dhist nationalism. Millennial uprisings in northeastern Thai-
land in 1901–1902 and resistance in the 1920s and 1930s
by Khru ̄ba ̄ S ̄ıwichai (Siri-vijoyo Thera), a highly revered
popular northern Thai monk, to the authority of the state-
appointed sangha hierarchy were precursors to contemporary
religious dissent in Thailand. In the mid-1950s and especial-
ly in the 1970s, a number of monks emerged as conspicuous
critics of government policies. While most of these “political
monks” could be considered leftists, there were also a num-
ber associated with right-wing causes. Of particular note is
Kittiwuttho ̄ Phikkhu (Kittivud:d:ho Bhikkhu), who gained
notoriety in the mid-1970s for arguing that killing commu-
nists was not murder as understood in Buddhist terms and
thus did not produce demerit. Although only a few monks
have taken active roles in Thai politics, there are many lay
Buddhist leaders who have contributed to a widening dis-
course on the salience of religious values for public life.
Among the best known of what might be termed “social gos-
pel” Buddhists is Sulak Sivarksa, who has exerted significant
influence through his numerous essays and the organizations
he has helped to create.
Members of the laity have also assumed leadership roles
in the many cults that have emerged and continue to emerge
in contemporary Thailand. The typical cult is one in which
a spirit medium (who typically would be a woman) is be-
lieved able to gain the assistance of her control spirit to aid
a client who is ill or otherwise in distress. Some cults have
assumed a wider significance; the most famous of recent
years is one known under the name Samnak Pu ̄ Sawan (Cen-
ter of the Heavenly Ancients). The male leader of this cult
claimed to be the vehicle for the spirits of a number of fa-
mous men in Thai history, including a former patriarch of
the sangha. As it developed, the belief system of the cult be-
came increasingly syncretic, uniting Christian, Muslim, and
Chinese elements with magico-Buddhist ones. In the late
1970s, the cult, which had gained thousands of followers, in-
cluding several high-ranking military officers, took on a dis-
tinctly political cast as its leader sought to use it for promot-
ing an international peace center that he would head. In
1981 the government attempted to arrest him, but he disap-
peared before the arrest was effected.
Although the ecumenicalism of the Samnak Pu ̄ Sawan
movement was idiosyncratic, more significant connections
between Thai Buddhism and other religions in Thailand
have evolved in recent years. A number of Protestant and
Catholic leaders have joined with Buddhist leaders in reli-
gious dialogue and in human rights activities. The smallness
of the Christian population (about 0.6 percent of the total)
has perhaps helped to encourage relatively good relations be-
tween Christians and Buddhists. In contrast, Muslims (who
account for about 4 percent of the population) have found
it much more difficult to relate to Buddhists. A Muslim-
Buddhist dialogue may, nonetheless, prove to be a means
leading to a reconstrual of Thai civil religion in other than
strictly Buddhist terms.
Life in Thailand in the twentieth century has become
increasingly secularized and rationalized as more and more
aspects of experience are interpreted with reference to bu-
reaucratic regulations, market transactions, technological
processes, and scientific medicine. While these processes of
change have led many Thai to turn away from traditional re-
ligious practices as being no longer significant to their lives,
they have also served to make people aware of those experi-
ences that do not make sense in terms of secular, rational
meanings. It is the awareness of those illnesses that do not
respond to modern medicine, of increasing disparities in
wealth and power, of the potential collapse of order as oc-
curred in Kampuchea, that leads many Thai to consider what
ritual and ethical practices are most meaningful to them.
This religious consciousness is what gives contemporary Thai
religion its dynamic character.SEE ALSO Buddhism, article on Buddhism in Southeast
Asia; Folk Religion, article on Folk Buddhism; Kingship, ar-
ticle on Kingship in East Asia; Mongkut; Sam:gha, article on
Sam:gha and Society in South and Southeast Asia; Southeast
Asian Religions, article on Mainland Cultures; Therava ̄da.BIBLIOGRAPHY
The collection Religion and Legitimation of Power in Thailand,
Laos, and Burma, edited by Bardwell L. Smith (Chambers-
burg, Pa., 1978), contains several essays that trace the history
of Thai religion and discuss the relationship between Bud-
dhism and power in both traditional and contemporary
Thailand. A. Thomas Kirsch’s “Complexity in the Thai Reli-
gious System: An Interpretation,” Journal of Asian Studies 36
(February 1977): 241–266, provides a good introduction to
traditional Thai religion. Stanley J. Tambiah’s World Con-
queror and World Renouncer (Cambridge, 1976) traces the
history of Thai religion with reference to sangha-policy rela-
tions and his Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-East
Thailand (Cambridge, 1970) details the elements of tradi-
tional religious practice as still found in a Lao-speaking com-
munity in northeastern Thailand.
A major source for traditional Buddhist cosmology as understood
by the Thai is Three Worlds According to King Ruang: A Thai
Buddhist Cosmology, translated with an introduction and
notes by Frank E. Reynolds and Mani B. Reynolds (Berkeley,
1982). Lucien M. Hanks, Jr., considers the implications of
Buddhist cosmological beliefs for Thai society in his “Merit
and Power in the Thai Social Order,” American Anthropolo-
gist 64 (1962): 1247–1262. For discussions of gender ideas
as shaped by the traditional Buddhist worldview of Tai peo-
ples, see my essays “Mother or Mistress but Never Monk:
Buddhist Notions of Female Gender in Rural Thailand,”
American Ethnologist 11 (May 1984): 223–241, and “Ambig-
uous Gender: Male Initiation in A Buddhist Society,” in
Gender and Religions: On the Complexity of Symbols, edited
by Caroline Bynum, Stevan Harrell, and Paula Richman
(Boston, 1956). The best study of the religious reforms of the
nineteenth century is Craig J. Reynolds’s “The Buddhist
Monkhood in Nineteenth Century Thailand” (Ph. D. diss.,
Cornell University, 1973). See also Reynolds’s “Buddhist
Cosmography in Thai History, with Special Reference toTHAI RELIGION 9097