Continuities and transformations in Southeast Asian symbolism: a case study from Thailand

Abstract

Since P. E. de Josselin de Jong first proposed that Southeast Asia could be considered a single ethnological area of study and was criticized for the formulation (1965), few attempts have been made to deal with the continuity of Southeast Asian symbols through time or to speculate on the relation between similar structures in different social, political and ecological contexts. To some extent, this reflects a change in theoretical climate away from studies which rely on diffusionist explanations for the distribution of objects or ideas. Such questions are easily reduced to mere ethnographic description a mapping of the spread of certain objects or symbols throughout Southeast Asia or untestable specula tions on the origin of a particular symbol. Anthropologists may also avoid looking at symbols diachronically by arguing that the meaning of a symbol has been lost through time and it is therefore no longer possible to discover a precise meaning. In past scholarship on Southeast Asia, there is a long tradition of interest in symbolism expressed by scholars from a variety of disciplines. The most significant resources on Southeast Asian symbolism are de tailed studies of particular symbolic domains such as Adam's work on Sumba textiles (1969), or Gittinger's analysis of the symbolism of Indo nesian textiles (1979). The house has been treated as a symbolic domain by both Cunningham (1964) and Hicks (1976) in Timor, and Turton (1978) and Tambiah ( 1970) in Thailand. On the state level, the architec ture of capital cities, palaces, and pilgrimage sites has been analyzed as a microcosm of cosmologica! order by Heine-Geldern (1956), and Mus (1978). Cultural performances such as Balinese dance dramas (Belo 1949), Javanese theatre (Anderson 1965) and Balinese cock-fights (Geertz 1972), provide further contexts for symbolic expression. These