Justin McDaniel's excellent new book disrupts several notions about Thai and Southeast Asian Buddhisms, especially the tired notion that they represent a sort of exotic, syncretic form of religiosity, degraded compared to its South Asian—by which is normally meant Pali canonical—versions, and the stereotype that the connection between Thai Buddhism and Thai nationalism is the product of a conspiratorial state program. Beyond those who will purchase this book because of a pre-existing interest in Thai culture and religion, this book should be read by those interested in Southeast Asian Buddhism, questions of religion and modernity, and those interested in the distinctions between ‘religion' and ‘magic’.
McDaniel's work represents an important intervention in the long-standing issue of the scholastic classification of Buddhism in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asian Buddhisms are routinely presented as degraded versions of some original, pure, Buddhism. Its deviations from an essentially textual corpus are explained by the production and ramification of concepts like ‘vernacular,’ ‘localized,’ ‘esoteric,’ et cetera.
The great contribution of this book is to reject these misleading classifications in favor of a more properly ethnographic approach—one which takes the practices and reports of Thai religionists as the primary classification, and subordinates—or ignores—scholastic classifications when they are irrelevant and misleading.
McDaniel introduces the notion of repertoires as a way of avoiding questions of ortho- and hetero- -doxies and -praxies. Repertoires are the “words, stock explanations, objects, and images that a social actor can ‘draw upon while engaged in meaning-making “on the the ground”' in the context of interacting with others” (p. 10). As such, they are for McDaniel the material, and occasionally the engines, of ongoing creativity, rather than restrictive and repressive doctrines and ideologies.
The famous ghost of Mae Nak, and her savior-destroyer the great historical monk Somdet To, flow through the book like a river, nourishing the other anecdotes and investigations as if they were branches of a larger system. This story, immortalized in numerous movies and books, is a central tale of love horribly distorted by death (or, perhaps, death horribly distorted by love)—a sympathetic love to be sure, but one which required the intervention of a powerful, ghost-taming monk to put right, before that love destroyed an entire community. Somdet To is one of the most famous monks in Thai history, and plays a central role in the imaginings of the modern Thai nation-state.
The example of Somdet To is useful for reasons that go beyond the fame of the story. As one of the most widely-venerated and respected Thai monks, Somdet To's obvious national attitude, his constant attention to the creation of offensive and defensive magical amulets, etc., post a clear challenge to the notion that Real Thai Buddhism is properly not interested in such things, is actually truly a secular pacifist religion of meditation, and opposes magical practices. The example forces the outsider to either condemn all Thai Buddhism as somehow degraded compared to its pure textual expression, or to accept that all Buddhisms may be less pure than their observers might prefer. The doctrines of impermanence and compassion are in evidence in Thailand, of course, but McDaniel's method leads him to examine the far more prevalent virtues of Security, Heritage, Beauty, Graciousness, and Abundance.
McDaniel effectively demolishes the appropriateness of classifications such as ‘tantric' or ‘esoteric' to this or other similar texts and practices. Throughout the text, McDaniel undermines the tendency for outsiders to associate proper Buddhism with something ancient and secret. In this chapter, he does so by beginning in a health-spa, where the most popular protective chant associated with Somdet To is broadcast into the ears of the customers.
McDaniel does not argue that magical practices do not exist in Thailand, or Thai Buddhism, but rather that the classifications observers apply to these practices do violence to a genuine understanding of Thai Buddhism. Comparing Thai Buddhist rituals to Thai magical practices (saiyasat), he notes that the logics, language, and objects involved in both are quite similar, and that Thai practitioners are quite unconcerned with making serious distinctions between the two. “Magic,” as McDaniel notes, “is in the eye of the beholder.” (p. 111)
Chapter 3 attempts to undermine the widespread thesis that a Bangkok-centric liturgical reform, associated with an increased orientation toward 'modernity,' was actually a homogenizing appropriation and capture of rural religious communities, especially the Northeastern Isaan (ethnic Lao) groups. He points out that despite real attempts to standardize some liturgical practices, “Thai Buddhists have never, it seems, had a problem developing their own novel liturgies or rituals, nor have they stopped questioning the efficacy of liturgy, meditation, ritual, and analysis.” (pp. 158–59). To put it another way, there seems to be no widespread, effective orthodoxic or praxic movement in Thai Buddhism that constrains the creative liturgical imagination of individual Thai Buddhists, or their communities. Instead, the diversity and abundance of various liturgies are often held as a value in themselves.
Similarly, empowered objects such as amulets and images take on a generative and creative life of their own through their histories and associations. These objects are put to work in the service of the central values of “beauty, abundance, and protective power,” concerns with mirror those of the earliest South Asian Buddhist communities, as we can tell by inscriptional and archaeological evidence (pp. 220–21).
McDaniel does not claim no Thai Buddhist is concerned with ‘orthodoxy' or reform – such a claim would clearly contradict a great deal of evidence. But he places such claims into context, as classifying acts that may not have a genuine historical relationship to any particular orthodoxy or orthopraxy. Moreover, Thai Buddhists—like religionists and human beings everywhere, perhaps—are quite capable of claiming orthodoxy “while directly contradicting orthodoxy by their actions and statements” (p. 227). Such insight lays bare the rather strange posture so many scholars have taken toward Buddhism in the region—comparing real Buddhism to its imaginary purity—and missing the Thai Forest for its Forest monks.
There is room for criticism of McDaniel's book. Although he pursues his methodological innovation – flattening the practices of magic and religion so that they appear—as they do to most Thai—on the same plane of analysis, McDaniel appears to suffer from a minor failure of nerve in this respect, consistently arguing against (but rarely citing his opponents) the widespread idea that Buddhism has been enrolled into a conspiratorial, intentional, nationalist ideological project.
When discussing nationalism, ideology, etc., it is unnecessary that such projects be conspiratorial or controlled by elites for them to qualify as such. A participatory, rhizomatic nationalism without a conspiratorial leader is still a nationalist ideology. In opposing the over-emphasis by others on the power of the state, McDaniel replicates some of this erroneous logic in a mirror image, insisting that because the state is not planning and controlling nationalist-religious projects, they are not nationalist or ideological.
Although I find this part of the argument unconvincing, the overall effect of this book is excellent, and the other, more important arguments, are not affected. McDaniel's disruption of the narrative of decline, esotericism, and syncretism, as well as his focus on the materials of religious creativity in Thailand, render this work a requirement for those concerned with Buddhism in Southeast Asia, Buddhism in general, and those interested in classificatory terms like magic, religion, syncretism, localization, and vernacular. Finally, I will definitely teach this book in future classes, and especially recommend it for graduate classes.
