For this week, we were asked to attend one of two Stanford events related the course. The first was the 12th Garfield Forum, held at the Stanford Humanities Center and sponsored by the Department of Religious Studies and Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford, on the them of Buddhism and Violence. The second event, held by the Ho Center for Buddhist Studies at Stanford on Zoom, was on the subject of Buddhist bilingualism in Thailand. Students unable to attend the events were asked to write a ~400 word response to the reading:
-Terwiel, Monks and Magic (92–177)
-Eberhardt, Imagining the Course of Life (1–45, 101–123)
Throughout this week’s readings, aside from the fascinating anthropological information, I tried to keep track of which parts could yield useful information in terms of the context and potential use of our manuscript.
The first thing that struck me about the readings from Monks and Magic was the fact that so many young men in Thailand take monastic vows, at least for a season. The importance of short-term monastic practice, and the studying that new monks undertake to fit into their new roles, are very useful in contextualizing the sort of society in which our manuscript may have been produced. The prevalence and importance of the chanting of Pali texts also stood out to me, as it fits with the long sections of Pali we think we’ve identified in our manuscript. What’s more, the role of monks in education of children more broadly seems to fit with the idea that our manuscript (which contains a lot of Buddhist material) seems to have been produced for a Pali school of sorts. It brought to mind the possibility that the manuscript was employed as a means of teaching novice monks or children (perhaps in their capacity as a dek wat), Pali for the purposes of chanting texts from a compendium source somewhat akin to the Suatmon Chet Tamnan that Terwiel describes. The role of monks in bestowing merit and auspice on many important occasions for householders by means of chanting, as well as the importance of chanting for the production of amulets and other forms of divine protection, also offer important context as to why our text may have been produced, and the contexts in which it might have been used.
The other part of Monks and Magic that stood out to me was its description of the importance of periods of astrological auspiciousness for a wide variety of activities including farming, house construction, marriage ceremonies, and when to end one’s tenure as a monk. Understanding the critical importance of the lunar date for all of these daily activities makes the prominence of the calendar in our manuscript make much more sense. From what Terwiel describes, it seems likely that the calendar would not merely have been used for magical practices, but also for entirely mundane practices like choosing when to plant a new crop, or when to travel to the next town. If Terwiel is correct when he mentions that “in almost every household an astrological timetable of one sort or another can be found” (150), then this would seem to explain the fact that the calendar on our manuscript merited its own cover page.
The points on chanting, Pali, and times of auspiciousness were all echoed by Imagining the Course of Life. Furthermore, Eberhardt’s descriptions of healing rituals and rituals for the purification of the village also strongly recalled some of the medicinal spells we read about in Van Schaik. The importance that such rituals play in day-to-day life for the Shan community she studied, and their very practical approach to the intersection of the natural and supernatural, also fit into a context in which a school text for learning Pali might also contain spells for various healing purposes. It’d be interesting to get an idea of what sorts of chants or spells our manuscript might include, and whether we see any connections to the functions of such practices in contexts like those described by Terwiel and Eberhardt.