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The historical vicissitudes of the Vessantara Jataka in mainland Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2018

Katherine A. Bowie
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Abstract

Across the Theravada Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia, the Vessantara Jataka has long been the most famous of the stories (jatakas) of the previous lives of the Buddha. However, little attention has been paid to the jataka's historical vicissitudes. Drawing on comparisons with neighbouring Thailand, this essay suggests there have been significant differences in the jataka's performances and interpretations in Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia and Laos. This essay seeks to historicise understandings of the Vessantara Jataka, showing how social movements, state policies and global pressures have shaped understandings of the jataka differently in each country.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 34 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2018 

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Footnotes

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Thomas Borchert, Tharaphi Than, Patrick Pranke, F.K. Lehman, John Holt, Juliane Schober, Steven Collins, Alicia Turner, Anne Hansen, Erik Davis, Satoru Kobayashi, Jerome Camal, Bhanubhatra (Kaan) Jittiang, Neeranooch (June) Malangpoo, Gertrud S. Bowie, Kesaya Noda, Frank Reynolds, the participants of the Theravada Buddhist Civilizations Workshop and the anonymous reviewers of JSEAS.

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9 Similar studies for Sri Lanka and elsewhere remain to be undertaken. Although this essay emerges from the research I conducted in Thailand, the Vessantara Jataka performances in Thailand should not be presumed to have especial importance. Nonetheless the possibility remains that the jataka was particularly important in northern Thailand, given that some 50 additional ‘apochryphal’ jatakas (paññasa jataka) which are not part of the 547 jataka in the Pali Canon have been found in this region. Prince Damrong Rajanubhab also suggested that the jataka of the central Thai region originally came from northern Thailand. Rajanubhab, Damrong, Preface, Mahaaphon kham chieng kap Mahaaphon khwaam Phra Thepmoli, Klin [The Mahaphon kham chieng (northern) version and the Mahaphon of Phra Thepmoli (Klin)] (Bangkok: Cremation volume for Khun Rachaphichitr [Jui Krisnaamara]; Sophonphiphattanakon Press, 1919)Google Scholar. Prakong Nimmanhaeminda notes that some 120 versions have been found in northern Thailand, some arguably over 300 years old (Mahaachaat Laanaa, p. 7).

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11 Tharaphi Than, personal communication, email, 31 Jan. 2014.

12 This impression is confirmed by Tharaphi Than, email, 31 Jan. 2014; Patrick Pranke, email, 17 Feb. 2014; Alicia Turner, email, 6 Feb. 2014.

13 Spiro, Buddhism and society, p. 108.

14 The troupes of Po Sein and Sein Gadon are mentioned as the most popular. For fuller discussion, see Khaing, Burmese family, p. 103; Enriquez, C.M., A Burmese enchantment (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1916), pp. 10, 105–7Google Scholar; Scott, The Burman, p. 168.

15 Enriquez, C.M., A Burmese loneliness: A tale of travel in Burma, the southern Shan States and Keng Tung (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1918), pp. 23Google Scholar, 86.

16 Scott, The Burman, pp. 215–16.

17 Ibid., pp. 221.

18 Gerini, G.E., A retrospective view and account of the origin of the Thet Maha Ch'at ceremony (Bangkok: Sathirakoses-Nagapradipa Foundation, 1976 [1892]), p. 34Google Scholar; see also Fournereau, Lucien, Bangkok in 1892, trans. and introduced Tips, Walter E.J. (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1998 [1894])Google Scholar; Young, Ernest, The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe: Being sketches of the domestic and religious rites and ceremonies of the Siamese (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1982[1898]), pp. 336–7Google Scholar; Bowie, Of beggars and Buddhas.

19 Forbes, British Burma, p. 171.

20 My thanks to Tharaphi Than, email, 31 Jan. 2014.

21 Burmese monk's tales, ed. and trans. Aung, Maung Htin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), p. 35Google Scholar; Ferrars and Ferrars, Burma, p. 175.

22 Scott, The Burman, p. 221; Forbes, British Burma, p. 171.

23 Rajadhon, Anuman, Popular Buddhism in Siam and other essays on Thai Studies (Bangkok: Thai Inter-Religious Commission for Development; Sathirakoses Nagapradipa Foundation, 1986), p. 69Google Scholar.

24 Ferrars and Ferrars, Burma, p. 186.

25 Bamboo Travel and Tours, ‘Festivals in Tawthalin’, Sept. 2011, http://www.bambootravelmyanmar.com/?p=125 (last accessed 26 Sept. 2017).

26 Nash, The golden road, p. 104.

27 My thanks to Tharaphi Than, email, 31 Jan. 2014.

28 Forbes, British Burma, p. 180; see also Scott, The Burman, p. 330.

29 Forbes, British Burma, pp. 179–94; for further details see Ferrars and Ferrars, Burma, pp. 184–5; Scott, The Burman, pp. 328–33.

30 Nash, The golden road, p. 106; Ferrars and Ferrars, Burma, pp. 185–6.

31 Ibid. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tazaungdaing_festival (last accessed 14 Dec. 2016).

32 Nash, The golden road, pp. 106–7.

33 Aung, Htin, Folk elements in Burmese Buddhism (London: Oxford University Press. 1962), pp. 80–81 Google Scholar. For a recent description, see Holt, John Clifford, Theravada traditions: Buddhist ritual cultures in contemporary Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017), pp. 189–238 Google Scholar. Northern Thai villagers also told me of this custom.

34 Ohnuma, Reiko, Ties that bind: Maternal imagery and discourse in Indian Buddhism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 171Google Scholar.

35 Scott, The Burman, p. 25.

36 Tharaphi Than, email, 31 Jan. 2014; for more on shinbyu, see Scott, The Burman, pp. 21–9; Nash, The golden road, pp. 124–31; Spiro, Buddhism and society, pp. 234–48.

37 Lilian Handlin, ‘A man for all seasons: Three Vessantaras in premodern Myanmar’, in Collins, Readings of the Vessantara Jataka, p. 159.

38 Cone and Gombrich, The perfect generosity, p. 90.

39 Handlin, ‘A man for all seasons’, pp. 174–5.

40 Boonsue, Kornvipa, Buddhism and gender bias: An analysis of a Jataka tale (Toronto: York University Thai Studies Working Paper no. 3, 1989), pp. 36–8Google Scholar; for more on gender see Bowie, Of beggars and Buddhas; Louis Gabaude, ‘Readers in the maze: Modern debates about the Vessantara story in Thailand’, in Collins, Readings of the Vessantara Jataka, pp. 36–52; Thitsa, Khin, Providence and prostitution: Image and reality for women in Buddhist Thailand (London: Change International, 1980), p. 20Google Scholar; Satha-anand, Suwanna, ‘Madsi: The female Bodhisattva denied?’, in Women, gender relations and development in Thai society, ed. Somswasdi, Virada and Theobald, Sally (Chiang Mai: Women's Studies Center, Chiang Mai University, 1997), pp. 243–56Google Scholar.

41 See Bowie, ‘Jujaka as trickster’; Bowie; Of beggars and Buddhas.

42 Ferrars and Ferrars, Burma, p. 184.

43 Enriquez, A Burmese loneliness, pp. 20–21.

44 Ibid., p. 22; see also pp. 18–24.

45 Handlin, ‘A man for all seasons’, pp. 173, 175; Goss, Allan L., The story of We-than-da-ya: A Buddhist legend, sketched from the Burmese version of the Pali text (Rangoon: American Baptist Mission Press, 1886), p. 32Google Scholar; Gabaude, ‘Readers in the maze’.

46 Bowie, ‘Jujaka as trickster’; Bowie, Of beggars and Buddhas.

47 Detailed most clearly in Gerini, A retrospective view; see also Bowie, Of beggars and Buddhas; Jory, ‘A history of the Thet Maha Chat’; Jory, Patrick, ‘The Vessantara Jataka, barami and the Bodhisatva-kings’, Crossroads 16, 2 (2002): 36–78 Google Scholar; Jory, Patrick, ‘Thai and Western Buddhist scholarship in the age of colonialism: King Chulalongkorn redefines the Jatakas’, Journal of Asian Studies 61, 3 (2002): 891–918 Google Scholar; McGill, Forrest, ‘Jatakas, universal monarchs, and the year 2000’, Artibus Asiae 53 (1993): 412–48Google Scholar; Nidhi, Pen and sail; Chantornvong, Sombat, ‘Religious literature in Thai political perspective’, in Essays on literature and society in Southeast Asia, ed. Seong, Tham Chee (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1981), pp. 187–205 Google Scholar.

48 Gerini, A retrospective view, p. 57; see also Hansen, Anne, How to behave: Buddhism and modernity in colonial Cambodia, 1860–1930 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i, 2007), p. 90Google Scholar.

49 Enriquez, A Burmese loneliness, p. 20.

50 Judson, Ann H., A particular relation of the American Baptist Mission to the Burma Empire, in a series of letters addressed to Joseph Butterworth, Esq. (Washington City: John S. Meehan, 1823), p. 103Google Scholar.

51 Htin Aung, Burmese monk's tales, p. 18.

52 Ibid., p. 21.

53 Htin Aung, p. 22.

54 Scott, The Burman, p. 149.

55 Ibid., p. 150. Scott, describing the offerings made at the Tawadeintha festival, remarks that the ‘ascetic Sulagandi monks would altogether refuse to accept such a temptation to break their vows as a silver rupee tree’ (ibid., p. 332). By comparison, Enriquez describes the Ari sect in Ava and Sagaing as having ‘boxed, drank, womanised, bred and sold horses, and dabbled in alchemy and amulets. In the eighteenth century a thousand militant monks set out from Ava to fight the Talaings [Mons]’. He also comments that Shan monks in Keng Tung ‘openly keep women’ ( A Burmese wonderland: A tale of travel in Lower and Upper Burma [Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co, 1922], p. 102Google Scholar). Elsewhere Enriquez writes that in addition to gambling, monks ‘indulge in every luxury. They eat after mid-day, drink wine, take opium, and smoke cheroots. They are not strictly celibate. They handle money, and even ask for it (A Burmese loneliness, p. 86). For more on controversies within the Burmese sangha, see Mendelson, E. Michael, Sangha and state in Burma: A study of monastic sectarianism and leadership, ed. Ferguson, John P. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975)Google Scholar and Patrick Pranke, ‘The “Treatise on the lineage of elders” (Vamsadipani): Monastic reform and the writing of Buddhist history in eighteenth-century Burma’ (PhD diss., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2004).

56 Htin Aung, Burmese monk's tales, p.15.

57 Ibid., p. 28.

58 Ibid., p. 27. See also Schober, Juliane, Modern Buddhist conjunctures in Myanmar: Cultural narratives, colonial legacies and civil society (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

59 Htin Aung, Burmese monk's tales, p. 144.

60 Goss, The story of We-than-da-ya, p. ii.

61 Htin Aung, Burmese monk's tales, p. 33.

62 Gascoigne, Gwendolen Trench, Among pagodas and fair ladies: An account of a tour through Burma (London: A.D. Innes & Co., 1896), p. 115Google Scholar.

63 Ferrars and Ferrars, Burma, pp. 173–4.

64 Enriquez, A Burmese enchantment, p. 110; see also p. 214.

65 Htin Aung, Burmese monk's tales. Unlike northern Thailand and to some extent northeastern Thailand where Jujaka was a beloved trickster, in Burma it seems Jujaka was ‘comparable to the Jew of Elizabethan times. He was an Indian, a foreigner, tolerated and feared for his knowledge of astrology’. Aung, Htin, Burmese drama (London: Oxford University Press, 1937) p. 97Google Scholar.

66 Enriquez, A Burmese wonderland, pp. 103, 196.

67 Htin Aung, Burmese drama, p. 77.

68 Ibid., p. 98; for fuller discussion, see pp. 76–108.

69 Forbes, British Burma, p. 144.

70 See esp. Jordt, Ingrid, Burma's mass lay meditation movement: Buddhism and the cultural construction of power (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007)Google Scholar; and Schober, Modern Buddhist conjunctures.

71 Enriquez, A Burmese enchantment, pp. 110, 214.

72 Associated Press, ‘Festival banned 20 years ago returns to Myanmar pagoda’, 22 Feb. 2012, http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/festival-banned-20-years-returns-myanmar-pagoda (last accessed 28 Dec. 2016).

73 http://www.infosights.com/okumura/trips/inlelake/index.html (last accessed 26 Sept. 2017).

74 MRTV Web Portal, Thadingyut Lighting Festival, uploaded 6 Oct. 2013; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7c-VHeUdYY. Traditional thadingyut lanterns are increasingly being replaced by lanterns imported from China. See MRTV Web Portal, uploaded 6 Oct. 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVQuij214iE. (both last accessed 28 Dec. 2016).

75 Kyi, Aung San Suu, Freedom from fear and other writings (London: Penguin, 1991), p. 173Google Scholar.

76 As quoted in Winternitz, M., ‘Jataka gathas and Jataka commentary’, Indian Historical Quarterly (Calcutta) 4, 1 (1928): 12Google Scholar.

77 Roveda, Vittorio and Yem, Sothon, Preah Bot: Buddhist painted scrolls in Cambodia (Bangkok: River Books, 2010), pp. 103Google Scholar, 118.

78 Chandler, David, Facing the Cambodian past: Selected essays 1971–1994 (Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 1996), p. 24Google Scholar.

79 Leclére, Adhèmard, The Buddhism of Cambodia, trans. von Scheliha, Renata (Paris: E. Leroux, 1899), pp. 119–20Google Scholar; see also Leclére, , Le livre de Vesandar, le roi charitable (Paris: E. Leroux, 1902)Google Scholar; Guesdon, Joseph, ‘La litterature khmere et le Buddhisme’, Anthropos 1 (1906): 91–109 Google Scholar, 278–95; Harris, Ian, Cambodian Buddhism: History and practice (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), p. 70Google Scholar.

80 Hansen, How to behave, p. 29.

81 Leclere, Le livre de Vesandar. May Ebihara (‘Svay, A Khmer village in Cambodia’, PhD diss., Columbia University, 1968) provides one of the only anthropological accounts of village life, but she does not specifically mention any performance of the Vessantara Jataka.

82 Jory, ‘A history of the Thet Maha Chat’, pp. 100–101.

83 Hansen, How to behave, pp. 80, 86–7.

84 Roveda and Yem, Preah Bot, p. 119.

85 Sou, Ketya, Sokhom, Hean and Thirit, Hun, The ordination ceremony of Buddhist monks in Cambodia: Past and present (Phnom Penh: Center of Advanced Study, 2005), p. 63Google Scholar; see also Roveda and Yem, Preah Bot, p. 119.

86 Hansen, How to behave, p. 27.

87 Holt, John Clifford, ‘Caring for the dead ritually in Cambodia’, Southeast Asian Studies 1, 1 (2012): 70Google Scholar. This date is reinforced by suggestions that recitations occurred near or at the end of Buddhist Lent — see for example, Edwards, Penny, Cambodge: The cultivation of a nation, 1860–1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), p. 100Google Scholar (Satoru Kobayashi, email, 2 Feb. 2014). See also Ebihara, ‘Svay, a Khmer village’, pp. 402–3; Kobayashi, Satoru, ‘An ethnographic study on the reconstruction of Buddhist practice in two Cambodian temples: With special reference to Buddhist Samay and Boran’, Kyoto Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 42, 4 (2005): 489–518 Google Scholar.

88 Bowie, Of beggars and Buddhas, pp. 42, 62, 282n36.

89 Hansen, How to behave, p. 30.

90 Bowie, Of beggars and Buddhas, pp. 34, 52–7.

91 Hansen, How to behave, p. 31.

92 Ibid.

93 Ibid.

94 The jataka typically is divided into 13 chapters. A temple scroll dated 1877 has yet another fourteenth chapter, namely a scene of a monk worshipping a glass reliquary containing a tooth. Pattatorn Chirapravati notes that in northeastern Thailand the jataka terminates with Vessantara paying respect to the Culamani Stupa (Roveda and Yem, Preah Bot, p. 116). In Thailand an 88-year-old villager told me that in the past his village would parade representatives of Jali and Kanhaa to the village temple, complete with the ceremonial khan maak (betel nut offering tray), and stage the wedding at the temple (Interview with Lung Waaj Ryangdej, Baan Den Samrong, T. Haat Song Khwae, A. Tron, Uttaradit, 24 Aug. 2015).

95 See Roveda and Yem, Preah Bot, pp. 116–17; and ‘Le satra du Roi Chealy’, in Leclére, Adhèmard, Cambodge, contes et legendes (Paris: Librairie Emile Bouillon, 1895)Google Scholar. The prolonged heavenly stay raises a challenge to the prevailing understanding of the Vessantara Jataka as the ‘penultimate’ birth. Also intriguing are stories of the Gotama Buddha's earlier birth as the younger sister of the bodhisatta Dipankara (Hansen, How to behave, p. 35).

96 Roveda and Yem, Preah Bot, p. 108.

97 Hansen, How to behave, p. 34.

98 Edwards, Cambodge, p. 103.

99 Translated by Hansen, How to behave, p. 90.

100 Ibid., p. 97.

101 Edwards, Cambodge, p. 103; see also Hansen, How to behave.

102 Translated by Hansen, How to behave, p. 105.

103 Harris, Cambodian Buddhism, pp. 147–8.

104 Roveda and Yem, Preah Bot, p. 121; see also Harris, Cambodian Buddhism, and Harris, Ian, Buddhism in a dark age: Cambodian monks under Pol Pot (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

105 Harris, Cambodian Buddhism; Harris, Buddhism in a dark age, p. 137; Kobayashi, ‘An ethnographic study’, p. 491.

106 Kobayashi, ‘An ethnographic study’, p. 491.

107 Roveda and Yem, Preah Bot, pp. 100–123.

108 Kobayashi, ‘An ethnographic study’, p. 508.

109 Holt, ‘Caring for the dead’, p. 70.

110 Bertrand, Didier, ‘A medium possession practice and its relationship with Cambodian Buddhism: The Gru Parami ’, in History, Buddhism and new religious movements in Cambodia, ed. Marston, John and Guthrie, Elizabeth (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004), pp. 166Google Scholar, 153.

111 Harris, Cambodian Buddhism, p. 248.

112 Holt, ‘Caring for the dead’; see also Erik Davis, ‘Treasures of the Buddha: Imagining death and life in contemporary Cambodia’ (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2009).

113 Harris, Cambodian Buddhism, p. 173.

114 Kwon, Hoenik, Ghosts of war in Vietnam (Cambridge University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

115 Ang Duong's sons, the future King Norodom (1834–1904) and Sisowath (1840–1927), were both ordained at Wat Boworniwet in Bangkok (see Pakdeekham, Santi, ‘Court Buddhism in Thai–Khmer relations’, in Buddhist dynamics in premodern and early modern Southeast Asia, ed. Christian, D. Lammerts [Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2015], p. 419Google Scholar). The resurgence of the Thammayut order came about with the return of Sihanouk to Cambodia in 1991 (Kobayashi, ‘An ethnographic study’, p. 491). The one Thammayut temple in Thailand that performs the jataka is Wat Raatbamrung in Nong Khaem, Bangkok; others do not.

116 Holt, John, Spirits of the place: Buddhism and Lao religious culture (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009), p. 40Google Scholar; see also Karpelès, ‘Voyage’; Condominas, Georges, ‘Notes sur le Bouddhisme populaire en milieu rural Lao’, Archives de sociologie des religions 25 (1968): 93Google Scholar; Patrice Ladwig, ‘Emotions and narrative: Excessive giving and ethical ambivalence in the Lao Vessantara Jataka’, in Collins, Readings of the Vessantara Jataka, p. 53; Stuart-Fox, Martin, The Lao kingdom of Lan Xang: Rise and decline (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1998), p. 174Google Scholar.

117 Zago, Marcello, Rites et ceremonies en milieu Bouddhiste Lao (Rome: Universita Gregoriana, 1972), p. 295Google Scholar; Holt, Spirits of the place, p. 216.

118 For more on northeastern Thai performances, see especially Lefferts and Cate, Buddhist storytelling; Bowie, Of beggars and Buddhas.

119 Although Boun Phavet is also often called ‘boun dyan sii’ or ‘the fourth month merit-making’, there is considerable variation in when it is held. As Lefferts and Cate explain, the festival is usually held ‘during the fourth lunar month (March and early April), but we have recorded instances of its occurrence from early January through late May and into June’ (‘Narration in the Vessantara Painted Scrolls’, in Collins, Readings of the Vessantara Jataka, p. 124). A website for Luang Prabang suggests the recitation there occurs in December and January; see https://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g295415-s408/Luang-Prabang:Laos:Events.And.Festivals.html. (last accessed 26 Sept. 2017); Holt observed a recitation there in early February (Spirits of the place, p. 211). Marcello Zago mentions that the Vessantara Jataka can also be recited for royal funerals (Rites et ceremonies, p. 297).

120 Faure, Marie-Daniel, ‘The “Boun” Pha-Vet (4th month festival)’, in Kingdom of Laos: The land of the million elephants and of the white parasol, ed. de Berval, Rene (Limoges: A. Bontemps, 1959), p. 297Google Scholar; see also the original article in French, Faure, Marie-Daniel, ‘Trois fetes laotiennes’, Bulletin des ‘Amis du Laos’ 1 (1937): 21–43 Google Scholar; Ladwig, ‘Emotions and narrative’, p. 56; Zago, Rites et ceremonies, pp. 292–3.

121 In Faure's description, the kan lon arrived as ‘a faked horse or elephant made out of white cloth hand mounted on a bamboo framework, at the neck of which hangs a rich collar made up of silver coins’. Some donors may even offer live horses ‘mounted by their own son, who will then become the “servant-novice” of the religious to whom the gift is offered’ (Faure, ‘The “Boun” Pha-Vet’, p. 297). Zago describes a kan lon shaped like a prasat, ‘a construction of a miniature temple mounted on bamboo poles decorated with bank notes, some of which have been folded into flower designs’ (Zago, Rites et ceremonies, p. 295).

122 Upakut is a water deity, often understood to have been a novice or monk, who is associated with protecting villagers from harm and ensuring rains (e.g. Tambiah, Stanley J., Buddhism and the spirit cults in north-east Thailand [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970, pp. 161–78])Google Scholar. Karpelès notes a larger altar for ‘l'esprit du Buddha’; these offerings include a mat, a miniature mattress, pillow, incense, candles, balls of rice, flowers, a teapot and an almsbowl; these offerings — especially the teapot and almsbowl — suggest that the altar is for Upakut (Suzanne Karpelès, ‘Voyage au Laos’, Bulletin de l’École française d’éxtreme orient 31 [1931]. Ladwig highlights the importance of Upakut, noting that in areas without rivers, Upakut can be invited through normal water pipes (Ladwig, ‘Emotions and narrative’, p. 56). For more, see also Strong, John, The legend and cult of Upagupta: Sanskrit Buddhism in North India and Southeast Asia (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

123 Zago, Rites et ceremonies, p. 292.

124 Ibid., p. 295.

125 Ibid.

126 Ladwig mentions scroll processions ‘can take place’, implying they are not considered a key element as in northeast Thailand (‘Emotions and narrative’, p. 56).

127 Karpelès, ‘Voyage au Laos’: 332.

128 Zago, Rites et ceremonies.

129 Faure, ‘Trois fetes laotiennes’.

130 Faure, ‘The “Boun” Pha-Vet’, p. 295.

131 Ibid.

132 She adds, the pulpit is ‘decorated with flowers and green and of which each panel is naively painted with scenes from the Life of the Buddha’ (ibid.).

133 Ibid., pp. 295–6.

134 Ibid., p. 296.

135 Ibid., p. 295. On central Thailand, see Rajadhon, Phya Anuman, ‘Thet Maha Chat’, in Essays on Thai folklore (Bangkok: Thai Inter-Religious Commission for Development: Sathirakoses Nagapradipa Foundation, 1988), p. 198Google Scholar.

136 Faure, ‘The “Boun” Pha-Vet’, p. 296.

137 Ibid., p. 297. The ceremony concluded with villagers who ‘recall to Nang Tholani [earth goddess] their pious deeds of the day’.

138 Lefferts and Cate, Buddhist storytelling, pp. 55–6; see also pp. 4, 91.

139 Ladwig, Patrice, ‘Narrative ethics: The excess of giving and moral ambiguity in the Lao Vessantara-Jataka’, in The anthropology of moralities, ed. Heintz, Monica (New York: Berghahn, 2009), p. 151Google Scholar.

140 Evans, Grant, The politics of ritual and remembrance: Laos since 1975 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1998), p. 57Google Scholar.

141 Evans, The politics of ritual, p. 58.

142 Ibid., pp. 44, 58–9.

143 Ibid., p. 59.

144 Ibid., p. 58.

145 Ibid.

146 Ibid.; Stuart-Fox, Martin, Buddhist kingdom, Marxist state: The making of modern Laos (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1996), p. 101Google Scholar.

147 Stuart-Fox, Buddhist kingdom, p. 101; Evans, The politics of ritual, p. 58.

148 Evans, The politics of ritual, pp. 57–8.

149 Holt, Spirits of the place, p. 77.

150 Stuart-Fox, Buddhist kingdom, pp. 89–92; Evans, The politics of ritual, pp. 54–5.

151 Stuart-Fox, Buddhist kingdom, p. 80.

152 Ibid., p. 78; see also Holt, Spirits of the place, pp. 116–28. For discussion of Lao Buddhism in the 1960s–1970s, also see Halperin, Joel, ‘The role of religion in government and politics in Laos’, in Southeast Asia: The politics of national integration, ed. McAlister, John T. (New York: Random House, 1973), pp. 202–14Google Scholar.

153 Stuart-Fox, Buddhist kingdom, p. 79.

154 Ibid.

155 Ibid., p. 81.

156 Ibid., pp. 78–9.

157 Ibid., p. 105.

158 Ibid.

159 Evans, The politics of ritual, p. 63; see also discussion in Holt, Spirits of the place, pp. 138–54.

160 Evans, The politics of ritual, p. 63.

161 Stuart-Fox, Buddhist kingdom, p. 107.

162 Holt, Spirits of the place, p. 9.

163 Evans, The politics of ritual, pp. 69, 164.

164 Zago, Rites et ceremonies, p. 290.

165 Evans, The politics of ritual, p. 65. The Thammayut likely shared the French view that the Vessantara Jataka was puerile (Holt, Spirits of the place, p. 97).

166 Evans, The politics of ritual, pp. 108–10.

167 Ibid., pp. 111–13.

168 McDaniel, Justin, ‘Questioning orientalist power: Buddhist monastic education in colonial Laos’, in Contemporary Lao Studies, ed. Compton, Carol J., Hartmann, John F. and Sysamouth, Vinya (DeKalb: Center for Lao Studies and Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Northern Illinois University, 2009), p. 217Google Scholar.

169 Holt, Spirits of the place.

170 Ibid., pp. 219–21.

171 John Holt, email, 24 Feb. 2014.

172 Holt, Spirits of the place, p. 219.

173 Ibid., p. 220.

174 Ibid., p. 216.

175 Ibid., p. 211.

176 A monk from Boulikhamsay told me that in his area 13 villages would cooperate, each sponsoring a different chapter. A novice is designated as Upakut and carried back from the water to the temple. A novice is chosen because full-fledged monks have to observe 227 precepts; as a thewadaa [deity] Upakut only observes 8 precepts. Their procession also includes a monk who represents Vessantara and rides a real elephant; Maddi and the others walk alongside.

177 Narayan, Kirin, Storytellers, saints, and scoundrels: Folk narrative in Hindu religious teaching (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), p. 26Google Scholar.

178 Bowie, ‘Jujaka as trickster’; Bowie; Of beggars and Buddhas.

179 Doniger, Wendy, The bedtrick: Tales of sex and masquerade (University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. xviiiGoogle Scholar.