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TRADITIONAL LITERACY: SOME QUANTITATIVE ASPECTS

I shall now extend this discussion of the traditional literacy of novices,
monks and lay ritual experts (all ex-monks) by commenting on the number
of people who travelled on the traditional path of literacy and emerged
literate. In modern educational jargon, I am considering the problem of
`educational wastage' from the point of view of literacy, not in terms of
other benefits.

In the figures given earlier on the number who became novices and
monks, I have indicated that although more than half of the male family
heads had seen some kind of religious service in the temple, only about
a fifth of the total number had been both novices and monks, and therefore
could be assumed to have had the time and training for mastering the art
of reading nansy Tham and documents in the secular Lao-Thai scripts.
But even this minority could not be assumed to have retained their

ability to read when they resumed lay life. There are many elderly persons
in the village today who, although they had studied nansy Tham in their
youth, have virtually lost their literacy.

In 1966 a very rough count was made of the number of laymen who
were versed in the traditional Tham and Lao scripts. Seven elders were
mentioned by villagers as having this capacity. Of these, only three were
lay ritual leaders and medical practitioners of the type we have discussed:
achaan wat, mau khwan, and mau ya. The other four, although able to
read the occasional literature that might come to hand, were not using
their literacy in a manner that had any visible impact on the village.

This leads us back to other facts already cited. A novice or monk does
not automatically acquire lay ritual and medical skills; after a lapse of
years, he may learn from a practitioner who is willing to have him as his
successor. Interest and effort on the part of the recruit (individual achievement
factors) as well as the right kinship connections (ascribed criteria)
come into play.

In the village, then, monkhood and novicehood as such are not restricted;
they are virtually open to any male, and it is not beyond the means of
most villagers to have their sons ordained. In fact, in Baan Phraan Muan
ordination is a collective rite to which the entire village contributes
financially. However, certain individual or idiosyncratic factors primarily
determine which of the many young men will serve long enough in the
temple to attain literacy and religious knowledge. Once lay life is resumed,
individual factors of interest and personal effort as well as restrictive
criteria (i.e. finding a teacher who will pass on knowledge to a chosen
or approved successor) play their part in determining the total number
of men who in their middle age will become ritual experts, highly appreciated
in the village.

What are the implications for traditional ritual and medicine of the fact
that in recent years there have been hardly any young men in the village
who can read the traditional manuscripts, both because of the government's
educational policy of teaching children only in the Thai language
and because the novices and monks of today need not, and in the main
do not, master the Tham script?

Village elders are very much aware of this as a problem, for the number
of mau khwan and mau ya in the region is dwindling, but not, as yet, the
public demand for their services. The khwan rites are still widely practised.
Most villagers are treated by their own village physicians rather than by
government doctors. Nevertheless, the loss of traditional literacy will
seriously affect the emergence of traditional specialists in the future.
Already, the death of elderly specialists is causing a visible shortage.