of primary
religious conceptions which are diagrammatically represented as two axes.
Their intersection provides four quarters which may be viewed as these
dominant foci of religious action:

1. good death and good rebirth, which is the domain of Buddhist ritual
par excellence;

2. bad death and bad or delayed rebirth, with which are associated the
rites directed towards capricious and malevolent spirits;

3. prosperity and orderly progression in life, which is the domain of
khwan rites;

4. protection and fertility, which are the themes of the guardian spirit
cult.

Band B lists the supernatural personifications or entities which figure
in religion. Their positions signify their relation to A.

Band C names the ritual specialists who deal with the supernaturals listed
in B.

Band D lists the rites which are conducted by the specialists in C.

Band E gives details of the scale of social participation in the different
rites in D.

The diagram is only a rough guide for making sense of the variety of
religious phenomena. To avoid misunderstanding, it must be stated that
it is not a conscious model on the part of the villagers; rather it is a composite
picture derived from several analytical procedures. The starting
point is the category distinctions made by the actors themselves. Apart
from their verbalized religious concepts, the villagers, as we noted when
we described their rites, made distinctions concerning the supernatural
agents, kinds of offering to them, the types of ritual specialists, and the
ritual idiom itself. The analyst, however, strives to go further. Having
systematically worked through the beliefs and rites, he is in a position
to present a total picture of the field wrought both from the conscious
categorizations of the actors and from the patterns and structural features
embedded in the rites which may be unknown to the actors.

Few villagers, if any, are faced with the need to contemplate or
visualize the many aspects of their religion as an intellectual puzzle.
A villager tends to act according to situation and context. He is aware that
each religious context requires him to behave in a stipulated manner. The

systematic arrangement and structuring of the religious field as such has to
be sought not at the level of the individual actor but elsewhere—at the level of
collective representations composed of religious ideas and formalized rituals.

The distinction I am making can be stated in a different way. If a villager
is suffering from a misfortune, he may conduct a merit-making ritual for
the monks and he may, at the same time, go to the diviner and on his
instructions propitiate a guardian spirit. This does not mean that he is
confusing Buddhist ritual with the spirit cult; it simply means that the
misfortune may be interpreted as a consequence of lack of merit or as
spirit affliction, or as both working in conjunction. From the point of view
of the individual actor there are many strings to his religious bow, and
furthermore, the different theories of mystical causation are not mutually
exclusive in operation.

But if we view this same situation from a different perspective, from the
standpoint of Buddhist ritual and the cult of the guardian spirits as
ordered phenomena, we can see that, although a layman may resort to
them simultaneously, their procedures are different. They represent different
ethical ideas and different approaches to the supernatural; their
ritual functionaries are separate and cannot intermingle roles; the grammar
of their rites is not the same. As structured ritual complexes they are
separated, segregated, and yet complementary. It is in this sense that they
are separate collective representations within a single field, and the analyst
tries to understand the logic of their differentiation in terms of underlying
distinctions and relations.

CATEGORY DISTINCTIONS IN RITUAL OFFERINGS
TO SUPERNATURALS

The following are the major classes of supernatural agents to whom village
ritual action is addressed:

1. the Buddha image (and let us also include here the monks who,
though not supernaturals, are associated with the same transaction);

2. thewada (divine angels), including Nang Thoranee (earth goddess);

3. khwan (spirit essence of human beings (and of rice));

4. guardian spirits of village, wat and swamp (Tapubaan, Chao Phau
Phraa Khao and Chao Phau Tong Khyang);

5. malevolent and capricious spirits (phii).

There is a single linguistic index pertaining to food offerings which tells
us that villagers reduce these five classes into two groups. All offerings
to classes 1, 2 and 3 are referred to as kryang bucha, while those to 4 and 5
are called liang phii.

Kryang bucha: bucha is derived from the Indian word puja, which
means `propitiation' or `ritual worship'. The Thai concept is used only
in respect of certain supernaturals.

Offerings to the Buddha statue are called kryang bucha khaw phraa,
that is, offerings presented to the Buddha statue in respect. There is no
notion that the statue partakes of the essence of the food offered. It is
relevant to note that the same type of offering is made to the monk in an
attitude of respect (pha khaw tawai phraa). Food offered to the Buddha
and the monks may consist of rice, meat and fish (non-vegetarian) but
excludes liquor. Typically bucha offerings also include candles and flowers
and joss-sticks.

Now, although offerings made to divine angels (thewada) are also called
kryang bucha, they are typically vegetarian. This is interesting in view of
the inclusion of meat in offerings to the Buddha (and the monks). An
historical conjecture is that the brahmanical value of vegetarianism may
be preserved in respect of the deities which originally belonged to the
Hindu pantheon and were later brought within the fold of Buddhism.
Thewada are both witnesses in Buddhist rites and an independent category
opposed to phii (malevolent spirits), and their vegetarianism may be a
contrast to the meat-eating character of phii. However, such speculation
is not important to the orientation of the actors, for whom the overall
bucha concept is dominant.

The food offerings in sukhwan ritual are also referred to as kryang bucha,
although there is a more specific ritual item called the phakhwan which
is a ceremonial conical structure filled with lumps of rice, bananas, boiled
egg and flowers. Divine angels are invoked as witnesses and homage is
made to the Buddhist Trinity in khwan rites, and therefore the linguistic
extension makes sense.

Liang phii: this contrasting term, which means offerings to take care
of spirits, is used in the case of both the guardian spirit cult and the rites
addressed to malevolent spirits, thereby indicating that in this sense they
comprise a common class. A common feature emphasized by the concept
of phii is that guardian spirits and miscellaneous malevolent spirits alike
may cause affliction to individuals and have therefore to be placated, or
in the case of `possession' driven out. In rites of affliction other than
`possession' which requires exorcism, we have seen that there are two
sequences: (1) kuad, which means `inviting' the spirit to leave with an
opening offering; and (2) pai karav, which is a larger thanks-offering given
after the spirit has removed its bad influence. In exorcism, however,
instead of invitation to leave, we have lai phii, `chasing away of the spirit',
but the placatory offering made to the spirit after its expulsion is still

called liang phii. This offering stands in contrast to that made by the
exorcist to his teacher and the thewada at the beginning of the rite; it is
a bucha type offering called kaj. Thus, the exorcist's ritual which deals
with both thewada and phii clearly expresses the bucha and liang phii
distinction.

We have seen before that there is an internal differentiation between
the guardian spirit of the village, who is meat-eating, and the guardian
spirit of the wat, who is vegetarian. Offerings to both, however, are liang
phii. All malevolent spirits, as well as the guardian of the village (Tapubaan),
are offered rice, varieties of meat, liquor, betel and tobacco—articles of
a `stronger' character than those employed in bucha.

In sum, then, the distinction between bucha and liang phii expresses
a basic difference as to the form of communication and reciprocity between
man and the supernatural. Offerings to the Buddha and the divine angels
as well as the monks, are in formal ideology given as free gifts and to
honour and pay respect to them. In the phii affliction rites, offerings are
made in terms of a bargain and a fee if recovery is achieved. The same
logic is carried over to the guardian spirit rituals of a collective nature
conducted to solicit ample rain and good harvests.

It is this fundamental difference in the idiom of gift giving and making
offerings that assigns Buddhist norms and action a higher place than those
associated with spirit cults, in the hierarchy of values and acts that
comprises the universe of religious action. The Buddhist idiom of selfless
giving of gifts, control of passion through asceticism, and renunciation
of worldly interests is an idealization and extension of the social norm of
reciprocity. On the other hand, the coercive relationship of bargaining
with spirits, their placation or subduing, is again a statement of power
relations which are an extension of socially manipulative behaviour.
Ethically the first ranks above the second, as purity above power;
hierarchically the cults are similarly ordered. The social existence of the
people of Baan Phraan Muan is inevitably fraught with moments of
harmony and disharmony. Religious action devoted to the securing of the
former and the elimination of the latter is modelled on the possibilities
of social relationships ranging from altruism to naked power. However
ethically valued, both are stubbornly present in real life—and if either
should gain supremacy life would be heaven on earth or pure hell; both
are improbable.

CONTRASTIVE FEATURES OF RITUAL FUNCTIONARIES

           

1 Monk	conducts Buddhist rites
2 Paahm, mau khwan	village elder, ex-monk, who performs khwan rites
3(a) Mau Song	diviner who channels patients and is primarily concerned with spirit affliction
(b) Tiam	medium of guardian spirits
(c) Cham	intermediary of guardian spirits
4 Mau Tham	exorcist

The four broad categories of ritual experts relate to the four major
ritual complexes.

1. The Buddhist monk is the only ritual expert in the village who
practises his vocation as a full-time occupation as long as he is in robes.
The office of monk expresses the value of asceticism for male youth. The
monk has access to sacred words in Pali which, when recited, transfer
prosperity to laymen. He is chiefly (but not exclusively) engaged in
collective merit-making and mortuary rites. He receives gifts, transfers
merit, and mediates between life and death. His ritual procedure is
controlled, austere and non-ecstatic. While in robes a monk has nothing
to do with spirit (phii) rites, but he can be the celebrant in khwan rites.

2. The paahm or mau khwan is typically a village elder, householder
(phuu thaw), ex-monk, and a literate. There is no contradiction between
khwan rites and monkish ritual. Khwan rites are primarily concerned with
initiation into new statuses at birth, marriage, ordination, and with various
threshold situations. The paahm's ritual procedure also is non-ecstatic
and puts emphasis on public recitation of words. Like the monk he
transfers grace, but the procedure is symbolized as restoring to the
celebrant his spirit essence (morale), which has escaped him. The monk/
paahm relation involves a co-existential relationship within the same
society of the classical bhikkhu and brahman, who were antagonists in the
parent country (India). In the village context there is a direct reciprocity
between elders as paahm and their children or grandchildren (luug-laan)
on the one side, and on the other, between monks as luug-laan and elders
to whom merit is transferred. In fact, a number of reciprocal oppositions
hang together and may be summarized as follows:

       

Gift giving	Asceticism
Paahm/householder	Monk
(Normal) Secular life	(Abnormal) Sacred life
Elders (phuu thaw)	Male youth (luug-laan)

These features can be read both vertically and laterally as forming interconnected
sets.

3 (a). The diviner (mau song) is of an intermediate status in this comparison
of ritual experts. He plays a bridging role as diagnostician in the
curing of disease. He is never called to office by a spirit but becomes
diviner through mastery of a technique, and is not directly associated with
the propitiation of spirits. His technique verges on the ecstatic. He is
distinctly separate from paahm and no one person performs in both
capacities.

(b). More clear-cut are the contrastive features of medium (tiam) and
intermediary (cham) of the spirit guardians. They acquire their powers
through possession by the spirit guardians and their techniques are
ecstatic, expressing extraordinary and idiosyncratic mystical powers. These
ritual offices are not tied to village leadership as the office of paahm is.
Furthermore, the fact that women can and frequently do become mediums
points up an underlying male/female distinction embedded in the Buddhist
and khwan rites (whose functionaries are male) which does not prevail
in the spirit cults.

4. The exorcizer (mau tham) is employed when a malevolent spirit
`possesses' a patient. The exorcist coerces or chases out the spirit, a
technique that sets him apart from tiam and cham. By virtue of the secret
knowledge of charms (which are said to be Buddhist gathas) he exercises
control over afflicting spirits with whom he communicates, not as a medium
but as a master invested with more potent power. His technique is ecstatic
like the medium's. In all these respects the exorcist stands in opposition
to the monk, in relation to whom, however, he is an `inversion'. When
compared to the paahm, we see that whereas the exorcist displaces an
unwanted external spirit which has entered the patient, the paahm replaces
an escaped spirit substance internal to the patient.

CONTRASTS IN THE SCALE OF SOCIAL PARTICIPATION
AND SIGNIFICATION

We need now to view the four ritual complexes within the framework of
social groupings and scale of social participation, in order to appreciate
their spheres of relevance from the standpoint of social structure.

The social groupings are divided into three broad levels ranging from
(1) individual/household/compound; to (2) bilateral kin (and neighbours);
to (3) community. We shall see that Buddhist rites and the cult of the
guardian spirits span all these levels while khwan rites and rites addressed
to malevolent spirits are more narrow in their scope.

Individual, household and compound

At this level rites conducted by Buddhist monks are concerned with such
threshold ceremonies as house-blessing and housewarming (khyn huean
mai) and with merit-making by the members of a household or compound
(thambun baan). Such rites are of small importance in the whole spectrum
of rites in which monks participate. The chief recipients of merit are the
household and compound members, although the attendance may be
wider.

In contrast the khwan rites have primary significance at this level of
social structure, for example pregnancy and childbirth, marriage (i.e.
recruitment to and establishment of families and households), and situations
concerned with the economic interests and prosperity of households and
compounds. In such events, the wider community is interested in the
fortunes of its smallest constituent units.

There is a further narrowing in the case of spirit rites dealing with the
afflictions of individual patients. Here the patient and the intermediary
are the major parties involved, and the occasion (illness) has little relevance
outside the household and compound. The rites in question involve
propitiation of malevolent spirits and exorcism to remove misfortunes
and illness.

Bilateral kin (and neighbours)

Monks are importantly involved in mortuary rites, whose significance
extends to bilateral kin and neighbours. Death is an event at which
institutionalized Buddhism directly participates in the family and kinship
networks of villagers. Thus the juxtaposition of Buddhist mortuary rites,
which deal with lesions or ruptures of the social structure and which
mediate between death and rebirth, and khwan rites, which are concerned
with initiation into statuses and with incorporation into village social
life, provides us with a clue to their social significance: the reciprocities
between the parental generation of elders (phuu thaaw) and their successors
(luug-laan).

The cults relating to spirits (phii) have little significance at this intermediate
level of social structure.

Community

While khwan rites and spirit affliction rites have no collective communal
significance, both Buddhist rites and the cult of the guardian spirits have
village and regional significance. The entire village and representatives
from surrounding villages participate as a single congregation in the

calendrical wat festivals. The guardian spirit rituals have a similar representative
feature—in fact, signified more distinctly than Buddhist rites
as solidarities of people associated with territory, both village and region—
which is expressed in the biannual agricultural rites and rain-making
festival.

Our conclusion is that in certain conspicuous ways Buddhism and the
guardian spirit cult have a symmetrical and balanced position in village
and regional life. Both are congregational: Buddhism draws together
human beings in its temples, located in villages, in which their sons and
grandsons serve as monks; the guardian cult assembles village communities
(collections of households) and regional communities (collections of villages)
together as territorial bodies under the protection of guardian `fathers'
whose `children' human beings are. Furthermore, Buddhism and the
guardian cult intersect at one point which is of primary interest to all
peasants—the ensuring of rains and agricultural fertility and prosperity.

I regard the complex relationship between Buddhism and the cult of
guardian spirits examined in previous chapters as a major contribution
of this book and a corrective to that kind of formulation which has phrased
their relation in classical terms—as religion versus magic, expressive action
versus instrumental action, church versus client. Their complex relationship
can be seen differently and more illuminatingly if we regard them as
separate, opposite, complementary and linked foci of religious action
within a single field.

THE GRAMMAR OF RITUAL TRANSACTIONS

Let us forget for the time being the meanings and associations that global
concepts like Buddhism, Animism, and Spirit Worship have for us and
seek in a different manner the principles of ordering and differentiation
exhibited by the variety of rituals examined here. We might use the
notions of particles or units, sequences of particles, and the grammar of
these sequences to uncover this order.

In the rituals described we saw that villagers identified and labelled
discrete sequences which broke up into smaller sequences or particles.
It might be said that a progression of certain particles of activity produced
a ritual sequence, and a set of finite sequences the complete rite. The
identification and contrasting of these various `emic' units and sequences
will enable us to say something of the lexical structure and meaning of
the ritual transactions. Since I have already analysed in great detail the
form of these rituals, I shall here merely contrast the general features of
some major classes of rites.

Three rites can be chosen to represent the variety in Buddhist rites:
a simple house-blessing ceremony, a mortuary rite, and the Kathin
festival.

(a) Major sequences in house-blessing rite

Evening chanting
(suad mon yen)
→ (Following)
Morning chanting
(suad mon chaw)
→ Feasting of monks
and giving them gifts

This rite has three major sequences. In the evening the main body of
paritta chants are recited to `charge' the house and its inmates, and holy
water is made; the next morning the monks return to chant the victory
blessing and to sprinkle the lustral water; finally the monks are given
their morning meal (and other gifts) and they chant the anumodana gatha
(acceptance with blessing).

(b) Major sequences in mortuary rite

This is a more complex and prolonged ritual and the major sequences
are best set out as happenings on different days:

First day
(Chanting by monks to
desacralize corpse and
presentation of food to
them)
→ Second day
Funeral procession and
cremation of corpse
→ Second night and two
successive nights
Chanting to purify
house and inmates
→ Fifth day
Bone collection and
effecting the passage
of the dead man's
winjan to heaven
→ Conclusion (same day)
Presentation of prasaat peung
of gifts and food by the
bereaved to monks in order to
transfer merit to the dead man

(c) Kathin festival (a collective festival)

First day
Morning
Feasting of monks and
assembling of gifts
→ Evening
Suad mongkhon chanting, that is,
collective purification and
protection threshold ceremony

Second day
Morning
Villagers receive
5 precepts from
monks
→ Kathin procession
and presentation of
gifts to monks
→ Monks give
blessings and
sermon
→ Evening
Fair and funmaking The festival demonstrates well the ideology of voluntary gift giving for
purposes of merit-making. Gifts are made first and monks reciprocate

later. The ideal Buddhist transaction occurs: the presentation of gifts as
a voluntary act and in proper spiritual state precedes the transfer of
grace by monks. In the mortuary and house-blessing rites, however, we
see that the monks first chant and perform their ritual service and are
rewarded afterwards with food and gifts. Yet this reward is very definitely
conceived as a gift, though the sequences are suggestive of payment for
specialist service, a service that receives explicit formulation in the spirit
rites, in which monks do not participate.

Let us now contrast the Buddhist transactional idiom with that of the
collective guardian cult.

(d) The sequences in the rain-making festival (Bunbangfai) are slightly
different from those of the Buddhist festival.

First day
Merit transferred by
villagers to the
guardian deities by
ordaining sons as
monks
→ Second day
Procession to shrine,
presenting food, firing
of rocket of respect
→ Third day
Firing rocket of request
for rain and promise of
larger offering in the
following year
→ Ritual licence
and fun making The festival combines elements of respectful propitiation of a deity
through offerings, and elements of a bargain to be followed on fulfilment
by the payment of a fee. The latter element is the more dominant theme
and is unambiguously expressed in the biannual agricultural rites which
show two major sequences.

(e) Before ploughing
Minor offering of food,
request for a good yield and
promise of a large offering
after harvest
→ After harvesting
Fulfilling of promise, large
offering, and expressing of
thanks. Also request for good
yield in the following year

The element of bargain and promise of later payment is given its most
explicit statement in the dealings with malicious spirits which cause
illness. The transaction with the supernatural is paralleled by that with
the specialist: he, too, is given an opening fee and a completion fee.

(f) The transactions in the khwan rites, in which elders conduct rites
of passage and of status assumption for their successors, are cast in an
idiom that is different from that expressed either in Buddhist ritual or in
spirit rites. Here the officiant, who is an elder, backed by a supporting
cast who are village elders, transfers by chanting and ritual acts morale
to the celebrant(s), and at the end instead of receiving a gift or a fee, he

and the elders make gifts to the celebrant(s). Ritual service and gifts
go in the same direction as demanded by the logic of the ritual context.
It is clear that the idiom of the khwan rite is closer to the Buddhist than
to the spirit rites.

The three modes of ritual transactions that inhere in the rites are
paralleled by three different uses of language in the same rites.

THREE USES OF SACRED WORDS

Throughout this monograph I have attempted to view the various rituals
as culturally structured systems of communication which transmit messages,
and have stated that the effects sought rely on transference in
which the sender of the message, the receiver, and the supporting cast
all occupy meaningful positions in a ritual situation or context. I have
also indicated that to understand the mechanism of transference it is not
enough to decode the language of non-verbal ritual acts, but that we
must also investigate what the `sacred' words say and how they are used
in conjunction with ritual acts to effect the transference. My conclusion
is that in the three ritual complexes in which sacred words figure importantly
the words are used differently, and that their distinctive roles can be
understood fully only in terms of the total religious field.

One use of sacred words—in this case Pali chants—by monks in Buddhist
ritual has received detailed treatment. Pali chants are recited at various
occasions; they are by and large not understood by the audience; the
words, however, are viewed as charged with power and listening to them
in itself confers merit. The sacred power and authority of the words
derives from a threefold relation expressed in the Buddhist Trinity, and
the semantics of the ritual consists of a metaphorical use of words linked
with a metonymical manipulation of objects and corresponding acts. The
monks in fact at the close of chanting confer blessings of a this-worldly
kind on the laity. The mechanism involved in this transference has to be
seen in terms of the relation between monk and layman, of village monastic
institutions and their integration with village interests and life. Through
proper ritual procedures the monk, who is an ascetic, partly aggregated
to the world of death, transmutes Buddha's conquests (through nonviolence,
compassionate love, and restraint of the dangers and sufferings
inherent in human existence), expressed in sacred words, into prosperity
and mental states free of pain and transfers these blessings to the laity,
who are ethically inferior and rooted in this world. In effecting this
transference mere access to the sacred Pali words by the monk is not
enough; two crucial conditions are right conduct and discipline on the

part of the monk and right intention, merit-making and liberality expressed
by free gift giving on the part of the layman. The monk's mediation is
effective because he is an apt mediator.

In the case of the sukhwan ritual the words recited by the officiant in
fact comprise the major part of the ceremony. This ritual is structured as
a prophylactic and therapeutic device. The words, which significantly
are expressed in the local language rather than in a sacred and unknown
language, are meant to transmit a message that is intended to alter the
orientations of the celebrant. While the non-verbal part of the ritual shows
only small variations, the words are changed to suit particular occasions.
The ritual's effectiveness depends on the role of village elders, whose
representative the officiant is, and who act as supporting witnesses in the
initiation of youth into statuses. The ritual texts are by no means secret;
they are in theory accessible to all who can read; but the efficacy of the
words partly derives from the fact that it is a venerable elder acceptable
to the village community who, supported by village elders, plays the role
of officiant. The sukhwan ritual often resembles a teaching situation, which
becomes all the more effective inasmuch as it is dramatized as a grand
mythological event in which the chief participants are invested with
elevated attributes.

The third use of sacred words is exemplified in the exorcism ritual.
Sacred words are again important in this therapeutic ritual but play quite
a different role from either of those in the other two contexts. There are
certain formal similarities with the monk's ritual in that the exorcist's
words are thought to derive their efficacy from a three-dimensional relation
(authority of the original teacher, the power embedded in the words
themselves, and the special characteristics of the practitioner). But the
exorcism ritual is a shock therapy. The exorcist as the protagonist in the
ritual, combating the possessing spirit, shows in dramatic form the supra-human
powers of the supernatural agents whose vehicle be becomes.
Significantly the charms and spells he recites are believed to be taken from
the Buddhist sacred texts, but a vital difference is that their knowledge is
secret, and the words have been transformed into powerful spells which
are uttered esoterically. The exorcist as a mock, dionysiac monk coerces
the patient into revealing the identity of the intruding malevolent agent.
It is not the monk's ethical power that the exorcist wields, but rather the
dangerous power acquired through secret instruction by a guru and the
ability to induce and experience an abnormal state of mind.