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.
