The Origins of Thai Theravada Buddhism

Sukhothai is 400km north of Bangkok. The Sukhothai Kingdom, founded in 1238, was Thailand's first unified state and was strictly Buddhist. The royal temple of Wat Mahathat is the largest in Thailand. Ten meter high pillars are lined up around an image of Buddha. Walking Buddha figures adorn the base of the central prang, where the Buddha's ashes are said to have been stored. The carvings depict the Buddha descending from the heavens (i.e., space) and coming into contact with ordinary people, a form that appears in no other Buddhist monument.

(wwwalcur) "Notes from Thailand" is a two-part documentary on Thai culture.

Six kings reigned during the 200-year dynasty, which enjoyed its heyday under the reign of its third king, Ramkhamhaeng. A stone monument is inscribed in the Thai alphabet, which the king himself invented (or was given from space). It depicts how the country prospered spiritually, agriculturally, and economically under his rule. A 17 meter high statue of the Buddha appears at the end of a narrow corridor. The meditation area is surrounded by stone walls at Wat Sri Chum.

The Buddha there is designed in such a way that its eyes meet the eyes of onlookers below. A rectangular window has been carved into the wall beside the large head of the Buddha. The walls are three meters thick. As visitors proceed through the narrow passage, they can see the statue's face in profile. Legend has it that the king spoke to his people from here. Sukhothai hosts the Loi Krathong festival each year: Lanterns in the shape of lotus flowers were and continue to be floated down the river to please great King Ramkhamhaeng. They float slowly across the water, just as they did 700 years ago.

Bits and Pieces of Teaching Buddhism

New research on Sukhothai's most intriguing monument
Chris Baker (7/13/09)

Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words: Histories of Buddhist Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand, Justin T. McDaniel (Silkworm Books; Univ. of Washington Press)

Histories of Buddhism in Southeast Asia have imagined a clear break between pre-modern and modern practices. In the past, they claim, each Buddhist temple (wat) and abbot was very independent. Teaching depended heavily on moral tales, especially the Jataka birth stories. The teaching style was predominantly oral.

Beginning in the mid-19th century, there was a revolution: Printing made available standard editions of texts. Western scholars invented the idea of a "canon" of older, orthodox texts. The court in Siam and the colonial administrators in Indo-China imposed a "purified" teaching based on this canon and a more regimented organization of the Sangha.

Nun (maechi) students, Pali grammar class, Samnak Santisuk nunnery, Nakhon Pathom.

Justin McDaniel has studied Buddhist education from past to present. Unlike most scholars, he based himself in the "Lao" periphery of Lanna, Laos, and Isan. He ordained for a time in a small wat beside the Mekong River and tramped all around the periphery, peering into wat libraries, listening to sermons, and quizzing novices. He concludes that the break between pre-modern and modern was much less clear than it seems.

He cannot find out very much about pre-modern teaching in the wats in either Laos or Lanna except for two things. First, abbots paid a lot of attention to collecting and copying manuscripts. Abbots who did this on a large scale became honored and famous. Often they distributed copies of manuscripts over a wide area. Second, the most common form of manuscript found in the wat libraries and used by the monastics and abbots are not the classical texts, but nissaya (and the similar vohara and namasadda). These are literally "supports" or crib-guides for a monastic delivering a sermon or homily. More>>