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CONTRASTIVE FEATURES OF RITUAL FUNCTIONARIES

           

1 Monk	conducts Buddhist rites
2 Paahm, mau khwan	village elder, ex-monk, who performs khwan rites
3(a) Mau Song	diviner who channels patients and is primarily concerned with spirit affliction
(b) Tiam	medium of guardian spirits
(c) Cham	intermediary of guardian spirits
4 Mau Tham	exorcist

The four broad categories of ritual experts relate to the four major
ritual complexes.

1. The Buddhist monk is the only ritual expert in the village who
practises his vocation as a full-time occupation as long as he is in robes.
The office of monk expresses the value of asceticism for male youth. The
monk has access to sacred words in Pali which, when recited, transfer
prosperity to laymen. He is chiefly (but not exclusively) engaged in
collective merit-making and mortuary rites. He receives gifts, transfers
merit, and mediates between life and death. His ritual procedure is
controlled, austere and non-ecstatic. While in robes a monk has nothing
to do with spirit (phii) rites, but he can be the celebrant in khwan rites.

2. The paahm or mau khwan is typically a village elder, householder
(phuu thaw), ex-monk, and a literate. There is no contradiction between
khwan rites and monkish ritual. Khwan rites are primarily concerned with
initiation into new statuses at birth, marriage, ordination, and with various
threshold situations. The paahm's ritual procedure also is non-ecstatic
and puts emphasis on public recitation of words. Like the monk he
transfers grace, but the procedure is symbolized as restoring to the
celebrant his spirit essence (morale), which has escaped him. The monk/
paahm relation involves a co-existential relationship within the same
society of the classical bhikkhu and brahman, who were antagonists in the
parent country (India). In the village context there is a direct reciprocity
between elders as paahm and their children or grandchildren (luug-laan)
on the one side, and on the other, between monks as luug-laan and elders
to whom merit is transferred. In fact, a number of reciprocal oppositions
hang together and may be summarized as follows:

       

Gift giving	Asceticism
Paahm/householder	Monk
(Normal) Secular life	(Abnormal) Sacred life
Elders (phuu thaw)	Male youth (luug-laan)

These features can be read both vertically and laterally as forming interconnected
sets.

3 (a). The diviner (mau song) is of an intermediate status in this comparison
of ritual experts. He plays a bridging role as diagnostician in the
curing of disease. He is never called to office by a spirit but becomes
diviner through mastery of a technique, and is not directly associated with
the propitiation of spirits. His technique verges on the ecstatic. He is
distinctly separate from paahm and no one person performs in both
capacities.

(b). More clear-cut are the contrastive features of medium (tiam) and
intermediary (cham) of the spirit guardians. They acquire their powers
through possession by the spirit guardians and their techniques are
ecstatic, expressing extraordinary and idiosyncratic mystical powers. These
ritual offices are not tied to village leadership as the office of paahm is.
Furthermore, the fact that women can and frequently do become mediums
points up an underlying male/female distinction embedded in the Buddhist
and khwan rites (whose functionaries are male) which does not prevail
in the spirit cults.

4. The exorcizer (mau tham) is employed when a malevolent spirit
`possesses' a patient. The exorcist coerces or chases out the spirit, a
technique that sets him apart from tiam and cham. By virtue of the secret
knowledge of charms (which are said to be Buddhist gathas) he exercises
control over afflicting spirits with whom he communicates, not as a medium
but as a master invested with more potent power. His technique is ecstatic
like the medium's. In all these respects the exorcist stands in opposition
to the monk, in relation to whom, however, he is an `inversion'. When
compared to the paahm, we see that whereas the exorcist displaces an
unwanted external spirit which has entered the patient, the paahm replaces
an escaped spirit substance internal to the patient.