BUDDHISM IN A SECULAR CITYA VIEW FROM CHIANG MAI1

Charles F. Keyes University of Washington

This paper was first published as “Buddhism in a Secular City: A View from Chiang Mai”, in Visakha Puja B.E. 2518, pp. 62-72 (Bangkok: The Buddhist Association of Thailand, Annual Publication, 1975).

1. Secularization and Religious Change in Chiang Mai

The city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand has long had a

significant religious role, as well as a secular one, in the

society of northern Thailand. Indeed, until very recently, the

religious role of the city was interwoven with the political,

educational, and social function of the city. In the political

sphere, for example, the prince of Chiang Mai, who was the ruler

of the city and the country of which it was capital until the

beginning of this century, officiated at annual rites whereby the

realm was oriented to a sacred cosmos.2

1 This version has been reformatted, references are given at the end and two footnotes (numbers 2 and 12) have been added.

2Among the most important of such rites were the süp cata müang (สสสสสสสสสสสสส), ‘extending the fate of the domain,’ and khao inthakhin

(สสสสสสสสสสส), ‘entering [the shrine] of the pole of Indra,’ as

well as rituals performed at songkran (สสสสสสสส), the traditional New Year (see Sanguan 1969: 24-33, 54-58). Also compare Archaimbault (1971) [who

1

As a religious city, Chiang Mai has drawn monks and novices

from throughout northern Thailand to its centers of religious

education. In the fifteenth century it was one of the most

important centers of scholarship in the whole of the Theravada

Buddhist world. The city contains a number of important shrines

that have long been are still the foci of the piety of clergy and

laity alike, among the most important of these being Wat Phra

Sing, wherein is found the famous Sihing image, Wat Chedi Luang,

which has served from time to time as the axis mundi of the realm

ruled from Chiang Mai, and nearby Wat Phra That Dôi Suthep, where

is enshrined a relic of the Lord Buddha.

The traditional religion of Chiang Mai differed from the

traditional religion of central Thailand – Siam proper – although

it was shared by people elsewhere in northern Thailand, in

Kengtung and other parts of the southern Shan States of Burma.

This traditional religion was perpetuated by senior monks, thera,

or monks with ten years of service since taking the higher

ordination . These monks had the authority by virtue of their

seniority to serve as ‘preceptors’ at the ordinations of other

monks; they also taught the younger monks, the novices, and lay

school boys.

The religious role of Chiang Mai city has been radically

redefined in the wake of both secularizing influences and

religious reforms that began about the turn of the twentieth

describes similar rites for premodern principality of Champasak].

2

century. Between 1874 and 1902 the royal house of Chiang Mai that

had ruled as a vassal of the king of Siam was stripped of its

power and authority, although left with a symbolic role that was

only finally eliminated in 1973 when the last heir of the house

of Chiang Mai, a man who still carried a title from the ancien

régime, was cremated. The central Thai government arrogated power

to itself over both the city and its former domains and sent

officials, who were only rarely of northern Thai origin, to

administer policies determined in Bangkok. These representatives

introduced a Thai ‘civil religion,’ that is, symbolic acts that

served to buttress the legitimacy of a national order rather than

one centered on Chiang Mai or northern Thailand.

Following upon the transformation of the political nature of

Chiang Mai came the institution of compulsory primary education

whose curriculum was determined by officials in Bangkok rather

than by local monks. While monks were initially retained as

teachers, they held these positions only until a sufficient

number of lay teachers could be trained. The separation of

secular and religious education was even more clearly made in

northern Thailand than in central Thailand since the script used

for traditional northern Thai literature, sacred and secular

alike, was totally different to the Siamese script used in the

state schools. Since about World War II, Yuan script, the

traditional script used in northern Thailand, has been relegated

to a strictly religious function.

3

Moreover, even this function was under attack. Beginning in

the first decade of the twentieth century, the senior authorities

of the Siamese sangha, or Buddhist order, began instituting

reforms that were designed to eliminate religion and local

autonomy within the clergy. Two of the reforms instituted were

of particular importance to the clergy of Chiang Mai, and of

other parts of northern Thailand: first, the role of ‘preceptor,’

that is the role of the monk with the authority to preside at the

ordination of other monks, was no longer determined by seniority

alone. Rather, ‘preceptors’ were to be only those who had been

confirmed by the authorities within the national hierarchy.

Secondly, religious education was made to conform to a national

curriculum, one that had been constructed by prince patriarch

Vajirañana (Wachirayan), a brother of King Chulalongkorn. The

northern Thai clergy did not accept these reforms passively as

did, apparently, the clergy in northeastern Thailand for whom the

reforms were equally threatening.3

In northern Thailand the famous monk, Khrūba Srivijaya

(Sīwichai) led what I call the last stand of northern Thai

conservativism. Following a series of moves that included the

virtual imprisonment of Khrūba Srivijaya and the threat of open

3A major difference between the North and the Northeast lay in the fact that the Thammayut order that traced its genealogy to the reforms instituted by King Mongkut in the period before he became the king and while he was a monk had attracted a number of monks in the Northeast who subsequently gained high prestige among the populace for their strict adherence to the discipline and their practice of meditation.

4

revolt on the part of the northern Thai clergy and their lay

followers, something of a compromise was reached. The northern

Thai clergy accepted the authority of the national hierarchy in

the matter of who should have the right to be a ‘preceptor’ while

the national sangha authorities tacitly recognized the right of

the northern clergy to perpetuate their own tradition of

religious education, albeit only for local purposes. At the same

time the national sangha officials succeeded in appointing

several non-northern monks as religious teaches and holders of

other important positions in a number of the most important

temples in northern Thailand. In Chiang Mai, the princely family

assisted in the effort to convert the important wat of Chedi

Luang into a temple affiliated with the strict Thammayut order

that had been introduced into Chiang Mai by a ranking monk sent

by prince patriarch Vajirañana. To this day [1975] its abbot is

not a northern Thai. A non-northern monk was also sent as

religious instructor at Wat Phra Sing, the other most important

wat of the city. This monk subsequently became the ecclesiastical

head of Chom Thong district in Chiang Mai province and has

recently been chosen as the abbot of Wat Phra Sing itself.4

Since the early 1950s Chiang Mai has experienced, albeit to

a much lesser extent than Bangkok, the effects of relatively

rapid economic development. Chiang Mai today is a market center

for a number of important agricultural products that are raised

4For some further discussion on the integration of northern Thai Buddhism into the national religion, see Keyes (1971:551-67).

5

commercially (tobacco, lamyai [longans], tea, for example], a

center for the production of craft products known both nationally

and internationally (for example, silk, silver and lacquer work,

wood carvings, and so on), a financial center (the city has

fifteen branches of Bangkok-based banks), and the center for some

light industry (furniture and brick manufacture, for example).

With the exception of the tourist industry, which focused

attention in part on some of Chiang Mai’s wats, the economic

development of Chiang Mai has been strongly secular in

character.5

This development has brought in its train an expansion of

entertainment facilities in Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai residents have

the choice, in their leisure time, of viewing the latest films at

one of the half dozen or so movie houses, of watching programs on

TV, or of listening to the ubiquitous radio. While temple fairs

and other wat centered activities continue to have entertainment

value for many of the people of Chiang Mai, they are now in what

would appear to be a losing competition with secular

entertainment.

Given the secularization of life in Chiang Mai and given the

reforms which have led to a restructuring of the northern Thai

sangha, one is led to ask what role religion has in contemporary

Chiang Mai City. This question was the focus of research which I

5Some aspects of the economic development of Chiang Mai are discussed by Chakrit Noranitipadungkarn and Clarke Nagensick (1973). Unfortunately, this study only scratches the surface of a very important subject.

6

carried out in 1972-1974 while I was serving as a Fulbright

lecturer and advisor at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Chiang

Mai University.6

The research included structured interviews carried out with

the abbots of 21 wats in the municipality of Chiang Mai, 11 of

which were made in December 1972 and an additional 8 were made in

January 1974. In addition, students from Chiang Mai University

working under my direction made observations of Buddhist Sabbath-

day observances at 11 wats (8 within the municipality) in July

and August 1973. Only two of these wats were ones whose abbots

were interviewed in the survey. Finally, unstructured

observations and interviews were made at 19 of the wats included

within the survey and at an additional 10 wats not included in the

survey, 4 of the latter being in the suburbs. In sum, interviews,

both structured and unstructured, and observations were made at

32 wats within the municipality of Chiang Mai and at another 6

wats in the suburbs of the city. In this paper, I shall attempt,

through the presentation of some of the findings from my 6 My research was carried out partially in conjunction with my teaching ofa seminar at Chiang Mai University. I am indebted to the students who tookthat seminar during the three quarters which I gave it for carrying out some interviews and for making some observations of sabbath-day events. I am also indebted to the faculty of the Social Sciences at Chiang Mai University for arranging for the mimeographing of questionnaires. I am particularly grateful to Ajarn Sommai Premjit who often provided me with invaluable insights, drawn from his previous knowledge as a monk who had achieved the highest level of Pali studies and from his own researches on the sacred literature found in the wats of Chiang Mai city. I also benefited in my research from my discussions with M.C. Chand Chirayu, Acharn Kasem Burakasiorn, Acharn Suthep Soontornpasuch, Professor Donald K. Swearer, and Professor Frank Reynolds.

7

research, to show how secular and religious changes have

manifested themselves within the religious life of Chiang Mai. It

is my thesis that such changes do not foreshadow the ultimate

decease of Buddhism in Chiang Mai; rather, religion in Chiang Mai

is acquiring new meanings as the populace of the city, both lay

and clerical alike, adapt to their altered conditions of life.

2. Chiang Mai Wats and Their Communities

The wat in Thailand is both a monastery in which Buddhist

monks and novices live and follow the religious life and a center

for the religious devotions of the laity. In other words, the wat

is the central Buddhist institution, there being no other

institution which can be said to even approximate the religious

role which the wat fulfills for Thai Buddhists. Over the past

century in Chiang Mai, there has been a marked decline in the

number of wats in proportion to the population of the city and a

concomitant decline in the size of both the religious communities

and the lay congregations associated with the wats. Given that

there is no evidence of large scale conversion to other

religions, these facts suggest that secular influences have

strongly challenged the role which the wat traditionally filled.

In 1971, according to figures provided by the Provincial

Office of Education in Chiang Mai, there were 118 wats in Muang

District, Chiang Mai, the district in which the city of Chiang

Mai is located. Of these 118, I have on the basis of maps,

8

identified 70 as being within the “municipality” (thetsaban) of

Chiang Mai, 36 being within the inner walls of the old city.7

In 1879, A.R. Colquhoun (1885: 138) reported that there were

75 wats in the city and in 1882, Carl Bock (1884: 228) reported

that “there are said to be upwards of eighty temples in the

city, but I think this is somewhat an exaggeration.” A list

compiled in 1907 by the abbot of a Chiang Mai wat includes 100

wats within the inner walls and another 50 between the inner

walls and outer walls.8 While this latter list most certainly

includes many wats which even then were abandoned, there is no

question that more wats have been abandoned in the last 100 years

than have been renovated or built anew. On the basis of interviews

with a number of abbots in Chiang Mai, it would appear that there

have been no new wats built in the city for about 50 years, that

few abandoned wats have been restored, and that at least a half

dozen wats have been abandoned or converted to non-religious

uses. It would seem that the last time when new wats were built

in Chiang Mai was at the end of the 19th century when several

Burmese, who had made small fortunes in the teak trade, used

7 The list of wats in Chiang Mai which I used was obtained from the provincial office of education by Mr. Puangkham Tuikhiao. I am indebted to Mr. Puangkham for allowing me to copy his list. The maps which I con-sulted included one prepared by the Department of Geography, Faculty of the Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University and one published in a guidebookby Chum na Bangchang (1973).8 Manuscript by Khruba Inta of Wat Sop Khamin, Chiang Mai, dated C.S. 1269 (A.D. 1907), transliterated from the Yuan by Mr. Puangkham Tuikhiao and mimeographed by the Faculty of the Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, 1973.

9

their wealth for the construction of new wats.

According to traditional northern Thai practice, the

construction of a new wat is one of the most significant acts of

piety, one which is believed to generate great merit for the

donor or donors. That this belief is no longer being acted upon

by those who acquire sufficient wealth – despite the economic

development of Chiang Mai – bespeaks a major change in the

religious orientation of the populace of Chiang Mai.

While the number of active wats in Chiang Mai has declined

over the past century, the population of the city has been

rapidly increasing. While comparative figures for the city itself

are not available, the following figures indicate the relative

decline in the number of wats in relation to the population for

the whole of northern Thailand (Table 1).

Table 1: Wats, Monks, and Population in Northern Thailand,

1919-20 and 1963.Year of Census

No. of wats

No. of monks

Population

Wats / population

monks / population

1919-20 2,884

8,050 1,342,000

1/468 1/166

1963 3,389

7,009 3,211,229

1/947 1/458

Sources: For figures from the 1919-20 census, Reginald LeMay, An Asian Arcady (Cambridge: Heffer, 1926), pp. 85, 87-88. For figures for 1963, Thailand, Official Yearbook 1964 (Bangkok: Government House Printing Office [1964?]), pp. 510-512.

In 1970, the ratio of wats to population in Chiang Mai was even

10

less than that for the whole of northern Thailand in 1963.

According to the 1970 census, the total population of Chiang

Mai municipality was 83,729. Of this number, 78,897 or 94.2%,

were listed as “Buddhists.” With a total of 70 wats in the

municipality, the ratio of wats to population for Chiang Mai in

1970 is 1/1127 (Thailand. National Statistical Office. n.d.).

Despite the increase in the number of laymen per wat in the

city, the normal size of “supporting congregations” for Chiang

Mai wats is very small. While wats do not maintain membership

rolls as is the case for churches in America, there are three

types of functions which bring the wat, or its resident clergy,

and laity in interaction and which define the composition of

the “supporting congregation.” First, there are those laity who

provide, on a daily or regular basis, offerings of food for the

monks of a particular wat. While only eight abbots of wats in

Chiang Mai were asked about the number of laity providing regular

offerings of food, their answers suggest the level of support

which all but the most famous wats receive. The answers ranged

from two families to 20, with the median being 10. Abbots at all

21 of the wats included into the two surveys were asked what was

the size of congregation attending sabbath-day (wan phra) services

during Lent (phansa). The average congregation at such services

based on the estimates of abbots was 48. Finally, abbots of all

21 wats were also asked to estimate the size of the congregation

attending some or all of the services of the major Buddhist holy

11

days (entering Lent, leaving Lent, songkran). On the basis of

the answers of eighteen of the abbots, it can be estimated that

the average size of the congregation at major holy day services

is 72.

While the supporting congregations for the two major wats –

Wat Chedi Luang and Wat Phra Sing – would be significantly larger

than the averages for the rest of the wats in the city, they

certainly would not include all, or even a significant percentage,

of all the Buddhists of Chiang Mai city who were not members of

the supporting congregations of other wats. Indeed, it can be

safely assumed that not more than ten percent of the “Buddhist”

population of Chiang Mai city are members of the “supporting

congregation” of any wat. This fact is not lost on the abbots,

not a few of whom expressed in interviews their great concern

and dismay over the small number of “faithful” (sattha) who regu-

larly supported their wat.

Those who are not members of supporting congregations of

specific wats may attend some wat functions irregularly, may

contribute to a group jointly sponsoring an alms-giving, may

offer food to monks on the occasion of a birthday or funeral, may

consult monks known for their specialized knowledge of folk

medicine or magic. The point is that for most lay Buddhists in

Chiang Mai, their religious life is not focused on one specific

wat.

It is rather difficult to obtain adequate data which would

12

permit us to determine whether there has been a significant

change in the average size of monastic population in the wats of

Chiang Mai. Colquhoun (1885: 138) estimated that in 1879 there

were 500 monks living in 75 wats in Chiang Mai, an average of

about 7 monks per wat. In the survey carried out in 1972 and

1974, I found that there was an average of 5.0 monks, 11.7

novices, and 16.8 monks and novices in the 21 wats included in

the survey.9 What is more clear is that there has been a

significant decline in the number of monks in relation to

population. In 1919-20, as can be seen by referring to Table 1,

the ratio, monks/population, in the whole of northern Thailand

was 1/166. If any different, the ratio in Chiang Mai at this

time would have been better than that for the whole of the

north. For 1970 I estimate the number of monks to population in

Chiang Mai at 1/225.

What is perhaps more significant than the size of the

monastic communities is the fact that the vast majority of both

monks and novices were not born in Chiang Mai city. Seventy-five

percent of the monks in 19 wats for which data are available were

not born in Chiang Mai; 93 % of the novices in 16 wats were born

outside of Chiang Mai, the vast majority in rural villages. What

these figures suggest is that religious orientation of the 9 It is of interest to compare the size and character of the composition of monastic communities in Chiang Mai and Ayutthaya, the only other city wheresimilar data have been collected. In Ayutthaya, the average number of monksfor 15 wats was 12.7/wat, the average number of novices, 7.6/wat, and the average number of both monks and novices, 20.3/wat. See Bunnag (1973: 200-201).

13

monastic communities even in Chiang Mai City tends to be grounded

in the experience of the rural society of the laity. The gap

between the religious orientation of the monastic communities and

the religious orientation of the urban laity has been widened

even further given the different educational experiences of

clergy and laity in Chiang Mai.

3. Education, Religious and Secular

In the tradition of northern Thailand, education was not

divided into secular and religious streams. Rather, those who

received formal education - and such were almost exclusively boys

- went to the wat where they sat at the foot of a monk-teacher

for a number of years. Writing of the 1920’s when this

tradition was beginning to disappear, Reginald LeMay (1936: 106-

107) provided a succinct description of both the structure and

content of the traditional northern Thai education:

Up to the age of ten a boy remains at home. ..At ten he is

sent to the nearest temple school, where he is taught his

letters and prayers by the priests... When the boy reaches

the age of fourteen or fifteen, according to his mental

capacity, he will either leave the school or become a novice

or acolyte...He will remain an acolyte at the temple for a

year or two, and then will come the parting of the ways. If

the novice is not to become a priest, he begs permission

from the Abbot or Head Priest to leave school and retires

14

into ordinary life. Clever boys sometimes remain until they

are eighteen. But if he desires to enter the priesthood,

the boy will continue to study the Buddhist scriptures,

and to perform his duties as an acolyte until he reaches the

age of twenty, when he will undergo his initiation into the

brotherhood.

LeMay (1926: 106) adds, significantly, that this form of

education as he has described it “has, of course, now been

modified by the new Compulsory Education Act.”

As a consequence of this act, all children, both male and

female, were required to study a curriculum established not by

the local wat but by the Ministry of Education. Moreover, by the

late 1930’s, the responsibility for this education had been

removed in northern Thailand, as previously it had elsewhere is

Thailand, from the monks and vested in lay teachers who had been

trained in government sponsored schools. While some schools, to

this day, remain physically located on grounds belonging to wats

– even in Chiang Mai city – and even though the secular

curriculum includes instruction in “morals” which, for

Buddhists, includes some instruction about the Buddhist

religion, the two curricula are now clearly and legally

separated.

In northern Thailand, there is not one, but two, forms of

religious education. As mentioned above, traditional religious

education in northern Thailand included instruction in the Yuan

15

or northern Thai script, the script in which the sacred

literature of the region is written. The literature deemed

important for monks and novices in the northern Thai tradition

also differed from the literature emphasized in the Siamese

tradition. Instruction in the Yuan script and in the

traditional literature of northern Thailand continues to be

given in wats in rural areas and in some of the districts of

northern Thailand. However, for the past several years there has

been no instruction of this type in the wats in Chiang Mai city.

Formal religious education in Chiang Mai city today consists

exclusively of instruction in Dharmic and Pali curricula

established by national sangha.10 Until recently, a number of wats

in Chiang Mai offered instruction in the Dharmic or doctrinal

curriculum. Now, only two religious educational centers, Wat Phra

Sing for the dominant Mahanikai order and Wat Cedi Luang for the

Thammayut order, exist. Both offer Dharmic and Pali education.

Educational attainment in the sangha-established

curriculum remains at a fairly low level among the clergy of

Chiang Mai. Of the 21 abbots interviewed, only 3 had passed

10 Dharmic studies consist of three levels, nak tham tīi to nak tham ēk. The syllabuses for each of these levels includes study of a number of texts written by Thai monks, and most were written by the late Prince Patriarch Wachirayan. Pali studies consist of seven levels from parian 3 prayok to parian 9 prayok. The syllabuses of each of these levels consist of the study of a number of commentaries, several of which were written by the famous Sinhalese monk, Buddhaghosa. Ishii (n.d.: 8-9) has noted that the emphasis in the instruction in both curricula is on rote memorization, of interpretations given by Prince Patriarch Wachirayan for the Dharmic education and of “orthodox Thai translations of Pali texts” for the Pali curriculum.

16

examinations in Pali. Fifteen had passed the first level of

Dharmic examinations, and four others had passed the second or

third levels. Of 132 clergy (monks and novices) in 7 wats

where information was obtained, only 13 had passed Pali

examinations. Even among those few monks who have studied the

formal curriculum in Pali, few have gone beyond parian 4, the second

level of attainment. The only monk in Chiang Mai who has achieved

parian 9, the highest level of Pali studies, is not a northerner and

did not study for the examinations in Pali while residing in

Chiang Mai.

Few monks or novices in Chiang Mai have acquired any

significant level of secular education. Of eight abbots asked,

only two had more than a primary (prathom 7) education; and these

two had only the lowest level of secondary education. Part of the

reason for low educational attainment in the secular level has

been the fact that many in the clergy ceased studying the

secular curriculum once they had taken holy orders. While those

in the yellow robes cannot study at secular schools, they can,

study at specially constituted schools run by monks which

provide secular education for members of the clergy. In Chiang

Mai, there is such a school at Wat Phra Sing, offering

instruction up through the lowest level of secondary school, but

not pre-college schooling. There is no question but that this

school is one of the major reasons why so many novices from the

countryside choose to come and live in wats in Chiang Mai city.

17

Most of the novices who do so will not remain in the clergy.

The clergy in Chiang Mai city today no longer holds the

position they once did as the literati of the community, the

instructors to lay and cleric alike. Rather, owing to the

reforms which altered secular and religious education alike, the

clergy of Chiang Mai have arrived at a stage where they are not

well-educated in any tradition. Few are masters of the

traditional education, and a growing number of monks and

novices are no longer able to read and write the Yuan script. Few

have achieved any significant level in the new religious

curriculum established by the national sangha. And none of the

clergy in Chiang Mai have achieved the level of secular education

commensurate with those laymen who have attended college. One

abbot, who is a part-time instructor at the secular school for

the sangha at Wat Phra Sing, expressed an awareness of what the

implications were for poorly educated clergy. He said that monks

can no longer talk to the young people of Chiang Mai: “How can

one retain the support of young students,” he asked, “who find

that monks do not even have their knowledge of arithmetic?” He

strongly advocated the revocation of the regulation which bars

clergy from studying in secular institutions such as

universities. Only by becoming better educated can monks

recapture the prestige they once had, he said. Another abbot,

who had once been an instructor at Wat Phra Sing in Yuan script

and traditional northern Thai literature, expressed a rather

18

different sentiment. He saw the Chiang Mai clergy as being the

conservators of the Yuan religious tradition and strongly

bemoaned the fact that instruction in this tradition, either in

the wats or at the schools and Universities, was now given, at

best, in an ad hoc fashion. However expressed, there is a common

awareness among most of the abbots interviewed that the education

of clergy is inadequate for preparing the clergy to serve in

their roles in an urban environment.

4. Religious Meaning in a Secular City

It is an oft-stated conclusion by students of Thai Buddhism

that the essential import of religious action in Thai society is

the acquisition of “merit” (tham bun in Siamese, ao bun in northern

Thai). The results of acquiring merit are both an improvement of

the conditions of the present life and an assurance of better

rebirth in the next life. Jane Bunnag (Bunnag 1973: 20), in her

study of Buddhist life in Ayutthaya city, has summarized this

position as follows:

Thus both the Buddhist bhikkhu and the Buddhist householder

pursue the same end, though by different means; each “seeks

the secondary compensation of a prosperous rebirth” (Tambiah

1968, p. 41) by doing good and avoiding evil. The

acquisition of merit is also felt to bring immediate

benefits in the form of happiness and peace of mind.

If the pursuit of merit is the fundamental religious meaning of

19

all religious action, then by any set of criteria one wishes to

use the people of Chiang Mai are far less religious today than

they were in the past.

If we were to conclude this, however, we would in fact be

distorting the picture of religious life in Chiang Mai. In recent

studies by Tambiah (1970) and Davis (1974), among others, we are

beginning to obtain a better picture of the meaning conveyed by

the symbols to which people in Thailand are exposed in various

ritual and mythic contexts. Few Thai Buddhist symbols are

univocal in meaning, conveying only the message of “merit.” The

“multivocality” (Turner 1967) of ritual and mythic symbols is

clearly seen in the ritual which encompasses the chanting of the

Vessantara Jataka (the story of the penultimate life of the Buddha

before he was born as the Buddha) which is of great importance

in all Thai Buddhist traditions. According to a well-known

northern Thai myth, Phra Malai, those who listen to the thet maha chat,

“the Great Life Sermon,” will be assured of rebirth at the time

of the next Buddha, Sri Ariya Maitreya. In addition, those who

listen to the sermon are reminded once again of the “great

sacrifice” of Prince Vessantara who gave away everything,

including his wife and children, to demonstrate his attainment

of the “perfection” (paramita) of self-sacrifice. However, as he is

rewarded for his sacrifice by receiving back everything he has

given away, the moral of the story appears more to be that

meritorious deeds will have the rewards in this life rather than

20

the ostensible moral that those who achieve the “perfections”

will become Buddhas.11 In addition to meritorious meaning of the

ritual chanting of the Vessantara Jataka, with consequence for both

this life and the next, the ritual/myth cycle has certain

profane meanings as well. Tambiah (1970: 161) has noted that in

the northeastern village in which he carried out research that

the annual ritual presentation of the Vessantara Jataka, the bun pha

wet, occurs appropriately after harvest. “In terms of the

agricultural cycle, (bun pha wet) reflects two themes-thanksgiving

and looking forward to the next cycle.” Tambiah discusses at

length the symbolic form in which these themes are presented in

the bun pha wet.

In Chiang Mai many of the traditional northern Thai rituals

are no longer performed or are performed only sporadically. It

is my argument that the disappearance and eclipse of such rituals

tak bat khao mai (“offering of food-alms of new rice”), thawai pha

phansa (“offering of Lenten robes”), and even of the thet tham luang

(the chanting of the Vessantara Jataka), which is not performed

annually at any of the wats surveyed and at many is no longer

performed at all, is a function not of the decline of concern

among Chiang Mai people about acquisition of merit but a function

of the fact that these rituals were intimately tied to the

agricultural cycle and carry symbolic meanings appropriate to

agriculture. In Chiang Mai where few practice agriculture, these

11 I am indebted for this interpretation to a study on Wat Haripunjaya, Lamphun, by Donald K. Swearer (1976).

21

meanings are no longer of commanding interest.

Other ritual/myth cycles have disappeared or been altered

owing to the changed political position of Chiang Mai. For

example, songkran, the traditional New Year’s, no longer includes

the ritual cleansing of the domains of the Chiang Mai by the

prince, although an echo of this ritual event has been

perpetuated by the Thai governor who performs the first ritual

bathing of the Sihing image, the most important Buddha image in

the city (and province).

While agriculture and political fortunes of Chiang Mai are

no longer of great concern to most of the populace of the city,

life crises are. From the survey, it is apparent that most of the

senior monks of the city devote considerable time to

participation in rituals associated with life crises. Of these,

the most important are rituals performed at funerals, on the

occasion of moving into a new house, and on the occasion of

birthdays, particularly those marking the completion of the 4th,

5th, 6th, etc. cycles.12 Participation in marriage rituals is less

common, partially because there was no role for monks in the

traditional wedding ceremonies of northern Thailand. Only those

following or emulating central Thai patterns will sponsor a

ritual alms-giving for monks on the occasion of a wedding. It

should be noted the rituals associated with life crises are often

not held in wats.

12 A’cycle’ (rôp) in the Thai and northern Thai tradition consists of 12 years.

22

Personal concerns regarding health, fertility,

interpersonal relations, wealth, and so on also find

considerable ritual expression, although much of this expression

is not formally Buddhist. The people of Chiang Mai consult a

variety of practitioners, some of them monks, who are skilled in

saiyasat (magic as learnt from texts originally written in India),

astrology, folk medicine, and spirit mediumship. The annual

ceremony of khao inthakhin, “entering [the shrine of] the pole of

Indra,” held at Wat Cedi Luang and in conjunction with the

annual wat fair of this temple-monastery, once had a strong

political significance as well as a fertility meaning. Today,

those who are most fervent devotees of the cult of the pole of

Indra are women who desire fertility. While I do not have the

data to support my conclusion, I have the strong impression that

the ritual expression of personal concerns is far more pervasive

in the city of Chiang Mai than it is in the surrounding

countryside. In any event, I am certain that there has been no

decline in this form of religious action.

The strong persistence of rituals associated with life

crises and with personal concerns side by side with the decline

in rituals associated with agricultural and political concerns

points up the relationship between religion and social

experience. It is those social experiences which continue to pose

what Max Weber called “problems of meaning” that most readily

find benefit from religious perspectives. To put this in another

23

way, religion serves to provide resolutions to the problems

thrown up by the experiences of men which are not susceptible to

rational solution. In Chiang Mai, the vicissitudes of nature, of

such great significance to the agriculturalist, are not of

pressing concern to most of the people of the city. Similarly,

with the shift of power from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, the threats

to the political fortunes of Chiang Mai are coped with less often

localy than they are in the capital city. On the other hand,

personal concerns with suffering, either physical or

economic, with fertility, with interpersonal relations, and with

death remain strongly felt concerns by everyone in the city at

some time in their lives.

For most in the city, these concerns find religious

expression in the actions involving religious specialists, who

are only sometimes monks and even if monks are probably not

living in one’s neighborhood wat. A small number in the city are

more deeply reflective about these concerns. A part of this

reflective population are the aged who are faced with the

imminent coming of death. The fact that sabbath-day services are

attended primarily by the aged (a phenomenon noted for most

Christian countries as well) is not to be interpreted as meaning

that the young and middle aged people no longer have interest

in religion. Rather, such services probably always

attracted mainly the elderly. At these services, these old men

and women have an opportunity to prepare themselves for the

24

serenity which precedes death. A small number also pursue this

goal further through the observance of the eight precepts,

through sleeping at the wat on the night before the sabbath, and

by practicing meditation led by monks at some wats in the city.

The practice of meditation has also attracted a greater

number of middle-aged and younger lay people than was probably

the case at any time in the past. Wat Umong, a forest meditation

center near Chiang Mai, encourages meditation following the way

of the famous Phutthathat Phikkhu (Buddhadasa Bhikkhu) whose

teachings have been avidly read by most educated Thai, including

those in Chiang Mai. At Wat Santitham and Wat Cedi Luang, the

two Thammayut wats in Chiang Mai, both laity and monks are

instructed in the form of meditation practiced by the late

Acharn Man, a monk widely believed to have been an Arahat. At

Wat Muang Mang, a monk who was schooled in the Burmese form

Vipassana meditation provides instruction, again to both laity

and monks. While the point cannot be pursued here, I would

note that meditation, particularly as practiced by middle-aged

and younger laymen, entails a significant degree of reflection

about the ultimate concerns of life by those who engage in it.

Chiang Mai has one of the more active lay Buddhist

Associations in the country. This association, which has a center

at Wat Uppakhut in the city itself, and which is the major

supporter of Wat Umong where there is a religious art center and

a printing press as well as a meditation center, actively

25

promotes the practice of Buddhist ethics in secular life. One of

the major religious messages conveyed by the activities and by

the publications (mainly of the works of Phutthathat Phikkhu and

Panyanantha Phikkhu) of the Buddhist Association of Thailand is

that the acquisition of merit is not accomplished solely through

ritual action involving alms-giving by the laity to the sangha.

Rather, merit is also acquired through charitable (broadly

interpreted) acts towards one’s fellow laymen.

The members of the Buddhist Association of Chiang Mai are

joined by some others, notably from among the students and

faculty of Chiang Mai University, who stress the significance

of a religious ethic for secular action. While such a position

is advocated by only a very small minority of the populace of the

city, it does appear, on the basis of my observations, to

represent the position arrived at by most of those who have

seriously confronted and reflected upon the question of what life

should be in a secular city. There are no alternative positions,

such as those advocated by other religions or by secular

political movements which, in 1974, at least, attracted any

equivalent level of public support.

Some of the clergy in Chiang Mai have also become involved in

this process of what might be called the secularization of

religion. The late Cao Khun Fu, abbot of Wat Phra Sing and one of

the most respected monks in northern Thailand, was a leader in

promoting the involvement of monks in programs of community

26

development. Under his direction, Wat Phra Sing became the center

for the Thammaphatthana (“Dharmic Development”) program, a

privately supported community development program which took

monks to villages together with community development teams

organized by the government. A number of the monks in Chiang Mai

wats have been volunteers in the Thammaphatthana program. Wat Si

Soda, at the foot of Doi Suthep Mountain, has also become a

center for a social action program, the Thammacarik (“Wandering

Dharma”) program which involves monks in work among tribal

peoples. At Wat Si Soda, tribal peoples who have been ordained as

novices or monks come to live in order to receive both religious

and secular (through the lowest grades of secondary school)

instruction.13 Once they have finished their education, these

tribal people are encouraged to return to their home villages

where they are expected, whether they remain in the clergy

(which few are expected to do) or return to lay life, to infuse

life in the tribal villages with a Buddhist ethic. In addition

to the role played by Wat Si Soda in the Thammacarik program, a

number of monks from wats in Chiang Mai have served as

Thammacarik missionaries during the dry season.

While both the Thammaphatthana and Thammacarik programs have

bases at wats in Chiang Mai, they are community rather than wat-

centered. This is also true of the activities of the Buddhist

13 It might be noted that the abbot of Wat Si Soda has also gained a reputation among tribal peoples and Thai alike as being very effective in curing opium and heroin addicts.

27

Association of Thailand and of the students and faculty at Chiang

Mai University despite their links, in the former instance, with

Wat Umong and Wat Uppakut, and, in the latter, with Wat Fai

Hian which is located on the edge of the Chiang Mai University

campus. In other words, the trend in Chiang Mai appears to be

towards the secularization of religious life itself.

How far this trend will lead cannot be predicted. However,

what can be said is that there has begun to emerge a new form of

encounter between religious and secular orientations which was

not true even as recently as 25 years ago. The major changes in

religious life in Chiang Mai which have occurred in the past half

century, including the shift away from affiliation with specific

wats, decline in the size of supporting congregations of wats,

disappearance of many ritual observances, and loss by the monks

of their preeminent position in education have followed upon

secularizing influences with nothing more than conservative

resistance being mounted by religious leaders, lay and clerical

alike. Today, a small but influential, religious leadership

actively seeks to confront secularization and to find new modes

of religious meaning, albeit very much still in the Buddhist

idiom, suitable for the secular city which is the modern Chiang

Mai.

28

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