Merit, hierarchy and royal gift-giving in traditional Thai society

Abstract

Yet, however abundant the information on this topic, the early (and not so early) observers of these rites took their "exotic" character so much for granted that they forgot to ask in their comments one simple but quite vital question, viz. what impelled the king to direct this con- tinuous flow of goods to the Buddhist monkhood? One perceives in the accounts of these observers a conviction that the participants in these rites were, after all, incomprehensible and that the traveller engaged in such serious pursuits as trade or diplomacy should not bother about the reasons these strange foreigners had for doing the things they did. It has been said that the difference between the social scientist and the layman-observer is not that the former invariably knows more about the social scene than the latter, but that he asks different questions about it. Problems of motivation, of the "logic of the situation" for the participants involved in certain social events are not brushed aside with an impatient gesture here (as they were by'many of the early observers, who were too preoccupied with the logic of their own, not always enviable situation), but constitute the very core of one's professional concern. It is in order to answer questions such as these that we will first take a closer look at what the king actually bestowed on the monkhood, then go on to discuss the various theories which have been put forward by social scientists to explain similar phenomena occurring elsewhere, and, finally, advance an alternative theory of our own