University of Virginia Library

---

135

THE `WAT' COMMITTEE

Throughout Thailand each wat and its monastic community communicates
for certain purposes with the outside world of lay parishioners, and
vice versa, through an organization called the wat committee, which is
composed usually of the abbot and a few secular lay leaders. The members
of the committee (excepting the abbot) act as the lay trustees of temple
affairs. Thus while the monastic membership and the village households
are two distinct communities, they are formally linked through the wat
committee for the facilitation and regulation of their reciprocal communication.

Wat Phraan Muan, like all other wat in Thailand, had a committee; it
consisted in 1961 of the abbot and three elders, all of whom had served
their time as monks and were in fact leaders of prestige. (One was Phau
Champi; other ritual leaders described earlier had in former years been
active members of the committee.) There is no popular election of a wat
committee; the present members were appointed by the previous abbot.
Their duties are to organize village labour and finance for holding collective
calendrical rites, to see that the wat is provided with the necessary
equipment, and to act as treasurers for money collected in the merit-making
ceremonies. The role of these lay elders in village affairs must
not be minimized. It is they, in fact, who structure and channel the
collective participation of the village as a religious congregation. Ritual
leadership is the only conspicuous leadership in the village, and it is
always available to an ex-monk of exceptional qualities and mature age.