Localising the universal: Women, motherhood and the appeal of early Theravāda Buddhism

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies

Volumn 33, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 1-30

  Andaya, Barbara Watson ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

RELIGION; THEORETICAL STUDY; WOMENS STATUS;

ASIA; EURASIA; SOUTHEAST ASIA;

EID: 33845863964     PISSN: 00224634     EISSN: 14740680     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0022463402000012     Document Type: Article

References (307)

1. G. Cœdès, Histoire ancienne des états hindouisés d'Extrême-Orient (Hanoi: Imprimerie d'Extrême- Orient, 1944), pp. 280, 329;
2. published in English as The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, ed. Walter F. Vella, trans. Susan Brown Cowing (Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1968), pp. 218, 253.
3. J. G. de Casparis and I. W. Mabbett, 'Religion and Popular Beliefs of Southeast Asia before 1500', in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol. I: From Early Times to c. 1800, ed. Nicholas Tarling (Sydney: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 294.
4. Richard F. Gombrich, Tlieravāda Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benares to Modern Columbo (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 151.
5. The literature on Southeast Asian Buddhism and kingship is extensive. For a general discussion, see Donald K. Swearer, The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), ch. 2.
6. Marshall Sahlins, 'Other Times, Other Places: The Anthropology of History', American Anthropologist, 85,3 (September 1983): 517 - 20.
7. Juliane Schober comments on the neglect of popular religiosity in the literature of traditional Southeast Asian Buddhist societies. See her 'The Theravada Buddhist Engagement with Modernity in Southeast Asia: Whither the Social Paradigm of the Galactic Polity?' Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (henceforth JSEAS), 26, 2 (September 1995): 308, n 11.
8. O.W. Wolters, The Khmer King at Basan (1371 - 3) and the Restoration of the Cambodian Chronology During the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries', Asia Major, 2, 1 (1966): 87.
9. David K. Wyatt, 'Relics, Oaths and Politics in Thirteenth-Century Siam', JSEAS, 32, 1 (February 2001): 49 - 50, 62 - 3.
10. Shelly Errington, 'Introduction', in Power and Difference: Gender in Island Southeast Asia, ed. Jane Monnig Atkinson and Shelly Errington (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), p. 3;
11. Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz, 'Introduction', in Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia, ed. Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 9 -10.
12. Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross, 'Introduction', in Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious Lives in Non-Western Cultures, ed. Nancy Auer Falk and Rita M. Gross (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979), p. xii.
13. O.W. Wolters, History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspectives (Ithaca, NY & Singapore: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program/Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1999), p. 229.
14. Nikāya originally connoted particular groups or collections of canonical texts or sutta. Though 'school' or 'sect' are commonly given as English equivalents, the term refers more broadly to a group of monks who have subscribed to a specific interpretation of the Buddha's teachings. Larger nikāya like Mahāyāna and Theravāda could themselves incorporate different nikāya. For example, in the eleventh century Theravāda Buddhism in Sri Lanka comprised three often rival nikāya associated with each of the largest monasteries, the Abhayagirivihāra, the Jetavanavihara and the Mahāvihāra, the latter being the most important.
15. Jonathan S. Walters, 'A Voice from the Silence: The Buddha's Mother's Story' (History of Religions, 33, 4 [1993 - 4]: 360 - 4) provides an overview of the debates on female status.
16. See also Alan Sponberg, 'Attitudes towards Women and the Feminine in Early Buddhism', in Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender, ed. José Ignacio Cabezón (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), pp. 3 - 36.
17. Rita M. Gross, Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis and Reconstruction of Buddhism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 4, 11;
18. Miranda Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 68;
19. Diana Y. Paul, Women in Buddhism: Images of the Feminine in Mahāyāna Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. xix, 5,6;
20. C.J. Reynolds, 'A Nineteenth-Century Thai Buddhist Defense of Polygamy and some Remarks on the Social History of Women in Thailand', in Proceedings of the Seventh IAHA Conference (Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University, 1979), p. 929.
21. Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce 1450 - 1680, Vol. 1: The Lands below the Winds (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), p. 146;
22. S. J. Tambiah, Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 98;
23. Penny Van Esterik, Materialising Thailand (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2000), p. 75.
24. Issues surfacing in the debates over women and Buddhism are apparent in the following studies: Khin Thitsa, Providence and Prostitution: Image and Reality for Women in Buddhist Thailand (London: Change International Reports, 1980), pp. 16 - 18;
25. Sukanya Hantrakul, 'Prostitution in Thailand', in Development and Displacement: Women in Southeasat Asia, ed. Glen Chandler, Norma Sullivan and Jan Branson (Clayton, Vie: Monash University Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, 1988), pp. 115 - 17;
26. Chatsumarn Kabilsingh, Thai Women in Buddhism (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1991), pp. 22 - 35;
27. Thanh-Dam Truong, Sex, Money and Morality: Prostitution and Tourism in South-East Asia (London: Zed Books, 1990), pp. 131 - 57;
28. and Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy.
29. G.H. Luce, 'The Ancient Pyu', Journal of the Burma Research Society (henceforth JBRS), 27 (1937): 251.
30. See further, Michael Aung Thwin, Pagan. The Origins of Modern Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1985), p. 17;
31. Kalpna Upreti, 'Position of Women as Reflected in Avadāna Śataka and its Ideological Ramifications', in Sarvāstivāda and its Traditions, ed. Sanghasen Singh (Delhi: Delhi University Dept. of Buddhist Studies, 1994), pp. 149 - 55.
32. The Sarvāstivādins broke away from Theravāda in the mid-third century BCE. An important contribution to our knowledge of Sarvāstivādin influence is John S. Strong, The Legend and Cult of Upagupta: Sanskrit Buddhism in North India and Southeast Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
33. For example, Rajnapatni, who succeeded as queen of the Javanese kingdom of Majapahit in 1329 'practised Buddhist meditation as a nun, venerable and shaven-headed'; Mpu Prapanca, Deśawarnana (Nāgarakrtāgania) by Mpu Prapañca, Irans. Stuart Robson (Leiden: KILTV Press, 1995), pp. 26,47;
34. Cuong Tu Nguyen, Zen in Medieval Vietnam. A Study and Translation of the Thien Uyen Tap Anh (Honolulu: Kuroda Institute/University of Hawai'i Press, 1997), pp. 197-8, 254;
35. A Record of the Buddhist Religion as Practised in India and the Malay Archipelago (A.D. 671 - 695) by I Tsing, trans. Takakasu Junjiro (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), p. 79;
36. Laurence Palmer Briggs, The Ancient Khmer Empire (Philadelphia: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1951), p. 50.
37. For evidence regarding religious roles for women in pre-Angkorian Cambodia, see Michael Vickery, Society, Economics and Politics in Pre-Angkor Cambodia: The 7th-8th Centuries (Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies for UNESCO, 1998), pp. 17-20.
38. Paul, Women in Buddhism, comments on the contrasting position of nuns in India and China, although in subsequent centuries the status of nuns in China declined (p. 80).
39. For the way in which Japanese nuns could acquire 'a certain degree of power', see Bernard Faure, Visions of Power: Imagining Medieval Japanese Buddhism, trans. Phyllis Brooks (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 41.
40. Nuns in Sri Lanka had previously enjoyed royal patronage, and a number of nunneries had been established. In the Mahavihara monastery they were in charge of rituals connected with nourishing the bō tree, which symbolised the Buddha in Buddhist ritual. The decline of patronage may have been due to opposition to female ordination among monks. R.A.L.H. Gunawardana, 'Subtle Silk of Ferrous Firmness: Buddhist Nuns in Ancient and Medieval Sri Lanka and their Role in the Propagation of Buddhism', The Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities, 14, 1 - 2 (1988): 32 - 8,
41. and Robe and Plough: Monasticism and Economic Interest in Early Medieval Sri Lanka (Tucson: University of Arizona Press for the Association of Asian Studies, 1979), pp. 37 - 9.
42. Chou Ta Kuan, Notes on the Customs of Cambodia, translated from the French of Paul Pelliot by J. Gilman D'Arcy Paul (Bangkok: Social Science Association Press, 1967), p. 24.
43. Simon de la Loubère, The Kingdom of Siam, ed. David K. Wyatt (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 113;
44. Nicolas Gervaise, The Natural and Political History of the Kingdom of Siam, ed. and trans. John Villiers (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1989), p. 163.
45. Pe Maung Tin, 'Women in the Inscriptions of Pagan', JBRS, 25, 3 (1935): 151;
46. Epigraphia Birinanica, ed. C.O. Blagden (Rangoon: Government Printing Press, 1934), vol. IV, part 1, pp. 58 - 9.
47. Michael Symes, An Account of an Embassy to the Kingdom of Ava in the Year 1795 (Edinburgh: Constable and Co, 1827), vol. I, p. 249.
48. Richard Cushman, The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya, ed. David K. Wyatt (Bangkok: The Siam Society, 2000), pp. 305, 424.
49. In 1791 a niece of Rama I was living as a nun in Tavoy; The Dynastic Chronicles Bangkok Era. The First Reign, ed. and trans. Thadeus and Chadin Flood, vol. I (Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1978), pp. 178 - 82.
50. In Myanmar today girls still commonly become novices; on nuns in Myanmar see Hiroko Kawanami, 'The Religious Standing of Burmese Buddhist Nuns (thild-shin), The Ten Precepts and Religious Respect Words', Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 13, 1 (1990): 17 - 39;
51. Tessa Bartholmeusz, Women under the Bō Tree: Buddhist Nuns in Sri Lanka (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 37, 46, 80 - 1.
52. For further discussions of lay nuns in contemporary Southeast Asia, see Ingrid Jordt, 'Bhikkhuni, Thilashin, Mae-Chii: Women who Renounce the World in Myanmar, Thailand and the Classical Pali Buddhist Texts', Crossroads, 4, 1 (Fall 1988): 31 - 9;
53. Swearer, The Buddhist World, pp. 152-6;
54. Tomomi Ito, 'Buddhist Women in Dhamma Practice in Contemporary Thailand: Movements Regarding their Status as World Renunciates', The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies, 17 (1999): 147 - 81.
55. Kamala Tiyavanich, Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-Century Thailand (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997), pp. 280 - 6.
56. Quoted in Aung Thwin, Pagan, pp. 34, 41.
57. A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, 'The Aśokārāma inscription of 1399 A.D: Epigraphic and Historical Studies, No. 2', Journal of the Siam Society (henceforth JSS), 57, 1 (1969): 55.
58. Judith M. Jacob, 'The Deliberate Use of Foreign Vocabulary by the Khmer: Changing Fashion, Methods and Sources', in Context, Meaning and Power in Southeast Asia, ed. Mark Hobart and Robert Taylor (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1986), p. 118.
59. Liz Wilson, Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996);
60. B.J. Terwiel. 'Rice Legends in Mainland Southeast Asia', in Contributions to Southeast Asian Ethnographies, 10 (1994): 20-1.
61. Frank Reynolds and Mani Reynolds, Three Worlds According to King Ruang (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1982), p. 132.
62. This work is attributed to the King Lu'Tai and is commonly dated to 1345, although Michael Vickery argues that it was compiled later, during the Ayutthaya period; see his 'Note on the Date of the Traibhūmikathā', JSS, 52, 3 (1974): 275 - 84
63. and 'On Traibhūmikathā', JSS, 79, 2 (1991): 24 - 36. The Lokapaññatti (mentioned in the Traibhūmikathā) is believed to have been written by Saddhamaghosa of Thaton, possibly based on a Sanskrit original; John Strong dates the text to the eleventh or twelfth century, Steven Collins to the fourteenth.
64. See Strong, The Legend and Cult of Upagupta, p. 12;
65. Steven Collins, Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities: Utopias of the Pali Imaginaire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 321;
66. and Reynolds,'A Nineteenth-Century Thai Buddhist Defense', p. 930.
67. A summary of the extensive literature is in Swearer, The Buddhist World, pp. 152-4.
68. Charles Keyes, 'Mother or Mistress but Never a Monk: Buddhist Notions of Female Gender in Rural Thailand', American Ethnologist, 11,2 (1984): 228 - 9;
69. A.Thomas Kirsch, 'Text and Context: Buddhist Sex Roles/Culture of Gender Revisited', American Ethnologist, 12, 2 (1985): 305,309;
70. Niels Mulder, Inside Thai Society (Bangkok: Duang Kamol, 1992), p. 25;
71. Jane R. Hanks, Maternity and its Rituals in Bang Chan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1963)
72. and 'Reflections on the Ontology of Rice', in Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin, ed. Stanley Diamond (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 298 - 301;
73. H. Leedom Lefferts, 'Women's Power and Theravada Buddhism: A Paradox from Xieng Khouang', in Laos: Culture and Society, ed. Grant Evans (Chiangmai: Silkworm Books, 1999), pp. 214 - 25.
74. Hanks, Maternity and its Rituals, p. 43.
75. On ordination as payment to a mother for breast-feeding, see Penny Van Esterik, 'The Cultural Context of Breast-Feeding in Rural Thailand', in Breastfeeding, Child Health and Child Spacing, ed. V. Hull and M. Simpson (London: Groom Helms, 1985), p. 143, and idem.,
76. 'Nurturance and Reciprocity in Thai Studies', in State Power and Culture in Thailand, ed. E. Paul Durrenberger (New Haven: Yale Southeast Asia Studies Monograph, 1996), p. 27;
77. Paul Levy, Buddhism: a 'Mystery Religion? (London: Athlone Press, 1957), p. 4.
78. In Thailand the gifts given to a bride's family at her wedding are also considered 'payment for mother's milk'; Susan Conway, Thai Textiles (London: British Museum Press, 1992), p. 46.
79. Melford Spiro, Buddhism and Society: A Great Tradition and its Burmese Vicissitudes (New York and London: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 234.
80. Gehan Wijeyewardene, Place and Emotion in Northern Thai Ritual Behaviour (Bangkok: Pandora, 1986), p. 115.
81. Levy, Buddhism: a 'Mystery Religion'?, p. 14.
82. Levy, Buddhism: a 'Mystery Religion'?, Ibid., p. 101;
83. François Bizot, 'La grotte de la naissance', Bulletin de l'École Française d'Extrême-Orient (henceforth BEFEO), 67 (1980): 222 - 73, especially p. 246, and idem.,
84. Le Chemin de Lanka. Textes Bouddhiques du Cambodge (Paris: École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1992). It is relevant to note that Buddhism in Cambodia was less influenced by Sri Lankan practices than was the case in Burma and Thailand.
85. See, for example, W.M. Sirisena, Sri Lanka and South-East Asia: Political, Religions and Cultural Relations from A.D. c. 1000 to c. 1500 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978), especially chs. 3-4;
86. Catherine Raymond, 'Étude des relations religieuses entre le Sri Lanka et l'Arakan du xii' au xviii' siècle: documentation historique et évidences archaéologiques', Journal Asiatique, 292, 2 (1995):469 - 501;
87. De Casparis and Mabbett, 'Religion and Popular Beliefs', p. 295;
88. Wyatt, 'Relics, Oaths and Politics', pp. 48-9.
89. For monastic education, see H.B.M. Ilangasinha, Buddhism in Medieval Sri Lanka (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications, 1992), pp. 133 - 61.
90. Wolters, History, Culture and Region, p. 46;
91. Wyatt, 'Relics, Oaths and Politics', pp. 13, 47, 49.
92. R.A.L.H. Gunawardena, 'People of the Lion: Sinhala Consciousness in History and Historiography', in Ethnicity and Social Change in Sri Lanka: Papers Presented at a Seminar Organised by the Social Scientists Association, December 1979 (Colombo: Social Scientists Association, 1984), p. 29.
93. Sheldon Pollock has postulated that during this period older 'empires' in South and Southeast Asia were devolving into 'vernacular polities' that tended to coincide with language or culture areas ('The Cosmopolitan Vernacular', Journal of Asian Studies, 57, 1 [February 1998]: 31).
94. Gunawardena, 'People of the Lion', pp. 25 - 7.
95. Charles Hallisey, 'Devotion in the Buddhist Literature of Medieval Sri Lanka' (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1988), vol. I, pp. 192 - 9.
96. As Tambiah points out, there is little about the benefits of dāna in the Pali canon (Buddhism and the Spirit Cults, p. 93).
97. Hallisey,'Devotion in the Buddhist Literature', vol. I, pp. 192, 199.
98. G.H. Luce, Old Burma-Early Pagan (Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustine, 1969), vol. 1, pp. 125 - 7.
99. Sirisena, Sri Lanka and South-East Asia, pp. 74, 94;
100. A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, 'The Epigraphy of Mahādharmarājā I of Sukhodaya. Epigraphic and Historical Studies, No. 11, Part II', JSS, 61, 2 (1973): 93 - 4.
101. Bonnie Pacala Brereton, Thai Tellings of Phra Malai: Texts and Rituals Concerning a Popular Buddhist Saint (Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University Program for Southeast Asian Studies, 1995), pp. 25 - 45, especially pp. 38 - 9. Phra Malai visits hell, where the denizens of hell, hoping to be reborn in heaven, plead for their relatives to make merit on their behalf. In Tāvatimsa heaven, whence he also travels, Phra Malai sees that heavenly beings are often ordinary people who have made merit through dāna.
102. C.E. Godakumbura presents a twelfth-century text of stories of good men and women who had performed meritorious deeds that would enable them to gain riches in this world, as well as higher rebirth; see his 'Sā dhucaritodaya: An Unnoticed Pâli Poem', Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Centenary Volume 1845- 1945, new series, 1 (1950): 95 - 103.
103. Reynolds and Reynolds, Tliree Worlds, p. 131.
104. The idea that childbirth can serve as a gauge of female piety is also evident in the belief that a woman of inadequate merit is likely to experience a difficult labour (Hanks, Maternity and Its Rituals, p. 61).
105. Aung Thwin, Pagan, p. 41.
106. Griswold and Prasert, 'The Aśokārāma Inscription', p. 37.
107. C.E. Godakumbura, Visuddhajanavilāsinī nāma Apadānatthakathā (London: Pali Text Society, 1954), p. xviii.
108. Brereton, Thai Tellings, pp. 205 - 7.
109. Tambiah, Buddhism and the Spirit Cults, p. 64;
110. Gervaise, Natural and Political History, pp. 136-7.
111. The comment on food is in Wijeyewardene, Place and Emotion, p. 36.
112. A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, 'Epigraphic and Historical Studies, No. 22; An Inscription from Vǎt Hin Tǎn, Sukhodaya', JSS, 67, I (1979): 71 - 2.
113. Walters, 'Voice from the Silence', p. 370;
114. on this subject, see Penny Van Esterik, 'Feeding their Faith: Recipe Knowledge among Thai Buddhist Women', Food and Foodways, 1 (1986): 199.
115. Van Esterik, 'Feeding their Faith', p. 210;
116. Zimmer, The Art of Indian Asia: Its Mythology and Transformations (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960), p. 139.
117. Walters, 'A Voice from the Silence', p. 370.
118. A.G.B. Kempers, Ancient Indonesian Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), Plate 85;
119. H.L. Shorto, A Dictionary of the Mon Inscriptions from the Sixth to the Sixteenth Centuries (Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 198;
120. Blagden, Epigraphia Binnanica, vol. 4, part 1, pp. 11 - 13;
121. Swearer, Buddhist World, pp. 29 - 30, describes the ritual re-enactments of the Sujātā episode in contemporary Thailand; for the same event in late nineteenth-century Burma,
122. see Shway Yoe (James George Scott), The Barman. His Life and Notions (reprint: New York: W.W. Norton, 1963), pp. 334 - 7.
123. Patricia M. Herbert, The Life of the Buddha (London: The British Library, 1992), pp. 34 - 5; this manuscript dates from the early nineteenth century.
124. Khing Mya Tchou, Les femmes de lettres birmanes (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1994), p. 47.
125. See further Van Esterik, 'Nurturance and Reciprocity', p. 24,
126. and 'Feeding their Faith', pp. 197 - 215.
127. A donation of 400 pillows and robes, for example, is mentioned in one of Lu'Tai's inscriptions (Griswold and Prasert, 'The Epigraphy of Mahādharmarājā I', p. 158).
128. On the Korat Plateau in northeastern Thailand women still give pillows they have made themselves to people in a superior position; offerings of pillows are thus made to the spirits and form an important aspect of merit-making ceremonies (Gittinger and Lefferts, Textiles and the Tai Experience, pp. 19, 51, 96, 103 - 4).
129. The same theme could be explored in Southeast Asia in relation to the ordinand's alms bowl, which according to the Vinaya should be of earthenware. Pottery in Southeast Asia was largely, although not completely, a female domain, and it is possible that a mother or a mother-like relative produced a monk's personal bowl. At the end of the nineteenth century in Burma one observer noted that the ordinand was asked to identify the accessories of ordination, the robes and bowl, as his own. In so doing he would have implicitly been affirming links with his mother (Levy, Buddhism: a 'Mystery Religion'?, p. 19).
130. A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, 'The Inscription of Vǎt Khemā. Epigraphic and Historical Studies, No. 15', JSS, 63, 1 (1975): 138.
131. See Barbara Watson Andaya, 'Statecraft in the Reign of Lü Tai of Sukhothai (ca. 1347 -1374)', in Religion and Legitimation of Power in Thailand, Laos and Burma, ed. Bardwell L. Smith (Chambersburg, PA: Anima Books, 1978), p. 14.
132. A. Raquez, Pages Laotiennes (Hanoi: F-H Schneider, 1902), p. 392
133. (cited in Lévy, Buddhism: a 'Mystery Religion?, p. 36).
134. Isaline Blew Horner, Women under Primitive Buddhism: The Position of Laywomen and Almswomen in Early Buddhist Times (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975; reprint of 1930 edition), pp. 350 - 1.
135. A kathina is explained as a robe made for a Buddhist monk in the course of a single day and night (M.B. Ariyapala, Society in Mediaeval Ceylon [Columbo and Kandy: de Silva, 1956], pp. 248 - 9).
136. Reynolds and Reynolds, Three Worlds, p. 237;
137. Sommai Premchit and Amphay Doré, The Lan Na twelve-month traditions (Chiang Mai: So Sap Kan Phim, 1992), p. 171;
138. Michael Aung Thwin, personal communication (4 February 1999);
139. Sila charuk Phokhun Ramkhamhaeng Maharat/The Inscription of King Ramkamhaeng the Great (Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University, 1984), p. 41.1 do not think the controversy over the dating of this inscription affects my broad argument.
140. Horner, Women under Primitive Buddhism, p. 347, n 1. The Jāakas teil the stories of the Buddha's former lives.
141. Horner, Women under Primitive Buddhism, Ibid., p. 351;
142. Nancy Auer Falk, 'Exemplary Donors of the Pāli Tradition', in Ethics, Wealth and Salvation, ed. Russell F. Sizemore and Donald K. Swearer (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 131 - 3.
143. This monastery dates from the reign of Rama I (1782 - 1809) (K.I. Matics, Introduction to the Thai Mural [Bangkok: White Lotus, 1992], p. 50).
144. In a Cambodian text cited by Bizot it is Visākhā rather that Sujātā who presents food to the Buddha under the tree of enlightenment (François Bizot, 'La consécration des statues et le culte des morts', in Recherches nouvelles sur le Cambodge, études thématiques, éd. François Bizot, vol. I (Paris: École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1994), p. 110.
145. S.J. Tambiah, 'The Ideology of Merit and the Social Correlates of Buddhism in a Thai Village', in Dialectic in Practical Religion, ed. E.R. Leach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 75;
146. Khing Mya Tchou, Les femmes de lettres birmanes, p. 42.
147. Sylvia Fraser-Lu, Burmese Crafts. Past and Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 260.
148. Mainstream traditions say that Maya died shortly after the Buddha's birth. The links between motherhood, cloth and Buddhism find a powerful symbolic statement in a Pali work, the Pamsukūlānisamsam, which became popular in Southeast Asia and was typical of the extracanonical ānisamsa genre (telling the advantage of doing good deeds). Originally associated with the Pamsukūlikas, a group of ascetic monks prominent in Sri Lanka between the eighth and tenth centuries, the text recounts the story of a merchant whose daughter died giving birth to a still-born baby. Washed, dried and dyed, the first pamśukūla, or robe of the ascetic Buddha, was in fact an expensive piece of cloth that had been wrapped around the dead foetus and afterbirth. According to this text, 'The pamśukūla robe is the best. It is while wearing it that the Buddhas have liberated all creatures...' The Pamsukūlikas themselves were so honoured that robes and clothing were distributed to their mothers by Sri Lankan rulers and other notables; see Wilhelm Geiger, Culture of Ceylon in Mediaeval Times (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1960), p. 202;
149. Strong, The Legend and Cult, pp. 71 - 2;
150. G. Martini, 'Brapamśukūlānisamsam', BEFEO, 60 (1973): 61, 71;
151. and Gunawardana, Robe and Plough, pp. 41 - 4, 168.
152. Geiger, Culture of Ceylon, p. 196.
153. Kenneth Wells, Thai Buddhism. Its Rites and Activities (Bangkok: Suriyabun Publishers, 1975; first printed 1939), p. 108.
154. Apocryphal Birth-Stories (Paññasa-Jatāka), trans. I.B. Horner and Padmanabh S. Jaini (London: The Pali Text Society, 1985), pp. 170 - 80, 200 - 7;
155. Sommai and Doré, Lan Na Twelve-Month, p. 171;
156. Fraser-Lu, Burmese Crafts, p. 260;
157. Gittinger and Lefferts, Textiles and the Tai Experience, pp. 102 - 3.
158. A detailed account of a similar ritual, the 'Golden Web' ceremony observed in 1941 among the Pai-i, a Tai-speaking people along the Myanmar-Yunnan border, shows how a local celebration of female weaving skills could be combined with communal merit-making (T'ien Ju-K'ang, Religious Cults of the Pai-i along the Burma-Yunnan Border [Ithaca, NY: Cornell Southeast Asia Program, 1986], pp. 48 - 52). For a description of the kathin presentation in northeastern Thailand,
159. see Tambiah, 'The Ideology of Merit', pp. 75 - 7,
160. while Swearer, Buddhist World, p. 23, describes a kathin ceremony he witnessed in a rural Northern Thai monastery in more recent times.
161. A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, 'Epigraphic and Historical Sources No. 19. An Inscription from Keng Tung (1451 A.D.)', JSS, 66, 1 (1978): 79.
162. Susan Murcott, The First Buddhist Women: Translations and Commentary on the Therigatha (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1991), pp. 76 -7;
163. Horner, Women under Primitive Buddhism, pp. 1 - 18. For a portrayal of maternal behaviour in early Tamil poetry as the ideal for both men and women,
164. see Paula Richman, 'Gender and Persuasion: The Portrayal of Beauty, Anguish and Nurturance in an Account of a Tamil Nun', in Cabezón ed., Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender, pp. 126-31.
165. Tessa Bartholomeusz, 'The Female Mendicant in Buddhist Sri Lankā', in Cabezón ed., Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender, p. 41;
166. Wilson, Charming Cadavers, p. 29.
167. Hallisey, 'Devotion in the Buddhist Literature of Medieval Sri Lanka', vol. I, p. 117.
168. Richard Gombrich, 'Feminine Elements in Sinhalese Buddhism', Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens, 16 (1972): 68, 78 - 9, 91 - 3.
169. Briggs, Ancient Khmer Empire, p. 222;
170. Nandana Chutivongs, 'The Iconography of Avalokiteśvara in Mainland South East Asia' (Ph.D. diss., Leiden University, 1984), pp. 332 - 3.
171. For instance, between the seventh and thirteenth centuries a common topic in Chinese Buddhist writings on family relationships is a son's indebtedness to his mother because of her 'kindnesses', particularly giving birth and breast-feeding. In seventeenth-century Vietnam images of a mother's self-sacrifice and the obligations thus incurred by her children were used by early missionaries in their explanations of a Christian's duties. The notion that merit-making can save relatives from hell exemplified in the Phra Malai legend also has parallels in the Chinese story of Mu Lian. However, a significant difference is the Chinese view that motherhood is inseparable from sexuality and pollution, and that a son has the obligation to redeem his deceased mother from hell, where she has been consigned as a result of her own desires. Victor H. Mair, Tun-Huang Popular Narratives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 87 - 121;
172. compare Alan Cole, Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), pp. 133, 176 and 232,
173. with writings by Alexandre de Rhodes cited in Peter C. Phan, Mission and Catechisis: Alexander of Rhodes and Inculturation in Seventeenth-Century Vietnam (Maryknoll, NY: Orvis Books, 1998), p. 220.
174. Reynolds and Reynolds, Three Worlds, p. 115.
175. Donald K. Swearer and Sommai Premchit, The Legend of Queen Cama: Bodhiranisi's Cāmadevīvamsa, a Translation and Commentary (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), pp. 25, 79.
176. Mabel Haynes Bode, The Pali Literature of Burma (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1909), pp. 16 - 19;
177. C.E. Godakumbara, Catalogue of Cambodian and Burmese Pāli Manuscripts (Copenhagen: The Royal Library, 1983), p. 39;
178. David K. Wyatt, Thailand: A Short History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 51, 58;
179. Gunawardana, Robe and Plough, pp. 271 - 7.
180. Pollock, 'Cosmopolitan Vernacular', pp. 6, 9.
181. N.A. Jayawickrama, The Sheaf of Garlands of the Epochs of the Conqueror, being a translation of the Jinakālamālīpakaranaṁ of Ratañña Thera of Thailand (London: Pali Text Society, 1978), pp. xix, 2-3;
182. Gombrich, 'Feminine Elements', p. 80;
183. Brereton, Thai Tellings, pp. 32, 103;
184. Jean Mulholland, Herbal Medicine in Paediatrics: Translation of a Thai Book of Genesis (Canberra: ANU Faculty of Asian Studies Monographs, 1989), p. 18.
185. For local versions of this theme, see stories 3, 19 and 23 of the locally composed Paññāsa-Jātaka in Horner and Jaini trans., Apocryphal Birth-Stories.
186. Cœdès, Histoire ancienne, p. 329;
187. Indianized States, p. 253.
188. Wyatt, 'Relics, Oaths and Polities', p. 13;
189. Tambiah, Buddhism and the Spirit Cults, pp. 195 - 214.
190. Swearer and Sommai, Legend of Queen Cāma, p. 44;
191. Brereton, Thai Tellings, p. xxi.
192. e siècles) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1998), vol. 3, p. 285.
193. U Lu Pe Win demonstrates the continuing influence of the Jātaka stories in 'The Jātakas in Burma', in Essays Offered to G.H. Luce by his Colleagues and Friends in Honour of his Seventy-fifth Birthday, ed. Ba Shin, Jean Boisselier and A.B. Griswold (Ascona, Switzerland: Artibus Asiae, 1966), vol. II, pp. 94 - 108. When the author's own father died, he was instructed to study the Mahājanaka Jātaka, which tells how the Buddha in a previous life cared for his widowed mother.
194. See also France Wongthet, 'The Jataka Stories and Laopuan Worldview', in Thai Folklore: Insights into Thai Culture, ed. Siraporn Nathalang (Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 2000), pp. 47 - 62.
195. K.R. Norman, Pāli Literature (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1983), pp. 177 - 8;
196. Horner and Jaini trans., Apocryphal Birth-Stories. The Paññāsa-Jātaka appear to have been first written down in Chiang Mai, from whence they were carried to Burma; the Khmer collection differs in arrangement and content from the Burmese and Thai versions.
197. A report from Laos in 1930, for example, describes the recitation of the Vessantara Jataka which took place in a temporary structure decorated with cloth paintings depicting scenes from the story (S. Karpèles, 'Chronique: Laos', BEFEO, 31 [1931]: 332).
198. Wyatt, 'Relics, Oaths and Polities', p. 35;
199. Margaret Cone and Richard F. Gombrich, The Perfect Generosity of Prince Vessantara: A Buddhist Epic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 415 - 18.
200. In 1865 King Mongkut commented on the fact that Thai monks could chant the Vessantara Jataka in other styles 'such as that of the Lao, Mon, Burmese and Khmer' (quoted in Terry E. Miller, Traditional Lao Music: Kaen Playing and Mawliun Singing in Northeast Thailand [Westport, CT/London: Greenwood Press, 1985], p. 38).
201. A. B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, 'King Lödaiya of Sukhodaya and his Contemporaries. Epigraphic and Historical Studies No. 10', JSS, 60, 1 (1972): 118.
202. Cone and Gombrich, Perfect Generosity, p. xxi;
203. G.H. Luce, 'The Jātakas at Pagan', JBRS, 58, 2 (1975): 231 - 3.
204. It was commonly believed that those who listen to the Vessantara Jātaka would be reborn in the time of the Metteyya, the Future Buddha. Collins draws parallels between the values of renunciation, Buddhahood, seasonal fecundity and rebirth that provide a context for the recitation of the Vessantara Jātaka (Nirvana and Other Buddhist Felicities, pp. 43, 376).
205. Griswold and Prasert,'Inscription from Vǎt Hin Tǎn', p. 72,
206. and 'Inscription of Vǎt Kherna', p. 138.
207. Roxanna M. Brown, The Ceramics of South-East Asia: Their Dating and Identification (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 53, 260-1.
208. Pollock argues that in India the cult of Rama can be traced to specific circumstances in the twelfth century when Hindu kings saw in the Rāma-Rāvana struggle a parallel to their own conflicts against the Turks (Sheldon Pollock, 'Rāmāyana and Political Imagination in India', Journal of Asian Studies, 52, 3 [May 1993]: 263).
209. Epigraphia Birmanica, ed. Taw Sein Co and Charles Duroiselle (Rangoon: Government Printing Office, 1921) vol. II, part 1, pp. 130 - 2;
210. Epigraphia Birmanica, vol. II, part 2, plates 351 - 60, 377;
211. Cone and Gombrich, Perfect Generosity, p. xxi.
212. The episode dealing with Māddi's lament may have assumed an independent status quite early. An observer in nineteenth-century Burma commented that 'men could be moved to tears' by good performances of this episode (C.J.F.S. Forbes, British Burma and its People, Being Sketches of Native Manners Customs and Religion [London: John Murray, 1878], p. 150).
213. Burmese Classical Poems, ed. and trans. Friedrich V. Lustig (Rangoon: U Khin Pe Gyi, 1966), p. 29.
214. Epigraphia Birmanica, ed. C.O. Blagden (Rangoon: Government Printing Press, 1928), vol. III, part 2, p. 278.
215. Cole, Mothers and Sons, p. vii.
216. Mulholland, Herbal Medicine, p. 18.
217. Women in Thai Literature (Bangkok: Office of the Prime Minister, 1992), p. 70.
218. We obviously have no figures for maternal mortality in early Southeast Asia. It is worth emphasising, however, that with every pregnancy a woman faced the real possibility of death. In England around 1600 it has been estimated that 1 in every 100 births resulted in the mother's death (Dr Merry Wiesner-Hanks, personal communication, 3 May 2000).
219. Khing Mya Tchou, Les femmes de lettres birmanes, p. 42.
220. Hallisey, 'Devotion in the Buddhist Literature', vol. I, p. 122;
221. Strong, Legend and Cult, p. 241.
222. Brereton, Thai Tellings, p. 58. In a Cambodian legend, a prince who unknowingly commits incest with his mother builds a stūpa as a means of expiating his sin;
223. see Ashley Thompson, 'Introductory Remarks Between the Lines: Writing Histories of Middle Cambodia', in Other Pasts: Women, Gender and History in Early Modern Southeast Asia, ed. Barbara Watson Andaya (Honolulu: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawai'i, 2000), pp. 47 - 68.
224. Swearer and Sommai, Legend of Queen Cāma, p. 161.
225. Imported from India, where it was particularly evident during the Gupta period (fourth-sixth centuries), the image of the Earth Goddess who witnessed Buddha's enlightenment was localised in Southeast Asian iconography. Here she was said to have defeated the evil forces of Māra by wringing a flood of water from her hair (itself emblematic of fertility), a motif which is unknown in India. Khmer images have been dated to the later Angkor period, but the first known depiction in Southeast Asia is a Pagan bronze from the eleventh or twelfth century;
226. Donald M. Stadner, 'Pagan Bronzes. Fresh Observations', in The Art of Burma, ed. Donald M. Stadner (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1999), p. 63. For Indian origins,
227. see Janice Leoshko, 'The Case of the Two Witnesses to the Buddha's Enlightenment', in A Pot-Pourri of Indian Art, ed. Pratapaditya Pal (Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1988), pp. 39 - 52;
228. and John P. Ferguson, 'The Great Goddess Today in Myanmar and Thailand: An Exploration of her Symbolic Relevance to Monastic and Female Roles', in Mother Worship: Theme and Variations, ed. James J. Preston (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), p. 286. I am grateful to Elizabeth Guthrie, who is working on the earth goddess, for information and helpful references.
229. Reynolds and Reynolds, Three Worlds, pp. 118 - 19;
230. Mulholland, Herbal Medicine, p. 18.
231. In the Buddhist Utopia the suckling of children is quite separate from the possession of mammary glands. According to the Traibhūmikatha cosmology the moral perfection of the inhabitants of the northern continent, Uttarakuru, is such that babies can extract milk from sucking the fingers of passing men and women. In other local texts such as 'The Sheaf of Garlands' and the Burmese 'Glass Palace Chronicle', a holy man can similarly care for his children with milk that comes from his finger; Reynolds and Reynolds, Three Worlds, p. 132;
232. Collins, Nirvana and other Buddhist Felicities, p. 322;
233. Jayawickrama, Sheaf of Garlands, p. 98;
234. Pe Maung Tin and G.H. Luce, The Glass Palace Chronicle (Rangoon: Rangoon University Press, 1960), p. 5;
235. Van Esterik, 'Nurturance and Reciprocity', p. 40.
236. Reynolds and Reynolds, Three Worlds, p. 122.
237. Walters, 'A Voice from the Silence', pp. 370, 376;
238. Wilson, Charming Cadavers, p. 31. Wilson sees this comparison as in fact a devaluation of worldly motherhood and worldly nourishment.
239. Hallisey, 'Devotion in the Buddhist Literature', vol. II, p. 251;
240. Gombrich, 'Feminine Elements', pp. 69 - 70.
241. Gombrich, 'Feminine Elements', pp. 74 - 7. It is worth remembering that the eighteenth century was also a time of renewed Thai-Sri Lankan contacts.
242. This was pointed out to me during a visit to Mrauk-U in December 2000.
243. Cone and Gombrich, Perfect Generosity, p. 90.
244. The lament of Bimbā (Yasodharā, wife of the Buddha-to-be), following his renunciation of his princely life, was also a popular episode. A Northern Thai version copied in the late eighteenth century stresses Bimbā's love for her son Rāhula, and her assurance that following her husband's departure 'your mother who loves you so much will be as your father'. In other words, her feeling for her son is so great that she can be like both parents to him. Donald K. Swearer, 'Bimbā's Lament', in Buddhism in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), pp. 541-2.
245. Sachchidanand Sahai, The Rama Jataka Tale in Laos: A Study in the Phra Lak Phra Lam (Delhi: B.R. Publishing House, 1996), vol. I, p. 23, n 28;
246. Sachchidanand Sahai, The Rama Jataka Tale in Laos: A Study in the Phra Lak Phra Lam, vol. II, p. 25.
247. Swearer and Sommai, Legend of Queen Cāma, pp. 12, 69.
248. The story of the Bodhisatta who, as an ascetic baby, refuses his mother's milk because it defiles him and impedes his path to nibbāna presumably reflects Indian influence (cited by Emmanuel Guillon, The Mons: A Civilisation of Southeast Asia, trans. James V. Di Crocco [Bangkok: The Siam Society, 1999], p. 39).
249. Mulholland, Herbal Medicine, pp. 56 - 7;
250. Taw Sein Co and Duroiselle, ed., Epigraphia Birmanica, vol. II, part 1, p. 101.
251. Pe Maung Tin, 'Women in the Inscriptions', pp. 149 - 59.
252. Hallisey, 'Devotion in the Buddhist Literature', vol. II, pp. 256, 300.
253. Hallisey, 'Devotion in the Buddhist Literature', Ibid., vol. I, p. 256;
254. Gombrich, 'Feminine Elements', pp. 69 - 70.
255. Swearer and Sommai, Legend of Queen Cāma, p. 127;
256. Adrien Launay, Histoire de la Mission de Siam 1662 - 1811 (Paris: Charles Douniol and Retaux, 1920), p. 304.
257. In the fourteenth century an inscription left by the king of Sukhothai also recognises his foster mother (A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, The Inscription of Vǎt Jāṅ Loṁ. Epigraphic and Historical Studies No. 8', JSS, 59, 1 [1971]: 206).
258. The 'Lord Mother' of a monastery in Ayutthaya had also been King Narai's nurse (Cushman and Wyatt, Royal Chronicles, p. 305).
259. Brereton, Thai Tellings, pp. 104-5.
260. The highest abode, inhabited by beings of very high spiritual qualities who have not yet gained full emancipation.
261. I am most grateful to Dr Swearer for allowing me to consult a draft translation of this chronicle, to be included in Donald K. Swearer, Becoming the Buddha: Iinage Consecration in Northern Thailand (forthcoming).
262. Gunawardana, Robe and Plough, p. 175.
263. See, for example, the inscription of 1141 CE set up by Alaungsitthu of Pagan (1112 - 47), in which he hopes to model himself on Gotama Buddha and become a Buddha himself (G.H. Luce and Pe Maung Tin, 'The Shwegyugi Pagoda Inscription, Pagan, 1141 AD', JBRS, 10 [1920]: 67-74).
264. Taw Sein Co and Duroiselle, Epigraphia Birmanica, vol. II, part 2, p. 117;
265. Pe Maung Tin and Luce, Glass Palace Chronicle, pp. 20 - 4.
266. Victor B. Lieberman, Burmese Administrative Cycles. Anarchy and Conquest c.1580 - 1760 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 230 - 1;
267. Gayatri Sen Majumdar, 'Status and Position of Women as Depicted in the Aṅguttara Nikaya', in Buddhism in Comparative Light, ed. Sanghasen Singh (Delhi/Varanasi: Indo-Asian Publishing House, 1999), p. 182.
268. Faure, Visions of Power, p. 35.
269. Jayawickrama, Sheaf of Garlands, pp. 35, 169.
270. Reynolds and Reynolds, Three Worlds, pp. 46, 349.
271. Swearer and Sommai, Legend of Queen Cāma, p. 104.
272. Griswold and Prasert, 'Inscription from Keng Tung', p. 84.
273. Betty Gosling, Sukhothai: Its History, Culture and Art (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 80, 91.
274. Rita Ringis, Thai Temples and Temple Murals (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 121.
275. Guillon, The Mons, pp. 160, 170-2.
276. Guillon, The Mons, Ibid., pp. 171 -2;
277. Blagden, Epigraphia Binnanica, vol. IV, part 1, p. 42.
278. Royal Orders of Burma, AD 1598 - 1885, ed. Than Tun (Kyoto: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1983), vol. III, p. 64.
279. Kennon Breazeale, personal communication (20 February 2001), who kindly provided a summary of this Thai translation of a Khmer chronicle.
280. Wolters, 'Khmer King at Basan', pp. 74 - 5.
281. Gervaise also mentions that a Cambodian king (apparently Chestha II, 1618 -27) left his queen (a Vietnamese princess) in charge of a Vietnamese force sent to help him against Ayutthaya (Natural and Political History, p. 195).
282. Trevor Ling, 'Introduction,' in Buddhist Trends in Southeast Asia, ed. Trevor Ling (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1993), pp. 4-5.
283. Wyatt, 'Relics, Oaths and Polities', p. 47.
284. See the contributions to 'Spirit Cults and the Position of Women in Northern Thailand', ed. Paul Cohen and Gehan Wijeyardene, Special Issue of Mankind (14, 4 [1984]);
285. Richard Davis, Muang Metaphysics: A Study of Northern Thai Myth and Ritual (Bangkok: Pandora, 1984), p. 26;
286. and Rosalind C. Morris, In the Place of Origins: Modernity and its Mediums in Northern Thailand (Durham, NC & London: Duke University Press, 2000).
287. Wyatt, 'Relics, Oaths and Polities', pp. 39 - 41.
288. A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, 'A Declaration of Independence and its Consequences. Epigraphic and Historical Inscriptions Number 1', JSS, 56, 2 [1968]: 26, n 39.
289. A.B. Griswold and Prasert na Nagara, JSS, Ibid., p. 26, n 39;
290. Andaya, 'Statecraft in the Reign of Lü Tai', p. 17, n 37.
291. The Chiang Mai Chronicle, ed. and trans. David K. Wyatt and Aroonrut Wichienko (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1995), pp. 80-1.
292. The Chiang Mai Chronicle, Ibid., p. 41.
293. Taken from explanatory information in the Nan museum, November 2000.
294. Penth, 'Historical Notes on the Region West of Chiang Mai', JSS, 65, 2 (1977): 181.
295. e siècles) (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1998), pp. 119-20; see also pp. xxi-xxii, xxv, xxvii, 106, 116, 165.
296. Wyatt and Aroonrut, Chiang Mai Chronicle, p. 68.
297. Wyatt, 'Relics, Oaths and Politics', p. 49.
298. For example, J.C. Eade, 'The Mangrai Buddha Image of Chiang Mai: A Computer Assisted Reading', JSS, 81, 1 (1993): 39;
299. Penth, 'Historical Notes' mentions the king Phra Yo of Chiang Rai (1487 - 95) and his mother, both of whom were pious Buddhists frequently mentioned as religious donors (p. 181).
300. Several inscriptions located in the museums at Chiang Saen, like that dated 1496 from Wat Prasart, also record donations to monasteries by queen mothers and their sons. The inscriptional evidence for merit-making by wealthy women in Sukhothai is examined by B.J. Terwiel, 'The Urgency of Making Merit in Early Thai History', forthcoming.
301. For example, following his conversion by the Buddha the disciple Angulimāla became a protector of pregnant women whose help could be solicited to facilitate an easier birth, and the chanting of one group of Pali texts associated with him was 'specifically sanctioned' to assist in a difficult delivery. The presence of his statue at Pagan's Shwezigon pagoda indicates Angulimāla's appeal (Strong, Legend and Cult, p. 241).
302. Judith Jacob, The Traditional Literature of Cambodia: A Preliminary Guide (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 29.
303. There is a long Mon-Khmer tradition of extolling the good deeds of a mother (Saveros Pou and Philip N. Jenner, 'Les Cpāp' ou "Codes de Conduites" Khmers Cpāp' Kram' BEFEO, 66 [1979]: 156).
304. Hallisey, 'Devotion in the Buddhist Literature', vol. II, p. 300, n 126.
305. Jacques Le Goff, The Medieval Imagination, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 1 - 5;
306. Shaw, Passionate Enlightenment, p. 13.
307. Joan Scott, 'Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis', American Historical Review, 91, 5 (December 1986): 1075.