During the past twenty-five years, hundreds of studies of Chinese peasant rebellions have appeared in print. Most of these were published in the People's Republic of China, where they represented an effort to create a new revolutionary history of class struggle, intended to replace the elite history written by Confucian historiographers under the empire. Embodying Mao Tse-tung's belief that “the ruthless economic exploitations and political oppression of the peasantry by the landlord class forced the peasants to rise repeatedly in revolt against its rule” (Mao 1961, Vol. III, p. 75), these studies of popular uprisings describe a bewildering variety of social phenomena.

The four articles on Thai religion and society published here are revisions of papers originally prepared for panels at the 1972 and 1973 annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies, held in New York and Chicago, respectively. Contributions were solicited from scholars representing a number of disciplines and regional interests, to survey the variety of approaches being followed and the research being done on “Religious and Social Change in Southeast Asia.” Various circumstances have made it impossible to publish the entire set of panel papers together, as was originally planned; but a list of the participants in the two panels and the topics their papers addressed will reflect the range of religious and social changes underway in Southeast Asia, as well as the diversity of disciplinary interests.

Complexity has characterized the Thai religious system since at least 1292, when the well-known inscription of Rama Kamhaeng was composed. This inscription not only celebrates the devotion of his people of Sukhothai to Theravada Buddhism but also notes a special relationship between the prosperity of the kingdom and reverence for Phra Khaphung, a “spirit-deity” living in a nearby mountain. Phra Khaphung is characterized as a phī-thewadā, combining phī (an indigenous Thai form meaning “spirit,” “ghost”) with thewadā (a form derived from Hindu-Buddhist cosmology and meaning “deity”). This classification of Phra Khaphung suggests that a process of merging two once-distinct religious traditions had already begun.

In recent years a number of historians, political scientists, and sociologists have been searching for a better way of approaching the study of the religious ideas, sentiments, and symbols associated with the life of modern national communities. It has become increasingly evident that the older procedure of making a clear distinction between specifically religious communities and religion on the one hand, and the state and politics on the other, then analyzing the interaction between the two, is no longer sufficient. However, no widely accepted alternative way of viewing the problem has emerged.

Theoretical Considerations

In this paper I am concerned with the explanation of a type of religious phenomenon I shall refer to as millennialism. I would, at the outset, underline the religious character of this phenomenon, since millennialism (also known under a variety of other names) is often viewed as a projection of psychological, economic, or political crisis experiences. I do not view religion merely as a projective system; rather I hold with Clifford Geertz that it is a “cultural system” which serves as both a “model of” and a “model for” reality. That is to say, I see religion serving both as a set of symbols that makes human experience ultimately meaningful, and as a set of symbols that provides an ultimate basis for human action.

It can be argued that full assimilation of Chinese immigrants into an alien society has proceeded longer and on a larger scale in Thailand than anywhere else. It was Chinese potters who built the first kilns at Sukhothai and Sawankhalok; Thai tradition says that King Ram Kamhaeng, who threw off Khmer domination and invented the Thai script, personally went to China to bring back five hundred artisans. And Chinese traders at Ayutthaya contributed decisively toward its becoming very large and very rich. Then, and later at Thonburi and Bangkok, Chinese skill and labor were crucial; successful immigrants were given great responsibilities and corresponding rewards as servants of the throne, and at all levels of the social scale were welcomed as husbands and sons-in-law. Though greatly altered by modern nationalisms on both sides, the mutual openness of Thai and Chinese has persisted, perhaps more strongly than contemporary observers have appreciated.