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Histories of Buddhist Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand?

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Histories of Buddhist Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand? Justin Thomas McDaniel. Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words: Histories of Buddhist Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand. Critical Dialogues in Southeast Asian Studies Series. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. 358 pp. $30.00, paper, ISBN 978-0-295-98849-8. Reviewed by Anne Blackburn Published on H-Buddhism (September, 2010) Commissioned by Daniel A. Arnold (University of Chicago) Historians of Buddhism and scholars of lum," and "vernacular landscape." Drawing on Al‐ Southeast Asian textual culture will benefit con‐ ton Becker's Beyond Translation: Essays Toward siderably from Justin Thomas McDaniel's frst a Modern Philology (1995), McDaniel suggests that book, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words. Draw‐ the Lao/Thai commentarial genres he examines ing on manuscript and print materials from what are fruitfully seen as instances of "languaging," or we now call Laos and Thailand, this ambitious reshaping older texts known from memory in study (which was developed from the author's new contexts. Nissaya, vohāra, and nāmasadda Harvard dissertation) proposes that Buddhist denote Thai/Northern Thai/Lao vernacular lan‐ commentarial texts, sermon guides, and hand‐ guage texts that respond to Pāli Buddhist textual books be studied with an eye to their pedagogical content (sometimes, but not always, drawn from use. According to McDaniel, this perspective on the tipiṭaka and its Pāli commentarial apparatus‐ Buddhist curricula reveals unexpected continu‐ es), through forms of gloss and/or verbal com‐ ities in Buddhist textual practice, despite the mentary. Central to all three of these commentari‐ twentieth-century rise of mass-produced printed al genres is the practice of yok sab (Thai), which texts and heightened Siamese/Thai state control McDaniel translates as "lifting words." The over monastic education and administration from process of "lifting words" in the production of the later nineteenth century onward. In addition commentarial texts, and also of sermons rooted in to developing this central argument, McDaniel of‐ these texts, reveals instances of "languaging." The fers in passing many valuably suggestive com‐ commentarial texts produced and used in a par‐ ments on specific texts and manuscripts, and on ticular place and time shed light on the "curricu‐ Thai/Lao monastic practice. lum" developed there. McDaniel emphasizes the McDaniel's introduction proposes key analyti‐ individuality and particularity of curriculum de‐ cal terms used throughout: "languaging," "curricu‐ velopment, often describing curricular and com‐ H-Net Reviews mentarial choices as "idiosyncratic." Curricula are tions between Laos and other parts of Indochina part of the "vernacular landscape" characterizing during the French colonial period, McDaniel ar‐ any given corner of the Buddhist world. McDaniel gues that French impact on Buddhist textual cul‐ recasts the work of J. B. Jackson on environmental ture in what we now call Laos was relatively mod‐ history (Discovering the Vernacular Landscape est. [1986]) in order to note the complex affective and In chapter 2, McDaniel focuses on manuscript relational lived environment within which curric‐ materials from Chiang Mai (now in northern ula are formed and function. In doing so, Mc‐ Thailand), suggesting characteristics of textual Daniel also draws on French studies of reading production and preaching culture in the Thai/Lao practice by Michel de Certeau and Roger Chartier. region prior to Siamese state reforms of the late The former's emphasis on small-scale transgres‐ nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This sion and tactical behavior seems to resonate with chapter contains many fascinating details for McDaniel's emphasis on the idiosyncrasy and in‐ scholars of Buddhism in the northern Thai/Lao re‐ dividuality of commentarial authors and preach‐ gion, drawing productively on monastic biograph‐ ers. McDaniel's introduction also makes clear his ical narratives and legends of famous monks and intent to place his work within revisionist histo‐ temples, bringing to life a world of mobile monks ries of Thailand, which, over the last several and "wandering librarians." This account helps decades, have sought to question monarchist and one understand the processes through which celebratory accounts of Siam's/Laos's/Thailand's shared textual emphases and practices developed road to modernity. Gathering Leaves and Lifting in the north. Moreover, this chapter advances Mc‐ Words is an extended argument against those Daniel's larger concerns by bringing the study of who see the educational and monastic adminis‐ curriculum to an individual scale: curricula are trative reforms of the late nineteenth- and twenti‐ the product of texts and sermons crafted by eth-century Siamese/Thai state as having trans‐ monks, who shape the content and use of Thai/ formed Siamese/Thai/Lao Buddhist practice and Lao commentarial genres. epistemology. Chapter 3, "Kings and Universities," provides Chapter 1 offers a valuable overview of Bud‐ an overview of late nineteenth- and twentieth- dhist education in what we now call Laos, from century Siamese/Thai state moves to centralize the French colonial period to the present day. The the saṅgha and to bring monastic education with‐ Lao focus of this chapter signals another aspect of in Bangkok's tighter embrace. McDaniel includes McDaniel's work of particular interest to scholars useful details about how these processes played of Thailand and Southeast Asia; McDaniel is keen out in northern Thailand, including a discussion to emphasize Lao/Northern Thai Buddhist textual of the monastic educational center at Wat Chedi and institutional histories since Buddhist materi‐ Luang in Chiang Mai. McDaniel here intensifies als and histories from this region (especially from his engagement with scholarly work on the "mod‐ the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) have of‐ ernization" of Siamese/Thai Buddhism, arguing ten been neglected in favor of a focus on central that foundational scholarship on this topic has Thailand or Cambodia and Vietnam. Chapter 1 is taken a misleadingly Bangkok-centered view of usefully read as a counterpoint to recent work by monastic administration and education. McDaniel Anne Hansen (How to Behave: Buddhism and emphasizes the numbers of monks who effective‐ Modernity in Colonial Cambodia, 1860-1930 ly remained outside the framework of state-orga‐ [2007]) and Penny Edwards (Cambodge, The Culti‐ nized Buddhist education, residing in rural vation of a Nation 1860-1945 [2008]). Discussing monasteries and/or not taking part in govern‐ French scholarly and Buddhist monastic connec‐ 2 H-Net Reviews ment-run monastic examinations. Moreover, he northern Thai/Lao region (pp. 127, 130). This suggests that even monks who participate within chapter includes several examples drawn from the new textual and examination practices of the manuscripts, and a discussion of the implications state (with their greater post-nineteenth-century of orthography for our understanding of textual emphasis on Pāli tipiṭaka texts) may sustain the practice in the region. long-standing commentarial, pedagogical, and Chapters 5 and 6 treat the transition from sermonic practices that characterize(d) vernacu‐ manuscripts to contemporary Thai Buddhist print lar landscapes formed by "lifting words." Usefully, culture, and consequently new expressions of the McDaniel proposes that those interested in com‐ commentarial genres discussed in chapter 4. parative studies of modernity look closely at con‐ While there is, according to McDaniel, no evi‐ tinuities and discontinuities in what he calls "epis‐ dence of the written or printed production of temic fows" and examine the choices made by these genres after 1920 in Laos or northern Thai‐ "intellectual agents" (p. 98). land, he argues in these chapters that their com‐ In the fourth chapter--which will be of consid‐ mentarial modes are maintained in a variety of erable interest to those working on Buddhist com‐ contemporary texts and textual practices. Thus, mentary and multilingual textual practices of McDaniel sees the vohāra mode present in a vari‐ southern Asia, whether or not they share Mc‐ ety of handbooks and notebooks used by teachers Daniel's wider interest in problems of centraliza‐ and as guides to sermons, while both the nissaya tion, standardization, and modernization--Mc‐ and vohāra modes are reflected in printed ser‐ Daniel takes readers into the heart of the practice mon texts referred to in Thai as desanā. Monastic of "lifting words," explaining the content and textbooks and examination handbooks, as well as structure of texts called nissaya, vohāra, and nā‐ a bilingual prose form called roi kaeo, also reflect masadda. Cautioning that thus-denominated texts the influence of earlier commentarial practice. cannot be neatly differentiated as genres-- McDaniel stresses the nonstandardized and unsta‐ manuscripts labeled in terms of any of these may ble character of canons formed through the hand‐ share features of the others--McDaniel explores books and notebooks that thus treat tipiṭaka and these commentarial manuscripts as instances of other Pāli textual materials. the "selective appropriation and re-application of Using a study of Dhammapada texts in con‐ Pali" (p. 121). Despite the blurring of genres and temporary Thailand, chapter 7 complicates the genre labels, he identifies nāmasadda view that the late nineteenth and twentieth cen‐ manuscripts as generally distinguished by word- turies witnessed a fundamental alteration of Thai by-word glosses,
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