 | Buddhism and the spirit cults in North-east Thailand |  |
THE LAYMAN AND THE MONK
We have already noted that the wat as an architectural complex is set
apart from the village, and that at the same time it is the centre of village
life. In the same way the distinction between monk and layman is fundamental,
though the monk is the focus of merit-making and religious
ceremonial on the part of the layman. The fact that it is the young men
of the village who are monks, and it is their elders who are benefactors,
does not stand in the way of the relationship between layman and monk
taking on a particular asymmetrical and symbiotic pattern.
The monks and novices live apart—the villagers visit them rather than
they the villagers. A monk keeps his visits to the village settlement to
a minimum; he does not socialize with villagers and he enters a home
primarily to conduct rites. When village women bring the morning and
midday meals to the monks there is very little verbal exchange. Although
a monk's home is usually in the village his visits there are also minimal;
a novice has greater freedom of contact with his family. While a monk is
separated from family and kin, the latter can and do visit him in the
wat. A monk is free to visit other wat and he often does so; nor is he
barred from going to a town where he may visit a bigger wat and transact
personal business. His freedom of movement is curtailed only during
Lent.
A layman of whatever age or either sex must show formal respect to
a monk. The fact that a monk's head is shaven and that he wears a saffron
robe automatically induces the asymmetrical etiquette. The rules of
contact with laymen are particularly stringent in the case of women—
not old women, contact with whom gives no cause for public suspicion,
but younger women, especially unmarried girls.
The concepts of formality, respect and distance are expressed in the
language of conversation between monk and layman. In fact, the linguistic
categories show a combination of two criteria of status differences. In
general, generational and relative-age distinctions are vital in village
behaviour, and kinship terms express these distinctions. Monkhood is
a specially venerated status, and it commands respect irrespective of the
age of the incumbent. In the case of a young monk vis-à-vis an elderly
expressed both nuances in a fused fashion.
Thus a man or woman who is an actual parent or of the parental
generation of the monk calls the latter hua luug (head child); hua is
a term of respect, because the head is the most sacred part of a man's
body. An older layman of grandparental or phuu thaaw status calls a monk
hua laan, the latter word meaning grandchild. A layman younger than
a monk calls him hua plus the appropriate kinship term. Thus a younger
male or female of the same generation, whether married or not, addresses
him as hua aaj (respected elder brother), and persons of the generation
below him address him in terms of the appropriate kinship term (e.g.
hua naa = respected mother's younger brother). In general, all villagers
refer to a monk as mom and a novice as juaa, both of which are terms of
respect. (Aristocrats outside the royal family have the prefix mom in their
titles.) These same terms are used as address terms towards him by a
monk's older `siblings', real and extended (of the same generation),
thereby not compromising their higher relative age position in the kinship
reckoning.
A monk in turn calls his parents and all persons of his parental generation
phau org (`father of leaving' the secular life) or mae org (`mother of
leaving' the secular life). Alternatively, he may call elders who are not
his parents by the appropriate kinship term (e.g. phau lung = father's or
mother's elder brother) and use phau org or mae org as a suffix (e.g.
phau lung phau org). The words phau/mae org refer to the concept of
sponsorship in ordination; parents, primarily, and all elders of the village
have made possible his ordination. The use of the words in respect of
all elderly persons is tantamount to saying that the monk is the son of all
the elders of the village. A monk addresses persons younger than himself
by personal name and small children as soo chaaw.
The linguistic evidence I have cited eloquently tells us how a monk,
venerated on account of his sacred status which implies removal from
village society, is nevertheless very much a part and parcel of the village
social universe categorized in terms of kinship statuses and the rights and
obligations that ensue from it. This latter point has not been sufficiently
documented and appreciated in previous ethnography. The respect accorded
to a monk and given expression in language is, of course, not unique to
monkhood but is an essential aspect of the Thai status system documented
in historical works: the use of different classifiers for nouns, of a differentiated
set of pronouns and verbs nicely graduated in terms of the relative
statuses of speaker and the person addressed (second person) or referred
to (third person). De la Loubère himself was sensitive to this Oriental
is the classifier for ordinary people, and tua for animals, ong is the classifier
for royal or revered personages, Buddha images, and monks. The general
pronouns in Central Thai for a revered third person of royal or religious
status is phraa-ong, for a respected third person than, for a familiar person
kee, an outsider khaw, and for an inferior person, child or thing man (see
Noss 1964). Similar differentiation occurs in verbs; whereas the word for
`to eat' commonly used by ordinary laymen amongst themselves is kin or
taan, it is chan when used in respect of a monk or other revered person.
A monk does not follow lay occupations—there is a strict taboo on
their practice. In theory he must also not directly handle money, but
there are in practice some neat circumventions of this rule, as, for example,
when money is included in a package which contains other, directly
acceptable items. When a monk goes to a market, however, a layman or
dekwat accompanies him and handles money on his behalf, a provision
allowed for in the Vinaya rules.
The symbiotic nature of the relationship between monks and novices
on the one hand and laymen on the other is exemplified in a two-way
reciprocity. The requirements of the monks and the local wat, including
daily food, are supplied entirely by the laity. The monks in return perform
certain ritual roles of great concern to the laity. (Hereafter when I speak
of monks, I include novices.) It is this set of double transactions that is
central to merit-making and merit-taking, in which monk and layman,
the elders phuu thaw, and the junior generation lung laan stand in opposed
and complementary relationships.
I shall first examine the layman's services to the monks and distinguish
which aspects of interaction are elaborations of doctrinally stated or
recommended rules, and which are peculiarly village and non-doctrinal
developments. I shall then devote ensuing chapters to the analysis of
Buddhist ritual and focus on the monks' services to laymen.
| Buddhism and the spirit cults in North-east Thailand | |