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1 |
ID:
099454
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Publication |
2010.
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Summary/Abstract |
Both Thai and Western academia have recently paid increasing attention to the changing roles of Thai Buddhist women. Still conspicuously missing, however, are more in-depth studies of female Buddhist saints in Thailand and the attendant symbolism, which would provide a more adequate depiction of the contemporary Thai Buddhist landscape. Similar to the prominent role of the mae chi in monastic education, the emergence of hagiographies and the veneration of female Buddhist saints has not, to date, been given sufficient attention in academic studies. To help remedy this situation, this paper provides a life account of one of the most outstanding female practitioners of modern Thai Buddhism: Mae Chi Kaew Sianglam (1901-1991). A summary of an increasing number of available biographical materials on Mae Chi Kaew's life is followed by a thematic analysis in which the author examines various aspects of her life accounts and her veneration. The purpose is to study the enormous significance of Mae Chi Kaew's biographies and attendant symbolic representations in the context of the religious landscape of Thai Buddhism. The author shows that many hagiographical elements in the sacred biographies of Mae Chi Kaew approximate the hagiographical paradigms not only of the Buddha and other Pali canonical figures, but also of modern saints of the Thai forest tradition. At the same time, however, significant hagiographical and venerational particularities can be observed.
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2 |
ID:
098861
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Publication |
2010.
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Summary/Abstract |
This paper presents an ethnographic account of Buddhist 'nuns' involved in the teaching of Pali language and Abhidhamma in contemporary Thailand. It also reflects on both the emic-Buddhist (Pali and modern vernacular) and etic-interpretative (English-language) vocabularies which have been used to describe these women and their social role(s) and status(es). The aims of the paper are to go beyond the Weberian vocabulary usually used to describe what we will call 'professionally celibate Buddhist women', to escape from the ubiquitous emphasis on the issue of re-establising the Nuns' Order (bhikkhuni--s) in the modern world in scholarship dealing with such women, and to encourage further ethnography and further civilizational interpretation of gender and asceticism.
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