JOHN CLIFFORD HOLT. Spirits of the Place: Buddhism and Lao Religious Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2009, 368p.

Abstract

Spirits of Place: Buddhism and Lao Religious Culture JOHN CLIFFORD HOLT Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2009, 368p.Current studies on religious culture of Lao ethnic groups began with S. J. Tambiah's structural-functionalistic analysis (1970) and have progressed mainly through Tiyavanich's biographical study on traditions of forest monks (1997) and Hayashi's historio-sociological ethnography of practical Buddhism (2003). While these studies were conducted on right bank of Mekong River in part of northeastern Thailand, generally known as Isan, Lao religious studies on other side of Mekong river, in present Lao PDR, have been very limited until recently. In fact, Spirits of Place: Buddhism and Lao Religious Culture is first book to focus on Lao religion by bringing together a wide range of previous studies concerning Lao history, politics, and cultures.Spirits of Place primarily provides a thorough analysis of phi (spirit) veneration and its relation to Buddhism in Laos. The author, John Holt, has studied Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka for a long time, and a notable feature of this book is its comparative use of Sinhalese Buddhism in order to understand Buddhism and spirit cults in Laos.Before embarking on an inquiry regarding circumstances in Lao, title words of place are explained through introduction of Paul Mus's term territorial sacred power. Mus, a French scholar of Southeast Asian studies, points out that religions of monsoon Asia are characterized by belief in spiritual power associated with a given locality, such as paddy field, family compound, or village. The practice of such beliefs requires that there be a social group which worships their ancestors, and focuses on of place in order to clarify linkages between both spiritual and human realms, past and present. By setting it as a key concept, Holt explores basic social unit of Lao, ban (village), and its relation to headman, human authority, and supernatural phi ban (village deity), or to muang, a cluster of ban, which includes chao muang (a muang chieftain) and phi muang. Holt finds here double hierarchical orders both in real politic and in supernatural, and he explains that spirit veneration is related not only to religious realm but also to social order as bedrock of Lao religious culture.On basis of this concept of the spirits of place, first three chapters of book develop relationship between Buddhism and spirit cults and provide a diachronic description of Lao history. The first chapter illuminates era of Lan Xang kingdom (fourteenth- nineteenth centuries). The Kingdom did not support Buddhism in early times, but when it started to sponsor Buddhist sangha from fifteenth century, worship of spirit cults still continued in many areas despite attempts by state to suppress them. For instance, veneration of stupas and Phraban (a Buddha statue as axis mundi) had Buddhist-like forms but symbolized power of past.The period prior to revolution in 1975 is described in chapter 2. With intervention by Siam, France, and United States in succession, national identification with Buddhism has undergone ceaseless changes. Under French colonial rule, religion was excluded from Laotian national identity, and since 1950s, aid from United States has exacerbated economic gap between urban elite and rural poor, an act that has been strongly criticized by sangha, support of which derives from rural regions. Under these circumstances, sangha has identified itself as a protector of Lao traditions and has sympathized with communist Pathet Lao's humanitarian agenda.Chapter 3 depicts revolutionary era when Marxist policy began to criticize Buddhism as otherworldly, and tried to change Buddhism as a means to sustain socialism and eradicate spirit veneration. …