at the time of the next Buddha, S ́r ̄ı Ariya Maitreya (Thai,
Phra S ̄ı A ̄n)—were detailed graphically in such sermons as
the popular tale of the travels of the monk Ma ̄laya to hell
and heaven.
These Buddhist ideas, as well as the articulation of these
beliefs with notions deriving from the pre-Buddhist past of
the Tai, were organized into three major popular religious
traditions followed by Tai-speaking peoples living in what
is today Thailand. To this day, the ritual practices of the Sia-
mese of central Thailand, the Yuan of northern Thailand,
and the Lao of northeastern Thailand, while sharing some
basic similarities, remain distinctive.
The Buddhist worldview adopted by Tai peoples shaped
their orientation toward society. Fundamental to this order
was the division between the sexes. The ideal Buddhist man
should become a member of the sangha in order to pursue
the Path. In practice, very few Tai men ever became mem-
bers of the sangha for life, but it became the norm among
all peoples living in premodern Thailand for young men to
spend at least a lenten period of three months as either a nov-
ice or a monk. For women, a connection was made between
the secular role of woman as mother and woman as nurturer
for the religion. The hierarchical order of traditional society
was understood in terms of differences in the karmic legacies
that each person was assumed to have been born with.
Most monks in premodern Thailand acted primarily to
preserve and transmit the local religious traditions of the
communities where they lived. Although they traced their
lineage to the “forest monastery” monks of the fifteenth cen-
tury, there is no evidence to suggest that monks during the
period between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries were
known for withdrawing from the world to devote their lives
to meditation. Some monks, however, lived in monasteries
that served as centers of study of the Dhamma. It was these
monks who kept alive a tradition of Pali scholarship as well
as of composition of vernacular religious texts. These centers
were supported mainly by rulers of the traditional kingdoms
or by lords of domains subordinate to the kings.
Kings and lords of premodern Tai realms and domains
were held in popular belief to have the right to rule because
they “had merit” (m ̄ı bun); that is, they had inherited at birth
a large store of positive consequences of kamma from previ-
ous incarnations. They were expected to display their merito-
riousness in their conspicuous support of the religion and in
ensuring the peace and order of the worlds over which they
held sway. This concept of merit can be seen to be similar
to the Maha ̄ya ̄na notion of compassion shown by bodhisatt-
vas toward the world. Some Tai kings did claim to be bodhi-
sattvas, but such a claim was far less common in Tai king-
doms than in those of premodern Burma.
In the major premodern Tai kingdom, the Siamese
kingdom of Ayutthaya ̄ (1350–1767), court traditions, espe-
cially after the fifteenth century, showed strong Brahmanic
influences, influences introduced from Angkor, which the
Siamese had conquered. When the new Siamese kingdom
with its capital at Bangkok was founded in 1782, its first rul-
ers downplayed the Brahmanic state cult in favor of such
Buddhist activities as unifying the sangha, restoring the scrip-
tures, and sponsoring public almsgiving. At the end of the
nineteenth century, King Chulalongkorn (c. 1868–1910) re-
stored many Brahmanic state rites in an effort to enhance the
image of the monarchy. The observance of some of these
rites persisted even after a coup in 1932 transformed Siam
into a constitutional monarchy, but by the second half of the
twentieth century they had assumed a more dramaturgical
than religious significance.
CONTEMPORARY RELIGION IN THAILAND. Religion as prac-
ticed by the peoples living in what was to become modern
Thailand was rarely rendered problematic to its adherents.
Only when the world collapsed, as it did following the de-
struction of Ayutthaya by the Burmese in 1767, did people
question the efficacy of traditional practice for making sense
of their lives. The period between the fall of Ayutthaya and
the founding of Bangkok in 1782 is notable for the appeal
that Buddhist millennialism held for many. Millennial ex-
perimentation was brought to an end, however, when in
1782 General Cakkr ̄ı deposed the then-reigning monarch,
Taksin, who claimed to be a bodhisattva. Cakkr ̄ı, as Rama
I (1782–1809), the founding ruler of the present dynasty,
laid the foundations for a new order by restoring peace
throughout the kingdom and, indeed, by extending his polit-
ical control even farther than his predecessors. He moved to
purify the religion by purging the sangha of monks who were
deemed not to be observing the Vinaya (disciplinary code),
by convening a Buddhist council to ensure that the Tipit:aka
(Skt., Tripit:aka), the Buddhist scriptures, were available in
an error-free Pali form, and by promoting the study of both
the scriptures and commentarial literature written in Pali.
The new order established by Rama I proved to be fer-
tile ground for the development of a major reform move-
ment led by a man who would become King Rama IV, better
known as Mongkut. Mongkut, who served as a monk be-
tween 1824 and 1851, was stimulated by his conversations
with Christian missionaries and other Westerners who had
begun to come to Siam to search for what could be taken
as the essential elements of Buddhist practice. He became the
leader of a small coterie of monks who spurned what they
considered to be “superstitious” accretions in traditional
practice and turned to Pali scriptures and commentaries to
find the basis for “true” Buddhism. When Mongkut became
king (r. 1851–1868), his associates in the sangha became the
vanguard of a new fraternity, one called the
Dhammayuttika-nika ̄ya (“the fraternity of those who adhere
to the Dhamma”), in contrast to the larger fraternity, the
Maha ̄nika ̄ya (Mahanikai), of monks who continued to fol-
low traditional practice.
Under King Chulalongkorn, Mongkut’s son and suc-
cessor, leading Dhammayuttika monks, and especially Prince
Wachiraya ̄n (Vajiraña ̄n:avarorasa), another of Mongkut’sTHAI RELIGION 9095