Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words: Histories of Buddhist Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand

2 Wandering Librarians

2 Wandering Librarians In 1886 King Chulalongkorn (Rama V) of Siam ordered a survey of monastic libraries in the vassal state of Northeast Thailand. After reading the report he concluded that the teaching of Buddhism in that rural region on the edge of Siam was “lew lew lai lai” (full of nonsense) because it involved the teaching of fantastic stories of the Buddha’s past lives when he was a frog or a servant or a maiden.1 King Chulalongkorn was a powerful voice in the Siamese royal reform of monastic education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Sangha Act of 1902 was the institutional culmination of this reform, and a number of scholars have seen it as the historical fulcrum between the premodern and modern periods of Buddhist education in Siam and its vassal states. By examining the institutional history of monastic education in Northern Thailand, this chapter questions the significance of this 1902 Sangha Act, which establishes an artificial break between the premodern and the modern. Monastic Education in Chiang Mai Chiang Mai, known in tourist magazines as the “Rose of the North” or the ancient capital of Thailand’s Northern kingdom, Lan Na (the Kingdom of One Million Fields), slowly became the regional center for state-monitored formal religious education in the twentieth century.2 This is not without historical precedent. Chiang Mai was the largest city in the region, and many of its large monasteries had attracted the best monastic students and teachers for centuries. Wat Suan Dok, Wat Chedi Luang, Wat Chiang Man, and 69 n Wat Phra Singh had run large monastic schools since the fourteenth century , and all had large libraries of palm-leaf manuscripts. Many Sri Lankan, Burmese, Shan, Khoen, Leu, Lao, Siamese, Mon, and Yuan monks had studied or taught in the city and then returned to their places of origin with texts. Before the Burmese takeover in the 1550s, Chiang Mai was the center of Buddhist education in the region. Phra Sumana, a famous monk of the Sri Lankan and Mon tradition, brought texts, images, and students from Sukhothai , about two hundred kilometers south of Chiang Mai, to the city of Haripunchai (present-day Lamphun). His brand of Buddhist practice distinguished Chiang Mai from other Burmese, Lao, Khmer, and Siamese regional expressions . Many monks and serious laypeople traveled to study with Phra Sumana. The region around Chiang Mai became a major educational and ritual center.3 This is reflected in the Pali and vernacular histories. Commentaries composed by local scholar monks, as well as the calling of the council of learned monks to organize and revise the canon by King Tilokarat in 1477 in Chiang Mai, were products of this intellectual activity. These scholarly endeavors helped attract manpower to the region to build monasteries and populate schools. Buddhist education continued under the Burmese, who militarily occupied and culturally influenced the region, between the 1550s and 1770s.4 The Burmese takeover of Chiang Mai in the mid-sixteenth century did not destroy Buddhist education in the region, but it did lead to many changes. First, the monks who came with Burmese armies brought new genres of religious texts like nissayas. Second, Pali grammatica and narratives common in Burma were copied and glossed in Northern Thailand. Third, the Burmese occupation and growth of the Lao economy led in part to increased contact among Lao, Shan, Khoen, Leu, and Northern Thai monks and lay scholars. The monasteries of Chiang Mai continued to grow and attract students. Wat Chedi Luang has been the crown jewel of Chiang Mai monasteries for almost seven hundred years. It lies in the center of the city, and the spire atop its main stupa, even after it partially collapsed following an earthquake, was the highest point in the city until very recently, when high-rise hotels were built along the river. The stupa/chedi was built under the sponsorship of King Saen Meuang Ma in 1391. King Sam Fang Kaen deposited a relic of 70 wandering librarians the Buddha brought from Sri Lanka in 1423. The chedi was enlarged in 1481. This was the year that the most honored Buddha image in the Tai world, the Emerald Buddha, was installed there. In 1511 the chedi was covered in gold leaf. The “city pillar” of Chiang Mai is also on the grounds of the monastery, making Wat Chedi Luang the ritual...