ancient indigenous chronicles. There are scattered Chinese accounts of Buddhism in states that are usually difficult to pinpoint on the modern map. There are inscriptions, generally fragmentary and mostly re-moved from their original contexts. These include many Pali citation inscriptions from the sixth to the eighth centuries in the Irrawaddy Delta in lower Burma and across central Thailand. There are images of buddhas and bodhisattvas, and there are architectural remains. In Thailand we face a collection of epigraphic riddles: a Pali-Khmer in-scription and massive pair of footprints in Prachinburi; a reference to Anurādhapura in a brief Mon inscription in a cave in Saraburi; the
bhikṣu-mahāyāna-sthavira ordered to maintain ascetic and ritual prac-tice for King Śrī Sūryavarmadeva in a Khmer inscription from Lopburi;
and a mention of Abhayagiri—a mountain rather than a vihāra—in a bilingual Sanskrit-Khmer inscription from Nakhon Ratchasima. No continuous narrative emerges from these fragments of the written re-cords of the past. All that can be said is that a school that used Pali as its scriptural language was prominent in the Chao Phraya Basin and in lower Burma, and that the school, or more probably schools, were likely to have been descendants of the Theriya lineage. It is simplistic to say that this Buddhism “came from Ceylon.” Trade and political re-lations were complex; the many communication routes from India and Lanka to Southeast Asia allowed diverse cultural contacts. Given the (I believe) complete silence of extant Mahāvihāra literature on rela-tions with Southeast Asia before the Polonnaruwa period, it does not seem likely that the dominant Vinaya lineage in the Chao Phraya basin was that of the Mahāvihāra. Nor is there compelling evidence (at least for the mainland) for an affiliation with the Abhayagiri. I tentatively conclude that a Theriya lineage, or Theriya lineages, were introduced at an early date, that is, in the early centuries CE, from India—at sev-eral times and in sevsev-eral places, and that these lineages developed into a regional lineage or regional lineages in its or their own right, with their own architecture, iconography, and (now lost) literature.
For later periods—starting with the second millennium of the Christian era—we have more sources. Here again they are often frag-mentary, or they were composed or edited centuries after the events that they purport to describe. These sources include inscriptions in Mon, Thai, Khmer, and Pali from Hariphunchai, Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, Lanna, and Lanchang, and chronicles in the same languages. Despite the availability of these sources, the study of the history of religion in Southeast Asia remains undeveloped compared, for example, to that of Tibet, China, or Japan. Current and widely distributed books give un-reliable and dated accounts. Harvey, for example, writes of Burma that
“In northern Burma, Sarvāstivada and Mahāyāna Buddhism, along with Hinduism, were present from the third century AD, with Tantric Buddhism arriving by the ninth century. A change came about when a northern king, Anawratā (1044–1077) unified the country and gave his allegiance to the Theravāda of the Mons; for he was impressed by the simplicity of its doctrines.”60 Anawratā’s adherence to Theravāda was questioned forty years ago by Luce, whose arguments were
summarized by D. G. E. Hall in his influential History of South-East Asia.61 Since, as Hall notes, “not a single authentic inscription dates from his reign, save for votive tablets briefly inscribed,” how are we to know that King Anawratā was “impressed by the simplicity” of Theravāda?
Harvey’s section on Thailand reads as follows: “In the region of modern Thailand, a mix of Mahāyāna and Śaivism was present from the tenth century. In the thirteenth century, the Tai people, driven south from China by the Mongolians, entered the area and drove out its Khmer rulers. Theravāda missions, sent from Burma from the eleventh cen-tury, found a response from the ruler of the Tais, once followers of Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism. Theravāda then became the dominant religious tradition.”62 This is outdated and inaccurate on every count.
It could be reasonably recast as:
In the region of what is today modern Thailand, a tradition or school that used Pali and must be related to the Theriya tradition—perhaps from India more than from Sri Lanka—seems to have been predom-inant in the first millennium of the Christian Era.63 Cults of bo-dhisatvas like Avalokiteśvara and of brahmanical deities like Viṣṇu, Śiva, and Sūrya were also active.64 In the thirteenth century, as the power of the Khmer waned, the Tai people became ascendant, es-tablishing states in the area of Chiangmai, Sukhothai, Suphanburi, and Ayutthaya. Not much can be said about the religious protohis-tory of the Tai in terms of the Buddhisms that we know today (except that they were never “followers of Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhism”
and were not driven south from China by the Mongolians, and there were never any “Theravāda missions” from Burma). It is, however, evident that there was continuity between the earlier traditions of the Mon Theravāda lineage, both in the central plains (through so-called Dvāravatī) and in the north (through Hariphunchai) and the traditions of the Tai. Brahmanical cults, a legacy of the central plains tradition and of the previously predominant Khmer civilization, con-tinued to be maintained, both at the court and popular level, well into the Ayutthaya and indeed the Bangkok periods. Local Brahmans and Brahmanical rites have played a significant ritual role up to the present.65
Skilton, in his A Concise History of Buddhism, writes that “Though later to be universally dominated by the Theravāda form of Buddhism, the early history of the Dharma in South-east Asia is more piecemeal and eclectic. The later history of Buddhism in the region is characterized by a strong correlation of religion and national identity, and the promul-gation of an ultra-orthodoxy derived from the works of Buddhaghosa,
on the model of developments in Sri Lanka and the Mahāvihāra.”66 One can agree that the early history of the dharma in Southeast Asia is
“piecemeal and eclectic”—indeed, no master narrative can be written—
but one wonders what this abstract “Theravāda form of Buddhism”
which “universally dominated” Southeast Asia might be. It seems as if Sri Lanka was a kind of Rome or Constantinople, and that Southeast Asian sanghas had no autonomous or local histories or development. It more likely that “Theravāda,” including that of Lanka, was a constant exchange and adaptation in response to the realities of patronage, eco-nomics, and social change.67 The idea of “the promulgation of an ultra-orthodoxy derived from the works of Buddhaghosa” is decidedly odd and cannot be justified, or even located, in Thai religious, social, or political history.68
As mentioned above, the categories “Buddhism” and “religion”
raise their own problems.69 The most common word used by Buddhists for what today we call “Buddhism” is śāsana, “the teaching or dispensa-tion,” a term used by all Indian Buddhist schools.70 In Siam, the inscrip-tions of Sukhothai use several combined forms:71
buddhaśāsanā Inscriptions 49-14, 69-1-6
phra buddhaśāsanā Inscription 1-2-12 śāsanā phra buddha Inscription 3-1-54, 57 śāsanā phra buddha pen chao Inscription 3-1-46 śāsanā phra chao Inscription 9-1-32;
Inscription 14-2-14 śāsanā phra pen chao Inscription 3-1-31, 43, 59;
Inscription 14-1-37, 2-18
Śāsanā most frequently refers to the dispensation of Gotama or Śākyamuni. In inscriptions or aspirations it may also refer to the dis-pensation of the next buddha, Maitreya.
If the term “Theravāda” was not used in Southeast Asian records, there is no dearth of alternate terms. I give below a few examples.
Sīhala-śāsanā
In the Thai principalities, and throughout Southeast Asia, the mo-nastic lineage of Sri Lanka had enormous prestige. Monks went to Lanka to be reordained and returned to start new monastic lines. As a result, lineage is frequently phrased in terms that show its Lankan pedigree.
An inscription from Chiang Rai, for example, records that in BE 2041 (= CE 1498) “twenty-five senior monks (mahāthera chao) went to bring the śāsanā of Phra Buddha Chao in Laṅkādīpa to Muang Hariphunchai.”72 Chapters of the northern Thai Pali chronicle Jinakālamālinī (completed 1527 CE) bear the titles “Sīhalasāsanāgamanakāla”—the “period of the arrival of the śāsanā from Ceylon”—and “Sīhalasāsanajotanakāla.”73 The body of the text uses the terms Sīhala-sāsana and Sīhala-saṅgha.
The fifteenth-century Thai literary classic The Defeat of the Yuan (Yuan Phai) relates that when King Paramatrailokanātha decided to enter the monkhood, he sent his son to Ceylon (Laṅkādvīpa) to invite pure monks, free of defilement, to assist in the ordination ceremony.74
Gāmavāsī and Araññavāsī
As mentioned above, important division of the sangha in Lanka from the twelfth century on was that of “town-dwellers” (gāma-vāsī) and “forest-dwellers” (arañña-vāsī).75 These are ancient Vinaya terms, shared by the Vinayas and texts of all Buddhist schools. Sukhothai in-scriptions refer to both, and suggest that they maintained separate ordination lineages.76 In the Ayutthaya Buddhism of central Siam, the sangha was administered as a well-organized bureaucracy. Broad ad-ministrative divisions paralleled old civil divisions into Right, Center, and the Left. They included:
Forest-dwelling groups (fāy arañavāsī), the Center Fraternity of town-dwellers (gaṇa gāmavāsī), the Left
Town-dwellers (gāmavāsī), the Right, under Phra Vanaratna of Wat Pā Kaew.
Within these were further stratifications, with a Phra Khru at ap-pointed temples. The Phra Khru (phra khrū [hybrid Pali, garū]) was a subordinate but powerful office in the monastic hierarchy, itself di-vided into several ranks. Under the Arañavāsī were:
Phra Khru of the section of insight meditation (phra khru fāy vipassanā)
Phra Khru, head of the Mon fraternity (gaṇa rāmañ) Phra Khru, head of the Lao fraternity (gaṇa lao).77
Under the Right Gāmavāsī were the gaṇa or fraternities of the southern principalities.
The Southeast Asian orders transmitted scriptures in differ-ent scripts and languages. In Thailand alone Pali, initially written in
the so-called Pallava script, came to be written in the Mon, Lanna, Tham, Khom, and Burmese alphabets; as a liturgical language it was pronounced and recited differently in different cadences. When King Rāma I of Bangkok sponsored a recitation-redaction of the Pali texts, manuscripts in Thai, Mon, and Lao were consulted, with some manu-scripts brought from Nakhon Si Thammarat in the South.78 Further, each vernacular had its own script or scripts, and interacted with Pali or Sanskrit in multiple ways. There was no single, standard or uniform interface between the “Pali database” and the living ritual repertoires and narrative imaginaires.
The “Four [Laṅ]kā Lineages” in Nakhon Si Thammarat
At an uncertain date, certainly in the Ayutthaya period, in Nakhon Si Thammarat and and Phatthalung, the sangha was described in terms of “four kā.” Local oral tradition explained that, from the beginning, the relics at Nakhon Si Thammarat were protected by four flocks of crows (kā) of four colors in the four cardinal directions. When legend-ary king Prayā Śrī Dharrmāśoka79 built a stūpa for the relics, the names and colors of the four flocks of crows became the titles of the four Phra Khru who oversaw the stūpa. In fact, the “four kā” are four monastic lineages believed to have come from Laṅkā:80
Kā Kaew Pa Kaew (Vanaratana) lineage white Kā Rām Rāmañña (Mon) lineage yellow Kā Jāta Pa Daeng lineage red
Kā Döm Former lineage black
The origins and evolution of these orders are obscure, but most are an-cient, and their lineage networks extended to Sukhothai, Chiangmai, and the Shan principalities. In the South, the lineages were enduring, and the terms continued to be used until the Bangkok period. With the constant travel to and fro there were many locally or chronologi-cally differentiated lineages within the Sinhala traditions. At the time Jinakālamālinī was compiled (beginning of the sixteenth century), there were three lineages in the north: the Nagaravāsī, the Pupphavāsī, and the Sīhaḷabhikkhus (i.e., the City-Dwellers, the Suan Dok monks, and the Wat Pa Daeng monks).81
The Four Nikāyas of Present-Day Siam
Since the late nineteenth century four monastic traditions have been officially recognized in Siam:
Mahānikāya The “Great or Majority Nikāya”
Dhammayuttika The “Nikāya Devoted to the Dhamma,”82 founded by King Mongkut
Cīna-nikāya The “Chinese Nikāya,” brought to Siam by southern Chinese immigrants
Annam-nikāya The “Annamite Nikāya,” brought to Siam by immigrants from Vietnam
Mahānikāya and Dhammayuttika are not necessarily exclusive. The twentieth-century northeastern master Ajahn Chah (Bodhiñāṇa, 1918–
1992), for example, studied under Ajahn Mun Bhūridatto (1870–1942)83 and other Dhammayuttika masters, but maintained his Mahānikāya lineage. Laypeople are neither Dhammayuttika nor Mahānikāya, though some may prefer to support monks of one or the other lin-eage. Representatives of all four traditions are invited to important royal or state ceremonies (although the status of the Cīna- and Annam-nikāyas is inferior to that of the two Theravāda lineages). At funerals both Theravādin and Chinese or Annamite monks may be invited to chant and conduct rites, depending on the ethnicity and wishes of the sponsors. The Chinese and Annamite monks perform rituals and recite dhāraṇīs in southern Chinese or Annamite styles that were imported in the nineteenth century or earlier.
Ahistorical Inventions: Ariya Buddhism and Other Chimera
Modern scholarship has compounded the confusion by coining new terms for the Buddhism of Southeast Asia.84 These late twentieth cen-tury neologisms include “Lopburi Hīnayāna” and “Ariya Buddhism,”
“Tantric Theravāda,” “Siamvaṃsa school,” and “Sukhavatī school.”
This is not the place to address the problem of these curious inven-tions, and I will briefly take up only one example, Tantric Theravāda.
Neither Thai nor Khmer Buddhism, as seen above, represents itself as
“Theravadin”—let alone “Tantric.” In India itself the word “tantra” is contested—there is no agreement as to what the long-lived, diverse, multicultural, multireligious term “tantra” means.85 It is noted in the Encyclopedia of Buddhism that “Tantra in Western nomenclature has achieved forms of signification independent from its Sanskritic use and
has become a somewhat promiscuous category applied to various ritu-als not easily classified.”86 The word “tantra” is not used in Southeast Asian Buddhism to describe either texts or practices (and the adjective tāntrika is equally unknown). There is no problem in drawing paral-lels (if there are any): that is our job. But when we place Khmer or Southeast Asian practice within a category alien to it, then, inevitably, everything else about tantra is associated with it, and confusion reigns.