The Journal of the Siam Society Vol. LXIV, Part 1-2, 1976 - Khamkoo

A NOTE ON RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN BUDDHIST
TEMPLES IN THAILAND*
by
Jack Bilmes
Invitations
Much has been written about Thai Buddhist beliefs and practices.
This is one of the most intensively studied areas of Thai life. The
organization of the Sangha (the Buddhist Order), the role of the monk;
the place of the wat (the temple complex) in village life, the ceremonial
cycle, and the understandings and objectives of the Thai Buddhist layman
have all been well described. But there is an important aspect of
religious life which has received scant attention-between-wat relationships.
This omission is surprising, since these relations are of considerable
importance in the religious life of the village and may be of some
significance in the study of Thai political and social integration.
I will base my discussion on data collected in the Northern Thai
village of Sang Ton. I have reason to believe that these data are fairly
typical for rural Northern Thailand and perhaps, with some modifications,
for the rest of Buddhist Thailand as welL Between-wat relationships are
manifested in joint participation in certain ceremonies which take place
at the wat. When the village of Sang Ton (whose inhabitants are all
members, and the only members, of the Sang Ton Wat congregation)
has one of these ceremonies, it invites, in the name of the Sang Ton Wat,
certain other wats to participate. The invitation may be to one monk
or to some or all the monks and novices of the wat, or to the monks,
novices, and congregation, depending on the occasion and the closeness
of the relationship between the two wats. The relationship is reciprocal,
so when the other wat has that ceremony, it will invite participation
from the Sang Ton Wat. (Each year an assessment is made against
every household in Sang Ton to finance village participation in the
*The research on which this paper was based was carried out in Northern Thailand
from February 1971 to March 1972, under a grant from the National Institute of
General Medical Sciences. I would like to thank Alice Dewey, Alan Howard, and
Takie Lebra for their comments on an earlier version of this paper.