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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.