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FROM MONK TO LAYMAN: THE USES OF LITERACY

The monastic experience, especially if it has been of sufficient duration
to have allowed the acquisition of literacy (the ability to read in the
sacred Tham and secular Lao scripts and to copy extant texts, rather than
to compose creatively), can be used to great advantage when lay life is
resumed. This I would claim is one of the most important rewards of
monkhood, which, although not necessarily formulated by the actors, is
nevertheless a significant implication of sociological analysis.

The acquisition of literacy, which gives access to ritual texts, is via the
village temple. In earlier times attendance at the temple school was an
essential first step on the ladder: the progression was from dekwat (temple
boy) to nen (novice) to phra (monk). What becomes of the ex-monk who
becomes a householder? His service in the wat—especially if it has been
long enough for him to have learned Buddhist chants and ritual procedures
and to have acquired literacy (as defined above)—will enable him to
become, if he so wishes, a ritual expert and a religious leader in the village.

Let us begin the analysis by taking a general view of the specialist

statuses in the village that require literacy. Below, I have enumerated
the village specialists and for purposes of convenience divided them into
ritual and secular kinds. It is the ritual specialists that concern us here
(incidentally, I also introduce the variety of ritual specialists and their
cults, which will concern us in later chapters), for the village headman,
who keeps records, and the schoolteacher, dispensing primary education,
are associated with the `new' literacy and are the products of recent
administrative measures (since the 1930s) of the central and provincial
governments. The mau lum (see B2), though traditional and though they
went to temple schools for primary education, did not in the past necessarily
improve their literacy through service as monks and novices nor did they
require mastery of the sacred Tham script for the practice of their art
(see Tambiah 1968a).