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Buddhism and Animism in a Burmese Village

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

John Brohm
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Extract

John Fee Embree some time ago remarked that “… we can never learn the nature of a religion simply by a perusal of the sacred texts, i.e., written words, torn from their social context; nor will a life of Buddha and a study of his original teachings in 500 B.C. tell us much of the nature of religion in contemporary Japan.” This statement from a decade and a half ago is as applicable to religious behavior and belief in a modern Buddhist country like Burma as it originally was to pre-war Japan. There is a good deal of literature which purports to be descriptive of Burmese religion and Burmese religious behavior. Much of this literature takes as an initial premise that Burma is one of the most actively Buddhistic countries in the world and that we may therefore gain the most intimate understanding of Burmese religious behavior through a perusal of the sacred canons of that faith. This approach is not without merit, and it would be foolhardy indeed to take as a premise that Burmese religion is not Buddhistic and that the Pali scriptures are worthless as explanatory points of reference. Such an alternative would be unrealistic, and would be infinitely shocking to Burmese, who certainly regard themselves as Theravada Buddhists. At the same urne, the imported nature of the Buddhist faith in Burma is well understood, and its historic superposition upon a more ancient substratum of customs and beliefs is appreciated, even though descriptive details in the matter may largely be lacking. All objective reporters speak, in greater or lesser detail, of residual elements in Burmese religion which owe little or nothing to Buddhism.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , February 1963 , pp. 155 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1963

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References

1 Embree, John F., The Japanese Nation (New York, 1945), p. 213.Google Scholar

2 “Genuine” animism as opposed to an animism which is simply a residual category of non-canonical beliefs and behavior implies belief in separable spirit substances—souls, spirits, and ultimately deities. In Burma there are a number of classes of spiritual creatures in which most people believe and toward whom behavior is directed. Best known among them are the nats.

3 Animalism involves the belief that even inorganic objects, in certain cases, may contain a form of life energy, personal or impersonal, that will permit or cause interaction with the biological world.

4 Sponsorship for these activities was provided by fellowships from the United States Educational Foundation in Burma (Fulbright) and the Ford Foundation.

5 Pitrim Sorokin's discussion of “lag” in cultural dynamics is tangential to this proposition (Sorokin, P., Social and Cultural Dynamics [New York, 1941] IV, 383Google Scholar), but Sorokin's discussion tends to dwell upon innovation in whole systems rather than acculturation and diffusion, and his “objectified religion,” which he contrasts with belief systems in describing “lag,” is more concerned with material aspects of culture than with units of human behavior.

Somewhat closer to the point in question is the social psychologist F. C. Bartlett when he discusses the process of “conventionalization,” a term he borrowed from the earlier work of the anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers, by means of which the assimilation of diffused cultural elements takes place (Bartlett, F. C., Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology [Cambridge, 1932, 1950, 1954] p. 244Google Scholar). But while he indicates that through “social constructiveness” the form and function which the borrowed trait is to take will be determined in large measure by the prior orientation of the culture concerned—à la Benedict's “configurations” or Kroeber's “styles”—he ignores the problem of the relative persistence of behavioral modes as opposed to the symbols or objects toward which ritual behavior is directed (Bartlett, , pp. 274ffGoogle Scholar).

More recently, McKim Marriott has touched upon certain aspects of this problem in his discussion of what he calls “parochialization” of the Sanskriric “Great Tradition” in village India (Marriott, McKim, Village India: Studies in the Little Community, [Menasha, Wis., 1955] pp. 200ffGoogle Scholar). When he speaks of the retention of traditional calendrical rituals while more and newer significances are attached to them as a result of borrowing from the Indian “Great Tradition,” he is speaking to the point that I am trying to make.

6 This also serves as a felicitous fulfillment of Horton's recent definition of religion as “an extension of the field of people's social relationships beyond the confines of purely human society … in which human beings involved see themselves in a dependent position vis-à-vis their non-human alters.” Horton, Robin, “A Definition of Religion and its Uses,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, XC, Part 2 (07 to 12 1960), 211.Google Scholar

7 Yoe, Shway (Sir J. G. Scott), The Burman: His Life and Notions (London, 1882, 1910), p. 354Google Scholar; SirFrazer, James George, The Golden Bough (New York, 1951)Google Scholar I, Part i, 251, 278; Stratanovich, G. G., PreBuddhistic Beliefs of the Peoples of Western and Central Indo-China (Moscow, 1960) p. 6.Google Scholar

8 U Htin Aung has made the point that this tour of the village has a pre-Buddhist Burmese origin and that its present usage represents a Buddhist rationalization of the event. (Aung, Htin, “Burmese Initiation Ceremonies,” Journal of the Burma Research Society, XXXVI [08 1953], 77–84.Google Scholar) While I cannot support the contention without some reservations, it is a hypothesis which gives further substance to the principal point that this paper seeks to make.

9 It may well be, as others have suggested, that the Indian peasantry view Mara in this way too. But knowledge of Mara, or Man Nat, has not come to the Burmese via the Indian peasant. It has come through canonical literature which has then been reinterpreted in terms that are meaningful to those on whom scriptural sophistication touches but lightly.

10 For an interesting attempt to trace the pre-Buddhist antecedents of Burmese pagoda worship, see Stratanovich, , pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

11 Yoe, Shway, pp. 21–29.Google Scholar

12 I am well aware that this ceremony is almost completely unfamiliar to most of the inhabitants of Lower Burma. The existence of such a ceremony has even been denied by Rangoon informants speaking on behalf of the Burmese Government. But I have photographs of its solemn performance and I believe it to be a well known feature of the life cycle in the more traditional areas of Upper Burma. That it may be derived from certain ritual practices of the old royal court, as some have suggested, is entirely credible, but such an origin adds little to its functional significance in the lives of the modern peasants I observed participating in it.