University of Virginia Library

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.