Confronting Christianity: The Protestant Mission and the Buddhist Reform Movement in Nineteenth-Century Thailand 0824895746, 9780824895747

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CONFRONTING CHRIS­TIAN­ITY

CONFRONTING CHRISTIANITY The Protestant Mission and the Buddhist Reform Movement in Nineteenth-Century ­ Thailand Sven Trakulhun

University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu

​© 2024 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca First printed, 2024

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Trakulhun, Sven, author. Title: Confronting Christianity : the Protestant mission and the Buddhist reform movement in nineteenth-century Thailand / Sven Trakulhun. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023049001 (print) | LCCN 2023049002 (ebook) | ISBN 9780824895747 (hardback) | ISBN 9780824897994 (epub) | ISBN 9780824898007 (kindle edition) | ISBN 9780824897987 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Missionaries—Thailand—History—19th century. | Buddhists—Thailand—History—19th century. Classification: LCC BV3315 .T73 2024 (print) | LCC BV3315 (ebook) | DDC 266/.209593—dc23/eng/20240208 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023049001 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023049002 Front cover: Photo of a ceiling painting at Phra Thinang Chakri Maha Prasat Throne Hall of the ­Grand Palace in Bangkok depicting King Mongkut with vari­ous religious communities. Photo by Michael Freeman. Courtesy of River Books, Bangkok and photographer. University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-­free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Notes on Transliteration

ix

Introduction Chapter One

The Origins of Buddhist Reformism Chapter Two

Christianity in Siam Chapter Three

Translating Christianity Chapter Four

The Siamese Response Chapter Five

The Making of Modern Buddhism in Siam and the West

1 14 33 82 113 139

Notes

175

Bibliography

211

Index

237

v

Acknowledgments ­

The idea of studying the history of the Protestant mission in Siam grew out of a short text I wrote in 2015 on the Siamese state minister Chaophraya Thiphakorawong, author of Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit (A book on vari­ous ­t hings; 1867). A considerable part of the book is devoted to a comparison of religions, paying par­tic­u­lar attention to a juxtaposition of Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity. However, as the extreme vagueness of its title indicates, Thiphakorawong’s remarks went far beyond questions of religion. He also wrote about education, science, psy­chol­ ogy, marriage customs, the relations of the sexes, kingship, law, the idea of modern civilization, and about the ­human condition in general. I soon noticed that the Kitchanukit is full of references to Christian tracts, the Bible, and conversations with Euro-­American missionaries, who had become notorious in Siam for their harsh public criticism of Buddhism. I came to conclude that the Kitchanukit is, above all, a response to t­ hese attacks. At the same time, the religious controversy arose in a period when the threat of ­European colonialism was becoming a serious concern for the Siamese government. Religion and politics are therefore difficult to separate in Thiphakorawong’s book. In fact, it was more than just a religious treatise; it was an examination of Western civilization as a ­whole. Its seemingly disordered structure helped me understand how Buddhism became one of the principal sources of Siamese r­ esistance against ­European domination and that the arguments developed to defend Siamese culture against Western colonialism derived not least from debates with Christian missionaries. This book is a study of the vari­ous manifestations of cross-­cultural religious communication in nineteenth-­century Siam. In writing the manuscript I have incurred many debts. In its formative stage, I had the opportunity to discuss aspects of the topic with Thongchai Winichakul, who shared my interest in Western missionary writings in the Thai language. Barend  J. Terwiel provided me with archival material on microfilm from the American Baptist mission in Siam, which caught my attention for its detailed descriptions of cross-­cultural religious encounters in the nineteenth ­century. Herbert  R. Swanson guided me through the maze of American Presbyterian vii

viii  Acknowl­ e dgments

lit­er­a­ture, unselfishly sharing his time and extensive knowledge of Thai church history and Presbyterian religious thought. Moltip Thongsriket provided invaluable help with translating and interpreting the language of Thai missionary lit­ er­a­t ure. Volker Grabowsky and Luciana Villas Bôas commented on ­earlier drafts of the text and patiently pointed out the parts that seemed obscure or flawed. I thank Jürgen Osterhammel, Marcus Sandl, and Rudolf Schlögl for supporting my work at University of Konstanz, where most of the manuscript was written. Sofia Kouropatov and Kate Babbitt did a brilliant job of proofreading and copyediting. Thanks go also to the two anonymous readers for University of Hawai‘i Press, who critically examined the manuscript and shared their ideas for sharpening my arguments. Mary C. Ribesky patiently guided me through the production p ­ rocess for the University of Hawai‘i Press. During the ­process of writing the book, I presented my findings in a range of conferences in ­Europe and Thailand, and I owe much to the many suggestions I received from the audiences on ­these occasions. The book could not have been written without a generous research grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation). It enabled me to conduct archival research in Thailand, the United States, and Germany. I thank Ms. Wanassuda Disyabutra at the National Library of Thailand (Bangkok) and the staff at the Payap University Archives (Chiang Mai), the New York Public Library, the Presbyterian Historical Society (Philadelphia), the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Munich) for the valuable assistance they rendered during my research. However, despite all the help I have received, any errors that may occur in this book are mine.

Notes on Transliteration

The book follows the Royal Thai General System of Transcription for most Thai words. Exceptions are names that have become widely known in other transcriptions or instances when Thai authors have already de­cided on the spelling of their name in Roman characters. I retained the E ­ nglish names of Thai kings and nobles as they are known among historians, such as Mongkut, Chulalongkorn, Vajiravudh, and Thiphakorawong.

ix

Introduction

In the dome of the Throne Hall of the Phra Thinang Chakri Maha Prasat of the ­Grand Palace in Bangkok, a ceiling painting depicts Siam’s King Mongkut (r. 1851– 1868) engaged in conversation with Buddhist monks and a flock of Christian missionaries. His throne is placed in front of the pedestal of a large golden statue representing the seated Bud­dha and his hands are executing the bhumisparsha mudra, the gesture of calling the earth to witness his Buddhahood, capturing the very moment of his enlightenment. The Bud­dha sits with his right hand pendant over his right knee, while his left hand, palm inward, touches the lotus throne. The Bud­dha and the king are at the center of the painting. Mongkut is sitting in an oratorical pose on an elevated throne, surrounded by representatives of the Christian and Buddhist religions. On the right, a group of Buddhist priests conversed with Muslims and Brah­mans; other monks in yellow robes kneel at the feet of the throne, listening to the words of the monarch. The work of an Italian artist, the painting was commissioned by King Chula­ longkorn (r. 1868–1910) to capture the moment King Mongkut proclaimed religious freedom in his realm. Although the scene does not refer to a historical assembly in Siam or a par­t ic­u ­lar religious discussion that took place during Mongkut’s reign, it is loaded with symbolic meaning. It invokes the spiritual authority of the Siamese king, emphasizing his role as a religious leader who had come to terms with the intrusion of Western beliefs and world views. It suggests a hierarchy in which the king not only ranks above the Buddhist monkhood (the Sangha) but also presides over all religions hosted in his kingdom, including Chris­ tian­ity and Islam. The throne hall, which was completed in 1882, was built to celebrate the centenary of the founding of the Chakri dynasty. Today it continues to serve as an exclusive venue for receiving foreign ambassadors and for other state ceremonies and is not open to the public. With its eclectic mix of domestic and European architectural styles, the Phra Thinang Chakri Maha Prasat building is an artistic reflection of Thai-Western relations. Its spatial organization was inspired by the neoclassical model of the French École des Beaux-Arts, which blends with Italian 1

2  Introduction

Cover image and Figure 1. Ceiling painting in the Chakri Maha Prasat Throne Hall, Bangkok. © Michael Freedman/River Books. Source: Naengnoi Suksri, Palaces of Bangkok.

Renaissance façades and German Baroque decoration in the interior. Painted scenes from Euro-Siamese history hang on the eastern and western walls. The eastern wall features Queen Victoria Receiving King Mongkut’s Ambassador and King Louis XIV Receiving the Ambassador of King Narai of Ayutthaya in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The paintings on the western wall depict King Mongkut with the British envoy Sir John Bowring, Napoleon III’s reception of Siamese ambassadors at Fontainebleau, and Rama IV’s reception of a French envoy in Bangkok.1 In the late nineteenth century, the Throne Hall was equipped with furniture

Introduction  3

imported from London, including carpets, billiard tables, and a library with a collection of the latest issues of American and European journals and newspapers. The interior thus created a living environment fashioned after Western tastes and served as a showpiece of the modernizing spirit that prompted Chulalongkorn’s reform policy.2 The upper part of the building follows an entirely dif­fer­ent concept. Informed by Buddhist traditions, the roof and spires feature the architecture of the late Ayutthaya period, signifying a cosmological order composed of heaven, earth, and hell in which the throne hall is positioned as the center of the universe. The Thai architect Koompong Noobanjong has argued that the design of the Chakri Maha Prasat contains a clear message. The E ­ uropean body symbolizes the material world (lokiyatham; โลกียธรรม) of international power relations and Newtonian physics, a realm then dominated by the West, while the roof represents the supramundane world of religious enlightenment (lokuttaratham; โลกุตรธรรม), where Buddhism prevails over all other faiths and the Siamese king figures as the primary source of moral authority.3 It would be easy to dismiss the painting as illustrating a national myth that transfigures or even distorts historical realities of the nineteenth ­century.4 Mongkut and his court ­were far from being in control of the entire Buddhist monkhood in Thailand, and his way of engaging with Chris­tian­ity was often highly confrontational. Moreover, the undisputed authority symbolically ascribed to Mongkut contrasts sharply with the a­ ctual powerlessness of his government when faced with ­political pressure from Western nations and the uncompromising forms of Chris­tian­ity they brought. Yet ­every myth reveals something of the p ­ olitical agenda of ­t hose who in­ven­ ted it, and sometimes a myth contains a grain of truth. The Throne Hall’s hybrid architecture and the tensions it produces in aesthetic terms constitute a material embodiment of Thailand’s historical strug­gle for a place in the modern world. The hall reflects a period of rapid p ­ olitical, economic, and intellectual change that fundamentally transformed the Thai state, its society, and its religious institutions. ­After Thailand’s long wars with Burma, a new ruling h ­ ouse ascended in Bangkok at the beginning of the nineteenth ­century ­under the reign of Phra Phutthayotfa Chulalok, also known as Rama I, and the kingdom consolidated its ­political power in subsequent ­decades. The military and economic expansion of Britain and France and the growing involvement of North Amer­i­ca in Eastern trade redefined Siam’s geopo­liti­c al status in the region and had a profound effect on the p ­ olitical ­organization of the kingdom. The reform policies during the reigns of Mongkut and Chulalongkorn ­were crucial in this regard and have attracted considerable attention in historical, p ­ olitical, and anthropological scholarship. Although

4  Introduction

interpretations of the nature and principal forces of the p ­ olitical transformations in the nineteenth c­ entury may differ in detail, the terms used to describe t­ hese changes all point to a break between tradition and modernity in Siam, brought about by the disruptive forces of colonialism, capitalism, and Western technology.5 However, Thailand (formerly called Siam) preserved its national i­ ndependence throughout the colonial period. It therefore does not fit well with the patterns of colonial power relations observed in other parts of Southeast Asia. This unusual historical trajectory has been interpreted in dif­fer­ent ways. Studies of the 1960s and 1970s highlighted how the Siamese government succeeded in countering threats to its i­ ndependence by introducing Western institutions and techniques, namely in education, law, and p ­ olitical administration, thus turning “the old Kingdom of Siam into a new and modern Thai nation,” as historian David K. Wyatt put it.6 Thai national historiography has described Thailand’s past in a similar vein and integrated it into a narrative of exceptionalism that prevails ­until t­ oday, mostly with a strong emphasis on the role the monarchy played in the making of the Thai nation.7 However, even as a sovereign state, Siam experienced forms of ­political pressure from E ­ uropean powers that are similar to what colonized countries had to cope with. The only way the kingdom’s ­independence could be maintained was through massive economic and p ­ olitical dependence, as the Communist Party leader Udom Srisuwan noted in 1950.8 The Siamese government ceded extraterritorial rights to citizens of Western states, granted fiscal concessions to traders from ­Europe and the United States in a series of unequal treaties, and lost former vassal states (prathetsarat) such as Luang Prabang, the Malay sultanates, and Cambodia to Britain and France. With ­these contradictions in mind, defining and naming Siam’s condition as in between the colonial and the noncolonial becomes a complicated task. One interpretation that is relatively widespread t­oday is the notion of semi-­colonialism that stems from postwar Marxist interpretations of Thai history.9 The American anthropologist Michael Herzfeld has broadened this concept and coined the term “crypto-­colonialism,” which is meant to provide an ave­nue for comparative research on related forms of semi-­dependency in countries such as Thailand, Greece, former Yugo­slavia, Japan, and Mexico.10 One strategy for coping with challenge from the West was adopting some of the features of colonial modernity that appeared to be compatible with local traditions while rejecting ­others that ­were not. Many of the ­political and economic reforms introduced in nineteenth-­century Siam derived from the Western concept of “civilization”—­a multifarious term in E ­ uropean intellectual history that needs explanation.11 It assumed its modern meaning in the eigh­teenth c­ entury, when E ­ uropean ­philosophers devised a theory of history that stated that h ­ uman

Introduction  5

development proceeds in stages. It was based on a secularized view of history that rejected the biblical narrative as a guide for the course of world history and proposed explanations derived from natu­ral ­causes rather than divine revelation. Drawing on his study of E ­ urope’s past and the vast archive of travel accounts and geo­graph­i­cal lit­er­a­ture then accessible to E ­ uropean scholars, the Scottish economist and ­philosopher Adam Smith argued in the 1760s that ­Europe had progressed through four historical stages of society, each distinguished by its unique mode of production. The course of h ­ uman development ranged from a primordial condition of hunting and gathering in prehistoric time to its “commercial” or “civilized” stage, represented by the refined culture of eighteenth-­century ­European socie­ties.12 This type of historical reasoning came to be called conjectural history in ­English and had its equivalents in other E ­ uropean countries, where French thinkers such as Voltaire and Jean-­Jacques Rousseau and German scholars such as Friedrich Schiller and August Ludwig Schlözer wrote ­popular works devoted to a universal perspective on h ­ uman development that moved beyond biblical 13 eschatology. Conjectural history owed its name to the fact that the assumption of a chronological succession and the idea of pro­g ress in society w ­ ere only hy­po­t het­i­cal princi­ples. A “natu­ral state” of man could not be proven without documentary or other material artifacts for the earliest period of ­human life, and it was impossible to predict the f­ uture course of other socie­ties with any certainty. Statements about the origin and goal of ­human history ­were thus based on philosophical speculation, or conjecture, not on empirical evidence. However, E ­ uropean scholars believed they had reasonable grounds for arguing that t­ here w ­ ere p ­ eoples in the world who w ­ ere still living in a presumed state of nature and that the history of ­Europe was a testament to man’s potential to advance from savagery to a polite and ever more civilized state of society. Based on this twofold premise, conjectural history and its variants (Universalgeschichte in Germany and philosophie de l’histoire in France) provided a framework for bringing order to the diversity of cultures in the world.14 Critical scholars concerned with the intellectual foundations of colonialism have repeatedly stressed that the universal teleology implied in the Enlightenment account of pro­gress is deeply Eurocentric; it makes the development of ­Europe the standard for all history and considers virtually all non-­Europeans to be latecomers at best in the civilizing p ­ rocess.15 Nineteenth-­century E ­ uropean scholars evaluated the narratives of colonial officials, sailors, traders, and missionaries to dif­fer­ent parts of the globe to establish and calibrate the varying degrees to which non-­European socie­ties ­were deficient compared to E ­ urope and located all the cultural phenomena they encountered on a common scale of civilization in which

6  Introduction

Western nations ­were elevated over all ­others. Moreover, the imaginary hierarchy implied in “civilization” was all too often used as a pretext for colonial intervention. In Southeast Asia, as elsewhere in the world, E ­ uropean imperial powers advocated their colonial proj­ects as a way of promoting good government and economic improvement that would deliver the “barbaric” p ­ eoples of Asia from poverty, incessant warfare, despotic rule, and superstitious folk beliefs. This “civilizing mission” may have soothed the consciences of ­t hose involved in the imperial enterprise, but in practice it frequently provoked r­ esistance in colonial socie­ ties, where harsh forms of social and ethnic segregation prevailed and E ­ uropeans (as well as Americans) lived separate from the dominated “­others.”16 At the same time, the under­lying idea of a civilizing p ­ rocess could have a peculiar appeal to the educated classes in Asian countries, ­because in theory it assumed the uniformity of ­human nature and conceded that even non-­Europeans had a principal capacity for self-­improvement. Siamese elites thus appropriated the word “civilization” in the nineteenth ­century as siwilai (civilization, civilized), accepting many of the ideological and practical consequences it entailed.17 They became familiar with Western notions of the nation-­state and concepts of space, education, and anthropology and set out to put them in practice as the ­century proceeded. This ­process was uneven and ambiguous. In Siam, central domestic institutions, such as the taxation system, the provincial administration, and the country’s ­legal and educational institutions, ­were transformed according to modern E ­ uropean standards, while the separation of church and state and the idea of secularism remained essentially alien to Siamese ­political theory.18 Siamese rulers have always insisted that Buddhism must be a central ele­ment of Thai culture, which they deemed incompatible with some ­European world views, especially Chris­tian­ity. Religion thus became a central arena of conflict between rival regimes of knowledge in Siam, setting in opposition “traditional” Thai Buddhist views on nature and man’s existence and Western ideals and practices of science and rationality. Critical historians have pointed out how Siamese elites ­adopted E ­ uropean concepts of nation, space, anthropology, and ­political administration in order to strengthen the position of the Thai monarchy.19 Over the course of the nineteenth ­century, the state became more centralized and more effective in its use of modern instruments of power, while the king and his government left the traditional social hierarchy (sakdina) intact and from the 1880s onward systematically expanded the power of the monarch and his court. Con­temporary critics of the absolute monarchy w ­ ere banished or silenced irrespective of their social status.20 The new nation-­state (with the Bangkok monarchy as its p ­ olitical, geo­graph­i­cal, and spiritual nucleus) expanded its control of ­people and resources at the expense

Introduction  7

of ethnic minorities, who felt marginalized in a society ­imagined as ethnically, linguistically, and religiously homogenous.21 In ­political terms, Siam did not become a center of anticolonial r­esistance in Southeast Asia; rather, t­here was a connection between Siamese modernism and ­European imperialism. This ambiguous attitude t­oward Western civilization is also evident in how the Siamese dealt with the intrusion of Chris­tian­ity. Religion was a field where dif­fer­ent strands of Siam’s confrontation with Euro-­American culture intersected, most notably with Western scientific epistemologies and technology. Siam’s first encounters with modern science took place in a religious context, when Christian missionaries confronted the Buddhist intelligent­sia with Western princi­ples of empirical observation and explained the laws of nature in ways that posed a challenge to traditional Thai world views.22 The interreligious debates that took place in the nineteenth c­ entury soon led to conflicts and tensions. The teachings of Chris­tian­ity and Buddhism appeared irreconcilable in almost all aspects of doctrine and the Siamese showed ­little ­inclination to convert to the faith of the foreigners. Yet t­ here w ­ ere also some similarities between Christians and Buddhists. Both groups shared beliefs about textuality and canon, religious purity, and scientific knowledge that had evolved in Siam in the late eigh­teenth c­ entury—­t hat is, the period before the Siamese kings established contact with Protestant missionaries.23 Modern academic disciplines such as geography, medicine, and astronomy fell on fertile ground in Siam b ­ ecause ­t here was already a growing interest among some Buddhist and lay scholars in the empirical study of nature that in many ways contradicted traditional forms of knowledge. The arrival of the first Protestant missionaries in the late 1820s coincided with the emergence of a new Buddhist movement in Siam, the Thammayut-­ nikai (or Order of ­Those Who Adhere to the Dhamma; ธรรมยุต กิ นิกาย), whose ­members acknowledged that most of their traditional cosmography was outdated and ­adopted many premises of Western scientific epistemology over the years. Prince Mongkut founded the order when he was still in monkhood. He assembled like-­minded religious scholars whose goal of locating a pure and rationalized Buddhism in the sacred Pāli scriptures was compatible with scientific naturalism. Mongkut also dismissed ­popular folk beliefs as “impure” and superstitious.24 Chris­tian­ity was not beyond doubt in this regard. The missionaries never sought to establish Chris­tian­ity as a particularly “modern” religion. They did not teach a disenchanted understanding of the world purified of magical ideas but rather spread a religion that in the eyes of the Siamese was no less irrational than many of the old Buddhist traditions the reformers sought to overcome. The contradiction between metaphysical Christian truths and the rationalization of world views undermined the persuasive power of Western civilization as a ­whole

8  Introduction

and gave way to an alternative vision of modernity in which h ­ uman reason and spiritual power ­were happily united in the person of the Buddhist king. Thai historian Nidhi Eoseewong has argued that Siam’s modernity has its roots in the early Bangkok period, roughly the time from 1767 to 1855. Based on an extensive analy­sis of the lit­er­a­ture and intellectual currents of that era, he devised a historical trajectory in which the modernizing p ­ rocess in Siam was driven by forces that originated in Asia rather than in the influence of the West. The d ­ ecades ­after the founding of the Chakri dynasty ­were marked by increased immigration from China and a considerable growth of the junk trade with other Asian countries, most importantly with China. According to Nidhi, ­t hese ­factors gave rise to a more cap­i­tal­ist way of o ­ rganizing Siam’s rapidly expanding export economy as well as a more active engagement of the elite in shipbuilding, canal digging, mining, and other activities that supported international trade. Another consequence was the emergence of new forms of artistic expression in lit­er­a­ture and drama and a more rational understanding of science, nature, and religion.25 Nidhi introduced the concept of bourgeois culture (watthanatham kradumphi; วัฒนธรรม กระฎ มุ พ )ี to capture ­these dif­fer­ent phenomena in a common term—­a choice of terminology that inevitably brought him close to classic Western theories of modernization. Pipat Pasutthanchat, however, challenged this analy­sis, arguing that Nidhi borrowed his categories of inquiry from Max Weber and Karl Marx without acknowledging this par­tic­u ­lar theoretical background. But t­ hese thinkers represent very dif­fer­ent philosophical worldviews, says Pipat, and the Thai bourgeois culture that Nidhi described in his work is in many ways dif­fer­ent from both Weber’s and Marx’s accounts of ­European bourgeoisies. In par­tic­u ­lar, the fact that Nidhi’s Thai bourgeoisie is composed of many dif­fer­ent social groups, including Chinese immigrants and members of the aristocracy, blurs the central distinction between the new m ­ iddle class and other classes of Siamese society.26 However, despite the multitude of social hierarchies around the globe, social historians of the long nineteenth c­ entury have identified “remarkably analogous developments in the transformation of socie­ties around the world,” as the editors of a recent volume on the “global bourgeoisie” have argued. Everywhere in the world t­ here was a rise of social groups that emphasized learning, w ­ ere striving for economic success, ­were fascinated by the technological and scientific advances of the West, and developed a more cosmopolitan and less traditional outlook on life, even though ­these groups ­were far from being homogeneous and did not always conform to the Weberian ideal type of a modern Western-­style bourgeoisie.27 Modernity itself is a multivalent and ambiguous term that is open to dif­fer­ent and sometimes contradictory definitions. Theorists of modernization in the twentieth c­ entury have identified putative core ele­ments of modernity that grew out

Introduction  9

of the reformist and secularist impulses of Protestantism and the ­European Enlightenment. Among ­these components are industrialization and capitalism based on economic growth, the belief in the inevitable pro­gress of humanity, a suspicion of tradition and traditional authority, the autonomy of individual reason, the rise of the scientific method, and the emergence of civil socie­ties and public spheres. Classical Western thinkers, from Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim to Max Weber, have assumed that secularization was another defining characteristic of the modern. The demystification of nature brought about by scientific pro­gress, they believed, would necessarily lead to the devaluation of religion in modern socie­ties and its receding from public life. Moreover, they argued, implicitly or not, that the basic institutional constellations that came together in E ­ uropean modernity and the cultural program of modernity as it developed in the West would naturally be a­ dopted in all modernizing socie­ties.28 More recent scholarship has challenged this narrative, particularly ­because the real­ity that emerged proved to be radically dif­fer­ent. Religion resurfaced as a central source of cultural identity. Many Asian nations have now successfully ­adopted the advancements of science and technology that originate in Western culture while at the same time insisting on a specifically religious consciousness that militates against the premises of the secularist Western tradition. The tension between the sacred and the profane that marks the history of Judeo-­Christian culture is perhaps a specifically E ­ uropean phenomenon and is not readily applicable to other civilizations.29 Moreover, the ­process of secularization was contradictory even in the West; the path to modernity was contested even among socie­ties that already claimed to be “modern.”30 In the nineteenth c­entury, Christian theologians looked for ways to reconcile religion with science, while ­popular Romantic movements battled against the calculating rationality of modernist thinking. We now recognize the existence of multiple modernities that tend to develop very dif­fer­ent ideological and institutional dynamics.31 Part of the fascination with Buddhism in Western countries and its renewed prestige in present-­day Asia stems from the prospect that Buddhism could be understood as a “rational” faith that is compatible with modern scientific epistemology. Based on examples mostly from South and Southeast Asia, the German Indologist Heinz Bechert coined the term “Buddhist modernism” (buddhistischer Modernismus) to describe the Buddhist revivals in Asia as evolving from a peculiar interplay between internal sources of religious reform and external modernizing impulses from the West. He derived the notion from a group of Catholic reformers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whose ideas ­were collectively called Catholic modernism.32 Not unlike their Buddhist contemporaries in Asia, progressive theologians such as Alfred Loisy, George Tyrrell, and

10  Introduction

Ignaz von Döllinger criticized the neoscholastic dogmatism of official Church doctrine, proposed a more liberal understanding of the Bible, and pleaded for a reconciliation of religion and science. Significantly, Pope Pius X banned ­t hese ideas as heresy in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis of 1907 and even threatened dissenters with excommunication. Part of the prob­lem was that Catholic reformers became suspicious of Protestant influence b ­ ecause the latter w ­ ere more willing to adopt historical-­critical methods of modern archeology, philology, and biblical exegesis. Conservative Catholics in the nineteenth ­century, who still looked at theological issues through the lenses of the Reformation and Counter-­Reformation in ­Europe, regarded ­these ideas as sinful and aberrant.33 Buddhist reformers in Siam w ­ ere more open to embracing the central claims and ele­ments of modernity than many of their Christian counter­parts and did not see any contradiction between modernity and the basic princi­ples of their religion. This intellectual ­process (and its ramifications in Thai politics and society) forms the main theme of this book. Confronting Chris­tian­ity examines the conflicts and contradictions as well as vari­ous forms of intellectual appropriation that developed during the encounter of Siamese Buddhists with Western science and religion. However, instead of repeating the familiar narrative of a civilizing mission that puts the Siamese at the receiving end of the p ­ rocess, the chapters w ­ ill employ a perspective that considers both the modernizing impulses emanating from the intrusion of Euro-­American religion and culture in Siam and the intellectual resources Siamese elites mobilized to withstand the allures of Western civilization. The first chapter traces the history of Buddhist reformism back to the reigns of the Thai kings Taksin and Rama I, who reestablished the ­political and religious institutions of the kingdom ­after the fall of the old capital Ayutthaya in 1767 and introduced a form of Buddhist orthodoxy that strengthened the ties between the Sangha and the monarchy. Historians have always been aware of the fundamental importance of religion for the legitimacy of Siamese kingship. Like other Buddhist countries of South and Southeast Asia, Siam was characterized by an ancient and enduring non-­Western tradition of ­political authority in which Buddhism and the monarchy w ­ ere intrinsically connected.34 The chapter shows how Siamese kings used their authority as spiritual leaders to gain control over the Buddhist monkhood in the kingdom and how they cautiously extended their influence to other Theravāda Buddhist countries in South and Southeast Asia. The second chapter provides a broad overview of the history of the Christian mission in Siam in the nineteenth c­ entury, focusing on the work of Protestant missionaries from ­Europe and the United States. Although ­t here is no lack of lit­er­a­ ture on the history and ideologies of Chris­tian­ity and Christian world missions

Introduction  11

in the period, few attempts have been made so far to bring ­t hese discussions into dialogue with the findings of the history of religion in Thailand. Most scholars have argued that the contribution of Christian missionaries to religious and ­political change in Thailand was negligible b ­ ecause the mission was a stunning failure in terms of conversions. However, many E ­ uropean and North American residents in Siam ­were Christian missionaries or members of missionary families and h ­ ouse­holds who played multiple roles in Thai society. Apart from their original vocation as clergy, Catholic priests and Protestant evangelizers from vari­ ous denominations also worked as physicians, printers, interpreters, journalists, or engineers. They w ­ ere impor­tant brokers of knowledge b ­ ecause one of their strengths was their ability to offer religion in tandem with modern science and technology. ­Because most of them lived permanently in the kingdom or stayed for at least a number of years, they contributed much to shaping the image of Western religion and civilization in Siam. This chapter elucidates the theological backgrounds of the missionaries and gives the reader a sketch of the religious encounters between missionaries and the ­people they addressed. It considers the ideological under­pinnings of the missions as well as some of the early Siamese strategies to c­ ounter the universal claims of Chris­tian­ity and Western civilization. Chapter three is devoted to an analy­sis of the ­process of religious translation. I ­w ill examine what exactly the missionaries translated and who assisted them in translating and w ­ ill study some of the translingual methods they employed. Missionary translators often combined translation, missionary work, medicine, education, and scholarship, blurring the line between religious and secular affairs. Translation was thus always more than a purely linguistic or literary ­matter. Missionary writings in the period ­were profoundly exclusive in perspective and ­were informed by a notion of radical alterity that forced Buddhist scholars to reformulate their own doctrines in ways that ­were compatible with Western concepts of religion. Based on a number of case studies, I ­w ill draw attention to the texts they produced and to the intermediary position of the translator, the problematic and shifting nature of the cultural borders all translations crossed, and the location of a translator discourse that enacts hybridity. Chapter four considers the reactions of Siamese Buddhists to the intrusion of evangelizing Chris­tian­ity and the arguments they developed to overcome the objectives of the missionaries. This w ­ ill lead to a better understanding of one of the most paradoxical consequences of the Christian mission in Siam. Although evangelizers printed millions of pages of Christian lit­er­a­ture in Thai, freely disseminated the scriptures in Bangkok and the provinces during preaching tours, and supplemented their work by establishing schools and medical clinics all over the kingdom, they had ­little effect on ­people’s religious convictions. At the same time,

12  Introduction

the introduction of printing technology and new concepts of education opened an ave­nue for the Siamese elites to disseminate their own religious ideas to a wider audience. Instead of challenging the belief in traditional forms of worship, missionary writings and Bible translations provided the Siamese ­people with material that strengthened the position of Buddhist reformers, who repudiated metaphysical speculation in Buddhism and fashioned a purified version of the faith that conformed to the assumptions of modern science. The ­process is documented in books, pamphlets, and newspapers in E ­ nglish and Thai that appeared in print from circa 1840 onward. It culminated in 1867 with the publication of Chaophraya Thiphakorawong’s Nangsue Sadaeng Kitchanukit, the first comprehensive work on comparative religion in the Thai language. The fifth chapter situates Siamese Buddhism in a more general discourse on Buddhism in Western countries. Buddhism became better known in the West in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when translations of its sacred texts appeared in print and superseded e­ arlier descriptions written by Jesuit missionaries or educated E ­ uropean travelers. Religious scholars and admirers of Buddhism such as Eugène Burnouf, Henry Steel Olcott, Thomas  W. Rhys Davids, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and Karl Eugen Neumann explored its history, ­adopted its tenets for a Western public, and compiled catechisms of its teachings in ­European languages that attracted a wide readership. They built their works on a heterogeneous body of Buddhist texts written in vari­ous Asian languages and scripts. Although Buddhism originated in India and spread from ­t here, most scholars looked at Sri Lanka/Ceylon, as the cradle of scriptural Buddhism, b ­ ecause that was where the supposed oldest (Theravāda) form of Buddhism was practiced and where the oldest copies of the canon w ­ ere kept. Colonial Ceylon became a noted battleground of Buddhist-­Christian debate, particularly in the crucial period of the 1830s to the 1880s, when public controversies between Buddhists and Protestant missionaries stimulated a Buddhist revival in Ceylon that resonated well beyond its borders.35 However, much less is known about the extent to which concurrent discussions in Siam ­were connected to ­these debates, even though Thai and Sinhalese Buddhists had maintained close contact since the mid-­eighteenth ­century. This chapter traces some of the entanglements that existed between t­ hese dif­fer­ent locales of Theravāda Buddhism and looks at the repercussions of ­t hose entanglements for the image of Buddhism in the West. Postcolonial studies have criticized Western accounts of Buddhism as “imaginative creations,” learned fabrications of Western Orientalists that w ­ ere detached from ­actual Buddhist texts and practices and thus reflected Western religious or ­political agendas. Philip C. Almond, for example, sought to demonstrate that

Introduction  13

Buddhism was essentially a Western intellectual construction that was created to define, delimit, and classify “Buddhism” as part of the colonial proj­ect.36 This book challenges this assumption by directing attention to the counterflows to and hidden sources of Western concepts of Theravāda Buddhism. It examines how the majority of Western authors a­ dopted a par­tic­u­lar interpretation of Thai Buddhism launched by a group of Buddhist reformers centered on King Mongkut and his fellow monks of the Thammayut-­nikai. ­Because many of its members had learned ­European languages, they served foreigners as native ­informants in religious ­matters and w ­ ere thus closely involved in the making of Buddhism in the West from the outset. Only a few missionaries in nineteenth-­century Siam took the time to study the long and complicated history of Buddhism thoroughly, and if they did, they often presented travesties of Buddhism that fit their specific interests and concerns. Even fewer managed to acquire sufficient knowledge of the Pāli canon to make competent judgements on its content. Almost every­thing the missionaries learned about Buddhism derived from personal conversations with local priests and educated laymen or was gained from the handful of Buddhist texts that ­were accessible to foreigners. Western commentators on Buddhism from outside the churches ­were often more sympathetic to its philosophy, but they too had to rely on native ­informants who mostly came from the same educated elite. Instead of being merely an imaginary projection of Western Orientalists, the idea of Buddhism in the West evolved in a ­process of “intercultural mimesis” in which the perspective of the Asian “­others” always remained pre­sent.37 This book is an attempt to contribute to ­t hese discussions by exploring the entanglements and transformations of Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity in a global context, considering the dif­fer­ent yet connected contexts of religious discourse in Siam, Ceylon, ­Europe, and the United States.

C HA P T E R ON E

The Origins of Buddhist Reformism

Religious reforms and p ­ olitical crises are often intrinsically connected. Revolutions and wars have been frequent in Thai history, but few events w ­ ere as disastrous for the kingdom as the sacking of Ayutthaya in April 1767. The destruction of the Siamese capital put an end to one of the most power­f ul empires in Southeast Asia. A ­ fter a fourteen-­month siege, Burmese troops stormed the city, plundered the king’s palace, and ravaged its principal buildings. The invaders slew or arrested court officials and the members of the royal f­amily. They carried away tens of thousands of war prisoners and ultimately burned down parts of the city, including private h ­ ouses, sacred ­temples, and Buddhist monasteries. The unfortunate Siamese king Ekkathat, the last monarch of the Ban Phlu Luang dynasty, fled the city and died in the jungle shortly thereafter. His b ­ rother, the former king Uthumphon, then in monkhood, was disrobed and imprisoned. He became subsequently known as Khun Luang Ha Wat, or “the king who fled to the monastery.” The Thai state collapsed ­under the pressure of the ­enemy’s attacks. Exhausted by famines and years of constant warfare, p ­ eople abandoned their homes and fled to the jungle, and what remained of the former capital ­after the invasion fell prey to bandits and looters.1 ­After the destruction of Ayutthaya, the entire central region of the kingdom fell u ­ nder Burmese control. However, the invaders faced adamant opposition from the Siamese and lacked the means and personnel to effectively rule their newly acquired possessions. The Siamese quickly succeeded in regaining ­political ­independence. Among several claimants to the vacant throne, the Sino-­Thai officer Phraya Tak (commonly known as Taksin) emerged as the strongest. He was a former provincial governor of comparatively ­humble origin who had won a ­great reputation as a charismatic military leader during the wars with the Burmese. He formed an alliance with Chinese traders, village headmen, and local rulers; raised an i­ ndependent army; and forced the Burmese troops to withdraw from the Siamese heartland. Taksin then led a series of military campaigns against potential rivals in Phimai, Sawangkhaburi (or Fang), Nakhon Si Thammarat, and Phitsa-

14

The Origins of Buddhist Reformism   15

nulok and in November 1767 seized the Siamese crown, assuming the official name of Borommaracha IV.2

King Taksin and the Struggle for Political Legitimacy Taksin was a ­political parvenu for most of his contemporaries and an outsider in the eyes of the established noble families. Yet his lack of inherited legitimacy was not an insurmountable obstacle to ruling the kingdom. Religious legitimacy was more impor­tant for a ruler than genealogy. ­There had been much bloody usurpation throughout Siamese history. Power­f ul nobles often plotted against ruling kings or nominated heirs. The chronicles of Ayutthaya and con­temporary Western accounts are full of stories about violent strug­g les for power between competing contenders, who frequently used treachery, murder, and regicide as methods of promoting their claims to the Siamese throne. The majority of royal successions in the seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries ­were ­either coups or ­were contested b ­ ecause t­ here was no commonly accepted system for appointing an heir upon the death of a king. Not u ­ ntil 1886, during the reign of King Chulalongkorn, was the position of crown prince introduced in Siam, and a­ ctual rules of succession w ­ ere not finalized u ­ ntil 1924. Th ­ ese w ­ ere based on a modified system of primogeniture in order to strengthen dynastic continuity and diminish the risk of ­political crisis.3 The traditional Siamese understanding of the monarchy was grounded in a distinctive Hindu-­Buddhist cosmology focused on the idealized concept of the Dhammaracha king. According to this model, the right to rule depended more on personal merit than on royal lineage. The king could be elected or take power by force, but to justify and sustain his rule he was obliged to behave in accordance with the Dhamma, the immutable law of nature believed to govern all aspects of ­human existence. Ideas of good government in Siam ultimately derived from an ancient Indian genre of lit­er­a­ture on law and ethics, the Dhar­maśās­tra. The textual corpus spread in vari­ous forms and translations all over mainland Southeast Asia, with significant alterations made by local interpreters as it traveled across time, space, and cultures.4 The Siamese version, the Thammasat, made use of ­legal works of Mon and Burmese provenance and was conceived, at least in part, as a code of conduct for Siamese kings to lead the way to virtuous practice.5 The Thammasat was the work of Buddhist scholars, who considered p ­ olitical and ­legal knowledge to be subcategories of religious learning. Steeped in classical culture, they often expressed ­political ideas in terms of themes from the Jātaka tales, stories from former incarnations of the Bud­dha. In other cases, they used

16  Chapter 1

the lives and deeds of exemplary Buddhist kings from a legendary past to illustrate what they considered to be timeless features of an ideal monarchy. The Thammasat contains long lists of precepts for the king to follow in order to prove his royal dignity. Th ­ ere w ­ ere rules of conduct for everyday life as well as guidelines for court rituals and state ceremonies. As a pious ruler, the king was expected to pursue the “Ten Royal Virtues [Thotsaphit ratchatham], the Five Precepts as normal practice, and the Eight Precepts as practice on holy days, with compassion and goodwill ­towards all beings.”6 In addition to his royal duties, an ideal king was to be in command of the Ten Kinds of Perfection (barami), which the Bud­ dha had reached before attaining enlightenment. The monarch was called to commit himself to spiritual pro­gress t­oward a full knowledge and practice of the Dhamma. Thus, in princi­ple, a r­ ighteous king was i­ magined as an ideal Buddhist who was constantly striving for personal improvement.7 The influence of Indian Brahmanism on Siamese kingship remained salient in court rituals and royal titles, especially ­t hose in which the king was revered as a god-­k ing (devaraja) or identified as a reincarnation of the Hindu deities Shiva and Vishnu, although Siamese monarchs rarely used this title.8 ­These Brahmanical ideas of kingship r­ ose and fell in prominence in dif­fer­ent periods and blended with the Theravāda Buddhist practices Mon and Sinhalese monks spread from the thirteenth ­century onward. According to the Buddhist notion of monarchy, the king’s authority was defined by his exceptional kar­ma accumulated by virtuous actions throughout many lifetimes. Due to his extraordinary merit, the king often assumed the title of dhammarāja (­righteous monarch or legislator) or bodhisatta (a f­ uture Bud­dha) who was victorious in war and ruled the world as a universal monarch (ca­kra­var­tin).9 Despite his sacred titles, the king was not the head priest of the Sangha. Instead, his spiritual power complemented the religious authority of the Buddhist monkhood. The role of the monarch was that of a “supreme defender of the faith” (akkhara sāsanūpathamphok) who protected Buddhism against external attacks and internal decay.10 Supporting the religious institutions in the country was thus one impor­tant way for Taksin to prove his merit. When he ascended to the throne in 1768, o ­ rganized religious life in Siam had almost ceased to exist. Many Buddhist ­temples had been plundered or destroyed, the Buddhist scriptures had been burned or lost, and the monastic communities had been dispersed or depleted. Taksin immediately took m ­ easures to restore the Buddhist scriptural traditions. He ordered that the Buddhist canon (Tipiṭaka; Thai: Traipidok) be copied and commissioned illuminated manuscript copies of the Traibhumikatha (popularly known in Thailand as Traiphum Phra Ruang; ไตรภ มู พ ิ ระร่วง), a p ­ opular Buddhist

The Origins of Buddhist Reformism   17

cosmology credited to King Li Thai, who ruled the kingdom of Sukhothai from 1347 to 1376.11 One impor­tant reason for the king’s active involvement in the affairs of the Sangha was the danger of rebellion in the kingdom. In Siamese history, religious radicalism had been a recurrent side effect of ­political crisis, and ­political opposition was often framed in millenarian Buddhist terms. Renegade monks who claimed magical power had repeatedly challenged the king’s authority and stirred ­political unrest in the provinces.12 Taksin used rigid methods to restore the monastic order, which he believed to be in a highly aberrant state, and he was no less strict in his dealings with other religious communities. He became notorious among E ­ uropeans for his harsh treatment of Catholic missionaries who refused to swear allegiance to the king in a court ritual: he accused them of treason and imprisoned them.13 ­Later in his reign, Taksin spent much time on the study of Buddhist meditation and fi­nally claimed to have reached the status of a sodaban, or “stream-­winner” (Pāli: sotāpanna), the first of four stages t­oward enlightenment, according to the Buddhist sūtras.14 He thus made himself more than an ordinary layman so that monks would have to acknowledge his superior spiritual status. He forced even high-­ranking monks to prostrate themselves before him and pay re­spect to his exalted spiritual abilities. The Royal Chronicle of Thonburi relates that Taksin had more than 500 monks flogged or demoted in 1781 b ­ ecause they denied his claims of super­natural power.15 Thai chronicles and accounts from Western observers suggest that the king developed an inclination ­toward megalomania, but it is difficult to tell w ­ hether his unorthodox be­hav­ior was the result of m ­ ental illness (as many contemporaries believed) or was attributable to his martial and uncompromising character. Despite the fame Taksin earned as Siam’s deliverer, his eccentric religious ideas damaged his royal prestige, alienated the Sangha, and ultimately led to his forced abdication and execution in 1782.16

Restoring Buddhism: Rama I and the Revision of the Pāli Canon The new king, Phra Phutthayotfa Chulalok (hereafter referred to as Rama I), made ­great efforts to separate himself from Taksin’s discredited interregnum in Thonburi. He established the Chakri dynasty as the ruling ­house and strengthened the new royal f­amily by raising nineteen relatives to the princely rank of chaofa. Shortly a­ fter his coronation, the king moved the Thai capital from Thonburi to Bangkok on the east bank of the Chao Phraya River, where he had the new city

18  Chapter 1

constructed according to princi­ples derived from old Ayutthayan traditions. Restoration was a defining theme of his reign. The king frequently invoked the spirit of Ayutthaya in state ceremonies and sought to revive traditional forms of religion, ritual, government, and law. The general explanation for the disruptive changes the Siamese had borne during the Burmese invasions blamed the previous Ayutthaya kings for governmental mismanagement and moral decay. The new regime thus aimed to restore the kingdom’s institutions as they had existed before the decline and fall of Ayutthaya.17 The reestablishment of Buddhist written traditions was an impor­tant part of this p ­ olitical agenda. The reign of Rama I is known in Thai historiography for its voluminous output of royal chronicles, poetry, ­legal codes, and religious texts. ­Because most of the official rec­ords and much of the sacred scriptures in Siam had been lost during the wars with Burma, Rama I strongly encouraged collective efforts to restore the kingdom’s written traditions. In 1783, he ordered a new edition of the Traibhūmikathā that would be more authoritative than the one Taksin had commissioned. He was also determined to collect and examine the laws of the kingdom, of which only fragments had survived the destruction of Ayutthaya. When it turned out that the remaining documents w ­ ere greatly confused and corrupted, the monarch appointed a royal commission of l­awyers and scribes and assigned it the task of completely revising the Siamese law code. The outcome of ­t hese endeavors was the Kotmai Tra Sam Duang, or the Three Seals Law, which was completed in 1805. It served as the basis for the Thai judicial system throughout the nineteenth c­ entury.18 In 1788, Rama I de­cided to grant royal sponsorship for a revision of the Tripiṭaka. He had become aware of the deficiencies of the Buddhist manuscripts available in the country and convened a Buddhist Council composed of high-­ ranking monks and learned laymen to correct and purify the canon. The scholars ­were hosted in the Nipphanaram ­temple adjacent to the king’s palace.19 They spent five months examining all extant copies, separating the sacred passages written in Pāli from the commentaries (Pāli: Aṭṭhakathā), rectifying all deviations in the manuscripts and correcting the errors and misspellings they contained. When the work was completed, the king had one set of the revised canon wrapped in silk embroidered with gold threads and stored in a fortified building erected for this purpose (Phra Monthop). He presented a set to each of the 218 members of the council as a reward for their s­ ervice.20 Religious councils have been frequent in the history of Buddhism. The reason for the first three synods, which ­were assembled in India in the period 483 to 250 BC, was to agree upon an authoritative version of the Dhamma and establish a code of monastic discipline.21 ­Later councils took place in dif­fer­ent countries of

The Origins of Buddhist Reformism   19

Asia to s­ ettle doctrinal disputes and revise the content of the sūtras. It is prob­ably due to the complex history of Buddhism that t­ here was no consistent way of counting ­t hese religious assemblies and no general agreement about how to determine their significance for the development of doctrine. As it traveled across Asia, Buddhism spawned distinctive local forms that feature dif­fer­ent traditions of interpreting and commenting on the canon. The council of 1788 in Bangkok had a practical rather than a doctrinal function; it primarily sought to reconstruct the kingdom’s written religious traditions. At the same time, it indicated some of the ­political implications religion had for the balance of power in the kingdom and the region. The most impor­tant chronicler of the event was the ­senior monk Somdet Phra Phonnarat, who acted as the head of a division of scholars that was in charge of collecting and inventorying Pāli manuscripts. He wrote a detailed description of the council that forms the eighth chapter of his Sangitiyavamsa, phongsawadan ruang sangkhayana phratham phrawinai (Sangitiyavamsa, or Chronicle of the Buddhist councils).22 As a religious text, the Sangitiyavamsa rests upon a universal conception of historical time in which the presence of the Buddhist faith on earth is only ephemeral. It pre­ sents the history of religion as one of continuous pollution of the original doctrine over many centuries.23 According to an eschatology devised by the fifth-­century Indian commentator Buddhagosa, the teachings of the Bud­dha would endure no more than 5,000 years before vanis­hing from the world of men. The decline of the faith would proceed in five successive stages, during which the knowledge of the scriptures, the observance of Buddhist precepts, and the corporeal relics of the Bud­dha would dis­appear. Buddhagosa’s fatal deadlines ­were interpreted in contradictory ways, but his prophecy became a recurrent theme in Pāli lit­er­a­ture in subsequent centuries. ­People ­imagined the final period of degeneration as a dark age (kala-­yuga) characterized by greed, poverty, and vio­lence. For Buddhists, this catastrophic vision of the ­future naturally caused anxiety, accompanied by renewed fervor and intensified scriptural activity in religious scholarship.24 Since the Sukhothai period (1238–1438), Siamese kings made use of this eschatology to legitimize their power, particularly in times of dynastic change or ­political unrest. The ­process of religious decay was deemed inevitable, but as long as the end of the world was not yet come, it was the duty of the ruler to forestall the downward course via meritorious actions.25 At first sight, Phra Phonnarat’s Sangitiyavamsa had a religious rather than a ­political purpose. According to his narrative, history was a constant strug­gle for purity of the Dhamma, exemplified by a sequence of eight Buddhist councils that ­were summoned ­after the historical Bud­d ha died. At the same time, religious decline and p ­ olitical turmoil w ­ ere ­imagined as mutually dependent. Although Buddhist monks lived in monastic

20  Chapter 1

seclusion most of the time, they w ­ ere still part of society and like every­one ­else experienced the vicissitudes of ­political change. The fall of Ayutthaya in 1767 and the dissolution of the Thai monastic community in the years thereafter demonstrated for Phra Phonnarat that in the pre­sent world, the fate of Buddhism and the well-­being of the Sangha depended almost entirely on the power and faithfulness of kings.26 Some eighty years a­ fter Ayutthaya fell, the Thai chronicler and s­ enior politician Chaophraya Thiphakorawong was even more explicit in this regard. He devoted a lengthy passage of his The Dynastic Chronicles: Bangkok Era, The First Reign (i.e., the reign of Rama I) to a description of the council of 1788 that Rama I convened in Bangkok. According to his account, the Sangha was too weak and disor­ga­nized to provide an institutional and ­legal framework in which monks could properly fulfill their duties. Thiphakorawong argued that only the monarch was capable of prompting religious reform b ­ ecause it had already become “impossible to find a nobleman or clergy who would support the purification and perfection of the Tripiṭaka as in former times.”27 Based on information from the Sangitiyavamsa, Thiphakorawong devised a historical trajectory that ranges from the first Buddhist council convened in India to the most recent one in Bangkok (the ninth, according to the Thai tradition), which elevated Rama I to a status rivaled only by the ­great Indian merit-­making kings Ajatashatru and Ashoka.28 According to Thiphakorawong, the council of 1788 stood out as an impor­tant event not only in Thai history but also in the history of the entire Buddhist world: In the Year of the Monkey, the tenth of the decade [AD 1788], the king gave his attention to the Buddhist Tripiṭaka texts, which were the very root of the teachings of Buddha. The king at this time spent a large amount of his royal funds to pay wages in having the texts written up on dried palm leaves. All of the existing texts available in the Laos or Mon scripts were rewritten in the Khom [i.e., Cambodian] script. These texts were then kept in a special cabinet at the Phra Monthiantham Library. The king also ordered that the Tripiṭaka texts be made available for study by Buddhist monks of every temple under the royal patronage. Then Chamun Waiworanat said to the king that the Tripiṭaka texts, which the king had spent so much money to have compiled at that time, contained irregularities that actually had been there in the older texts that the new ones were based on. No one had bothered to correct the mistakes. The king, upon hearing this, said that since the Pāli texts of the Buddhist Tripiṭaka contained a great many irregularities, these texts could hardly serve as the basic teaching of the Buddhist religion. Moreover, said the king, t here were extremely few

The Origins of Buddhist Reformism   21 ­

It was common for Buddhist kings to claim ­political and spiritual authority over the entire Theravāda Buddhist ecumene. They often expressed ­these prerogatives in the royal names and titles they assumed ­after coronation. However, when Rama I came to power in 1782, his assumption of spiritual supremacy in the region was more i­ magined than real. The religious institutions in Siam ­were still in disorder. The Sangha was divided between favorites of the deceased monarch and ­others who ­were loyal to the new king. Disunity was so ­great that Rama I issued ten decrees on ecclesiastical law during his reign that severely criticized the low state of religion in the country. He established a school at the T ­ emple of the Emerald Bud­dha in Bangkok to teach the Pāli language to monks and novices. He frequently reminded the monks of the monastic rules (Vinaya) they had vowed to obey and sometimes took harsh ­measures to improve their moral standards.30 In the past, the majority of Siamese kings had been careful to re­spect the distinction between profane and sacred realms and had avoided getting too deeply involved with religious affairs. Rama I, in contrast, interfered in the internal ­organization of the Sangha to an unusual extent. His idea of convening a Buddhist council in Bangkok was unpre­ce­dented in the history of Ayutthaya, but his ambitions as a universal monarch did not end ­there. The king reor­ga­nized the ecclesiastic hierarchy to replace clerics who held deviant religious convictions and even made rulings in the case of monastic quarrels over questions pertaining to the canon. He introduced a registry of monks and novices in the ­temples and issued an identification card that e­ very monk needed to carry to facilitate registration. On one occasion, the king disrobed 128 clerics due to their “ignoble be­ hav­ior” and expelled them from monkhood.31 Rama I frequently stressed in his proclamations that his policy of tightening the supervision of monks aimed at purifying (chamra; ชำ�ระ) the Sangha and protecting the Vinaya rules on which monastic life was based. His under­lying concept of Buddhist kingship appeared to be much less disruptive than that of his immediate ­predecessor, King Taksin. Yet his acts of “purification” ­were less traditional in practice than the language of royal edicts suggested. The extent of the ­measures Rama I took to expand royal control over the Sangha had been unknown in previous centuries.32

22  Chapter 1

Narratives of the Orthodox Buddhist State The US historian David K. Wyatt has pointed out that the restoration of the Siamese state during the reign of Rama I was in fact a revolution in the shape of orthodoxy based on the g­ reat changes that took place during the period in an explic­itly conservative way.33 The restoration of the ecclesiastical institutions in the kingdom complemented the course of p ­ olitical centralization and territorial expansion. Court historians depicted Siamese military campaigns in Laos and Tavoy (in present-­day southeast Myanmar) as religious wars to defend Buddhism against the Burmese ­enemy, the aggressive policies of which ­were regarded in Siam as destructive and essentially un-­Buddhist. The new dynasty in Bangkok represented itself as the major supporter of the faith at a time when Buddhism was in danger of decline, thus responding to a universal yearning for religious purity that became particularly strong in Siam in times of p ­ olitical crisis.34 King Rama I responded to this challenge by strengthening literary production in the kingdom. His policy increased interest among the literary class in Siam in the Buddhist canon and more generally in scripture as a medium of transmitting religious knowledge. In addition, the growth of literary production during the First Reign was not confined to Pāli lit­er­a­ture; it also stirred a trend ­toward vernacularization.35 Only the clergy and a small secular elite fostered the study of the Pāli language, but the king encouraged translations of fundamental Buddhist texts into Thai for religious instruction of the broader population. Pieces of classic Buddhist stories such as the Vessantara Jātaka ­were transformed into metric verses ­adopted from traditional Siamese poetry and ­were publicly recited in splendorous state ceremonies.36 The Bangkok court became the center of cultural life in the kingdom and gave room for the literary ambitions of a range of educated nobles, including the king himself. Prominent authors of the period often earned their fame as translators of Pāli, Chinese, or Mon lit­er­a­ture. For example, the politician and scholar Chaophraya Phra Khlang (Hon) translated the Chinese novel Sanguozhi yanyi (The Story of the Three Kingdoms) into Siamese and authored a range of poems now regarded as landmark pieces of classical Thai lit­er­a­ture.37 Enhancing the prestige of the ruler and disseminating his idea of a Buddhist monarchy was a major function of court lit­er­a­ture. Not all of the works dealt with religion in par­tic­u ­lar, but Buddhism always served as a principal frame of reference. The most significant contribution to the Thai lit­er­a­ture that was compiled during the First Reign was a vernacular version of the Ramakien (1798). The narrative has its roots in the ancient Hindu epic Ramayana (Sans­krit: rā­mā­ya­ṇa), which spread over the centuries from Bengal into present-­day Myanmar, Thailand, and

The Origins of Buddhist Reformism   23

Laos.38 Its dominant theme is the rise to the throne of Rama, prince of Ayodhya, and his strug­gle against the demon king Ravana. Rama fi­nally succeeds over his ­enemy and becomes king, thus ending a long and dark period of warfare. The narrative was a good vehicle for the ­political ideology of the Siamese monarchy ­because it provided many examples of royal virtue, personal valor, bravery in b ­ attle, and other features commonly associated with an ideal monarch.39 In the p ­ rocess of adaptation, the story was transformed in vari­ous ways. The characters, episodes, and settings of the Siamese Ramakien ­were almost completely stripped of their Indic origin, and Theravāda Buddhist my­thol­ogy superseded the original Hindu background of the story. Despite ­these transformations, the Ramakien contained moral lessons for almost e­ very condition of h ­ uman life. Its numerous episodes ­were transmitted in written, oral, or painted form and performed in Thai dramas (khong) and ­popular shadow plays (nang jai) throughout the twentieth ­century.40 However, the lit­er­a­ture produced at the court reached only part of the metropolitan elite in Bangkok; a majority of the kingdom’s population remained virtually untouched by royal propaganda. B ­ ecause the traditional sociopo­liti­cal order granted almost complete internal autonomy to vassal kings and local monastic communities, religious life in the provinces was l­ ittle affected by interventions of the central government. The first kings of the Chakri dynasty ­were not in a position to alter the traditionally heterogeneous structure of the Sangha in the country. The villages remained relatively ­free to select their own abbots, the monks in the ­temples w ­ ere mostly of local origin, and t­here was no central control over religious education, practices, or beliefs.41 In fact, the religious landscape of the kingdom was extremely diverse ­because of the internal condition of Thai Buddhism in the nineteenth ­century. Like other religions, Buddhism had blended with vari­ous local religious practices as it spread over mainland Southeast Asia. The ability to provide a spiritual framework that could accommodate indigenous religious customs was one of the strengths of Buddhism and became instrumental for the survival of its ideas in a variety of dif­fer­ ent cultural environments. Buddhism in Siam, which had traveled from India to Ceylon, Asia Minor, Central Asia, China, and fi­nally to Southeast Asia, was based on networks of interaction between the dif­fer­ent religious communities and was from the outset s­ haped by cross-­cultural exchange.42 The ­process of transmitting Indian Buddhist ideas to mainland Southeast Asia resulted in dif­fer­ent forms of religious syncretism. In Siam, pre-­or non-­Buddhist beliefs such as Chinese ancestor worship and the veneration of magical amulets (phra khrueang) and spirits (phi) prevailed in all social classes even though they ran ­counter to central Theravāda princi­ples. At the same time, Brahmanic rites continued to be salient features of Siamese state ceremonies. The heterogeneous

24  Chapter 1

nature of Siamese Buddhism became problematic when ­people expressed ­political opposition in religious terms. The decentralized structure of the Siamese Sangha, which had separate entities in the north and northeast of Siam and in Laos, gave way to a range of religious movements centered on charismatic leaders who claimed magical powers or a superior karmic status. Some of t­ hese movements could turn into open protest and pose a serious threat to royal authority.43 A good example is the rebellion of the Buddhist monk Sakiatngong in 1820. He headed a group composed of non-­Thai minorities from the region of Champasak in present-­ day Laos and invoked as his ancestor the legendary hero Thao Cüang, who according to local traditions had reigned over the T’ai kingdom of Ngoen Yang in the early twelfth ­century AD.44 Millennialist movements and “holy men” revolts in Siam usually had regional ­causes, but they also tended to destabilize the central government. Siamese kings therefore took ­great pains to purge the Sangha of internal opposition and forcefully suppressed ­political opposition in the provinces.45 In the first half of the nineteenth c­ entury, scriptural orthodoxy and strict monastic discipline became an ever more impor­tant topic of religious discourse in Siam. The most influential religious party was the Thammayut-­nikai. Established in the late 1830s (although not officially as a separate order), the group instigated one of the most impor­tant religious changes in Siamese history. Its recognized leader was Prince Mongkut, then the highest-­ranking member of the royal f­ amily in the country. Mongkut had spent twenty-­seven years in monkhood before ascending in 1851 to the Siamese throne as King Phra Chom Klao, also known as Rama IV.46 His long tenure in the Sangha was rather uncommon for a prince of his rank. Mongkut was a legitimate heir to the throne when King Rama II died in 1824, but in the p ­ rocess of succession, he lost to his elder and more po­liti­cally experienced half-­brother Prince Jessadabodindra, the l­ ater King Nangklao (Rama III). In order to avoid p ­ olitical intrigues and ensure his personal safety, Mongkut entered the monkhood and retained his monastic status u ­ ntil the end of the Third Reign. He learned Pāli, E ­ nglish, and a ­little Latin; delved into the study of the Tripiṭaka; and obtained a religious degree that endowed him with impeccable religious authority.47 Mongkut sought a radical reform of both the doctrinal and practical ele­ments of Theravāda Buddhism. He gathered a number of apprentices at his residence at Wat Bowonniwet in Bangkok, some of whom l­ater became eminent Buddhist scholars. One of t­ hese apprentices was Phra Amarabhirakkhit, who in 1860 authored a textbook on monastic discipline (Pubbasikkhavassana) that was in use for the instruction of Thai monks u ­ ntil 1913. Another of Mongkut’s students was the l­ ater supreme patriarch Ariyavangsagatayana (Sa Pussadeva), who introduced a new analytical tone to Siamese religious lit­er­a­ture in Pathamasambodhikatha

The Origins of Buddhist Reformism   25

(The Bud­dha’s first enlightenment), which omitted all of the magical ele­ments that had s­ haped e­ arlier Buddhist narratives of the Bud­dha’s life. Mongkut also attracted prominent lay followers, such as the court chronicler and minister of financial affairs (Phra Khlang) Chaophraya Thiphakorawong, who became a leading voice of the reform movement. Mongkut’s successor as abbot at Wat Bowonniwet was his youn­ger b ­ rother Pavares Variyalongkorn (Somdej Krom Phraya Pawaretwariyalongkon), who also presided over the compilation of the Buddhist canon printed in Thai in 1893 and 1894.48 The reformers proposed a purified version of the faith based on princi­ples derived from the Tripiṭaka that in effect redefined virtually all aspects of religious life in Siam. They emphasized the importance of the original Pāli canon and rejected all types of religious eclecticism. Mongkut and his followers cultivated a radical form of “scripturalism,” a par­tic­u­lar inclination ­toward textual orthodoxy, which they paired with a conservative understanding of religious practice.49 They diverged from traditional local conceptions of Buddhism and w ­ ere drawn to the most ancient Pāli texts. The reformers pursued their quest for religious purity in an almost Orientalist manner, searching for the most ancient texts and traditions like the British did in India or the French did in Egypt. They considered the Traiphum and many of the Jātakas of the Buddhist tradition to be uncanonical and therefore irrelevant for their vision of a true and uncontaminated Buddhism. According to the doctrines of the Thammayut-­nikai, the truth of Buddhism would reveal itself only through the study of the holy scriptures. They criticized the fact that in daily life both clerics and laymen unconsciously made use of vari­ous religious traditions that w ­ ere not in accordance with the Buddhist canon. Over centuries, the Siamese had ­adopted practices from Brah­man sources and maintained older beliefs and rituals such as the veneration of super­natural spirits. The reformers battled against t­hese “foreign” influences and deemed non-­Buddhist spirit worship and the veneration of Hindu deities as inconsistent with Gau­ta­ma’s original teachings.50 Mongkut reserved most of his scorn for the internal conditions of the Sangha. He argued that the majority of Siamese monks ­were followers of what he called the “large fraternity” (Mahanikai) who based their religious practice only on habit and tradition. In a particularly blunt statement entitled Wa Duai Kan Nai Phra Phutthasatsana (On Buddhist affairs), he described the Sangha as being in a horrible state of decline. The text was written during his time in monkhood and is interspersed with long Pāli citations. In it, Mongkut lamented that the majority of his fellow monks ­were incapable of examining the Pāli lit­er­a­ture directly and thus w ­ ere unable to strictly observe the monastic discipline as expounded in the “original scriptures” (ba­li doem; บาฬ เี ดิม). Many prayer books ­were confused,

26  Chapter 1

incomplete, or not in accordance with the older collections in Khmer and Mon, Mongkut said. The t­ emples had become a refuge for the poor who w ­ ere trying to escape from poverty, while many priests had succumbed to the lure of material gain, using the yellow robe to enrich themselves at the expense of the common ­people. Siamese kings of the past dynasty fared no better in Mongkut’s account. He described them as arrogant hypocrites who did not re­spect religious authorities and repeatedly interfered in religious affairs, further accelerating the moral decay of the Buddhist priesthood.51 Mongkut did not hide his opinions from foreigners, as the American missionary Jesse Caswell related: January 2, 1846. I am getting a clearer insight into the character of the peculiar views of the new party in the priesthood. There is a strong tendency among them to the rankest atheism, but at the same time, there seems to be something that is praiseworthy lying at the foundation of this party. C.F. [i.e., Mongkut] and his priests have several times of late inquired whether t here are any enlightened scientific men in America who do not believe in the existence of a God, of angels or devils, or of a future state of rewards and punishments. When I have replied that there are some such, they say, “there are such here!”, yet in such a way as that none could accuse them of indulging such a belief. When informed that those who embrace such views in our country are usually of the vile sort, they reply that it is not so here. “The great body of the priesthood,” they say, “are constantly fleecing the people of the little they have by telling them that giving to the priests w ill merit heaven, while withholding exposes them to hell. But there is a class who pity the common people and despise this kind of teaching, and, seeing that heaven and hell are used in this despicable way, they are disposed to swing off to the opposite extreme and entirely abandon the use of these sanctions.”52 The Thammayut-­nikai was not a mass movement. Only 150 monks openly supported Mongkut’s reforms when he became king in 1851. Even though the order was small compared to the number of Mahanikai monks, its influence on the intellectual and doctrinal development of Buddhism in Siam was profound. A majority of Supreme Patriarchs of the Siamese Sangha in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries w ­ ere chosen from the Thammayut-­nikai. B ­ ecause the members of the order maintained close connections to the court and their ideas attracted many high-­ranking nobles, their influence on the kingdom’s religious policy was significant. Mongkut and his followers visibly diverged from mainstream priests, starting with the way they wore the yellow robe, which they took apart and resewed as prescribed in the Vinaya order. They also established their own ordination

The Origins of Buddhist Reformism   27

ceremony, composed new verses in Pāli for worship, and attempted to reconstruct the original Pāli pronunciation (albeit with l­ittle success).53 The reformers argued that most of the p ­ opular Buddhist lit­er­a­ture available in Siam was postcanonical and was therefore questionable in form and content, including the cosmology of the Traiphum Phra Ruang. They made a clear distinction between the books of the Theravāda canon, the only ones they acknowledged as accurate in terms of tradition, and the many Jātakas and commentaries, which they accepted only when they ­were in line with the canon.

The Buddhist Reform Movement in a Transnational Context Mongkut became abbot at Wat Bowonniwet in Bangkok in 1837 and in subsequent years used his position as a respected Buddhist scholar to turn the t­ emple into a center of Pāli learning.54 Following a generally accepted genealogy, he looked upon Ceylon as the cradle of Theravāda Buddhism and a repository of its sacred lit­er­a­ ture. Siamese kings have since the second half of the thirteenth ­century supported religious contacts with the island kingdom, where the most ancient Pāli manuscripts ­were preserved and many impor­tant sacred monuments ­were located. Siamese pilgrims came together with Sinhalese clerics on vari­ous occasions to exchange texts and validate their ordination lineages.55 However, the colonial expansion of E ­ urope altered the paths and directions of religious communication in the Buddhist world. The Thammayut ideology owed part of its relevance to a trend ­toward orthodoxy that was widespread among Buddhist elites in Asia that merged in dif­fer­ent ways with p ­ olitical reforms, anticolonial r­ esistance, and nationalistic sentiments. Perhaps ­t here was even a worldwide tendency ­toward formalizing religious authority and defining religious dogmas in the nineteenth ­century, as the British historian Christopher Bayly has argued.56 P ­ olitical instability in South and Southeast Asia and the intrusion of Western imperialism gave rise to an interlocking series of prob­lems that ­were understood as threatening the entire Buddhist world. The loss of power of Buddhist kings in colonized states not only led to an overthrow of indigenous p ­ olitical systems and social hierarchies but also jeopardized the life and status of Buddhism in ­t hese states. The island of Sri Lanka became the theater of the imperial and missionary ambitions of a range of ­European powers. Portuguese conquerors operating in the region from the 1520s aggressively enhanced their influence in ­later d ­ ecades. By 1600, they had extended p ­ olitical control over vari­ous kingdoms on the western coast of the island, among them Kotte (1551), Jaffna (1591), and Sitawaka (1593), where they established fortresses, ware­houses, and churches. The Christian mission

28  Chapter 1

was an integral part of Portuguese colonial ideology and depended in practice on the support of their profit-­seeking compatriots. The Portuguese Jesuit António Vieira described this relationship in his História do futuro (1649): “The preachers take the Gospel and the merchants take the preachers.”57 Portuguese kings sought to spread the Christian gospel in their new colonial territories. The everlasting ­union of the cross and the sword was exemplified in the Padroado Real, a series of bulls issued by popes in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that codified for the Iberian powers the right (and duty) of kings to exercise royal patronage over churches in non-­Christian countries.58 Catholic missionaries regarded all religions other than the Catholic faith as intrinsically wrong and harmful. They destroyed many Buddhist and Hindu ­temples and seized their land and revenue. Throughout the period of Portuguese rule in Sri Lanka, the Catholic Church played a decisive role in public affairs. Catholic schools and churches became impor­tant instruments for social control in Portuguese colonial enclaves, acting as virtually another arm of the colonial government.59 ­After the expulsion of Portuguese power from Sri Lanka in 1656–1658, the new Dutch regime made efforts to curtail the missionary activities of the Catholic clergy. It banned Portuguese priests from their territory and placed ­legal hindrances in the way of public profession of the Catholic faith. Dutch Calvinist missionaries directed most of their energy against the local community of Roman Catholics, whom they suspected of collaborating with the Portuguese e­ nemy. In contrast to their colonial ­predecessors, however, the Dutch did comparatively ­little to proselytize the Hindu and Buddhist population of the island. With some notable exceptions, such as the reformed ministers Philippus Baldaeus and Abraham Rogerius, Dutch predikanten (pastors) in South Asia ­were unwilling or unable to learn the local languages and seriously engage with the religions practiced on the island.60 Dutch East India Com­pany officials, too, w ­ ere wary of interfering in local religious practices and did not actively suppress “heathen” beliefs. In order to expel the Portuguese from their colonial bases in the maritime area, the Dutch had joined forces with Rājasingha II, king of Kandy (r. 1635–1687), who yielded sovereignty over the interior of the island. Although the Kandyan king was formally ­independent, he relied heavi­ly on the Dutch, who controlled the external trade of the kingdom and its communications with South India and other Buddhist kingdoms such as Arakan, Pegu, and Ayutthaya. Moreover, the Sinhalese Sangha, which had been revived during the reign of Vimaladharmasuriya II (1687–1707), became divided into several schools and sects. By the m ­ iddle of the eigh­teenth ­century, Buddhism in Sri Lanka had declined so far that even the indigenous ordination tradition had gotten lost.61

The Origins of Buddhist Reformism   29

The marginalization of Sinhalese Buddhism ­under E ­ uropean rule alarmed Siamese kings and encouraged them to support the Sri Lankan clergy in revitalizing the faith. In 1750 to 1755, King Borommakot (r. 1733–1758) initiated an exchange of missions with the Kingdom of Kandy in order to restore Sinhalese Buddhism. In so d ­ oing, he gained considerable prestige in Southeast Asia as a supporter of the Buddhist religion.62 Borommakot’s embassies resulted in the founding of the Siyam Nikāya order in Kandy, designed to shape the Sinhalese Sangha ­after the model of the monastic order in Ayutthaya. The Siamese priests reportedly “remained four years in Ceylon and ­were engaged in training the Ceylon priests in the practice of devout abstract meditation and other religious exercises. They gave the Upasampada [ordination] to three hundred priests and admitted hundreds of persons as Samanera priests [young ascetics].”63 However, the fall of Kandy in 1815 and the beginning of British rule on the island undermined the authority of Kandyan kings, whose power as patrons of Buddhism was waning. The Kandyan Sangha progressively lost its authority structure, disintegrated internally, and faced inexorable opposition from Protestant missionaries, who from the beginning of British rule enjoyed the support of the new colonial government.64 A revival of Siamese contacts with Ceylon began when chief monks from the Siyam Nikāya asked the Siamese for help in restoring religious unity. In 1815, King Rama II dispatched a mission of eight Siamese monks to Kandy to confirm the bonds between the kingdoms and get in touch with local monastic communities.65 In 1843, Mongkut had forty volumes of the Tripiṭaka brought over from Ceylon to use for a thorough revision and expansion of the Siamese scriptures. He exchanged letters written in Pāli with Sinhalese monks that discussed the state of religion in their countries, and in 1852 he equipped an embassy of six government officials and a del­e­ga­tion of ten monks for a journey to return the books he had borrowed nine years e­ arlier.66 Mongkut believed that the Sinhalese Sangha was in desperate need of renewal ­because Ceylonese priests had ruined the ecclesiastic institutions through corruption and immoral conduct. Many priests, he argued, had been seduced by material wealth and ­were devoted to sexual ­pleasures. On one occasion, Mongkut cited the example of a ­senior Ceylonese monk who was hiding a concubine ­under his bed to illustrate the progressive state of degradation of the Sangha.67 In a series of letters to Ceylonese religious authorities, he admonished his fellow monks to “hold true doctrines and disciplines” and to “keep reviewing one’s belief all the time.”68 Siamese influence in Ceylon remained strong b ­ ecause Sinhalese monks attempted to use ordination lineages brought from Southeast Asia to unify the fractious and divided monastic community. Bright young scholars such as Hikkaḍuvē Sumaṅgala from the Siyam Nikāya or the ­senior monk Bulatgama Siri Sumanatissa

30  Chapter 1

sought to draw the dif­fer­ent provinces of the Buddhist world closer together and increase the pace of contact with high-­ranking Buddhist monks and members of the royal ­family in Siam.69 Siamese reformers also engaged in religious intercourse with other Buddhist countries in Southeast Asia. They w ­ ere always e­ ager to trace the most ancient sources of Buddhism and to spread their ideas throughout the Buddhist world. One impor­tant source of Thai Buddhism in Southeast Asia was the tradition of the Mon of Lower Burma, who had been major transmitters of Theravāda learning in Siam since the eighth ­century AD. By the thirteenth ­century, Bagan had emerged as Theravāda’s foremost intellectual and ceremonial center and had attracted monks from all over the Buddhist realm.70 Thammayut monks regarded the code of monastic discipline and the rules of ordination as practiced by the Mon as the most au­t hen­tic ones. It thus would have been natu­ral for them to consider Burma as an impor­tant site of ancient religious traditions. A first attempt to disseminate Thammayut doctrines in Burma was made by the Burmese monk Mahayin (U Buddhavamsa), who was born in a Mon village in Siam. A ­ fter his ordination as a Thammayut monk and his graduation in Bangkok, he settled in a town near Moulmein, where he founded the Dhammayutti Mahayin Gaing in 1874, prob­ably with the intention of spreading the Siamese doctrines among the Mon population in south and central Burma.71 However, nineteenth-­century Burmese kings developed their own religious reform policy that invoked a peculiar national tradition. Religious reforms in Burma evolved during the reign of King Mindon (1853–1878), who came to the throne ­after a bloody coup d’état in the aftermath of the Second Anglo-­Burmese War (1852–1854). As in other Buddhist countries, royal patronage was of vital importance for the continuance of the Buddhist faith in Burma and a central way for a pious king to gain moral authority. Mindon therefore aimed at strengthening cooperation between the Sangha and the royal government. In 1871, he convened a Buddhist council in Mandalay (the fifth synod according to the Burmese tradition), where 2,400 monks ­were assembled, none of whom apparently came from outside Burma. It took five months and three days to recite all the Pāli canonical texts and their commentaries, which w ­ ere inscribed on palm leaves and on 729 marble slabs.72 The king also interfered in m ­ atters of monastic education and introduced a new syllabus for the study of the Vinaya and the Abhidhamma in the ­temples.73 Mindon’s purification program shared many features with Mongkut’s religious reform agenda in Siam. They both stressed the importance of the Pāli canon, emphasized strict adherence to the monastic rules of the Vinaya, and aimed to strengthen the role of the king as the promoter of the Buddhist faith. The Shwegyin-­

The Origins of Buddhist Reformism   31

nikāya, a Burmese secessionist group formed in 1861 in opposition to the majority of monks of the Sudhamma order, supported Mindon’s reforms and fulfilled similar functions as t­ hose of the Thammayut-­nikai in Siam.74 Despite t­ hese similarities, however, p ­ olitical rivalry between the two kingdoms and the rise of nationalism complicated contact between the religious communities. Siam did not recognize the Fifth Council held in Mandalay, and Burma recognized none of the Buddhist synods that had been held in the past in Chiang Mai, Ayutthaya, and Bangkok.75 Moreover, the expansion of British power in mainland Southeast Asia and the deposition of the Burmese king Thibaw Min in 1885 subverted the ­political and religious institutions in the kingdom. The Burmese Sangha lost its prestige as a center of Theravāda learning and was gradually cut off from transnational exchange with other Theravāda countries.76 Mongkut’s mission was more successful in Cambodia, where in 1854 or 1864 (the exact date is uncertain) a local branch of the Thammayut-­nikai was founded by Khmer monks who had been educated in Siamese monasteries. Th ­ ese religious reforms began a­ fter ­decades of warfare between Siam and Vietnam over control of Cambodia. The ­Vietnamese had expanded their influence in Southeast Asia during the reigns of Gia Long and Minh Mang. They subdued the Khmer Empire in the early nineteenth c­ entury and sought to assimilate the local population into ­Vietnamese culture by introducing the names, language, clothing, and civilizational practices of the new regime. The ­Vietnamese also attacked the Buddhist clergy, driving many priests out of their ­temples and destroying their monasteries and sacred Buddhist images.77 When the Cambodians rebelled, Rama III took the opportunity to launch a series of military campaigns against the V ­ ietnamese to recover Siamese p ­ olitical supremacy in Cambodia. The war ended in 1846 with the conclusion of a curious peace treaty that made Cambodia a vassal state of both the Siamese and V ­ ietnamese empires. The Bangkok court installed the Khmer prince Ang Duong on the Cambodian throne. He had spent twenty-­seven years in Bangkok and became a major supporter of religious reforms in his kingdom.78 Siamese influence on the development of Buddhism in Cambodia grew even stronger during the reign of King Chulalongkorn. Reforms in monastic learning ­under Ang Duong’s successor Norodom closely followed the curricula of Siamese reformers. The most respected monks in Cambodia w ­ ere gradu­ates from Bangkok. A ­ fter their return, they acted as brokers of the ideas and teachings of the Thammayut fraternity. Th ­ ere was a constant flow of Khmer monks to Siam to acquire a degree from a reformed ­temple in order to promote their ecclesiastic ­careers at home, u ­ ntil the French colonial regime de­cided to restrict such exchanges to reduce contacts between the Cambodian and Thai Sanghas. Bangkok became an impor­tant center of monastic training in Buddhist Southeast Asia, attracting a

32  Chapter 1

wide range of monks from abroad to study the Pāli language and learn the rules of the Vinaya.79 When Siam was consolidating its hold over the northern states in the latter half of the nineteenth c­ entury, the reform movement found followers among Buddhist monks in present-­day Laos and the Isan region. The first attempts to disseminate Thammayut learning in the northeast date back to the reign of Rama III, when Mongkut (then known as Vajirañāna Bhikkhu) assigned the Lao monk Ariyawong (Sui), a student from Wat Saket in Bangkok, the task of introducing formal Pāli and Thai studies to Ubon Ratchathani. Shortly ­after his coronation in 1851, Mongkut ordered the erection of a Thammayut t­ emple t­ here (Wat Supat) that effectively served as an offshoot of Wat Bowonniwet in Bangkok.80 The abbots of the monastery w ­ ere natives from the region but had been trained in Bangkok, and they maintained close relationships with the Thammayut headquarters in the Siamese capital throughout their tenure. Bangkok reformers also gained support from local forest monks (thudong), who shared their affinity for asceticism, meditation, and discipline and helped convert villa­gers who held indigenous non-­Buddhist beliefs. Larger groups of Thammayut monks settled in provincial capitals and district centers such as Ubon, Champasak, Khon Kaen, and Loei, where they w ­ ere promoted by government officials and local aristocratic rulers.81 The northern expansion of Thammayut doctrines first created dissent rather than unity, ­because one immediate effect was a division of the northern Siamese Sangha into two sects, the Mahanikai and the Thammayut. The reformers operated on a relatively modest scale compared with the much larger Mahanikai order, whose t­emples and monasteries significantly outnumbered t­hose of the newcomers. U ­ ntil 1948, only one Thammayut ­temple existed in Chiang Mai Province, and the Thammayut sect perennially lacked financial resources and trained teachers. It was not u ­ ntil the Sangha Act of 1902, which King Chulalongkorn proclaimed in the year of a major millenarian rebellion in the northeast,82 that a systematic and unified ecclesiastic hierarchy was created in Siam that paralleled the establishment of a centralized administration of the civil government in the outlying provinces.83 In the years ­after 1902, state control of the ecclesiastical institutions in the kingdom extended only to a handful of royal monasteries scattered across the inner provinces. The commoner ­temples w ­ ere far more numerous and remained ­independent. Yet in the ­decades that followed, ­these ­measures ­were fairly successful at imposing the use of Thai-­language texts and altered the balance between the Sangha and the state. From then on, the king, as the prime defender of the faith, claimed authority over all monks, novices, and monasteries in the country.84

C HA P T E R T WO

Christianity ­ ­ in Siam

Siamese kings have long faced the challenge of ruling over non-­Buddhist ­peoples, including Catholics from Portugal, Spain, and France and Protestants from the Netherlands and ­England. Siam’s earliest encounters with Chris­tian­ity date back to the sixteenth ­century, when Portuguese conquistadors in search of Christians and spices began to operate in Southeast Asian w ­ aters. A treaty of 1518 granted the Portuguese religious freedom and the right to trade in Ayutthaya and a number of other Siamese ports. The Portuguese promised in turn to provide the Siamese army with guns, cannons, and military expertise, which at the time w ­ ere the commodities and s­ ervices Asian rulers wanted most.1 Siam was difficult terrain for ­European proselytizing activities. The wars against the Burmese in the latter half of the sixteenth ­century made evangelizing work too dangerous for most missionaries, who concentrated instead on their colonial enclaves.2 However, the Catholic Counter-­Reformation in ­Europe became a major stimulus for the missionary enterprise and revitalized the Siam mission in the early seventeenth ­century. Between 1607 and 1630, the Jesuits tried three times to establish a permanent mission in Ayutthaya, but all of the padres died from tropical diseases or ­were killed in military conflicts not long ­after their arrival. In 1622, the Vatican de­cided to create the pontifical congregation De Propaganda Fide to promote the papal policy of spreading Catholicism throughout the world. This new institution challenged the Portuguese mono­poly on the mission territories in the East b ­ ecause it allowed missionaries from other ­European countries to go to Asia without Portuguese interference or consent. Most of the missionaries who now began to pour into Asia ­were gradu­ates from the Sacred College of the Propaganda de Fide, or came from one of the national mission seminars founded ­after 1622 in Italy and France. They w ­ ere responsible only to the apostolic vicar and the Roman authorities, thus strengthening Papal control over the foreign missions at the expense of the Portuguese Padroado. Encouraged by a new zeal for the Christian missions overseas, French missionaries from the newly founded Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP) began to explore the field and established mission stations in Cochin-­China and Tonkin in present-­day Vietnam. In 1662, the 33

34  Chapter 2

first group of French missionaries set foot on Siamese soil, among them Lambert de la Motte, Bishop of Berythus, and Jacques de Bourges, who l­ ater became Vicar Apostolic of Western Tonkin (Tonkino Occidentale). In 1664, another party of six French missionaries arrived in Ayutthaya. They w ­ ere led by François Pallu, bishop of Heliopolis, who successfully established diplomatic contacts with the Siamese court. In the years thereafter, the French founded the Seminary of Saint Joseph in Ayutthaya and became the main actors of the Catholic mission in Siam in the seventeenth c­ entury.3

From Ayutthaya to Bangkok The French missionaries profited from a new openness of the Siamese government ­toward ­Europeans. King Narai (r. 1656–1688), who had developed a keen interest in Western arts, science, and religion, generously granted land and other facilities to the new missionaries.4 Narai welcomed the French offer to conclude a treaty of trade and friendship with King Louis XIV, then the most power­f ul monarch in E ­ urope, and promised to tolerate the Catholic faith in Siam. Narai’s fascination with Western science, especially astronomy, grew so strong in the following years that he had observatories built in Ayutthaya and Lopburi for the use of Jesuit astronomers and his court astrologer, Phra Horathibodhi.5 Jesuit missionaries ­were particularly aware that Chris­t ian­ity would appear more attractive to the Siamese when they presented it in combination with science. This strategy had already been successful in China, where scholar-­ missionaries such as Matteo Ricci, Adam Schall von Bell, and Martin Martini gained access to the highest government circles by impressing the imperial court with their skills as geographers, astronomers, or engineers.6 The earliest statement in this regard is the illustration on the title page of Guy Tachard’s book on the French mission in Siam, Voyage de Siam, published in 1686 (Figure 2). It features a sextant, a quadrant, a mechanical globe, and a range of other mathematical and astronomical instruments, labeled with the Latin motto His coelum panditur (By ­t hese means heaven is revealed).7 The outcome of French-­Siamese contacts in the seventeenth ­century is well known to historians of Thailand. From early on, the Catholic mission suffered from internal conflicts and rivalry. French and Portuguese friars strug­gled over questions of authority, ecclesiastic jurisdiction, and religious doctrine. Moreover, the French camp was divided between a group of French Jesuits, who actively promoted the conversion of King Narai, and the priests from the MEP, who warned that such a goal was impossible to achieve within a few years and pleaded for a long-­term missionary policy. King Narai died in 1688, and a­ fter a bloody coup

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Figure 2. Detail of the title page of Guy Tachard, Voyage de Siam (Paris, 1686). Source: Bibliothèque nationale de France.

d’état, he was succeeded via usurpation by Phetracha, a high-ranking noble and minister of the Elephant Department (Krom Chang). The new king had no trust in France’s political intentions. He felt threatened by a French garrison stationed at Bangkok without royal permission, while the Sangha bristled at French attempts to convert the Siamese to Christianity. Phetracha canceled all negotiations with the court of Versailles and turned away from France. Narai’s Greek advisor, Constantine Phaulkon, who had been one of the Svengalis in diplomatic negotiations with the French ambassadors, was accused of high treason and executed. The French missionaries, among them many learned Jesuits, went to prison or were expelled from the country. The Siamese destroyed many Catholic churches and seminaries in their country and enslaved many of the Asian converts.8 In the context of an overwhelmingly hostile attitude toward Christianity, the Christian mission almost vanished in Siam. The vicar apostolic of the MEP, Bishop Louis Laneau, was arrested and spent three years in prison. The French mission never recovered from this blow; Laneau and his fellows made only a few converts in subsequent decades and were consistently short of funds.9 Catholic missionaries fared no better after the destruction of Ayutthaya in 1767. During the years of restoration, Taksin sought to revive Siam’s relations with France and invited a group of Catholic Christians to resettle in Thonburi. The parish consisted of roughly 1,000 Christians from various ethnic and national backgrounds.10 For several years, most of them led modest and unobtrusive lives in the kingdom that went largely unnoticed by the court. The first conflicts arose in

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1775, when the king prompted the heads of the Christian community to swear an oath of fidelity that was to be performed in a public ceremony called drinking the ­water of allegiance (thue nam phiphat sattaya). The ritual was impor­tant for the king ­because it symbolically confirmed the ­political loyalty of his subjects, who ­were expected to take part in the event irrespective of their religious preferences. The Catholic bishop Olivier Simon Le Bon, who was fully devoted to instructing his flock in the “purity and sanctity of the Christian religion,” declared that this “strange mixture of idolatrous rites and superstitious ceremonies” was incompatible with Christian beliefs and refused to obey. The Siamese court considered such be­hav­ior treason and had the bishop and three other priests publicly punished and then arrested.11 Although most Christians eventually submitted to the wishes of the king, Le Bon did not fear the hardships of martyrdom and remained in jail for a year. He was unwilling to compromise with Siamese cultural practices and insisted on the purity of Catholic ritual and faith. The prob­lem was not easy to solve, ­because in theological terms Le Bon’s firm attitude conformed to the MEP’s official missionary policy. Le Bon believed that the gestures, words, and objects that constituted the Siamese state ceremony not only enacted a distinctive concept of p ­ olitical authority but also conveyed a religious and cosmological order that was deeply engrained in Buddhist and Brahmanic traditions. In the eyes of Catholics, the ritual raised the question of distinguishing and defining the position of Chris­tian­ ity vis-­à-­vis Siamese ­political sovereignty and its pagan religious under­pinnings. The conflict recurred in 1780, when the oath was to be renewed. The Catholic friars again refused to attend the ritual and insisted that they owed fidelity only to God the Almighty. This time, King Taksin banished all the Catholic missionaries from Siam. A few returned in 1782 ­after Taksin died and quietly resumed their ­labors, but the MEP effectively abandoned Siam for many years. When the British diplomat John Crawfurd visited Siam in 1821, the apostolic vicar Esprit-­Joseph-­ Marie Florens was the only ­European missionary in Bangkok who was ­doing pastoral work, assisted by a few Asian priests. According to Crawfurd, he “seldom or never made a proselyte.”12 In the early Bangkok period, neither the Siamese government nor the Sangha ­were particularly hostile to Chris­tian­ity, despite the conflict-­ridden history of the Catholic mission in Siam. A major difficulty for the French friars was a lack of personnel. ­There ­were almost no clerics in that part of Asia who ­were sufficiently familiar with at least one of the many languages spoken in Siam, and few ­were willing to work in such a difficult environment. The Catholic community in the Siamese kingdom was almost entirely Chinese, Cambodian, and V ­ ietnamese. Native-­born Siamese ­were apparently unwilling to convert, a fact that ­Father

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Florens’s coadjutor, Msgr. Barthélémy Bruguière, attributed to “the corruption of the morals of this p ­ eople, to their indolence, to their frivolousness, to their fickleness, and especially due to their faith in the Talapoins” in 1829.13 Bruguière also noted that ­t here w ­ ere only six priests in the Siamese mission, two of whom ­were in charge of the seminary on the island of Penang. The apostolic vicariate of Siam included the entire region that lies between the Gan­ges in the west and the borders of Tonkin and Cochinchina in the east and from South China in the north down to Singapore. The Siamese mission consisted of small Christian communities scattered across the kingdom, separated from each other by mountain ranges, vast forests, and swamps that ­were difficult to cross. Bruguière felt that ­because of this, missionaries needed to be located in the vari­ous places where the Christians ­were gathered in greater numbers.14 Like his p ­ redecessors in the seventeenth c­ entury, Bruguière had to deal with the unpleasant task (for him) of studying the religion of the Siamese. He recognized that it was necessary to understand the beliefs and practices of ­t hose he wished to convert. His letters to the directors of the MEP in Paris contain a detailed analy­sis of what he believed to be the basic doctrines of Theravāda Buddhism and enumerated the many deities in the Buddhist pantheon. Bruguière shared most of the prejudices of his ­predecessors. He made some brief remarks about the Buddhist idea of metempsychosis, which he rejected as erroneous, and spread rumors about “diabolical ceremonies” and vari­ous kinds of black magic that he said w ­ ere practiced in public in Siam.15 Bruguière’s summary of Buddhism was scarcely in harmony with the usual beliefs the Siamese embraced. He did not distinguish between Buddhist orthodoxy and p ­ opular folk beliefs, and even though he was aware of the existence of a written canon in Pāli, he d ­ idn’t seem to know much about its content. A substantial part of his account was devoted to the religious practices of the Buddhist monkhood, which Bruguière rendered in terms that alluded to the Catholic customs he was familiar with: “The Talapoins form a species of religious order and hierarchy; they have a general, provincials, priors, private religionists, novices, and disciples, and fi­nally savants and doctors. . . . ​The Talapoins may be regarded as the ministers of the Siamese religion; they give the ­people a kind of holy ­water, to which they attribute ­great virtue; the newly married must prostrate themselves before them to be sprinkled with this ­water. Th ­ ere are also several rites which they have copied from the Christians; they have a lent, an Easter, tapers, rosaries, relics, holywater, & c., as we have.” Bruguière concluded his remarks on Buddhism with the assertion that “it is easy to recognize many dogmas of Chris­tian­ity, such as the creation of the world, and of the first man and w ­ oman, existence of angels and ­devils, the immortality of the soul, the Flood, heaven, hell, virginity of the

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holy m ­ other, incarnation of the Word, his second advent, signs and calamities which w ­ ill precede it, and the end of the world, the resurrection, judgment, and eternal happiness. They have many of the rites of the Roman Church, and the hierarchy of the Talapoins is absolutely the same.”16 This part of his description shows an obvious strategy of accommodation to bridge the gap between Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity. Although Bruguière deeply abhorred the many “superstitions” that seemed to be so widespread among the Siamese, he also recognized ele­ments of Buddhism that appeared to be compatible with Chris­tian­ity. This approach led to a selective understanding of Buddhism and a distorted view of its basic princi­ples. ­There w ­ ere long and controversial debates in Christian E ­ urope about ­whether accommodation was wise from a missionary point of view. In theological terms, accommodation constituted one of the major differences between Catholic and Protestant missions in the period.17 About the time Bruguière was writing in the late 1820s, a group of Protestant missionaries arrived in Bangkok to spread their version of Chris­tian­ity in the land of the “heathens.” Their encounters with the Siamese initially repeated the seventeenth-­century pattern of cross-­cultural intercourse. Part of the Siamese elite welcomed the technological and scientific innovations the ­Europeans brought and began to study the basic tenets of Western learning. In the ­decades that followed, missionaries became impor­tant ­informants for the Siamese court in ­matters relating to ­European cultures, languages, and science. From circa 1828 onward, Mongkut and other royal princes, ministers, and priests frequently met Christian missionaries from all denominations and with their assistance became acquainted with Western languages and learning. Prince Mongkut, whom the missionaries referred to as Chao Fa Yai (elder prince) before he became king in 1851, was particularly open to Western influence. He learned some Latin and French from the Catholic missionary Jean-­Baptiste Pallegoix and took E ­ nglish lessons from Jesse Caswell, an American Protestant who came to Siam in 1840 as an agent of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). Both Pallegoix and Caswell became close friends of the ­f uture king.18 Despite t­ hese friendships, the relationship between Buddhists and Christians was difficult from the outset. The missionaries believed in Chris­tian­ity as the only path to religious salvation and rejected Buddhism as essentially false and barbaric. This belief in their religious and cultural superiority was often paired with p ­ olitical pressure and military threats from ­European colonizing powers. By the ­middle of the nineteenth c­ entury, the borders of the British Empire had become ominously close to ­t hose of the Siamese kingdom and the French had expanded their influence in what was ­later called Indochina on the eastern mainland, often at the expense of Siamese p ­ olitical claims in the region. Nevertheless, missionaries figured

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as genuine representatives of Western modernity, whose advanced knowledge of the arts and sciences was particularly attractive to Siamese elites, who in many ways shared their belief in scientific rationality.

The Mirror of the Enlightenment Religion and science have long had a tangled and difficult relationship in Christian ­European culture. The emergence of modern science during the R ­ enaissance fundamentally altered historical ways of knowing nature, often at the expense of the medieval ideas about the natu­ral world. Enlightenment ­philosophers in the eigh­teenth ­century questioned the universalistic claims of Christian doctrines and advocated a new civil order founded on reason, science, and natu­ral law rather than on tradition or belief. However, although Enlightenment protagonists w ­ ere usually secular in their outlook or even hostile to the church, most of them still retained a belief in God, and scientific developments of the period did not automatically contradict the teachings of Christian religion.19 Historians have stressed that the Jesuit order played an impor­tant role in the emergence and establishment of what has been called the scientific revolution in the West and provided an institutional home for an enormous variety of scientific practices during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many features that characterized the Jesuit mission appear distinctively modern: its global expanse, the ­great mobility of its members, and the Jesuits’ ability to use science as a tool for promoting the goals of the Christian mission.20 The American sociologist Robert K. Merton has even proposed a positive correlation between Chris­tian­ity and modern science, particularly between the rise of Protestant Pietism in the form of Puritanism and early experimental science.21 Although this view generated much opposition among historians, it is striking that Protestants increasingly became fascinated by the sciences during the first half of the nineteenth ­century. Missionaries arrived in Siam with a par­t ic­u ­lar mindset that was both inspired and challenged by the E ­ uropean Enlightenment and the intellectual forces it had unleashed in modern Western thought. Based on common sense ideas of the world, the missionaries believed that nature contains clear evidence of God’s existence and perfection. Each t­ hing that exists in the universe, they argued, is bound by laws it has no choice but to obey. Th ­ ese laws are precise and immaculate ­because the universe has a creator God who is logical and has imposed order on his creation. Protestant scholars who proposed this type of natu­ral theology did not consider Christian philosophy to be opposed to science; instead, they based their beliefs on both the Bible and Baconian empiricism. Although the former revealed the trajectory of God’s creation, the latter

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offered a way to understand the nature and laws of that creation. Antebellum evangelizers in Amer­i­ca aimed to adhere to the same standards of rational investigation as other philosophical and scientific enterprises. They also came to believe that science provides an ample set of tools for promoting the Christian mission. They enthusiastically incorporated the sciences into their college curricula so they could teach young students that nature, like history and scripture, demonstrates the perfection and sovereignty of God.22 American missionaries in Siam inherited their preference for empirical science from the philosophies of Thomas Reid and John Witherspoon. Scottish Common Sense Realism was a Christian response to the writings of John Locke and David Hume, who presented a critical philosophy of h ­ uman knowledge based on empirical inquiry. They ­were firmly rooted in the ­European intellectual tradition of Greek philosophy and Chris­tian­ity, but the “age of discoveries” and the enormous expansion of ­European power all over the globe in the centuries thereafter compelled thinkers at home to look beyond the bound­a ries of the Christian world.23 In An Essay Concerning H ­ uman Understanding (1690), Locke argued against the assumption that h ­ uman beings inherently recognize certain moral truths or are naturally inclined to embrace the idea of the divine, thus challenging the views of Orthodox Calvinist thinkers who believed that a sense of religion or consciousness of God was intrinsic in ­every person. Locke based his argument on seventeenth-­ century French travel lit­er­a­ture on Buddhism in Siam, particularly on the accounts of the Abbé de Choisy and Simon de la Loubère. ­After reading what they had to say about Siamese religion and cosmology, Locke de­cided that Siam was a “polite nation” where ­people are educated and lettered but whose belief system “consists properly in acknowledging no God at all.”24 The case of Siam and more examples from China and other “heathen” countries led him to conclude that cultural diversity rules out the possibility of common moral princi­ples around the globe. If a man has any knowledge about God, Locke claimed, this knowledge is acquired through experience, custom, and education. He argued that religions differ according to time and place and that not all of t­ hese religions worship a creator god. Locke denied man a natu­ral inclination to direct us to God or the good, and thus implicitly denied the existence of a natu­ral theology, a basic premise of most overseas missionaries. Although Locke’s empiricism raised doubts about the authority of the church and Christian orthodoxy, he eventually “reposed more faith in Scripture as a source of moral guidance than he did in unaided rationality,” as Daniel Carey has noted.25 David Hume was more radical in this regard. In his Treatise of H ­ uman Nature (1740), he raised the general prob­lem of the existence and objective properties of

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the external world beyond a person’s immediate sense experience. Accepting Locke’s contention that man is born with an empty mind and that every­t hing he ever knows must come through his senses, Hume argued that ­t here is no way of proving that God exists b ­ ecause all we can know is our own ideas, which are formed by sense impressions but not by any realities beyond them. In the section entitled “Of personal identity,” Hume said that even though most (­European) ­philosophers believed that ­human beings are continuously aware of something they call the self, ­t here was nothing to substantiate this belief ­because ­every idea a person can have comes from sense impressions. This was a prob­lem for Hume ­because “self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are supposed to have reference.”26 Hume’s epistemological skepticism led to a range of troubling conclusions for religious orthodoxy and for the theological foundations of the Christian mission. At the same time, his radical philosophy appeared far fetched to the g­ reat majority of his readers, who firmly believed in a real world that was accessible to ­human perception. In his l­ater work on the Natu­ral History of Religion (1757), Hume insinuated that many events recounted in the Bible could not be wholly verified and said that it was not rational to maintain religious beliefs in the absence of evidence or arguments to support them.27 This position was naturally unacceptable for Christian believers, who universally viewed his philosophy as destructive and essentially atheistic. One of Hume’s most determined critics was the Scottish p ­ hilosopher Thomas Reid, the son of a minister who had been a Presbyterian minister himself before he became a professor of philosophy in Aberdeen. Reid sought to refute Hume’s skepticism in the interests of common sense and Chris­tian­ity. He had no doubt that h ­ uman senses deal with real objects and pro­cesses b ­ ecause he presupposed that God exists and is not a deceiver. Therefore, he claimed, if the natu­ral princi­ples by which h ­ umans are constituted are not deceptive, then the sensations h ­ umans experience indicate an external existence beyond the contents of our senses. For Reid, perceptual beliefs in the existence of what ­people see directly before them are justified or evident in themselves.28 Even if we admit that our observations could deceive us and that the true essence of t­ hings is quite dif­fer­ent from what our minds and senses tell us, Reid wrote, we need not worry about such a possibility. We get along in life only if we believe our observations. Reid did not try to arrive at a view of ­things through complicated ways of reasoning (although his arguments w ­ ere often complex and sophisticated); instead, he advocated ­going back to the views that the ­human mind adopts instinctively. Moreover, common sense told Reid that Hume was caught in an obvious dilemma ­because he left open what philosophical communication refers to if not to a presupposed real­ity. Although Hume

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skeptically proposed giving up the illusion of the existence of an eternal world that is naturally related to our impressions, Reid observed that Hume “[found] himself absolutely and necessarily determined, to live and talk and act like all other ­people in the common affairs of life.”29 The Scottish Presbyterian theologian John Witherspoon was one of the most impor­tant transmitters of Scottish Common Sense philosophy in late colonial North Amer­i­ca. He graduated in Edinburgh and in 1768 immigrated to the East Coast of the United States, where he became dean of Prince­ton College in New Jersey. Several years l­ater, he was the only cleric to sign the Declaration of ­Independence on July 4, 1776. Throughout his ­career, Witherspoon warned that Hume’s skepticism was harmful ­because it called into question the credibility of ­those who witnessed the sacrifice of Christ at Golgata. He criticized Hume for deriving his conclusions from idealistic speculation rather than from empirical science, arguing that metaphysical speculation always tends ­toward atheism. In contrast, Witherspoon’s philosophy relied on learning and literary studies without abandoning the most salient theological princi­ples, in par­tic­u­lar the need for external divine assistance.30 Witherspoon was a distinguished supporter of evangelicalism, and during his tenure in Prince­ton he turned the college into “one of the most impressive fortresses of Protestant orthodoxy” in the United States.31 Many of the Presbyterian clergy in Siam w ­ ere trained in Prince­ton’s theological seminary and shared their teacher’s fear of atheism. Recent scholars have noted that Hume’s skepticism bears some resemblance to certain aspects of the Buddhist intellectual tradition, although it is difficult to say to what extent missionaries w ­ ere able to recognize ele­ments of Hume’s detested philosophy in Buddhism. However, Hume’s ideas converge with Buddhist assumptions in their denial of any real­ity of what, according to common Western belief, is the “outside world,” thus questioning the i­ndependent existence of objects as well as the belief in the ­independent self.32 ­These parallels may derive from Hume’s contacts with the French Jesuit missionary Charles Francois Dolu, among ­others, whom he met when he was working on his Treatise at the Royal College in La Flèche from 1735 to 1737. Dolu was a member of the second French embassy to Siam in 1687–1688 and may have provided Hume with information about Siamese Buddhism.33 Three of the Jesuit missionaries from the French embassy had stayed in a monastery in Ayutthaya to learn the Siamese court language (rachasap) and prob­ably conveyed some of the knowledge they had gained to their colleagues in France.34 However, it seems impossible to establish a Buddhist influence on Hume’s philosophy with any certainty ­because he never directly addressed Buddhism in his writings and historical evidence on the time he spent in La Flèche is scarce.

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However, ­because his works ­were still common among evangelical theologians in the nineteenth ­century, many Buddhist arguments against Christian explanations of the world must have sounded familiar to missionaries. Over the years, they had learned to deal with dif­fer­ent forms of atheism in the world, especially in Asia, although they rarely encountered it in as explicit a form as in nineteenth-­century Siamese reform Buddhism. That is not to say that all Siamese Buddhists w ­ ere more rational minded than Christians ­were. It was not even clear to many Western observers that mainstream Buddhists ­were ­really atheists in a strict sense of the word. Most Buddhists accepted the existence of divine spirits (devas) and ghosts (phi) and, like other Southeast Asians, believed in the ability of spirits to cross the line between life and death, remaining unbound in e­ ither state. Siamese Buddhists seemed to be polytheists and atheists at the same time.35 The apparent contradiction between the rational attitude of the Thammayut order and the enduring presence of “superstitious” folk beliefs undermined the modernizing vision of Buddhist reformers. Yet the religious debates of the period revealed the potential Buddhism had to qualify the universal truth claims of Chris­tian­ity, thus providing space for r­ esistance to the impositions of Western modernity. Although the religious views of the Siamese seemed strange and unfamiliar to most pious Christians, some Western observers saw similarities between Buddhism and Chris­t ian­ity. In the seventeenth ­century, Catholic missionaries had sometimes conjectured that both religions derived from a common source that they (wrongly) believed to be the Judaic tradition.36 One striking feature of Buddhism was that it spread over almost all of Asia, so it was intriguing for scholars to speculate about where it originated and how it was dispersed over time. Scholars who visited Buddhist countries learned from local traditions that India was the cradle of Buddhism. In 1724, the French linguist Maturin Veyssière La Croze argued that the “­great legislator of the Indies” had spread his doctrine from India to China around the year AD 60 and had then “infected the kingdoms of Siam, Cambodia, Laos, Cochin China, Tonkin, and several other countries in North and South Asia.”37 Some d ­ ecades ­later, the French Orientalist Joseph de Guignes challenged this genealogy and proposed instead that the “religion of Fo” in China (named ­a fter the Chinese word for the Bud­d ha, fó) was “nothing other than a Chris­t ian­ity deeply corrupted and distorted” by heretical princi­ples borrowed from India. It was not surprising, Guignes concluded, “to find in Siam t­ hose Talapoins [monks] who live in community like monks and obey a species of bishop.”38 In the eigh­teenth c­ entury, t­ here was considerable growth in the study of Eastern religions, not least b ­ ecause of the expansion of E ­ uropean power in Asia and the subsequent discovery of ancient texts from the ­great Asian religious traditions. Pioneering scholars such as Sir William Jones, Thomas Colebrooke, and Abraham

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Hyacinthe Anquetil-­Duperron translated ancient chronicles, l­egal texts, poetic lit­ er­a­ture, and religious writings from Persian and Sans­krit into ­English and French, arousing the interest of the E ­ uropean reading public. Jones’s uncovering of the common roots of Indian, Persian, and ­European languages captivated the imagination of philologists who sought evidence of the existence of an original language of humankind (Ursprache) that they would trace all the languages of the world to.39 Scholars who studied other systems of belief usually applied their assumptions about Chris­tian­ity to them. Most fostered a peculiar sense of origin that melded with a Protestant inclination t­oward textuality and canon. By the eigh­teenth ­century, the study of religions was no longer the exclusive domain of the Church. The scholarly investigation of biblical writings and the rise of biblical criticism in ­Europe opened a new field of intellectual ambition. In 1750, Johann David Michaelis wrote the first modern critical introduction to the New Testament. Similarly, deist ­philosophers such as Hermann Samuel Reimarus and Christian Wolff questioned the very fundaments of Christian doctrine in the name of philosophical reason. Particularly in Wolff’s case, this kind of criticism owed much to the discovery of Asian religious traditions.40 Church authorities warned, no doubt with good reason, that the new rationalistic approach to Chris­tian­ity would lead to a disenchantment with the faith and ultimately result in nihilism, but they did so in vain. ­Europeans became aware that Chris­tian­ity was only one among many other religions in the world, some of which appeared to have an even longer history than the ­European religious traditions. ­Those who studied Eastern religions in the eigh­teenth c­ entury subscribed to a par­tic­u­lar historical, textual, and philological perspective that derived from Christian theology. This mindset could easily be reconciled with the notion of scriptural purity that was so central to the teachings of religious reformers in Siam. Religious scholars of this period who engaged with a comparative study of Chris­tian­ity and Buddhism also perceived that a common inclination ­toward individual spiritual pro­gress had had a profound effect on the historical development of the two religions. For example, the American theologian James Freeman Clarke, who was among the first Americans to seriously study and write about Eastern religions, stressed that both Buddhism and Protestantism derived from religious reform movements whose proponents rejected a hierarchal priestly caste, emphasized humane values, and worshiped godlike founding figures. Beyond ­these similarities, however, the differences between the religious doctrines could hardly be greater. For Clarke, instead of a pointing to a common ancestry, the outward parallels between Chris­tian­ity and Buddhism and their convergent development pointed to a historical homology based on the universal h ­ uman impulse ­toward religion.41 Yet the assumption that Buddhism had a distinct identity,

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a formal structure, and a historical tradition akin to Chris­tian­ity provided a framework for comparison that not only guided Western interpretations of Buddhism but also served as a kind of common ground for the interreligious debates in Siam that began anew when Protestant missionaries went to that country in the nineteenth ­century.

Foundations of the Protestant Mission in Asia Siamese Buddhists certainly noticed that the ceremonies, rituals, and rites of the Roman Catholic Church resembled their own in many ways. They ­were tonsured; they used strings of beads, like the rosary, to count their prayers; they used incense and candles in their worship; they fasted; they had pro­cessions and litanies; and they used holy ­water. The Catholic practice of offering prayers for the dead (which Protestants did not have) seemed to have similar functions as the custom of merit making for the dead in Theravāda Buddhism. ­These observations strengthened the principal Buddhist belief that at their core, all the g­ reat religions embraced essentially the same truth that was clothed in dif­fer­ent modes of expression. However, Protestant missionaries differed from their Catholic ­predecessors in many ways. To the Siamese, the outward appearance and ways of life of Protestants looked secular rather than religious ­because they ­were not celibate and did not live in monastic seclusion. Many Siamese therefore viewed Protestant missionaries as healers, scholars, or teachers but not primarily as clerics. In contrast to Catholic customs, Protestant ceremonies ­were devoid of saints, relics, and sacral iconography, a princi­ple called sola fide in Protestant theology. The new missionaries also had a much stronger preference for the written and printed word. They believed that a true and unadulterated religious practice depended upon a close study of the canonical texts of the Bible (sola scriptura), an obsession they shared with Buddhist reformers of the Thammayut order. B ­ ecause the missionaries w ­ ere convinced that salvation was pos­si­ble for ­every ­human being irrespective of race and culture, they invested much of their energy in translating the books of the Bible into local languages. For Protestants, the path to conversion was an individual p ­ rocess, not primarily a social or communal experience. They believed that religious salvation revealed itself in personal confessions and narratives of individual spiritual pro­gress facilitated by God’s grace (sola gratia) that was often described in diaries, proclaimed in public meetings, and published as personal testimonies in missionary magazines. The idea of establishing Protestant missions in Southeast Asia emerged among vari­ous revivalist groups in ­Europe and North Amer­i­ca. Before the nineteenth ­century, Protestant powers such as the Dutch or the British gave ­little or no thought

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to the possibility of proselytizing in their colonial possessions. Protestant churches in the Netherlands w ­ ere only loosely o ­ rganized and w ­ ere neither prepared nor willing to start such an endeavor on a large scale. In 1661, Koxinga, a Han loyalist of the Ming dynasty, drove the Dutch mission out of Formosa (Taiwan). During the seventeenth c­ entury, nascent missionary endeavors in Ceylon ­were short lived and largely unsuccessful.42 The British w ­ ere long reluctant to support the Christian mission in the Empire as well. They believed that proselytizing work was contrary to the idea of religious tolerance and would likely arouse rebellion among residents of their colonies. The example of Catholic missions in Asia seemed discouraging in this regard. Thus, many in Britain thought that the Christianization of the world was theoretically desirable but doubted that it was practicable or wise to attempt it.43 In the late seventeenth c­ entury, a youn­ger generation of evangelizing Christians, deeply moved by renewed religious fervor, challenged this assumption. The most prominent supporter of a Protestant foreign mission was the British Baptist minister William Carey, who published the manifesto An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen in 1792. His warm embrace of the doctrine of ­free ­w ill contrasted markedly with the Orthodox Calvinist notion of predestination. He believed that Protestant E ­ urope (including E ­ ngland) had a mission to extend its religion and ­political culture throughout the world.44 Carey held secular beliefs that had taken on religious coloring. He was committed to the unity of the ­human race and was convinced that ethnicity, sex, or culture did not pose insurmountable barriers to h ­ uman improvement. Based on a reevaluation of Matthew 28:18–20 and other Bible passages, Carey argued in his treatise that the missionary imperative was not a temporary phase in the history of Chris­tian­ity but was inherent in the Christian message. Carey maintained that the “­great commission” to evangelize around the world was as much an obligation for modern Christians as it had been for the apostles. He did not believe, like moderate Protestants in his time, that a new revelation was needed for the church to pursue the apostolic mandate: It has been said that we ought not to force our way, but to wait for the openings, and leadings of Providence; but . . . what openings of providence do we wait for? We can neither expect to be transported into the heathen world without ordinary means, nor to be endowed with the gift of tongues, &c. when we arrive t here. These would not be providential interpositions, but miraculous ones. Where a command exists nothing can be necessary to render it binding but a removal of t hose obstacles which render obedience impossible, and t hese are removed already.45

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The missionary impulse is difficult to understand outside the context of the millenarianism that spurred nineteenth-­century evangelistic movements in the Christian West.46 Carey expected that Christ would establish a new order on Earth at some point in the ­f uture. He knew that effective evangelistic work required a sound institutional basis. Thus, he founded with Andrew Fuller, John Ryand Jr., and ­others the Par­tic­u ­lar Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Amongst the Heathen (subsequently known as the Baptist Missionary Society). A few months ­later, in June 1793, he embarked for India, where he spent the rest of his life translating the scriptures, preaching the gospel, teaching at a university, and establishing new churches.47 The p ­ olitical climate in Britain became more favorable for evangelistic work in the years that followed. Forces ­were gaining ground in support of missionizing as a means of mitigating the consequences of colonial rule.48 Missionary groups from vari­ous denominations followed Carey’s example and founded seven more missionary socie­ties in ­England, including the London Missionary Society (1795) and the Anglican Church Mission Society (1799).49 Religious enthusiasm also became widespread on the Continent, where new evangelizing movements established a range of national mission socie­ties such as the Nederlandsch Zendelinggenootschap in Holland (1797), the Basler Mission in Switzerland (1815), and the Danske Missionsselskab in Denmark (1821). German congregations formed four missionary socie­ties in the period 1824 to 1836 in Berlin, Cologne, Bremen, and Leipzig.50 Another center of Protestant revivalism was the United States, where a broad religious movement known as the Second G ­ reat Awakening had emerged in the eigh­teenth ­century that promoted an active, an emotional, and, in par­tic­u ­lar, an evangelizing form of Chris­tian­ity. The majority of Protestant missionaries in Siam came from the East Coast of the United States, where most headquarters of the mission socie­ties ­were located. They ­were able to build on broad public support at home and w ­ ere comparatively well funded, even though it was usually expected that the mission stations would become financially i­ ndependent a­ fter the initial phase. From 1810 to 1870, American Protestant churches established about a dozen agencies whose goals w ­ ere evangelism and distribution of the Bible, among them the American Bible Society (founded in 1816) and the American Missionary Association (1846). Methodist and Baptist clerics spearheaded the American inland mission and took the spirit of revival to US villages and cities. Itinerant preachers of the ABCFM sought to lead the way abroad and founded missionary stations all over Asia and the Pacific. In addition to their involvement in one of ­t hese interdenominational agencies, the Baptist and Presbyterian denominations inaugurated their own mission works, both at home and overseas.51

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The rapid growth in transportation and communication in the nineteenth c­ entury greatly improved the operating conditions for overseas missions. Th ­ ese changes made it pos­si­ble for religious authorities to expand and improve bureaucracies and training institutions. Cooperation over long distances became easier; ­European and American missions w ­ ere connected by global networks of information, correspondence, and personnel. Contacts between British and North American socie­ties ­were particularly close and took many forms over the course of the c­ entury. Transatlantic ties w ­ ere reinforced by p ­ olitical cooperation, an exchange of lit­er­a­ture and revivalist impulses, and the occasional intermarriage of members of missionary families.52 Personal contacts w ­ ere crucial for the spread of proselytizing work in Asia. In India, William Carey met the American Congregational missionary Adoniram Judson. He and his wife Ann Hasseltine Judson ­were the first American missionaries to work in Southeast Asia. They ­were en route to Burma, where the ABCFM had sent them in 1812 to build up a missionary station. ­After long conversations with Carey in Calcutta, the Judsons became Baptists and w ­ ere baptized by immersion by William Ward. Judson declared that ­after this, it was no longer pos­si­ble for him to follow the instructions of the ABCFM with regard to baptism. He left the ABCFM and continued his work with the newly formed Baptist General Missionary Convention.53 In Burma, the Judsons ­were joined by John Taylor Jones and Eliza Grew Jones, a Baptist missionary ­couple from New ­England, who helped them translate Christian lit­er­a­ture into Burmese and taught at a small boarding school. In 1831, a­ fter two years of s­ ervice in Burma, the Joneses left to continue their proselytizing work in Siam. Ten years l­ater, the American missionary and machinist John H. Chandler took the same route. He first worked ­under the aegis of Adoniram Judson and in 1843 moved over to Siam, where he stayed with his ­family ­until 1868.54 Religious publications played an impor­tant role in what has been called the print revolution, the mass reproduction of printed material in a wide range of languages and the dissemination of printed lit­er­a­ture on a global scale. The huge outflow of missionary publications in the United States and E ­ urope helped improve the public image of Christian missions in the home countries of missionaries, and churches took advantage of t­ hese new opportunities to transmit their religious ideas over long distances. Mission socie­ties published numerous journals and magazines to convey information about the pro­gress of evangelizing work in countries around the world. Over the years, t­ hese writings began to dominate the public imagination of the non-­Western world.55 Readers interested in the Siam mission could choose from a variety of monthly or fortnightly journals such as the Baptist Missionary Magazine, the congregational Missionary Herald, and the Presbyterian Foreign Missionary.

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Missionaries in the field printed thousands of copies of Christian tracts and translations of the Bible in Thai, Chinese, Burmese, and other Asian languages. In addition, clergymen such as Dan Beach Bradley and Samuel Jones Smith tried to reach a wider audience by editing the Bangkok Calendar, a yearly almanac in ­English published between 1859 and 1873, and the annual magazine Siam Repository (1869–1874), addressing above all the growing number of farang (Westerners) living in the country. They also published the Bangkok Recorder, the Siam Weekly Advertiser, and other newspapers in E ­ nglish and Thai. The Catholic bishop Jean-­Baptiste Pallegoix also made use of the printing press, although his publications ­were almost exclusively devoted to religious topics.56 Missionaries developed connections with Asian ­people that ­were dif­fer­ent from ­those of colonial administrators and businessmen. They w ­ ere obliged to study Asian languages and socie­ties to a depth beyond that attained by o ­ thers, and they wrote and rewrote translations of the scriptures and printed Christian tracts using vari­ous Asian idioms and scripts. The British and Foreign Bible ­Society, which was founded in 1804, sought to create a nondenominational network of experts to translate, revise, print, and distribute affordable Bibles in ­England, continental ­Europe, India, and other parts of the world.57 ­Because religious propaganda was needed in order to raise the funds missionaries needed for their work, missionary socie­ties sought to address a wide readership. They constructed an image of the foreign “other” that fit with their purposes, complementing and sometimes challenging the views of academic Orientalists and colonial officials. According to recent studies, 300 missionary periodicals w ­ ere established during the nineteenth c­ entury in Britain alone, in addition to the hundreds more that ­were established in the United States, continental E ­ urope, and in US and E ­ uropean colonies.58 Another striking feature of evangelizing movements in the nineteenth c­ entury is the predominance of female converts, particularly in the United States, where they outnumbered male converts by approximately 30 ­percent. Female piety was stimulated by the industrial revolution, which transformed New ­England’s agriculture-­based ­house­hold economy into a market economy in the ­decades following American ­independence. Young unmarried w ­ omen w ­ ere more directly affected by ­t hese developments than other groups in society b ­ ecause they largely depended on general h ­ ouse­hold work conducted in the ­family. Professional specialization, wage earning, and an increase in cash-­based purchases of h ­ ouse­hold goods decreased the importance of domestic manufacturing and brought young ­women uncertainty rather than opportunity. Evangelical socie­t ies could offer safety and comfort to young w ­ omen who ­were “unsettled” and “disoriented.” In theory, conversion also opened up an ave­nue to circumvent the authority of men

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over w ­ omen b ­ ecause it established a direct relation to God’s authority. At the same time, regular church ­services and additional small group meetings put effective pressure on participants to convert and devote their life exclusively to religion thereafter.59 Protestant missionaries believed that the biblical mandate to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19–20) applied to both Christian ­women and men.60 The religious activism of evangelizing movements often instilled the desire among ­women to do more to promote their faith. Becoming a missionary wife was one pos­si­ble way for a ­woman to operate successfully within church circles and gain recognition in her peer group. W ­ omen w ­ ere no less energetic missionaries than men, although most missionary socie­ties downplayed w ­ omen’s early engagements with evangelistic activity. Throughout the nineteenth c­ entury, ­women served as itinerant evangelists, deacons, schoolteachers, and delegates, but it was many years before they could be officially ordained; public ministry was long restricted to men. W ­ omen w ­ ere expected to exhibit self-­renunciation rather than self-­assertion and to assist their husbands instead of pursuing evangelism in their own right. The ideal missionary wife was a ­mother or a martyr rather than a preacher or a scholar. Nevertheless, the role made it pos­si­ble for w ­ omen to do work that was challenging and fascinating. The idea of crossing cultural borders and traveling to distant locales was particularly in­ter­est­ing to Western readers with a taste for the remote and the exotic. The mission presses in ­Europe and the United States published numerous biographies of missionary heroines such as Ann Hazeltine Judson, Harriet Atwood Newell, and Eliza Grew Jones, whose adventurous life stories addressed a pious female audience at home and ­were instrumental in recruiting new personnel for foreign missions.61 Many Protestant missionaries ­were diligent writers ­because religious writing was central to the evangelical way of life and part of a profession of faith. All clergy wrote something about their work, even if the writing consisted only of letters to their support groups at home or personal notes and diaries. They had the habit of self-­description and self-­justification, constantly bearing witness to their faith and reflecting on their experiences in the lands of the “heathens.” Missionaries saw their life path as a religious journey that proceeded from ignorance to enlightenment and ultimately from this world to the next. Conversion did not mean spiritual complacency but was a constant strug­gle for spiritual pro­gress that missionaries documented in a personal journal or some other form of self-­narrative.62 For example, Eliza Grew’s memoir contains numerous passages of painful self-­inspection and lengthy theological reflections that testify to her quest for a stronger faith.63 The narrative transforms her life course as a missionary into a pathway to personal

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sanctification that was both a physical voyage and a ­mental exercise and unfolded in a sequence of biographical stations a missionary wife had to pass, from worldly and indulgent youth to religious awakening and from conversion to self-­sacrifice to serve the mission of promoting Christ’s kingdom. Missionary writings ­were meant to generate prayers and financial support at home and to help readers better understand the many difficulties missionaries encountered on their sacred journeys. Christian churches and missionary socie­ties built up large libraries and archives where t­ hese testimonies w ­ ere stored, evaluated, and selected for publication. The travelogues, letters, and diaries that mission presses published contained previously unknown information on a wide range of themes, including geography, history, p ­ olitical institutions, population, and information about the ethnic groups who lived in the countries where missionaries ­were stationed. Even readers who ­were indifferent to religion became aware of the impor­tant roles missionaries played in the history of the E ­ uropean expansion and the significant contributions many of them made to Western knowledge about the world. Several missionaries in Asia became respected scholars in their field of expertise. Examples include the Scottish Anglican missionary James Legge, who was acknowledged as a prolific translator of classical Chinese texts into E ­ nglish, and his compatriot Robert Caldwell in India, who became an acclaimed linguist of Indian languages. Adoniram Judson was venerated by Western scholars for his contributions to the study of Burmese culture and language, and Dan Beach Bradley is remembered in Thailand as the most impor­tant broker of Western knowledge in nineteenth-­century Siam, where he served as a central intermediary in p ­ olitical negotiations between the Siamese court and Western countries. His diaries, printed journals, calendars, and religious tracts are crucial sources for our understanding of the history of Siam and the role Chris­tian­ ity played in the period.

Evangelicals in Siam The Protestant mission in Siam began in the first half of the nineteenth c­ entury, when ministers from dif­fer­ent denominations and backgrounds began to pour into the country, partly b ­ ecause of the reopening of relations with Western countries ­under King Rama III. The first missionaries to arrive in Bangkok ­were the German Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff, who was traveling at his own expense, and the Anglican Jacob Tomlin from the London Missionary Society. They came to Siam in August 1828 to work among the Chinese diaspora in the country and moved between Bangkok and other mission posts in Southeast Asia in subsequent years. In 1831, David Abeel, an American missionary ordained in the Dutch

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Reformed Church who held an appointment from the American Mission Board, joined the group. The main purpose of t­ hese three men was to locate suitable missionary stations along the way to China. Their long-­term objective was to spread Chris­tian­ity in East Asia, especially in the Chinese hinterland.64 They lived in a small wooden cottage on the bank of the Chao Phraya River in Bangkok. The ­house was owned by the Portuguese consul, Carlos de Silveira, who helped the missionaries s­ ettle in ­after their arrival and introduced them to the few ­Europeans who w ­ ere living in the Siamese capital.65 Gützlaff had received his first missionary training in 1821 at the Missionary Institute in Berlin, where he came into contact with Protestant revivalism and pietistic theology. The director of the institute was Johannes Jänicke, a Lutheran preacher from the Moravian Church who instructed young men to prepare them for s­ ervice in E ­ nglish and Dutch missionary socie­ties. ­After two years, Gützlaff left Berlin to continue his education u ­ nder the auspices of the Nederlandsch Zendelinggenootschap in Rotterdam. In 1826, he was posted to Sumatra to serve as a chaplain ­under the Dutch East Indies government, where he may have acquired some basic medical skills and where he studied the Hokkien dialect, classical Chinese, and Malay.66 During his stay in Malacca, he married Maria Newell, a rich ­English w ­ oman from Middlesex, who in 1827 had been appointed the first female missionary of the London Missionary Society and whose fortune Gützlaff inherited a­ fter her premature death in Bangkok in 1831. Three years l­ater, he married Mary Wanstall, who was also from a wealthy E ­ nglish ­family. She helped her husband put his increasingly expensive plans for a mission in China into practice. Gützlaff was a romantic enthusiast whose religious fervor soon became well known among other missionaries. He often blurred the line between devoutness and religious ­fanaticism. He believed in the supremacy of the scriptures as a norm of practice and faith and devoted much of his time to translating the books of the Bible into Asian languages. B ­ ecause ­t hese books required explanation, he also wrote tracts to elucidate their content. In fact, Gützlaff was prob­ably the most prolific writer of the early missionaries in Siam. His fame as a scholar and a missionary predominantly rests upon his work on China, where he spent most of his life as a missionary, producing an impressive number of religious, scholarly, and semi-­ scholarly writings on vari­ous aspects of the M ­ iddle Kingdom. Gützlaff’s oeuvre is astonishingly broad and includes more than 180 titles in vari­ous E ­ uropean and Asian languages, although only a few items deal directly with his experiences in Siam.67 Gützlaff postulated that an intrinsic relationship had unfolded between religion and civilization over the centuries that had brought Protestant nations to the forefront of ­human development. He firmly believed in the benefits of “unshackled

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commercial relations” between all nations and that Chris­tian­ity should be the vehicle through which the West would spread its technologies, values, attitudes, and tastes to ­every corner of the world.68 Gützlaff’s agenda fit well with the imperial ambitions Britain was developing in Asia. The East India Com­pany had become the master of much of the South Asian subcontinent and had gained control of the impor­tant Southeast Asian entrepôts of Malacca and Singapore. British merchants of the East India Com­pany dominated China’s ever-­growing imports of opium. They ­were becoming increasingly interested in the Malay Peninsula and by the time Gützlaff was writing had just extended their influence to lower Burma. Gützlaff was well connected to the British colonial administration, and from 1834 ­until his death in 1851, he served as a secretary to the British superintendent of trade in Guangzhou and Hong Kong. During the First Opium War (1839–1842), Gützlaff acted as an interpreter for British commanders and negotiators, as a temporary magistrate of conquered cities, and as a scout for British forces, all the time still conducting preaching tours and composing Christian pamphlets. Although his support of British imperial politics was instrumental for his work as a religious propagandist and fund-­raiser, it became a source of criticism from other missionaries, who feared that his involvement in British imperialism would jeopardize the success of the Christian mission in China.69 In 1827, the London Missionary Society appointed Cambridge gradu­ate Jacob Tomlin to Malacca. It is difficult to say w ­ hether Tomlin’s life as a missionary was driven by curiosity and religious fervor or if he simply lost his way in Asia. Tomlin frequently moved around the region to connect with other missionaries and stations. He worked temporarily as principal at the Anglo Chinese College; he visited Batavia (present-­day Jakarta), Singapore, and Ba­li; and he spent nine months in Siam during 1828–1829 and 1831–1832, presumably looking for ways to use the kingdom as a backdoor to China. ­Because he was interested in ministry to China, he was attracted to Siam and its large Chinese community as a place to begin. In 1831, Tomlin published Journal of a Nine Months’ Residence in Siam. Shortly ­after his return to Malacca in 1832, he abandoned his work for the London Missionary Society and opened an i­ndependent Christian School for All Nations. In 1836, he left Malacca to travel in Bengal. In 1844, he published Missionary Journals and Letters in London.70 Back in E ­ ngland, he was ordained in the Church of ­England and from 1846 to 1876 served as vicar in Wollaston with Irchester in Northamptonshire.71 As an En­glishman, Tomlin was directly concerned with the ­political maneuvers the British w ­ ere making in Southeast Asia. Formal diplomatic relations between Britain and the court in Bangkok had begun some years before his sojourn in Siam. The first British embassy, which was dispatched in 1822, was headed by

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the East India Com­pany officer John Crawfurd, who wrote a detailed account of his journey but in effect achieved ­little more than opening formal relations with the Siamese kingdom.72 A second envoy, Captain Henry Burney, arrived in Bangkok in 1825 during the First Anglo-­Burmese War. His mission was to renew contacts between the two states and cautiously watch the ­political moves of the Siamese while the war continued. A ­ fter long negotiations with King Rama III and his ministers, Burney succeeded in concluding an official treaty between Siam and Britain. Although the text of the Burney Treaty did not directly address the Christian mission in Siam, Tomlin considered it to be “the best pledge of security to a missionary in Bangkok” b ­ ecause it allowed British subjects to live in Siamese territory and granted them royal protection as long as they obeyed the laws of the country.73 The Siamese government had become aware of the potential threat the British posed to Siam’s national integrity and had slowly increased its circle of pos­si­ ble p ­ olitical allies in the West. In 1833, the first American embassy arrived in Siam to establish friendly relations between the two states. In contrast to Britain, the United States did not have territorial ambitions in the region. US companies even became major suppliers of firearms to the Siamese army. The American legate was Edmund Roberts, who had been appointed by President Andrew Jackson as envoy to the Far East. The agreement he obtained included all the trade advantages granted to Britain in the Burney Treaty and in addition specified the right of the United States to establish a consulate in Siam.74 The reign of King Rama IV was a turning point in Thai history. He instigated a period of reform on vari­ous levels of society and changed how the Bangkok government administered the country, how the Siamese government dealt with foreigners (especially t­ hose from China and Western countries), and how the monks in the t­ emples practiced the Buddhist religion. From an economic point of view, the period 1851–1868 is marked by the conclusion of the Bowring Treaty between Britain and Siam in April 1855. This treaty had a significant effect on the development of the country b ­ ecause it opened Siam to Western trade. The British came to Siam as an imperial power with the potential to use force to protect their economic interests. The outcome of the agreement therefore met London’s chief conditions.75 The treaty did not bring about an instant revolution in Siam’s economic and ­political system, as the British might have had hoped or expected, but one consequence that was immediately felt was a remarkable influx of ­European and other foreign residents who ­were attracted by new trade opportunities in Siam and whose numbers increased significantly a­ fter 1855. The Siamese concluded similar treaties with other nations in subsequent years, including the United States, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Prus­sia.

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Siam’s growing engagement with Western powers encouraged American missionaries to join their ­European counter­parts in exploring the field. The Dutch Reformed minister David Abeel, a gradu­ate of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, was the first American missionary to undertake exploratory work for the ABCFM in Siam. Like Gützlaff and Tomlin, he was an itinerant preacher rather than a stationary missionary. He wandered across three continents, preaching in Atlantic North Amer­i­ca and E ­ urope as well as in East and Southeast Asia. Abeel was an active promoter of female education in Asia and an assiduous writer. He authored an account of his travels in Asia as well as a number of Christian tracts and scholarly articles published in the Chinese Repository, the most widely read periodical about China in the first half of the nineteenth c­ entury.76 The ABCFM and the Board of Foreign Mission of the Reformed Dutch Church jointly published his Journal of a Residence in China and the Neighboring Countries in 1834. The book became very p ­ opular in American missionary circles and was instrumental in establishing American Protestant missions in Asia. A se­lection from Abeel’s diaries and letters was published posthumously in 1849 as the Memoir of the Rev. David Abeel, D.D.77 Abeel’s visits to Siam w ­ ere brief, however, lasting from June 1831 to January 1832 and from May to November 1832. Although his knowledge of the country was therefore rather ­limited, he wrote at length about what he believed was the general character of the Siamese, painting a particularly dark picture of their ­political and moral condition. According to Abeel, the p ­ eople w ­ ere hopelessly steeped in vice and poverty and w ­ ere deprived of any civil rights by a despotic government that treated its subjects like slaves.78 His description of the shortcomings of the Siamese made use of a complex array of ideas on “the Orient” that ­were current in the West, emphasizing the huge gap between the East and the West in social, economic, and ­political development. Some of ­t hese Orientalist ­stereotypes already had a long tradition in Western intellectual thought, such as the perception that despotism prevailed in Siam and among virtually all “Oriental” governments.79 Abeel’s firm judgments about the Siamese kingdom w ­ ere sometimes misleading and far fetched, but he provided his readers with a first impression of an Asian country that was largely unknown in ­Europe or the United States at the time. Abeel, Gützlaff, and Tomlin ­were l­ ittle more than visitors in Siam. They w ­ ere primarily concerned with sowing “gospel seeds” and traveling from place to place. The group dispersed early in 1832, when Tomlin and Abeel returned to Singapore and Gützlaff left for China. The first Protestant missionaries to permanently live and preach in Siam w ­ ere the American Baptist c­ ouple Eliza Grew Jones and John Taylor Jones, who arrived in Bangkok on March 25, 1833. Both w ­ ere natives

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of New ­England, the home of the ­Great Awakening in the United States. They played a pioneering role as authors and translators of Christian texts in Siam and prepared a first complete edition of the New Testament in Thai. John was an active preacher in Siam, restlessly traveling with his wife around Bangkok and other parts of the kingdom to talk to the p ­ eople and distribute religious tracts.80 The Joneses faced a number of difficulties. First, it was more challenging than expected to find a piece of land for the establishment of a missionary station. The Siamese authorities ­were occupied with preparations for war against Vietnam in late 1833 and could not fulfill their promise to help the missionaries erect a ­house for the mission. Moreover, the few Catholic Christians residing in Bangkok w ­ ere mostly hostile ­toward the newcomers and thwarted ­every attempt of the missionaries to find a place for a permanent location in their quarter. In a journal written in November and December 1833, John described the Catholics as “part Portuguese, part Peguan, part Cambodian, part Siamese. . . . ​They are the greatest thieves and drunkards in the country and yet they are proud and always careful to inform strangers, that they are not natives, they are Christians!”81 The Baptists fi­nally established a missionary station of wooden h ­ ouses on a piece of land close to the Portuguese consulate, and in subsequent years they directed most of their efforts ­toward learning the Siamese language and propagating their faith in vernacular language. In 1834, b ­ ecause a large proportion of Bangkok’s inhabitants ­were Chinese immigrants, the Baptist Missionary Society de­cided to appoint William Dean, an American dentist and preacher who spoke the Teochew dialect, as a missionary to the Chinese residents of Siam. Preaching places ­were established in Bangkok and adjacent locales, and the ­women cared for some of the local c­ hildren in two small boarding schools. Eliza Jones worked as an instructor for the Siamese section and helped her husband prepare Christian lit­er­a­ture in the Siamese language. The distribution of tracts and scripture portions became one of the main forms of missionary activity. ­These texts ­were often carried far inland by waterways, often on Chinese junks. The Bangkok station also became a Christian training school for the China mission. John and his colleagues trained several missionaries who ­later relocated to China when the Qing Empire was forced to open to Christian work in the aftermath of the Opium Wars.82 The Joneses faced many discouragements during their stay in Bangkok. They had to cope with religious leaders whose authority was deeply rooted in local traditions. The majority of local members of the Baptist church in Siam w ­ ere p ­ eople from the margins of society such as poor Chinese immigrants.83 Furthermore, living conditions in the tropics w ­ ere harsh and unhealthy for Westerners and the death rate among foreigners was high. Eliza died of cholera on March 28, 1838,

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five years ­after her arrival in Siam. John’s second wife was Judith Leavitt from Meredith Village, New Hampshire, whom he met during a visit to the United States in 1840. She soon fell ill in Bangkok and never recovered, d ­ ying in 1846.84 One year l­ ater, John made another trip to the United States and returned to Siam with his third and last wife, Sarah Sleeper, who had been born in 1812 in Gilford, New Hampshire. She outlived her husband by thirty-­eight years and in 1853 married Samuel Jones Smith, the ­adopted son of John and Eliza, who at the time was around twenty-­t hree years old.85 In 1851, a fire burned down the entire Baptist mission, “including dwellings, chapel, printing-­press, type-­foundry, book-­bindery, libraries, schools and personal property.”86 Generally, Siam had a bad reputation among missionaries even before the arrival of the Baptists. Shortly before her departure, Eliza noted in a letter that Siam was “represented to us as a most undesirable station on e­ very account except the most impor­tant one—­t hat of ­doing good.” In another letter written not long ­after her arrival in Bangkok in 1833, she described her first impressions of Siam and the Siamese: We feel that we are exiles from our native land, our beloved friends, the religious privileges we once enjoyed, and even from civilized life. . . . When we look around on those among whom we dwell, and feel what it is to live in the midst of “a people of unclean lips,” we are ready to cry with Israel’s psalmist, “My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord.” I am now reading the Psalms in course, and find them sweeter and more appropriate than ever before. I was not sensible of the frequency and fervour of David’s complaints of wicked men and the misery of living with them. What a holy indignation does he manifest against sin, and how pathetically does he lament his lot in witnessing it! And if David, though a sinner himself, was distressed by the conversation of the wicked: if even my heart, polluted as it is, can be pained by witnessing the moral depravity of my neighbours and fellow citizens, and feel it to be a calamity to dwell among them, what must our holy and blessed Saviour have endured while sojourning with publicans and sinners, an exile from all the glories of heaven!87 Eliza invoked Isaiah 6:5 and Psalm 84:2 to express her feelings as a stranger living in a land where the number of Christian inhabitants was extremely small. The “Courts of the Lord” ­were far away. Eliza never felt at home in Siam. Even ­after three years of residence in Bangkok, she felt like she was living “in the heart of the e­ nemy’s country,” constantly battling against an ignorant and often hostile environment.88 In a curious memorandum entitled “Resolutions for 1838 to read

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over e­ very night and morning,” she made a list of seven dos and d ­ on’ts to help her hold steadfast to her course (Figure 3). The memorandum, which was not included in her published Memoir, is a document designed to increase self-­control. She admonished herself not to be “impatient when dealing with inferiors” and to “put down wandering thoughts.” But she also reminded herself to “avoid unprofitable conversation,” citing Matthew 12:36, which seems to hint at the resignation that had befallen her t­ oward the end of her life and her gradual withdrawal from the outside world.89

Figure 3. Eliza Grew Jones, “Resolutions for 1838.” Source: American Baptist Historical Society.

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One prob­lem of the Protestant mission was a tendency to social segregation that ran c­ ounter to the cultural eclecticism practiced by the majority of the Siamese p ­ eople, who in everyday life borrowed from many dif­fer­ent religious sources. Like many other Christian groups, the Baptists developed a strong sense of social cohesion. They saw themselves as an exclusive congregation of believers, firmly tied together by a common faith achieved through personal religious enlightenment. Although cooperation with other Protestant ­orders in Siam was obligatory on a professional level, both men and w ­ omen w ­ ere expected to marry (and remarry) within the Baptist camp. Missionaries also had to learn that public preaching alone did not have the desired effect and that additional qualifications would be required for successful missionary work. John Taylor Jones recommended, for instance, that all missionaries to Siam should have some medical knowledge that could serve “as a means of access to the p ­ eople which can be gained in no other way.”90 In 1834, the ABCFM appointed the physician Dan Beach Bradley to work as a missionary in Siam. He arrived in Bangkok in July 1835, where he built up a small medical clinic and stayed, with an interruption of three years, u ­ ntil his death in 1873. Bradley is a well-­k nown figure in Thai history for his pioneering work in medicine and for his l­ater occupation as a court physician. Medical knowledge was a field of par­tic­u ­lar interest for the clerics ­because it is so central to the well-­being of p ­ eople and has been closely intertwined with religion since ancient times. Bradley earned his reputation for being the first surgeon to practice in Bangkok and for introducing inoculation and vaccination, which he successfully used in his lifelong ­battle against smallpox.91 In Chris­tian­ity, the pre­ce­dent for medical work was Christ’s own ministry. Healing practices based on Greco-­Roman traditions feature prominently in the New Testament, which pre­sents Jesus as the first medical missionary, a healer who restored sight to the blind and mobility to the lame. Nineteenth-­century missionaries repeatedly invoked this role model, highlighting the fact that the “divinely-­joined relationship” of preaching and healing had been prevalent throughout the history of Chris­tian­ity.92 The Siamese population certainly understood this context ­because the most impor­tant medical schools w ­ ere located in Buddhist t­ emples (wat), where the ancient books on traditional Hindu-­ Buddhist medicine w ­ ere kept.93 Learned monks collected and preserved t­ hese manuscripts and cautiously expanded their medical knowledge by adding recent information on drugs, pharmacy, and medi­ cation. In 1832, King Rama III confirmed the intimate connection of religion and healing by having all available knowledge of the finest quality in medicine engraved in stone and ordering that the stone tablets be fixed to the walls of the buildings of Wat Pho in Bangkok.94

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Another medical missionary was the American Samuel Reynolds ­House, who arrived in Siam in 1847, when Bradley was on leave in the United States. Born in Waterford, New York, in 1817, ­House graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York in 1845. Shortly thereafter, he joined the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions and was assigned, with missionaries Stephen Mattoon and his wife Mary Lourie Mattoon, to work in Siam. Although t­ here generally was significant demand for medical work in Siam, H ­ ouse became known among his contemporaries as a scientist rather than for his work as a physician or cleric. He even developed an aversion ­toward medical practice and over the years considered giving it up entirely.95 A member of the American Oriental Society, he made meteorological observations on a regular basis and was in contact with the natu­ ral scientist John C. Bowring in Hong Kong, the son of a British diplomat, for whom he collected specimens of Siamese insects and shells.96 Stephen Mattoon, a gradu­ate of Prince­ton Theological Seminary, devoted much of his work in Siam to preaching and Bible translation. He published a number of articles in missionary journals on basic tenets of Siamese Buddhism. Mattoon also acted as an interpreter at the Siamese court. He assisted in the negotiations with Britain and the United States in 1855–1856 and thereafter became acting vice consul for the United States in Siam, an unpaid position he held ­until 1859, when he turned it over to John H. Chandler of the Baptist mission. Mattoon’s industrious wife Mary Lourie Mattoon engaged in keeping ­house, teaching school, distributing the Bible, and proselytizing among Siamese ­women and ­children. A ­ fter his return to the United States in 1865, Mattoon became the first president of the Johnson C. Smith University, a Presbyterian school in Charlotte, North Carolina.97 Protestant missionaries had dif­fer­ent roles and functions in Siam. Some of them, such as Gützlaff and the Joneses, ­were primarily concerned with spreading their faith by preaching, teaching, and translating the Christian message into Thai and other Asian languages. O ­ thers, such as H ­ ouse and Bradley, combined missionary work with the practice of medicine and science and the use of modern technology. ­Others fulfilled religious and diplomatic functions, such as Mattoon and Chandler, who both acted as American vice consul in Siam in the period 1856 to 1861.98 However, the number of converts remained disappointingly low in subsequent years. Western observers found many explanations for the drawbacks the Christian missions faced in Siam: the enduring practice of polygamy, the education of young boys in Buddhist ­temples, the Siamese fear of foreign domination, and internal dissent and competition among the dif­fer­ent missionary o ­ rders. Conflicts ­were frequent not only between Catholics and Protestants but also among missionaries of dif­fer­ent Protestant denominations, who often argued about certain

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points of religious doctrine. Hostilities regularly broke out at their monthly meetings, as Frederick Arthur Neale noted in 1840, and “generally ended in a flood of tears and a hugging match all round.”99 Religious controversies often erupted about points of theology. In 1848, Bradley and his close friend Jesse Caswell w ­ ere expelled from the ABCFM b ­ ecause of their unorthodox views on the subject of sinless perfection.100 They believed that it was theoretically pos­si­ble to attain full sanctification if one lived a life like Christ lived his, while the majority of their fellow missionaries maintained that man was inherently sinful and therefore incapable of moral or spiritual perfection in this world. The conflict also affected the Baptists and Presbyterians in Bangkok, who argued that Bradley and Caswell ­were holding back the pro­gress of the mission with their erroneous beliefs.101 Bradley responded to the accusations with an elaborate treatise on the issue in which he protested against his and Caswell’s expulsion from the ABCFM. Based on a reading of 1 John 3:3 (“And ­every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure”), he explained his position in theological terms: Is it not right to hope and expect to do daily all that God our Savior requires us sincerely to purpose or resolve, or endeavor, or aim, or try to do? Will anyone dare to deny, that He requires us thus to purpose to do all his w ill daily, when He positively commands us to “reckon (calculate upon, regard as,) ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin” continually; and when he assures us that “every man hath this hope in him (the hope of living with Him in glory,) purifieth himself even as He is pure?” What can t hese passages mean less, than that to be a true Christian, is to sincerely purpose, endeavor, aim, or determine to be now and evermore dead indeed unto sin, and pure as God is pure?102 Bradley was preaching his idea of sanctification in a tempered and judicious way. He did not claim that perfection was probable ­because the vast majority of Christians w ­ ere far away from that goal, but he argued the scriptures would not have encouraged man to follow Christ’s example when sanctification was not attainable in this world. If we may not expect his all-sufficient grace to-day, and his strength made perfect in weakness, how can He require us to trust in him for it? If He has told us that we must not expect the grace of Christ to help us to discharge all duty, He has virtually forbidden us to exercise the degree of faith in his Son which He commands us to exercise.103 Bradley’s attempt to vindicate himself was unsuccessful. The ABCFM withdrew funding for his mission in 1847 and forced him to return to the United States,

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where he waited ­until he received an appointment from the American Missionary Association that enabled him to resume his work in Bangkok in 1850. The controversy appears largely irrelevant to practical missionary work in Siam, but Bradley and Caswell found the topic impor­tant enough to run the risk of schism. The doctrine of sinless perfection had been a contested theme since its introduction to Protestant theology by the E ­ nglish preacher John Wesley in the 1760s, one of the founding ­fathers of the Methodist Church.104 Bradley had become familiar with the idea through the teachings of the Presbyterian revivalist leader Charles Grandison Finney, a professor of theology at Oberlin College in Ohio. Finney’s religious ideas contrasted with the traditional view in Calvinist, Lutheran, and Anglican systems that perfection was a gift sometimes bestowed to the r­ ighteous on their deathbed but was usually not bestowed u ­ ntil ­after death. Informed by a deep-­seated distrust of ­human nature, ­t hese Protestants did not believe that any man could cleanse himself from sin ­because that could only happen by the grace of God. Bradley’s vision of sanctification was more optimistic. He preached a teleology of life with God in perfect love, which he construed as an absolute pro­ gress that would lead to full sanctification, whereas most Christians saw the quest for perfection as a necessarily incomplete and therefore open-­ended ­process. Most Protestant churches rejected the concept of spiritual perfection ­because it exhibited some troubling parallels to the Catholic model of a consecrated life that was ascribed to saints, monks, hermits, pious ­widows, and virgins who devoted their entire lives to God as a way of seeking holiness. Indeed, Caswell used to engage in regular devotional exercises that sometimes came suspiciously close to a monastic way of life. He reserved much of his time for fasting and prayer, continually reflecting on his personal relationship with God and scrupulously questioning the pro­gress of his faith. On New Year’s Eve in 1841, he noted in his diary: I am resolved the coming year to have three stated seasons of secret devotion daily. I will in all ordinary cases arise as soon as I first hear the voice of crows in the morning and repair to my closet and spend the time till breakfast in devotional exercises and the study of the Bible. At 12 o’clock, I will have another season of prayer and also directly after tea. I am resolved also to observe the first Monday of each month strictly as a day of fasting and prayer, eating nothing from breakfast to supper, until I see it to be my duty to relax in this respect. At each season of this kind, I will examine myself with reference to the above resolution and seek to conform myself to it.105 Caswell was a man full of doubts about his vocation as a missionary. Constantly striving for spiritual improvement, he indulged in painful self-­examination that often left him in an unwholesome state of despair. Apart from the psycho-

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logical effects the idea of sinless perfection may have had on Caswell’s m ­ ental health, it is difficult to tell the extent to which it affected his missionary methods, if it did at all. However, Caswell’s ascetic lifestyle, his inclination t­ oward science, and perhaps even his unquenchable craving for spiritual perfection attracted Mongkut and many other Buddhist priests, even though Caswell had always been an out­spoken critic of Buddhism. Although many of his own denomination considered him to be a stubborn outsider, it was easier for Caswell than it was for most other Protestant ministers (with the exception of Bradley) to gain access to the members of the Thammayut-­nikai, who became the missionaries’ closest allies at the Siamese court. Caswell worked as a tutor to the prince-­priest in 1845– 1846 and built up a close relationship with his royal student, who had a memorial erected to his former teacher a few years a­ fter Caswell’s death in 1848.106

Figure 4. A portrait of Dan Beach Bradley. N.d. Source: Oberlin College Archives, Oberlin College Library.

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Religious Encounters In princi­ple, Christian missionaries ­were allowed to preach Chris­tian­ity freely and distribute their tracts without restrictions, but they soon became well known to the Siamese as religious fundamentalists. T ­ oward the end of his reign, Rama III ordered the arrest of four Siamese teachers at the mission schools and sued them for having “written for the missionaries t­ hings against his own sacred religion.”107 Suspicion among the Siamese had grown over the years b ­ ecause the missionaries spread their faith with exuberant zeal. Even Western observers sympathetic to the mission feared that the missionaries’ be­hav­ior might destroy the good reputations they could possibly gain as teachers of “Western civilization.” The American envoy Edmund Roberts wrote about Karl Gützlaff’s missionary methods in 1833: ­

In general, up to that point, the Siamese government had been tolerant of other religions. Buddhists never claimed to provide an exclusive path to salvation. Traditionally, adherents of dif­fer­ent faiths had lived in the country according to their own customs and had had considerable freedom in religious ­matters. Although Siamese rulers ­were deeply entrenched in the religious tradition of Theravāda Buddhism and had unlimited power of life and death in Siamese society, they did not claim to have power over the minds of their subjects. In a society whose economy increasingly depended on international trade, religious tolerance was a central strategy for avoiding social conflict. The Siamese state relied on external assistance in many impor­tant ways. The government required the ­service of foreigners to deal with the already ethnically diverse population in the country and in the capital, it sought their linguistic skills in diplomatic intercourse, it benefited from their expertise in military technology, and it used foreign merchant networks to conduct trade.

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The population of the capital had been multireligious since the Ayutthaya period. Merchant families from Burma, Portugal, China, the Netherlands, India, Japan, the Malay states, Persia, and Vietnam lived in separate quarters in the suburbs of the city. Many non-­Siamese officials occupied key positions in the Siamese administration, particularly in the ministry of the phra khlang. For example, the Department of Eastern Maritime Affairs and Crown Junks (Krom Tha Sai) was controlled by a Chinese harbormaster and the Department of Western Maritime Affairs of the Right (Krom Tha Khwa) was headed by South Asian Muslims.109 Writing in 1666, the French missionary Jacques de Bourges noted with g­ reat astonishment that t­ here was prob­ably no other country in the world where all religions enjoyed the freedom they had in Siam: They say that heaven is like a great palace to which several paths lead, some are shorter, some more frequented, some more difficult, but that all in the end arrive at the palace of bliss which men seek; that it would be something too difficult to determine in deciding which of these paths is the best, the more so that the number of religions being great, the examination of them all would be very irksome, and all one’s life would be consumed in this research before being able to decide. And given that they believe in the plurality of gods, they add that as they are all great lords, they require of men different forms of worship and desire to be honoured in diverse fashions.110 In the nineteenth c­ entury, Buddhist priests usually responded to Christian missionaries in the same manner and tried to find similarities rather than differences between their faiths. Siamese Buddhists fostered a genuinely inclusive approach to religious diversity that accepted and respected w ­ hatever was true and good in other traditions. Yet this pluralistic attitude did not mean that Buddhists had no precise understanding of the nature of the final goal of ­human existence and of the means of achieving it.111 They proclaimed that the path to the supreme goal of a holy life—­final deliverance from suffering—­was revealed only in the Bud­ dha’s teachings and could be attained only by following the Noble Eightfold Path and the integrated system of spiritual training it entails.112 However, the exclusivist stance of Buddhism concerning the prospects for final emancipation did not engender a policy of intolerance ­toward other religions. In a letter to Pope Pius IX in 1861, King Mongkut maintained that “no hostility to Chris­tian­ity has ever been manifested ­here in the Kingdom as in cases of the Emperor of China, the king of Annam and other heads of state. This tradition is considered to be well founded by Siam and it breathes a spirit of happy tolerance among the p ­ eople of the Kingdom. For in as much as it is difficult to foretell the shape of the life to

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come thereafter, it is only just to allow ­every person the right to seek happiness therein in his own way.”113 Mongkut’s plea for religious tolerance fit well with nineteenth-­century progressive Western sensibilities. Tolerance of religious difference was a central ­political claim in Western countries, stemming from the Dutch Revolt of the late sixteenth ­century, the Glorious Revolution of 1688–1689 in ­Great Britain, and the late eighteenth-­century revolutions in the British North American colonies and France. It became one of the rights that came to be called ­human rights and made its way into the US Bill of Rights and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. Although freedom of religion was a necessary condition for Christian missionizing abroad, it was not sufficient to facilitate conversions. Buddhist inclusivism did not necessarily promote interfaith dialogue and interest in learning from other religions. For Buddhists, religious tolerance was useful for developing friendships and preventing conflicts among religious communities, but interreligious dialogue was ultimately dispensable from a spiritual point of view.114 Missionaries saw the Buddhist approach to religious pluralism as indifference and considered it to be a major impediment to successful proselytizing. One way of responding to it was open provocation. In a journal entry written in February  1836, John Taylor Jones gave a detailed account of his life as an itinerant preacher in Siam, which he arranged as a series of cross-­cultural encounters. When he was not writing and translating, Jones traveled through Bangkok from t­ emple to ­temple. Following the example of the Judsons in Burma, he would occupy a pavilion on the ­temple ground, waiting with his tracts in hand for ­people to come by. He would physically conquer, as it w ­ ere, the sacral space of the “heathens,” and once a decent-­sized crowd had convened, would begin preaching.115 Siamese Buddhists ­were usually calm and curious enough to tolerate such a transgression, if only to hear a foreigner speaking to them fluently in their native language and to receive the printed lit­er­a­ture missionaries distributed on ­these occasions. Yet Jones often insulted the images of the Bud­dha as pagan idols and openly dismissed indigenous beliefs as inherently wrong. When he was invited on one occasion to attend the opening of a new t­ emple, Jones used the opportunity to publicly preach against Buddhism: ­

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ing” to these “dry bones” might, through the breathing of the Spirit, impart to them some spiritual life.116 One almost inevitable consequence of this be­hav­ior was alienation, if not hostility, from the Siamese. Jones freely admitted that his audiences often ridiculed him or responded to his sermons in harsh and unfriendly ways. Educated in the tradition of Christian martyrdom, however, missionaries of all denominations expected and indeed hoped to excite hostility among their audiences. They deliberately sought confrontation with Buddhist monks in order to instill in them a sense of the Christian message, which they construed as fundamentally dif­fer­ent from Buddhism. ­After five years in Siam, Jesse Caswell summarized his experiences as a preacher: The enmity of the Siamese to the truth seems to come out more and more distinctly, as the gospel becomes better known. Two or three days since, as I was preaching at the tract house, a man, standing behind me, took his quid of betel nut from his mouth, and cast it on my clothes. Yesterday the same t hing was done to Doct. Bradley; and afterwards filth was gathered up from the street and thrown upon him.117 Another way of responding to the Christian message was complete incomprehension. ­There is a telling episode in this regard in a letter Eliza Grew Jones wrote three years a­ fter she arrived in Siam: At the entrance to one of the temples, I met with an old gray-headed man, who was employed to assist in repairing it, and said to him, “you are an old man.” He assented. “You w ill soon die,” I continued, “and then what will become of your spirit?” At first, he replied, he did not know; but the next moment his eye brightened, and he looked upward, pointing toward the sky, and said, “I shall go to heaven for working at this temple.” “No,” said I, “that w ill not take you t here.” “Where shall I go then?” “I do not know; if you worship the true God, and believe in his Son, he will take you to heaven; if not, you cannot be saved.” “Who is the Son of God?” I gave him, in answer to this last question, a brief account of Christ’s mission to earth, and his death on the cross for the salvation of all men, and left him. How did my heart sink within me as I walked down the steps, to see him look up in my face with an expression of wonder, and say, “she can speak Siamese!” And this, thought I, is all the interest the poor old man takes in the glorious tidings which have just reached his ears; and such, my dear

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­There ­were several reasons why it was difficult for Siamese Buddhists to understand the basic ideas of Chris­tian­ity, let alone accept its message as true. The most fundamental prob­lem was the lack of a creator God in Buddhism. ­Because Buddhists assumed that the universe had no beginning, they saw no need for a creator God. They had become familiar with vari­ous forms of theistic religions long before their first encounters with Chris­tian­ity. Many religious traditions in ancient India, such as Hinduism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and the Bahá’í faith, contained ele­ments of ­monotheism and to some extent shared the concept of a creator God.119 Siamese Buddhists’ centuries-­long confrontation with ­t hese religions (and in par­tic­u ­lar with the Hindu tradition of the ­Great Brah­mā) had produced a multitude of commentaries directed against a belief in an all-­powerful creator and other wrong explanations for the origin of the world.120 Siamese monks ­were thus particularly sensitive to this issue and, according to Caswell, especially hard for the Christian missionaries to convince: I had read the fifth commandment, and observed that if it was right and proper for us to honor, love and serve our parents, who nourished us, much more manifestly is it proper that we honor, love and serve the God who created us; that Boodh had created nothing, and, therefore, should not be called God; that the word God should be applied only to the Creator of all things. While proceeding in this strain, the man above mentioned abruptly inquired how I knew anything of the Siamese religion; and how I knew that Boodh created nothing. I replied that Chau Fa, the head priest of the Praklang’s wat, and the head priests of several other wats, admitted this. “Well,” said he, “what has your God done? What merit had he, that should constitute him a God?” This question was accompanied with much gesturing, and repeated so many times, and in such rapid succession, that it really seemed that I should find no opportunity to reply. As soon as he became quiet I said, “The God whom I serve, created the sun, moon and stars, the world and all things therein, he created your body and soul, and, therefore, is your rightful owner and master. He, and he alone, deserves the name of God, and should be loved and served as such.” Upon this he arose from his seat, vociferating that he would have no such God: his god was Boodh, and if he should believe in my God he should go to hell. He then left, with a filthy expression on his lips not proper to be recorded.121

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Related to the concept of a creator God was the Christian idea of original sin. According to the Christian doctrine, each h ­ uman being has been born in a state of sin ­because the first man, Adam, disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge of good and evil, thus transmitting his guilt to his descendants by heredity. Although this concept was so widespread in Christian cultures that it almost required no further explanation, it appeared strange and unfamiliar to ­others. ­There is no sin in Buddhism and no feeling of sin in the biblical sense of the word. It was therefore difficult for the missionaries to explain what original sin meant and how God would show the pious that their sins w ­ ere forgiven, how forgiveness is obtained, or what expiates sin. Bradley reported in his diary about his experiences conveying this notion of sin to his audience: I stood up in the boat and talked and distributed [tracts] to many who came from other places in little boats [and] then held another season of prayer together in our boat. Read a portion of the word of God and sang one of the songs of Zion . . . We went out again into the fields and talked with several companies of souls. Reasoned and disputed with priests not a few. Their chief subject was What sin is—Is it wicked to kill fish, hogs, fowls, ducks, cattle etc. Is it wicked to break the limbs and pick off the leaves of the banyan? It was painful to see that they entertained scarcely another idea of sin than that of killing animals or the violation of some of their foolish notions. We presented Jehovah’s law to them and labored hard to show them what sin is by its pure light. But it seemed as if there was no conscience to receive it and not the least fibre of flesh in their hearts that could be made to feel it. Thus we spent the greater part of the day to the almost entire exhaustion of our strength and to the great trial of our faith and patience.122 ­There was a painful awareness in Theravāda Buddhism of the ­human proclivity to do evil and an urgent need to ­counter this trait. Buddhists know the feeling of guilt, in the sense of an awareness of having willfully transgressed the norms of moral conduct. ­There are many terms in Buddhist lit­er­a­ture that denote evil actions that lead to unsalutary rebirths. Examples include the Pāli terms akusala (unvirtuous action) and pāpa (Thai: bap [บาป]; transgression). The latter has become the standard translation of sin in the Thai Bible and other Christian texts.123 Although ­t here is a certain degree of overlap between sin and bap, its use in a Christian sense is misleading, ­because ­t here is no supreme being in Buddhism whose commandments can be broken and no personal deity to ask for forgiveness and salvation. A “sin” in Buddhism could be a violation of external standards

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such as the five Buddhist precepts. This type of sin could be removed by converting one’s mind and be­hav­ior. A second kind of sin is ignorance, that is, a failure to observe ­t hings as they ­really are. According to Buddhist ethics, this unawareness of real­ity is the basis of spiritual defilement, yet such defilement can only be purified by oneself, not by ­others.124 The missionaries did not limit their activities to the Thai capital. They traveled to vari­ous parts of the kingdom as itinerant preachers, spreading the word of God to every­one who was willing to listen. At the same time, they ­were always keen to expand their knowledge of the country and used e­ very opportunity to gather information about its geography, natu­ral resources, and agricultural products. Bradley spent considerable time describing the flora and fauna of the provinces he was passing through, recording the distances he traveled, and drawing maps of the rivers and the provincial towns he was visiting. ­After Bradley explored the surroundings of Bangkok, he went on a boat trip to Chanthaburi in November and December 1835. During his time in Siam, he also traveled around the provinces of Ratchaburi, Ayutthaya, Kanchanaburi, and Petchaburi. The American Baptists, among them John Taylor Jones, William Dean, and Robert Davenport, made twelve journeys to vari­ous places in what is now central Thailand, including Pak Kret, Sam Khok, Ayutthaya, Phra Putthabat, and Ang Hin.125 Beginning in 1858, the American Presbyterian Daniel McGilvary explored the northern provinces and became the first Protestant missionary to establish Christian schools and missionary stations in northern Siam and present-­day Laos.126 On their preaching tours, the missionaries went from door to door and called at almost e­ very t­ emple, equipped with hundreds of Christian tracts and portions of the Bible to bring the gospel to e­ very monk and layman. Their sermons usually followed a uniform procedure. A missionary would gather an audience of usually five to twenty persons, sometimes attracting p ­ eople’s attention by singing hymns. He would preach, usually for roughly half an hour, and then give the listeners the opportunity to discuss some of the topics he had addressed in his sermon. At the end of the event, he would distribute Christian tracts in Siamese, Burmese, or Chinese to ­t hose who could read. Bradley carefully recorded his experiences in his diary, noting down the themes of his sermons and describing the conversations he had on ­t hese occasions. His comments on Buddhism and the Siamese character in general ­were less than complimentary. He attributed almost all the vices he claimed to have observed among the ­people to spiritual ­causes, including ­people’s inclination for gambling, chewing betel nut, smoking cigars and marijuana (guncha), and a passion for cockfights.127 Bradley repeatedly emphasized in his diary that ­human pro­g ress, morality, prosperity, and social welfare w ­ ere closely linked to conversion to Chris­tian­ity,

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but Buddhism made ­people ignorant and forced them into poverty. Although as an American churchman, Bradley was not a representative of a colonial state such as the British ­were in Burma, Ma­la­ya, Ceylon, or India, he viewed Siam through the lens of religious imperialism. The language he used in describing the ­people and the country expressed contempt for the religion of the “­others” and was sometimes informed by colonial fantasies. He believed that the kingdom would soon flourish both po­liti­cally and eco­nom­ically if only the ­people would renounce Buddhism and convert to the “true faith.” During his journey to Kanchanaburi in December 1856, Bradley noted that “the city could be made a beautiful place ­under a good government and Christian culture.”128 He described the landscape near the town of Ban Baw (in present-­day Myanmar), where he had preached to a handful of priests in a small Buddhist t­ emple, in a similar manner: I and my son walked out to a clear view of the wide and open prairie in the rear of the temple. We stood upon a little hill whether natural or artificial we could not ascertain and had a very animating prospect of a vast expanse of rice fields with mountains beyond. It had every appearance of being indeed a goodly land and needed thoroughgoing Christians to possess it to make it a delightsome land. I could see the time coming and not far distant when it should be thus occasioned and that the work in which we are engaged w ill most certainly lead on to that happy time.129 Three years l­ater, when he was on a preaching tour to Phetchaburi, Bradley presented his detailed description of the landscape, agricultural products, h ­ ouses, streets, towns, and buildings as if the ­whole province was just waiting to be conquered by the Christians from the West. He noted in his diary, “We then went up the summit and had a ­grand view of the country about. The rice fields studded with Palmyra trees w ­ ere particularly cheering. It was an inspiring thought: all ­t hese roads, tracks, ­shall erelong be given to the p ­ eople of the saints of the Most High God.”130 Bradley’s account of the peripheries of the Siamese kingdom not only fit well with many similar comments from other missionaries working in colonial contexts, they also echoed a particularly American frontier spirit, as the historian Frederick Jackson Turner famously called it.131 Turner argued that the concept of the frontier as the “meeting point between savagery and civilization” invoked a spirit of exploration and settlement on an area of “­free land” and the continuous movement of the frontier to the west as American settlers settled across the continent, characteristically ignoring the rights of the Native Americans. The myth of westward-­pushing Protestant Euro-­Americans who transformed the wilderness

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into cultivated land, built towns and churches, and eventually founded a new society was a power­f ul narrative that was easily applicable to other locales. Bradley believed that Christian missionaries in Siam w ­ ere operating as civilizing agents who had been called to tame the immorality and social disorder of the “heathens” by teaching a Christian code of be­hav­ior. American evangelizers tended to identify the United States with the biblical concept of the “chosen nation,” a belief they used to justify their campaigns to conquer the world for Christ. The rhe­toric they employed to describe other religions followed a binary logic that divided the world into good and evil and consistently ascribed non-­Christian systems of thought to Satan’s rebellion against the true faith.132 One consequence of this dualistic worldview was an inability or unwillingness to distinguish between forms of worship that did not follow the Judeo-­ Christian tradition. They ­were convinced that Buddhist and animistic practices, which Christian missionaries described as “idolatry,” had a negative impact on the lives of the Thai ­people. Missionaries believed that ­t hese practices not only cut prac­ti­tion­ers off from God and bound them to dark spiritual powers but also held back technological and economic pro­gress b ­ ecause they inhibited a true understanding of the material world and the laws of nature. On one occasion, Bradley noticed that farmers w ­ ere reluctant to cut down the roots of a sacred banyan tree that ­were strangling the palmyra trees growing next to it. He used this observation as an illustration of the “crushing tendencies of Buddhism”: I am persuaded they had more abundance if they would be more enterprising and diligent. They are extremely indolent, gamble and universally chew betel and smoke cigars and seem to be willing to live upon as little as the beasts. Their religion is choking them in its killing embrace like the banyan which I saw here and t here crushing palmyra trees. . . . So said I to the laity and priests, your religion is crushing you. It is drawing you from your power to become enlightened, enterprising, affluent, good and happy. Many would reply to such teaching: it is true, it is true. But little change can be made for the real good of the people until this religion of the devil’s planting and culture be stripped in great measure from them.133 Bradley was more optimistic about his proselytizing work when he met ­people who w ­ ere curious and w ­ ere open-­minded about questioning their world view. ­After a conversation with two “el­derly laymen” in Kanchanaburi, he enthusiastically noted in his diary: They manifested uncommon interest in the doctrines I taught. I encouraged them to ask me questions on matters of religion as they pleased. They

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became quite free and peculiarly interesting. This enabled me to give them much of the Gospel on just t hose points when the Lord had opened their hearts to hear it. The following are some of their questions—What is sin? What is the law of the true Lord? May men kill animals? And why? How do we get money to support us in our work? How far off is America? Is America indeed away beyond Ceylon? And did you come over those seas? Then it cannot be true what we have been taught that it is impossible to navigate in t hose seas? The idea they have had on t hose wild wastes is that the medium is not exactly water nor air nor fire nor earth but a fluid that will not bear up any water craft. Then they went on to inquire how large our ships are, the shape of the earth. What is motion. How the sun rises and sets. How it is and was that men can be on an opposite side of the globe and not fall off etc. They kept me talking as fast as I could rattle it off for nearly an hour. It was so dark that I could not see their faces. But they proved themselves to be men having the same almighty s[pirit?] with myself and consequently my brethren. I loved them. It seemed to me the Lord had sent them to me and had opened their hearts to a very encouraging degree to hear the word of life from my lips. I entertained fervent hopes that I should meet them in heaven. Gave them each a copy of John’s Gospel and Moses.134

The Primacy of Science and Education Religious encounters with Siamese ­people led missionaries to believe that Western learning was the most promising tool for convincing them of the superiority of Chris­tian­ity over Buddhism. They concluded that closing the knowledge gaps the Siamese had in the natu­ral sciences, geography, medicine, and other disciplines could make the learned among them more open to the arts and sciences developed in Christian culture. In addition, they believed that a high rate of literacy would mean that many ordinary ­people could read the religious tracts and Bible translations they ­were distributing. ­Because ­t hese circumstances appeared favorable for evangelizing work, missionaries pinned their hopes on education. In Siam, the traditional educational institutions w ­ ere in the hands of the Buddhist clergy.135 Buddhist ­temple schools ­were located throughout the kingdom that provided young males with basic knowledge in reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. Monastic teachers taught all social classes, from commoner to noble, but offered instruction only to boys. The schools of large and prestigious monasteries covered a relatively broad range of topics, including astronomy, medicine, law, and lit­er­a­ture, while novices and monks engaged in the study of Buddhism and its sacred languages.136

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Siamese ­popular knowledge was collected in manuals (tamra), which ­were often written in verse form on a variety of subjects that ranged from compilations of magic spells and medical therapies to treatises on astrology, social etiquette, and warfare. The most sophisticated textbook on Thai language and philology, the Cindamani, dates from the reign of King Narai in the latter half of the seventeenth ­century and was still in use throughout the nineteenth c­ entury. It contains explanations of the scripts then in use in Siam, lessons on Siamese prosody and grammar, and a short lexicon. The key concepts and entries of the Cindamani ­were not standardized and changed over time, so a number of dif­fer­ent versions exist in Thai lit­er­a­ture. It became a standard textbook ­after Siamese court scholars published a compilation of two versions commonly known as Phra Horathibodhi’s Cindamani and Prince Wongsathirat’s Cindamani in 1870, printed with the assistance of Samuel Jones Smith’s printing ­house. Dan Beach Bradley produced his own version that adapted content to the needs of Western students of the Thai language.137 The traditional framework of knowledge as taught in Siamese schools is best exemplified by the Traiphum Phra Ruang (Three worlds according to King Ruang). U ­ ntil the mid-­nineteenth ­century, this book provided the theoretical basis for the Theravāda Buddhist understanding of nature and existence and served as a textbook of Buddhism and kingship. The Traiphum sought to make the basic doctrines of Theravāda Buddhism accessible to a lay public; it contains a detailed account of the nature and shape of the Buddhist universe. It divides the cosmos into three planes of existence construed as a hierarchy of merit that accumulates according to kar­ma, or the physical, cognitive, and verbal actions a person has done in their former lives.138 The highest world (arupabhumi) consists of four levels. This is where brahma deities dwell who exist in a formless and insensate state, ­free from perception, desire, and need. The m ­ iddle world, called rupabhumi, or the realm of subtle materiality, is divided into sixteen levels. It hosts brahma deities who have accumulated enough merit to escape from the constraints of worldly desires but who are still conditioned by body and form. The third and lowest world is that of sensual desire (kamabhumi). It is divided into eleven realms that host vari­ous kinds of hell: the realms of animals and suffering ghosts (pret; เปรต), and the world of ­humans, who have been reborn in dif­fer­ent conditions as a result of their merit or failings.139 The Traiphum describes the world of humankind in some detail. This world consists of four continents, each surrounded by wide and impassable oceans. The gigantic Mount Me­ru is placed in the center, around which the sun, moon, and

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stars revolve. Some editions of the book are illuminated with numerous colorful scenes depicting the mythological Himavanta forest with lions, birds, and bovines; Mount Me­ru and the seven mountains of the mythical Cakkavala range; vari­ous kinds of hell and its inhabitants; or the shapes of countries, coasts, and seas.140 However, a central theme of the Traiphum is the relationship between merit, social status, and power. Each form of existence of a ­human being is determined by their deeds and actions in their former lives. Th ­ ose who have been ignorant of the Noble Eightfold Path to salvation are condemned to be reborn in a state of suffering, while t­ hose who have followed the teaching and practice of the Bud­ dha climb the spiritual ladder and fi­nally escape from the painful cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. To some extent, this cosmological order resonates with the hierarchical organization of traditional Thai society (the sakdina), where the quantifications of merit are translated into numerical ranks that indicate a person’s social standing. The numbers represent the number of rai of land a person was entitled to own (one rai is equal to 1,600 square metres). The higher the numerical value of a person’s sakdina, the higher their status in society.141 A considerable part of the Traiphum is devoted to the role and function of the king as the head of the social order. Phra Ruang devoted a long account to the qualities of an ideal monarch as exemplified in the mahacakkavattiraja (wheel-­turning monarch). Phra Ruang’s text emphasized the achievements of such a monarch who preaches the Dhamma to his subjects and vassal states.142 The Traiphum is therefore both a religious text and a ­political statement about the authority of the monarch, whose legitimacy rests on his abilities as a teacher, guardian of the p ­ eople, and protector of Buddhism.143 Missionaries may not have been fully aware of the ­political implications of the Traiphum, but they soon realized its central importance for the Siamese order of knowledge, even though its content is far from scientific. It describes a moral cosmos rather than a physical one. The Traiphum provides no rational explanation for the laws of nature and no realistic description of the material world. It describes the earth as flat and locates it as the center of the universe. The maps it contains are useless for travel or navigation, for they do not show the real shapes of continents, countries, coasts, or seas. Instead, they depict a cosmological order of existence that reveals man’s place in the universe.144 Missionaries harshly criticized its fantastical content, concluding that the general state of education in Siam was poor compared to Western standards, particularly in the natu­ral sciences.145 Yet they also noticed that a new progressive class of educated men who ­were skeptical about many indigenous traditions and world views was gaining influence in the kingdom. John Taylor Jones noted in 1844:

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The “liberal party” (more properly “latitudinarian”) referred to in a communication I lately sent you, are increasing rapidly; and embrace the most intelligent and thoughtful portion of the priesthood, and a large number of other classes. Their views seem strongly to resemble those of Confucius, who, when inquired of regarding heaven and hell, is said to have replied, “We do not yet understand all that pertains to earth, why should we trouble ourselves about what lies beyond it?” They do not expressly deny a future existence, but they say, “What do we know about it?” Some time ago they had rejected most of the geographical and astronomical errors of Budhism, and t hose books which teach them. Only a few days since, one of the most intelligent of them said to me, “We take none of the Budhist books as a guide. We examine them,—what we find probable and reasonable, we adopt,—what is not so, we reject. Gaudama was wise,—but not infallible,” They are “ free thinkers”. And if they learn to think, in any way, an impor tant object is gained. The want of thought, and an apparent inability to think, is often one of the most perplexing and discouraging circumstances to be met with in our attempts to combat error and spread truth. . . . The change to which I have adverted among the priests, is advancing. Very few days pass without some of them calling. Last week I had a three hours’ discussion with about a dozen of them,—young men,— thinkers,—such as I have not before seen in a body during all my residence here. They feel that Buddhism, as a religious system having divine claims, is not tenable. Christianity is too humiliating. They fly to reason,— and would fain set it up as a guide.146 Siamese interest in Western knowledge increased remarkably during the reign of Rama III, particularly among the metropolitan elites who supported Mongkut’s new religious party. Fortunately, missionaries discovered that skills in reading and writing ­were widespread among the males in the kingdom. This was essential for their proj­ect of disseminating their religious message through translations of the Bible and expositions of Chris­tian­ity in journals and tracts written in vernacular language. In 1841, American missionaries reported to the board of the ABCFM that “­t here is no heathen country where so large a proportion of the ­children are readers. And the wats where they are taught afford admirable opportunities of reaching large numbers of them, with a l­ ittle expense of time and strength.”147 Protestant missionaries began their teaching ­careers in Buddhist ­temples and at the royal court in Bangkok. Their first and most prominent student was Prince Mongkut, who in 1845 offered Jesse Caswell office space in one of the ­temple buildings of Wat Bowonniwet to teach E ­ nglish, preach his religion, and distribute his tracts. Mongkut also gave permission to all priests ­under his authority to attend

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Caswell’s sermons as they wished.148 Caswell was greatly interested in science. He kept weather charts during his years in Bangkok and offered a series of scientific lectures. ­After Caswell died in 1848, Samuel Reynolds ­House continued ­these lectures.149 Caswell was also the author of an unpublished Siamese-­English dictionary, an E ­ nglish grammar guide, a catechism of prayer, and a textbook on astronomy in Thai.150 Missionaries also attracted a range of prominent lay students who l­ater occupied impor­tant positions in the Siamese government.151 Among them ­were the ­brothers Chuang and Kham Bunnag, who came from one of the most eminent noble families in the country. The ancestors of the Bunnags had immigrated from Persia to Siam in the early seventeenth c­ entury.152 The f­ amily built close ties with the royal ­family through intermarriage and steady diplomatic ­service, ­adopted Buddhism during the eigh­teenth ­century to permanently secure their position at court, and produced at least five state ministers (ranked as chaophraya) in the Ayutthaya period. Their influence in the kingdom remained strong ­u nder the monarchs of the Chakri dynasty. In the mid-­nineteenth ­century, members of the ­family obtained the most prestigious and lucrative posts in the official hierarchy and controlled much of the ­political administration in the country.153 When King Rama III died in 1851 without appointing an heir to the throne, the Bunnags ­were among ­those who de­cided who should succeed him, successfully supporting Mongkut’s claim to power. As a reward for his loyalty, Chuang became kalahom (head of defense) in Mongkut’s government and served as regent during the early years of the reign of King Chulalongkorn, adopting the title of Somdet Chaophraya Sri Suriwongse. His youn­ger b ­ rother Kham was raised to the rank of chaophraya in 1853 and two years l­ater succeeded his f­ ather as a minister of the royal t­reasury (phra khlang). In 1865, the king awarded him the title of Chaophraya Thiphakorawong, u ­ nder which he is best known t­ oday.154 Mongkut’s youn­ger b ­ rother, Prince Chudamani, was also an ardent student of Western culture. He soon became fluent in E ­ nglish and developed a lifelong interest in engineering and military technology. When Mongkut was crowned in 1851, Chudamani became his second king (uparat), assuming the title of Phra Pinklao. Another of Mongkut’s ­brothers, Prince Wongsathiratsanit, was the head of the royal physicians and was trained in traditional Thai medicine. He joined the group to study Western healing methods with Dan Beach Bradley and l­ater edited a manual on Thai medicinal herbs, produced an augmented version of the Cindamani, and published a number of travel poems (nirat). Wongsathiratsanit occupied several roles in the royal government. Apart from his interests in science and medicine, he commanded a Siamese army that marched against Chiangtung (Kengtung) in 1853. In subsequent years became known in the West as

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a skilled diplomat and politician. He was one of the five Siamese plenipotentiaries who negotiated the Bowring Treaty of 1855 and was among the signatories of the Harris Treaty between Siam and the United States in 1856.155 Throughout the reign of Rama III, the education work of the American missionaries received ­little support from the Siamese government. Their friendly relations with Prince Mongkut and his party ­were informal and ­were watched with suspicion by many at the court, especially by the king himself. Th ­ ese observers noticed that missionaries wanted to do more than educate the comparatively small group of Buddhist scholars in the t­ emples or the tiny class of nobles in the palace; they also wanted to teach the broader population. Missionaries felt that instruction in Western sciences in E ­ nglish could play a special role in winning the consent and cooperation of the Siamese for their civilizing mission. Christian schools from all denominations have historically contributed to channeling Western science into the Siamese kingdom, although the beginnings w ­ ere ­humble. The first school run by the Baptist mission opened in 1838, along with a seminary for biblical studies. ­There was one section for Siamese students and another for pupils of Chinese descent, who outnumbered the Siamese by far. In 1848, Mary Lourie Mattoon started teaching a handful of Siamese c­ hildren of both sexes. She ­later opened a small school in a Burmese village near the mission compound. She taught reading and writing in Siamese, geography, and ­English, but seldom had more than a dozen pupils. Samuel Reynolds H ­ ouse noted in 1850 that it was difficult to get access to the p ­ eople ­because they distrusted Christian teachers who openly criticized Buddhist monastic education: The establishing of schools among the Siamese is a matter that is much in our thoughts and lies very near to our hearts. But the difficulties that in former years have prevented the gathering of children from among this people into mission schools hinder us still. Such is the influence of their religion and the force of custom that every respectable parent feels bound to send his son for a season to the wats—which besides being the temple[s] of idolatry are also the seminaries of instruction for the children of the land, the priests in exchange for the services of the lads teaching them to read and write their native tongue. So that being already provided with free schools of their choice—we can present them with no inducement to commit their children to our care even could their natural distrust of the teachers of a strange religion be overcome.156 Prospects for the Protestant mission became brighter when Mongkut ascended to the throne. Only a few months a­ fter his coronation, he invited the missionar-

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ies to teach ­English, geography, and ­European history (including biblical history) to the princes and ministers at his court. In addition, an interdenominational group of ­women missionaries—­Sarah Blachly Bradley from the American Missionary Association, Presbyterian Mary Lourie Mattoon, and Baptist Sarah Sleeper Jones—­was delegated to instruct the royal wives, concubines, and princesses in the palace. The Protestant w ­ omen enthusiastically welcomed Mongkut’s invitation. They immediately set up a curriculum for six mornings a week and began teaching a class of twenty-­one “pretty bright young girls” from the royal harem.157 Female education was something new to the Siamese, as was the comparatively strong role w ­ omen played in all Protestant communities.158 W ­ omen w ­ ere impor­ tant protagonists of the evangelizing movement and served the mission in vari­ ous capacities, including as translators, nurses, interpreters, and, above all, as teachers. Schools w ­ ere an impor­tant agent of evangelism in the missionary movement of the time. According to a statement of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, the purpose of mission schools in Siam was to “provide Christian education for the Christian youth,” to “win non-­Christian boys and girls to Christ,” to “permeate Siamese society with Christian ideals and standards,” and to “discover and train Christian leaders—­not only for the churches, but for positions in Government, business and professional life.”159 This indoctrination policy induced the missionaries to teach Western knowledge within a Christian framework; they w ­ ere always looking for ways to enrich their lessons with stories from the Bible. Unfortunately for the missionaries, however, the combination of secular and religious learning irritated their students, whose interest in Chris­ tian­ity remained ­limited. ­After two years of teaching, Mary Lourie Mattoon summarized the results: Error and superstition have a strong hold here. Siam is not as the Sandwich Islands were, and as Africa is now, with a people ready to be moulded at your hand; a people with little or no attachment to their own institutions, and so destitute of any system of religion that they seem hungering for some system around which to cling, to satisfy the cravings of the immortal spirit within. Not such is Siam. For centuries royalty here has sat upon her high throne, dispensing her iron mandates to her prostrate subjects. For centuries royalty itself has placed Buddh upon a still higher throne, and has instilled into the people, both by example and precept, the subtle philosophy of Gaudama, or rather the superstitions that have gathered around it through the lapse of more than a thousand years. Buddhism is just the kind of religion to gratify the evil heart—a religion which teaches that by outward ceremonies and merit-making[,] punishment may be

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escaped, and a heaven gained. Yet Buddh shall fall, and this spirit-fettered people be made “free indeed,” “not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.”160 Mattoon was a self-­confident and honest ­woman. She conceded that the missionaries had had ­little success in competing with a religion that had ­shaped Siamese culture for centuries. Buddhism was the primary source of legitimacy for the Siamese monarchy and it was deeply entrenched in p ­ eople’s cultural identity. Missionary teachers recognized that religion and civilization ­were intrinsically connected. They denigrated non-­European religions such as Buddhism as inferior and superstitious while asserting the superiority of Western Chris­tian­ity as rational and progressive and as the only path to spiritual salvation. They did not hesitate to express their beliefs with g­ reat fervor. ­After missionaries had taught at court for three years, the king accused the missionaries, male and female, of per­ sis­tently mixing religion with science and attacking Buddhism during their classes. Mongkut also accused the w ­ omen missionaries of inciting protest among the ­women they ­were teaching by agitating against polygamy. It is not clear how g­ reat their students’ discontent actually was, but Mongkut took the issue seriously enough to publish a proclamation in 1854 that gave all ladies of the Inner Palace the right to leave the royal h ­ ouse­hold without restraint if they wished to do so.161 ­After the king’s proclamation, the missionary wives ­were no longer admitted at the palace. In 1858, Sarah Bradley resumed teaching at the court for a while, but fi­nally Mongkut de­cided to appoint a lay teacher from abroad to avoid ­f uture religious conflicts.162 In 1862, he hired the Anglo-­Indian governess Anna H. Leonowens from Singapore to teach the royal c­ hildren in the palace. Leonowens held this post ­until 1867 and ­later became known in the West for her ­popular writings about the time she spent in Siam.163 Prince Chulalongkorn was among her pupils u ­ ntil 1866, when he left school to become a Buddhist novice.164 The introduction and institutionalization of Western learning in Siam gained momentum when Chulalongkorn became king in 1868. He sought to reform the traditional system of monastic education and promoted the founding of schools based on modern Western standards. Missionaries from the Presbyterian board became his most impor­tant Western partners. In 1875, Harriet M. ­House opened a small boarding school for girls on the grounds of the royal palace.165 Three years ­later, the king invited Samuel G. McFarland to establish a bilingual school for the royal offspring that opened in January 1879. Located in the Nantha Utthayan Palace on the Thonburi side of the capital, it became known in Bangkok first as the Suan Anand School and ­later as Sunanthalai School. It offered classes in mathe­ matics, Western languages, and the arts and sciences. The king strictly forbade

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McFarland and the ­others who taught in the school to use Chris­tian­ity in any way in their instruction. Presbyterian missionaries also established schools in the northern provinces of Chiang Mai and Phetchaburi, where the ­acceptance of the gospel was greater than in Bangkok and local governments placed fewer restrictions on the syllabus.166 Modern education was a contested field in Siam throughout the nineteenth ­century b ­ ecause traditionally t­ here had been “close interrelationships which bound education, religion, and cultural and p ­ olitical life in a complex w ­ hole,” as historian David K. Wyatt has noted.167 Changing the basic patterns of Thai learning and adapting them to Western concepts of education could have had far-­reaching repercussions for the entire p ­ olitical and religious structure of Siamese society. Siamese elites suspected mission schools of trying to lead the students astray by teaching Chris­tian­ity. Indeed, over the years, b ­ ecause of the growing volume of printed lit­er­a­ture missionaries produced, Chris­tian­ity became better known in Siam. The more Buddhists learned about that religion, the more aware they became of the potential danger it posed to their traditional social and p ­ olitical order. In its evangelizing form, Chris­tian­ity was a most disruptive religion. It radically questioned not only Buddhist cosmology and its spiritual foundations but also central institutions of traditional Siamese society, such as slavery, polygamy, and absolute monarchy. The missionaries thus not only translated and taught the scriptures but also weaponized Chris­tian­ity to spread a more broadly conceived vision of “Western civilization.”

C HA P T E R T H R E E

Translating Christianity ­ ­

Protestant missionaries disagreed about w ­ hether the printed word should precede or follow the preacher, w ­ hether they should print translations of only the four gospels, or w ­ hether tracts should explain passages in the Bible in addition to core religious ideas. But they all agreed that Chris­tian­ity could not take root in Siam ­unless its message was disseminated in vernacular language. However, historical scholarship says ­little about what exactly the missionaries translated, how translators became involved in cross-­cultural dialogue, and what consequences translation into vernacular language had for the transmission of the faith as well as for the interpretation of its message. This chapter looks at the lit­er­a­ture Christian missionaries produced during the first ­decades of their work in Siam. Hardly any activity had greater value for the Protestant mission than translating the Christian message into the Thai language. Although almost every­thing missionaries did in Siam was translating in some sense—­preaching, teaching, interpreting, and so on—­writing down words from the Bible in vernacular language and distributing the scriptures in Siam was an achievement that was particularly admired in Protestant circles. However, translating Christian ideas and texts was a cumbersome business. It required a thorough knowledge of foreign idioms based on many years of language study, more often than not conducted ­under arduous and unhealthy conditions. In addition, missionaries had to cope with the prob­lem of translating Christian ideas into a language that inextricably bound sacred terminology to Buddhism. On top of that, even fundamental Christian notions (such as God, creation, sin, the soul, or atonement) w ­ ere new to most Siamese and therefore likely to be misunderstood. B ­ ecause Christian orthodoxy was incompatible with religious ambiguity, talented linguists like Dan Beach Bradley and John Taylor Jones supplemented their sermons with written explanations of the basic tenets of Christian doctrine. Nevertheless, even the ablest translators ­were forced to paraphrase the meaning of Christian terms, often at the expense of conceptual clarity. Some of them borrowed Buddhist expressions or reformulated or recontextualized them in the context of Chris­tian­ity. ­Others tried to circumvent Buddhist concepts by introducing neologisms into Thai religious vocabulary. 82

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Catholic missionaries in Siam had become familiar with ­t hese prob­lems long before the nineteenth ­century. In order to successfully pre­sent Christian ideas in the languages spoken in Siam, they had to become acquainted with the cultural codes and belief systems prevalent in their host society. The French friar Louis Laneau, who was based in Ayutthaya from 1663 ­until his death in 1696, wrote a number of treatises on comparative religion to help his colleagues understand the faith they ­were seeking to replace. He had studied Siamese religious discourse for many years and prob­ably knew more about the topic than any other E ­ uropean in his time. Laneau and his assistants translated a part of the New Testament book of Luke, wrote dif­fer­ent versions of a Siamese catechism, compiled a range of dictionaries and textbooks on language, and drafted treatises on vari­ous aspects of Catholic ritual and doctrine written in Siamese, Pāli, and Mon. All of t­ hese writings ­were manuscripts. Some of them ­were prob­ably used to instruct missionaries who preached to the local population. Other texts ­were addressed to the members of the Siamese court and the Buddhist priesthood.1 Laneau’s writings seem to have fallen into oblivion a­ fter his death; his successors spoke l­ittle or no Siamese. Unable to catechize adults or engage in religious dialogues with Buddhist priests, French missionaries in subsequent d ­ ecades confined their activities to pastoral work among the few adult Christians residing in the country and baptizing c­ hildren at death’s door.2 The Catholic mission did not publish a book in Thailand u ­ ntil 1796. Nangsue kham son Christang Phàc ton (Book of Christian teachings: The early part) contained explanations of some major Christian doctrines. It was produced by a group of unnamed local scholars, printed in Pondicherry in Latin characters, and edited by the French bishop Arnaud-­Antoine Garnault.3 Inspired by the successful introduction of Alexandre de Rhodes’s transliteration system of the ­Vietnamese language (chữ Quốc ngữ), the bishop may have hoped to introduce a similar system in Siam, but this attempt did not succeed. His “hybrid” text was a brief intermediate step on the way to a Catholic mission entirely conducted in Thai language that used texts published in Thai script. That did not happen ­until 1850, when the Church revived the mission in Siam and sent Bishop Jean-­Baptiste Pallegoix, who established his own printing press and began to publish Thai catechisms, pastoral letters, and schoolbooks for converts to the Catholic faith.4

Gützlaff ’s First Translations From the moment they arrived in Siam, Protestant missionaries w ­ ere more active than Catholic missionaries about systematically writing, printing, and disseminating Christian lit­er­a­ture in Thai. They firmly believed that individual salvation

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was achieved through faith and a clear understanding of the message of the Bible. When Karl Gützlaff and Jacob Tomlin arrived in Siam in 1828, they brought a substantial number of Chinese tracts from Singapore and immediately began distributing them to the Chinese-­speaking population. Gützlaff was interested in languages and had learned Dutch, Malay, and Chinese during his missionary training in Rotterdam and Batavia. But neither he nor any of his associates could speak Thai, and t­here was l­ittle preliminary work from e­ arlier missionaries they could build on. The only Christian writings from a Protestant pen then available w ­ ere a catechism printed in Thai letters in Serampore, India, at the end of 1819 and a draft version of the Gospel of Matthew prepared by Ann Hazeltine Judson. In addition, missionaries had come across a number of Siamese translations and fragments of translations made by Catholic priests that consisted of “select lives of the saints, some parts of the New and Old Testament, all in manuscript and Roman character,” as Tomlin noted in his journal.5 Gützlaff took the initiative in most of the missionaries’ activities and was especially engaged in translation work. As a rule, he wanted the language to be as ­simple as pos­si­ble to enable ­every Siamese reader to understand the core of the Christian message. Although the doctrines of the scriptures ­were complex and sublime, he argued, the language of the Bible was remarkably ­simple. As a result, he believed, it was as translatable as any other book.6 Gützlaff’s concept of language owed much to the ideas of German Romanticism, especially ­t hose of the ­philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, who recognized the importance of language and the impact it has on ideas of cultural belonging, individual identity, and intellectual thought. For Gützlaff, as for Herder, each language constituted a par­ tic­u­lar way of being in the world.7 Gützlaff made a threefold distinction between colloquial Thai, a court language based on Cambodian, and a religious language dominated by Pāli, the sacred language of Theravāda Buddhism. Gützlaff criticized ­earlier Catholic translations of the scriptures as being “too literal, and not sufficiently idiomatical, which, in a language so dif­fer­ent from Latin (from which the translations are made) is very natu­ral.”8 On another occasion, he repudiated Pāli as an “extravagant and incomprehensible language . . . ​which can convey to the reader’s mind nothing but confusion.”9 In his translations, Gützlaff preferred the language common p ­ eople used in everyday life. He believed that such language was closer to the true character of the Siamese and (more impor­tant) had not been ­shaped by Buddhist terminology. Gützlaff found many words in Siamese for romantic relations or for descriptions of nature and landscapes; he felt that the language had “all the simplicity and sublimity which we admire in Homer.” But he also observed that the ­simple

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structure and vocabulary of that language meant that it required many loan words from Pāli to denote philosophical or scientific concepts, “since the dialects spoken by so rude a nation as the Siamese had no expressions to define objects of such a nature.” Gützlaff also noted that the Siamese language lacked any ability to articulate “ingenuity, satire, or antithesis,” b ­ ecause more sophisticated figures of lit­er­a­ture and speech w ­ ere “as strange to the style of diction of the Siamese language as to the character of the nation.” According to Gützlaff, translators of the Bible needed to use a plain rather than an elegant style, and translating Christian ideas into Siamese was not an impossible task.10 Much of Gützlaff’s fame in the nineteenth ­century was due to his work as a mediator between the East and the West. In his ­later years, as he looked back on the time he had spent in Siam, Gützlaff emphasized his literary and linguistic work.11 He fashioned himself as a language genius who had mastered the enormously complex Chinese language and spoke a range of regional Chinese dialects plus some other Asian languages, including Thai. The German Erfurter Zeitung rev­er­ent­ly noted in 1850 that Gützlaff had published his works in ten dif­fer­ent idioms and scripts: Dutch, German, Latin, ­English, Siamese, Lao, Cambodian, ­Vietnamese, Chinese, and J­ apanese.12 Compared to his lifelong study of Chinese and the numerous contributions he made to Western sinology in the nineteenth c­ entury, Gützlaff’s Remarks on the Siamese Language are superficial at best. Many of his opinions about its qualities appear biased and Eurocentric to modern readers. Gützlaff was also often misinformed. He wrongly traced the origin of the Siamese script to the Ayutthaya period, said nothing about most con­temporary Thai literary genres, and was more concerned with a philosophical reflection on the interrelationship between language, religion, and national character than he was with the particularities of Siamese language and lit­er­a­ture.13 Gützlaff’s translation practice in Siam was also less elaborate than his ­later writings about that work suggest. He sought above all to produce tangible results as quickly as pos­si­ble and did not dwell on philological details for too long. Gützlaff de­cided to use the Christian lit­er­a­ture he had in Chinese as a basis for his work and hired two local linguists as language teachers and translators. Th ­ ese assistants ­were no mere scribes; they w ­ ere collaborators who corrected m ­ istakes and edited preliminary versions so they would be acceptable literary productions. A frequent complaint among missionaries was that t­ hese men, who had been schooled in the prose of trade contracts or diplomacy, could not bring themselves to write in ­simple enough Thai. One of them was an “old Chinaman” named Hing. Tomlin described him as having a “sound mind, and inquisitive spirit” who at first was “too fond of fine language in translating” but whose style eventually became

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“almost as plain and ­simple as we could wish.” Hing orally translated the Chinese text into Siamese, while “Hom the Burmese” wrote from Hing’s dictation. At a l­ater stage, missionaries also cooperated with a Cambodian scholar named Chaou Bun, who corrected the manuscripts they w ­ ere drafting and, according to Tomlin, possessed a “critical knowledge of Siamese seldom attained by a native.” Fi­nally, the missionaries hired a Siamese scholar named Chaou Run, who was instrumental for translating the book of Genesis into Siamese. Missionaries would have been helpless without the assistance of ­these collaborators, although most of them w ­ ere not native speakers of Siamese. They also did not have a deep knowledge of Chris­tian­ity and showed no inclination to become Christians. Hing was unwilling to follow the strict rules of the Protestant lifestyle his employers attempted to impose on him and left the mission ­after only four months, perhaps ­because he feared being arrested ­because of his collaboration with the foreigners. The learned Chaou Bun openly despised the Christian writings he was helping to translate and argued that the books would be “abused and torn by the ­people, and ridiculed by the priests, on account of their blunders,” as Tomlin noted with disappointment.14 Nevertheless, the group managed within a few weeks to render into Siamese the Gospels of John and Luke. Only seven months ­after the missionaries arrived in Bangkok, they had completed the four gospels, the book of Acts, and the Epistle to the Romans.15 Their output was even more impressive in the years thereafter. Gützlaff went to Malacca in the fall of 1829, where he worked at the Anglo-­ Chinese College of the London Missionary Society. While ­there, he married Maria Newell, who had studied Chinese u ­ nder Robert Morrison. Gützlaff returned to Bangkok a few months ­later in order to resume his work in Siam. Maria Gützlaff began compiling a Siamese-­English dictionary, and Tomlin and Gützlaff began translating the New Testament and the book of Psalms into Siamese.16 Their American associate David Abeel reported that when Gützlaff left Siam in June 1831, “the New Testament, and parts of the Old, w ­ ere translated; a vocabulary was formed, and two or three religious books written. One of the tracts went through the press, and has been circulated. The other works required revision and correction, and, owing to a train of providential obstacles, have not been printed to this day.”17 In fact, most of Gützlaff’s works remained in draft form. He sent his translation of the New Testament to the Bible Society for the Netherlands and Flanders to apply for funds for printing a multilanguage edition of the Bible in Khmer, Lao, and Thai, but the mission board had no trust in the quality of the work and provided funding only for the printing and distribution of the Gospel of Luke in Siamese.18

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Gützlaff won a reputation among the Siamese as an able physician (although his knowledge of medicine was in fact quite ­limited), but his missionary efforts ­were largely unsuccessful. His religious zeal repulsed the Siamese population and raised doubts among the elite about his p ­ olitical reliability. Shortly a­ fter their arrival, the royal government suspected Gützlaff and Tomlin of spying for the ­English and threatened to banish them from the kingdom. The kind of Chris­tian­ ity the missionaries brought to Siam remained a mystery to most ­people ­because their gospel translations ­were difficult or impossible for native Thai speakers to understand. Shortly a­ fter Gützlaff and Tomlin arrived in Bangkok, King Rama III appointed a committee of court scholars to translate the Chinese tracts the foreigners ­were distributing into Thai, but the committee reportedly failed to prepare a comprehensible text.19 The missionaries ­were confident in producing translations that would be more comprehensible, but ­little is known so far about the quality of their work. Two translations of Christian texts ascribed to Gützlaff’s workshop are preserved in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. They arrived ­there in November 1834 together with other documents Gützlaff and another preacher named Elias Röttchen sent.20 One manuscript is entitled “Biblische Geschichten” (Stories from the Bible) and is actually a fragment of a Christian sermon or prayer book, although the meaning of the narrative is difficult to grasp (Figure 6). The script is Thai and most words are spelled in phonemic form. The name of God is given as Phraphuthichao, which is what the Siamese call the Bud­d ha, and “God the ­Father” is rendered as Phraputthichao-­bidā.21 This choice of terminology is odd, as it inevitably caused misunderstanding among Siamese readers, who may have thought that Chris­tian­ ity was only a distorted Western variant of Buddhism. Other Christian translators rendered the name of God in a similar manner, for example Bishop Pallegoix in his Dictionarium Linguae Thai (1854).22 Part of Gützlaff’s text deals with content from the Old Testament, including the biblical genealogy from Adam to the lives of Abraham and his wife Sarah and the subsequent generations of Jacob and Isaac. The handwriting is generally clear and clean, although tonal marks are often misplaced and the translators did not follow a uniform orthography. B ­ ecause the manuscript was prob­ably difficult for Siamese readers to decipher, it is perhaps nothing more than an early writing exercise that Gützlaff had kept to pre­sent to potential sponsors as an example of his work. The Siamese text and the script in which it was written may have had an aesthetic appeal in its own right. In Germany, as elsewhere in ­Europe, t­ here was prob­ably no one who could read Gützlaff’s manuscripts or assess their literary value. Gützlaff’s authority as a leading ­European Orientalist rested on his ability

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to go where no Westerner had gone before, particularly by crossing the language barriers that separated the West from the East. Gützlaff had promised to unveil the mysteries that surrounded the lit­er­a­ture, philosophy, and religion of the East for a ­European public. The symbolic value of the Thai manuscripts was likely far greater than the practical use they may have had for spreading the Christian faith in Siam. The other manuscript Gützlaff sent to Berlin is a Thai version of the Gospel of Luke (Figure 5).23 It was prob­ably produced ­later than “Biblische Geschichten” ­because the handwriting is dif­fer­ent and the prose more fluent. The manuscript is incomplete; it starts on page eight with Luke 1:12 and tells the story of the birth and life of John the Baptist, construed (as it is in Luke) as foreshadowing the coming of Christ. Although the Siamese term for God (Phra Chao) used h ­ ere is less burdened with Buddhist connotations, the words for “angel” ­were borrowed from Hindu-­Buddhist language and beliefs.24 Another version of Gützlaff’s translation of Luke is at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich (Figure 7). The manuscript begins with a sermon on man’s sin and the grace (metta karuna) of God (Phra Putthichao), who spares people

Figure 5. Folios from “Das Evangelium Lukas im Siamesischen.” N.d. Source: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.

Figure 6. Folios from “Biblische Geschichten.” N.d. Source: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.

Figure 7. Second page of “Life of Christ.” N.d. Source: Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.

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who accept his terms from any punishment (thot).25 The manuscript then continues with “Nangsue Phra Iesu” (The book of Jesus), a third translation of the book of Luke. It begins with 1:5, omitting a number of verses or parts of verses (such as 1:9–11, 19, 22, 23, and 25) without any indication of doing so.26 This manuscript is obviously a preliminary draft prepared by a team of translators because many words are corrected or crossed out and there are many interpolations in different hands. Although Gützlaff invested a g­ reat deal of money and energy in his work in Siam, his efforts did not yield the desired results. Discouraged by the enduring failure of his mission in terms of conversions (his only convert was the Chinese immigrant Boon-­Tee, or Bun-­Ty) and deeply affected by the sudden death in childbirth of his wife Maria in February 1831, he left Bangkok on a Chinese trading junk and went on a journey along the Chinese coast. He never returned to Siam. While distributing medicines and religious tracts as he traveled along the Chinese coastline, Gützlaff de­cided to concentrate on evangelism t­ here. The account of his journey was originally published in 1832–1833 in the Chinese Repository as a series of articles that established his reputation as a courageous and intrepid proponent of the Protestant mission in China. He ­later moved to Macao, where he met Robert Morrison again and secured the patronage of Alexander Matheson, a wealthy E ­ nglish merchant who lived in Canton. Gützlaff began his work as a publisher and launched his own monthly magazine, Dongxiyangkao Meiyue Tongjizhuan (Eastern western monthly magazine), a periodical about Western culture and learning written in Chinese.27 ­After Morrison died in 1834, Gützlaff succeeded him as Chinese secretary to the British consulate in Canton. In 1840, he founded the Chinese U ­ nion (Fu Han Hui), which promoted Chris­tian­ity in rural China.28 Gützlaff was well connected to mission socie­ties from ­Europe and the United States and used his extensive personal network to promote his religious agenda. As an i­ndependent missionary, he was responsible only to God and was f­ ree to choose what methods to use in his work, but he depended on financial support from generous patrons. In 1849, he went on a long fund-­raising tour in E ­ urope. He preached to pious audiences in E ­ ngland and on the Continent and gave p ­ opular lectures on his adventurous life in China.29 Gützlaff used the opportunity to recruit volunteers for his China mission and founded several local branches of the Chinese ­Union along the way. However, Gützlaff, who was known for his dazzling personality, became one of the most controversial figures of Protestant missionizing in the nineteenth ­century. His involvement in the British opium trade and his work as interpreter to the British plenipotentiary in negotiations during the First Opium War of 1839–

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1842 overshadowed his missionary and scholarly work. Some of his critics in ­Europe, among them the famous Scottish missionary and sinologist James Legge, claimed that Gützlaff’s method of missionizing was superficial and that the indigenous pastors he trained in China w ­ ere acting too in­de­pen­dently. Although most contemporaries acknowledged Gützlaff’s expertise as a scholar of Chinese, the destabilizing effect of his Chinese Bible (which was completed in 1840) was a warning for other missionaries. Gützlaff’s translation of the scriptures became a source of inspiration for Hong Xiuquan (1814–1864), the leader of a religious society who masterminded the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), the largest anti-­ Manchu movement in nineteenth-­century China. Hong even borrowed a phrase in the Gospel of Matthew—­“the kingdom of heaven”—as part of the name of his new regime: the Heavenly Kingdom of ­Great Peace (Taiping Tianguo). Once the Bible had been translated, it was impossible to predict, let alone control, what conclusions new readers would draw from it.30 Gützlaff’s translation work in Siam was certainly less momentous than that, but some of the princi­ples he used in his translation work ­t here and the way he sought to use print technology as a means of spreading the gospel set a pre­ce­dent for missionaries who would soon follow his example.

Translating the Bible During the first d ­ ecades of the Protestant mission in Siam, Baptist, Congregational, and Presbyterian missionaries worked separately and almost si­mul­ta­ neously on Siamese versions of the Bible, competing rather than cooperating with each other. A major prob­lem was the practice of translating and printing the Siamese Bible in bits and pieces. Siamese ­people received the Christian message in fragments, not as a coherent religious doctrine, and in the early nineteenth c­ entury this caused considerable confusion for Siamese readers.31 The American minister John Taylor Jones was the head of the Baptist group. Like Gützlaff, he became an expert in Asian languages and preferred a ­simple narrative style. Many missionaries mythologized the turn to the vernacular as a return to the natu­ral speech of native Siamese and considered this translation practice the best way to convey the ­simple clarity of Christian ideas. In order to come to terms with vernacular language, missionaries needed to harmonize its parts, standardize its orthography, and endow it with a grammar that Westerners could understand. The missionaries published Siamese dictionaries and textbooks based on the rules and princi­ples of nineteenth-­century ­European philology, always searching for ways to make the language look more familiar to Western eyes. When they wrote in Thai script, they introduced punctuation and spaces between words and sentences. Sometimes they

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wrote the entire text in Latin letters. They collected information about the history and diffusion of the Siamese language, and determined its origin and f­ amily roots.32 Jones refrained from using Pāli or Sans­k rit expressions if Siamese terms existed. When Siamese terms did not exist, he tried to find a translation that was as s­ imple as pos­si­ble: The Siamese have no word for week. The name of the days, as Sunday, Monday, &c., corresponding to Western nations, they have—well known to all. How then shall Matthew 28:1 be translated? If we seek the meaning, no one questions but what it is this: “In the end of the Sabbath, as Sunday was dawning”. So then I translate it giving the meaning, and not the words, for this is impossible. . . . After having labored to determine the meaning of the original, I have asked myself—“If an intelligent Siamese had full possession of this idea, how would he express it?” In general I would aim to express it in the same way.33 In other re­spects, Jones’s approach was significantly dif­fer­ent from that of his ­ redecessors. His assessment of Gützlaff’s first translations of the gospels was unp flattering, though respectful in tone; he highlighted the zeal and enormous output of the German missionary but not his qualities as a translator.34 In a public address at the Newton Theological Institution in 1840, Jones described the Siam mission as a long-­term proj­ect based on three princi­ples for missionary work he had developed during his stay in Southeast Asia. First, he argued, it required a solid understanding of the Christian doctrines as Christ had taught them; evangelizing work had to be based on a literal reading of the scriptures, not on individual speculation or esoteric fantasies. Second, missionaries had to acquire a thorough knowledge of the language of the country they ­were missionizing so they did not have to rely on the help of local translators: “The missionary must . . . ​be a perfect master of the language himself; then, and then only, can he successfully communicate the truth by it.” Third, Jones emphasized “a due regard to adaptation in the communication of truth”; the missionary should be “wise in adapting himself, and the truth he utters, to the condition and circumstances of t­ hose whom he would instruct.”35 All t­ hese skills required diligence and patience; they could not be acquired within a few months. Language skills w ­ ere particularly impor­tant. Although Jones spoke Burmese and was prob­ably able to read some Khmer, Pāli, and Mon, the Thai language became his prime object of study. He had started to learn Siamese when he was in Burma. Furthermore, he had lived for roughly a year in Bangkok, further improving his language skills, before he began translation work in 1833.

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According to an obituary published in 1853, Jones was more fluent in Siamese than in ­English at the end of his life, “to the astonishment of his friends who had heard him preach in both.”36 Jones began with translating the New Testament. He published its books in several portions as each section was completed and then published the full New Testament in 1843 and 1850. He mentioned in the preface to the second edition that he had exchanged ideas with his fellow missionaries Jesse Caswell and Charles Robinson, but it is most likely that some of his Siamese language teachers assisted him with translation, at least in the beginning. Eliza Grew Jones’s contribution to her husband’s work was prob­ably also more substantial than he acknowledged. She mentioned in her letters that she had translated into Siamese two books of the Old Testament and was preparing a dictionary of several thousand words of that language.37 She was apparently a talented linguist; according to her former instructor Lydia Sigourney, the young Eliza had learned Greek without the assistance of a teacher.38 In contrast to Gützlaff, Jones based his translations on the Greek scriptures, not on a Chinese translation.39 In addition, he consulted all e­ arlier translations of the Gospel that w ­ ere accessible to him, and with the help of Bishop Pallegoix examined a number of Catholic manuscripts written in the seventeenth and eigh­ teenth centuries. Among ­these texts was an unprinted Gospel of Matthew in Thai written entirely in Latin script that preserved many Latin terms (sacerdos, poenitentia, e­ tc.). In another Catholic version of the book of Matthew, Jones could hardly find a sentence that did not contain many words and phrases from Pāli. He was aware that the attempt to express Christian ideas in written Siamese could easily cause misunderstanding. Translators of the Christian Bible have always been confronted with the prob­lem of finding a balance between literal translation and ­free adaptation. Jones explained that successful translation required ele­ments of both: In regard to the principles on which the translation has been conducted, the main and primary one is that the meaning of an author should be given by the translator, and as much of his manner as the idioms and circumstances will allow. If the translation is to be merely verbal, or strictly literal, the Scriptures might just as well be given in Hebrew or Greek. The Scriptures themselves assert that they are given “for instruction.” Instruction can only profit where it is understood. It may be urged that an attempt to give the meaning makes the translator an expounder. This is true. He cannot be other wise if he would do any good.40 Jones invested most of his time and energy in the 1840s to translation work. He died of dysentery in 1851, only one year ­after the publication of the second

Figure  8. Title page of John Taylor Jones’s translation of the New Testament. 1850. Source: Taylor Institution Library, Oxford, accessed through Google Books, public domain.

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edition of his New Testament. His work was first complemented and then continued by Dan Beach Bradley and Charles Robinson from the ABCFM, who came to Siam in 1834 and 1840, respectively. Robinson translated or revised much of the New Testament and the books of Genesis and Daniel from the Old Testament. Bradley translated the Gospel of John and the Old Testament books of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Jesse Caswell (who died in 1848) was also closely involved in the translation ­process, although no religious work appeared in print u ­ nder his name. The Presbyterian mission in Siam was founded in 1858, when Daniel McGilvary and Jonathan Wilson arrived in Bangkok, followed by Noah A. McDonald and Samuel G. McFarland in 1860. All of them became able translators in subsequent years, frequently revising and re-­editing the scriptures in Thai.41 Missionary translators may have had dif­fer­ent opinions about how to render terms such as “God,” “Jesus,” “to baptize,” or “Holy Spirit” into proper Thai, depending on their personal views about what constituted a good translation. But one t­ hing all translators had in common was a fear of religious syncretism. In the nineteenth ­century, translating the Bible meant connecting dif­fer­ent cultural experiences and universes, bridging the gap between one’s own language and culture and another language and culture while at the same time carefully avoiding the danger of syncretism, which Protestant missionaries regarded as “contaminating” Chris­tian­ity with beliefs and practices from other religions. Borrowing terminology from Buddhist scriptures gave the Thai gospel a flavor that reflected the distinctive language practices of non-­Christian Siamese. In ­t hese moments of entanglement, however, the translator was in danger of failing to differentiate the sacredness of Christ from that of the Bud­dha. Missionaries tried a range of linguistic variants over the years and broadened their vocabulary of synonyms, ­metaphors, and semantic analogies in Thai in order to compose a readable text. They had vari­ous expressions for the name of Jesus. The Son of God appears in Garnault’s Nangsue kham son Christang Phàc ton (1796) ­either plainly as JESU-­Christo or as thàn maha thai (ท่านมหาไทย), that is, The ­Great ­Free. Gützlaff used Butra Phra Phuti Chao (Son of God) for Jesus, among other terms. Jones de­cided to avoid Buddhist language as much as pos­si­ble and often rendered the name of Christ as Phra Yesu Khrit (พระเยซ คู ร สิ ต์ or, in short, Phra Khrit พระคร สิ ต์). He thus created a mixture of a name (Yesu), a loan word (Khrit), and the common word Phra, which was used in Thai as a title or prefix to denote a most revered person, priest, monk, or God. In other cases, it was impossible for the translator avoid using a “pagan” vocabulary. In their translations of Luke, for example, Gützlaff and Jones borrowed the language of Hindu-­Buddhist cosmology by adopting terms like thut sawan (ท ตู สวรรค์) or the Pāli/Sanskrit-­derived thep

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(เทพ) to describe the angels who foretold the births of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ (Luke 1: 5–38).42 Missionary translators used many alternative words and phrases for “God.” The Catholic translator who produced Nangsue kham son Christang Phàc ton sometimes rendered “God” in descriptive form as “pra:phu pen iu, lee ching thi­ nglish, “the God who is, the living and ang thee” (พระผ เู ้ ป น ็ อย แู่ ละจร งิ เท ี ย่ งแท )้ or, in E true one.”43 The translation of God as Phraphuthichao (Lord Bud­dha), which Gützlaff and Pallegoix favored, was ­later deemed inappropriate. Jones and ­others replaced it with Phra Chao or Phra Ong Chao (both are sakdina ranks of royal princes), presumably in order to avoid referring to the name of the Bud­dha. However, t­ hese new phrases posed other prob­lems ­because they ­were frequently used to address the Siamese monarch or members of the high nobility. The same was true for chau xivitr (chao jivit; เจ้าช วี ติ ), or “Lord of Life,” which occurs in the Nangsue kham son Christang Phàc ton, b ­ ecause the term was colloquially employed in Thai court language as an honorary title of the king.44 The appropriation of royal language (ratchasap; ราชาศ พ ั ท์) in translations of the Bible was a recurrent theme among gospel translators, especially in combination with the enduring prob­lem of how to avoid the mixing of Christian and Buddhist concepts. The line between religious and ­political vocabularies was blurred in Thai royal language, so it was difficult for missionaries to find a unique vocabulary to use only for God that fully separated that deity from a ­human ruler. Another difficulty was that ­English translations inevitably assumed an unwanted flavor of Siamese divine kingship that ran c­ ounter to Western p ­ olitical princi­ples. In 1835, the ABCFM missionary Charles Robinson summarized t­ hese prob­lems: Thus in the word Prah-poo-te-chow, ­ ­ ­ (the word for God in Mr. Gutzlaff’s translations, and no other than Lord Boodh.), Prah literally means Lord, and Poo-te ­ is the Siamese way of writing Boodh, by changing the b to p, and the dh to te. Chow is only a title of respect, and is applied to all men of rank. Prah is applied to all the priests, the king and nobles; also to anything pertaining to royalty. Mr. Jones has employed the word Prah-Chow ­ in his translations for the name of the Supreme Being. This is certainly less objectionable, yet we fear it is often understood by this dark-minded people to refer to Boodh, or to some royal person. I have often conversed with Mr. Jones and others, respecting introducing an entirely new word, and we have asked could not the word Jehovah be introduced? It would be pronounced in Siamese almost precisely like the Hebrew word. . . . Every translator into a heathen language w ill find it no easy task to convey correct ideas of the meaning of such words as the soul, angels, hope, faith,

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repentance, benevolence, holiness, heaven, etc. For many of these he will be obliged to coin new words, and then explain them, before they can be understood, for they have no such terms in their language. This is the case in the Siamese. The nearest term to express the idea of prophet, is ho-ra, ­ literally astrologer; that for angel, ta-wa-dah, ­ ­ a fabulous being subject to endless transmigration, sometimes inhabiting one of the heavens, at others dwelling in the most loathsome reptile; for hope, faith, repentance, holiness, gratitude, benevolence, heaven, I cannot find any appropriate terms in their language, especially for the five last mentioned.45 It turned out that the idea of a “pure” Thai language devoid of “pagan” connotations was impossible to realize ­because ­there ­were virtually no words for spiritual subjects in Thai that ­were not somehow connected to Buddhist or pre-­Buddhist meanings. The overlapping of dif­fer­ent spiritual semantics produced an ambiguous narrative space where contradictory expressions of the divine interacted ­until it became difficult to say where Chris­tian­ity ­stopped and Buddhism began. Jones and his colleagues understood that reformulating Christian terms for the Siamese context in order to transmit their true meaning was inevitable, often by appropriating the dif­fer­ent linguistic registers of other languages, even though they ­were aware that they ran the risk of producing religious ambiguities by ­doing so. Their works w ­ ere written in a kind of interlanguage through which the writer’s ­mother tongue can often be heard and traces of “pagan” belief systems are pre­sent. Sometimes Jones even intentionally transgressed the bound­aries between the religions. In some of his ­later works, for instance, he accommodated Siamese traditions of sacred lit­er­a­ture by using Khòm script on the title pages of his publications b ­ ecause he knew that t­ hese letters w ­ ere frequently used in Siam to write Pāli texts (Figure 8).46 In 1850, King Rama III accused him of using “sacred characters” in his gospel translations and had three of the missionaries’ local language teachers temporarily arrested.47 Translating the Bible into Thai was a work in pro­gress throughout the nineteenth c­ entury (and in a sense remains so t­ oday). Over time it became an increasingly collective endeavor. A first full translation of the Bible was published in 1893, more than 200 years a­ fter Bishop Laneau began translating the Gospel of Luke in Ayutthaya and some sixty years ­after Gützlaff began his work for the Protestant mission in Bangkok. Work proceeded slowly compared to the translation work of missionaries in China, Japan, and the ­European colonies in Southeast Asia for several reasons. The Siamese kingdom was po­liti­cally ­independent and comparatively small, the climate was unhealthy for Westerners, the Thai language is complex, and the overwhelming majority of Siamese w ­ ere unwilling to accept the message of

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Christ. The missionaries w ­ ere consistently short of staff and funding, even though the American Bible Society and other Christian institutions gave financial support for the continuation of translation work on vari­ous occasions. It took ­until 1971 to establish a standard Thai version of the ­whole Bible that all Protestant confessions could agree on. That version is still in use t­ oday.48 All Protestant missionaries agreed that printing was an essential feature of the mission proj­ect, but they could not decide on a common publication strategy. Most of them concentrated on printing only gospels, psalms, catechisms, or hymns and ­were opposed to the idea of publishing religious tracts that primarily contained interpretations of the Christian message. In contrast, Bradley was convinced that the books of the Bible ­were not self-­explanatory for Siamese readers. He argued that the scriptures required guidance from a teacher who knew how to bridge the huge gap that divided Christian and Buddhist thought.49 Many of Bradley’s religious works in Thai ­were interpretations of Christian concepts rather than pure translations of sections of the Bible. ­These ­were often infused with allusions to his controversial idea of sinless perfection. For example, in 1837 he printed four tracts entitled The Character of Jehova, The Commandments, The History of Bud­ dha and Christ Compared, and The True and Only Way to Heaven, all of which ­were thinly veiled theological commentaries.50 In the introduction to his Nangsue ni pen ruang kitchakan haeng Phrayesu Chao (Book on the life of Jesus), which was based on the four gospels, Bradley explained that “­t hose who believe in the Son of God and live according to His teachings, ­w ill too become the Son of God, ­w ill be relieved from sin, ascend to heaven, and be happy forever and ever.”51 Bradley construed the life course of Christ as a model that was attainable for mortals. Although this theology distressed his colleagues, it is not difficult to see that Bradley’s narrative was easier to reconcile with the idea of ­human perfection as expounded in Buddhist teachings than the doctrine of salvation by faith alone, which the majority of his fellow missionaries taught. Although religious controversies among the Protestant missions continued over the nineteenth ­century, it was much easier for missionaries to agree on who their external enemies ­were. John Taylor Jones believed that one obstacle to the spread of “true” Chris­tian­ity was the bad example the Catholics had set in the seventeenth c­ entury, when French Jesuits had abused Chris­tian­ity in their thirst for power. The nineteenth-­century Catholic community in Bangkok fared no better in his account. Jones noted that the Roman Church was “despised by every­body, a disgrace to all their races & the name of Christian.”52 The Protestants also scorned what they generally called “heathendom,” a term that included ­t hose who embraced Buddhism and other non-­Abrahamic beliefs such as the animistic cults found among the hill tribes in the north. Yet missionaries believed that “natu­ral”

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or “primitive” religions ­were easier to overcome b ­ ecause they usually lacked a systematic theology and a canon of sacred texts. The most serious competitor of Chris­tian­ity in Siam was Buddhism b ­ ecause it was deeply rooted in Siamese society, ­because it was taught and practiced in numerous ­temples and monasteries, ­because it was protected by an absolute monarchy, and b ­ ecause it was frequently performed in public rituals. It is easy to understand why Buddhism became the primary target of Christian polemics as soon as missionaries had mastered the Thai language.

Comparing Religions ­ ere is a long tradition of comparative religious writing in E Th ­ uropean missionary lit­er­a­ture that in the case of Siam goes back to the seventeenth c­ entury. In a text entitled Recontre avec un sage bouddhiste (Meeting with a Buddhist sage; 1691), Louis Laneau directly addressed the religion of the Siamese in order to refute Buddhist opinions about the meaning of ­human existence and impart an idea of the universal truths of the Christian faith. He employed two narrative traditions to transmit his message: the schema of a Platonic dialogue and the Buddhist distinction between the forest-­dwelling meditating monk (the Buddhist sage or homme de la forêt; forest man) and a (Christian) town dweller (citaden) who studies the Bible.53 The dialogue was originally in Thai and was used for the instruction of fellow missionaries who ­were given the task of preaching to the Siamese population. It addressed some basic themes of beliefs that Laneau considered to be central to Siamese religious doctrine, including a pessimism that was often ascribed to Buddhism, the absence of a creator god, and certain ideas about nature and the cosmos that ran ­counter to the findings of con­temporary Western science.54 Laneau believed that an innate idea of God was common to all ­human beings and maintained that in Siam this idea had been superseded over the centuries by idolatrous rituals and erroneous teachings. Only the Christian religion, he argued, “has managed to preserve an awareness of the love that is due only to the Almighty God.”55 The Siamese respected the sacred scriptures of other religions and usually did not restrict their dissemination in the kingdom. Before the introduction of print in Siam, ­these texts circulated in manuscript form within dif­fer­ent religious communities that lived side by side in separate quarters in Bangkok (as they had done in Ayutthaya) and seldom drew the attention of local p ­ olitical authorities. Laneau’s manuscripts lay forgotten in the shelves of the library of the Catholic mission in Ayutthaya ­until 1730, when the apostolic vicar, Jean-­Jacques Tessier de Quèralay, provided the court with samples of Catholic religious lit­er­a­ture. That was when

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the Siamese became aware of the harsh rhe­toric strategies missionaries used to refute the fundamentals of Buddhist teachings. The phra khlang was so alarmed by ­t hese writings that he issued an edict against Chris­tian­ity in 1731. It prohibited the dissemination of works on the Christian religion written in Thai or Cambodian scripts and the preaching of Catholicism to Siamese, Mon, or Laotians. It also prohibited attempts to induce residents of Siam to become Christians by any means and the condemnation of Buddhism in Catholic sermons and writings. The phra khlang ordered that the edict be written on stone tablets and posted on pedestals near the Catholic church of Ayutthaya and in front of the church in Mergui.56 ­Until the mid-­nineteenth ­century, the Catholic missionaries had no Thai fonts for their printing presses, so they continued to work with manuscripts or printed religious lit­er­a­ture in Romanized Thai. ­Those publications excluded Siamese readers who could not read the Latin script—in other words, the majority of Siamese readers. Most local Catholic Christians ­were Chinese or ­Vietnamese converts and a catechism was not published in Thai script ­until 1850, when Bishop Pallegoix wrote Maha Kangwon (­Great care).57 Like Laneau’s Recontre of 1691, the book was arranged as a dialogue of questions and answers that explained basic Catholic beliefs while presenting arguments against Buddhism (and Protestantism). The chapters of the book centered on a range of topics such as God and creation, merit and sin, death and judgment, and paradise and hell.58 Instead of formulating dichotomies between Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity, as Protestant missionaries did, Pallegoix established a religious hierarchy in which he construed the Bud­dha (Phra Phutthichao, or the Awakening One) as a servant of God (Phra Phutthichao Thiang Thae, or the True Awakening One). He semantically incorporated Buddhism into the Catholic universe and a Christian eschatology in which Buddhism would fi­nally be overcome by the superior qualities of the teachings of Christ.59 In the second half of the nineteenth c­ entury, the p ­ olitical landscape of Southeast Asia was changing dramatically. The opening of the East through colonization and the establishment of ­European spheres of influence in the neighborhood of Siam fundamentally altered the balance of power in the region. It became more difficult for the Siamese government to silence or expel unwelcome Western critics of Buddhism b ­ ecause foreigners w ­ ere now protected by a series of treaties between Siam and Western nations that made them almost unassailable. Encouraged by the changing ­political climate in the kingdom, Christian missionaries of all denominations used the new opportunities to run their religious campaigns more or less undisturbed by the Siamese government. Masses of printed religious lit­er­a­ture began to pour into the kingdom, including Christian tracts in which the missionaries critically commented on the Buddhist religion and its doctrines, princi­ples, and rituals.

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American missionaries w ­ ere at the forefront of this development and used the printing press to systematically spread their ideas in religious tracts written in vernacular Thai. One of the best-­k nown is Nangsue trachu thong (The golden balance) by John Taylor Jones, a small booklet of thirty-­five pages that went through several editions in the years ­after its first publication in 1841. In his text, Jones promised to weigh Chris­tian­ity and Buddhism carefully with a “golden scale” (trachu thong; ตราช ทู อง). He had learned in countless discussions with Buddhists that their seeming agreement without confrontation did not imply a willingness to substitute Chris­tian­ity for their own religious beliefs. Early during his stay in Siam, Jones reported on a conversation with a Buddhist monk from Burma that he found most discouraging, even though the monk was “pleasant and not so stupid as most of the priests are.” Yet the tolerant Burmese priest “endeavoured to avoid giving Chris­tian­ity that serious attention it demands, by maintaining that that and Boodhism ­were all the same in substance, that a ­great many Gods had appeared in succession; Gaudama was one, Jesus another. How painful to hear Him ‘by whom all t­ hings w ­ ere made and are made’ thus put on a level with such a being!”60 Nangsue trachu thong challenged the pluralistic attitude of Buddhists by establishing a set of firm distinctions between Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity. Jones analyzed Buddhism in terms of a normative framework based on Protestant evangelicalism. He plotted the history of Chris­tian­ity as a constant strug­gle for religious truth and invoked the prophet Elijah to explain the nature of his missionary work. Just as Elijah convinced Baal worshippers to renounce their practices and follow Jehovah in the Old Testament (1 Kings 18), so Jones set out to convince Buddhists of the truth of Chris­tian­ity.61 He opposed any form of religious pluralism or syncretism. Jones was convinced that a systematic comparison of Chris­ tian­ity and Buddhism would reveal the superiority of the former. To prove his point, he recounted a number of familiar distinctions: Buddhists have no creator God and are therefore ignorant of the origin of the world. While the Bud­dha (frequently called Somnakotom in the text) is a mortal who ultimately flees to Nirvana, “Jehovah lives in the past, ­future, and pre­sent, without illness, aging or death, with a flourishing life, infinite, without suffering at any time, filled with happiness.”62 Somnakotom, Jones alleged, is a teacher, a ­human being, not a world creator or an almighty deity, while the God of the Christians is omnipotent and rules the universe, transcending time and space. Jones explained that all the miracles of the Bible ­were true and that ­t here was no real proof of the miracles of the Bud­dha. He wrote that the stories of Somnakotom’s many lives, the Jātakas, w ­ ere merely fairy tales while the Bible told historical facts. He said that the five Buddhist precepts w ­ ere incomplete, whereas the Ten Commandments of the Bible provided a perfect guide to the be­hav­ior God

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required of his followers. According to Jones, Buddhist scholars lacked adequate knowledge of geography and science. Furthermore, Buddhist priests only prayed for money and showed ­little inclination to bring their faith to ­others, while Christian missionaries would “leave their parents, relatives and homeland, cross the ocean to travel to underdeveloped countries and learn foreign languages. Through the Word of God, they seek to enlighten all ­t hose p ­ eople who live in darkness, although they do not even know them.” Not surprisingly, e­ very example Jones gave in his text demonstrated for him that Chris­tian­ity was a “sublime” (prasoet; ประเสร ฐิ ) religion and Buddhism was not.63 By the time he wrote this text in the early 1840s, Jones had witnessed the rise of ­European colonial empires in East and Southeast Asia. He believed that Chris­tian­ ity would eventually prevail all over the globe. The ancient Buddhist kingdoms of the East ­were crumbling ­under the attacks of ­European powers and many Buddhist kings had lost the ability to protect the religious institutions in their countries. As the c­ entury wore on, the two major centers of Theravāda Buddhist scholarship, Sri Lanka and Burma, became colonies of the British Empire and declined u ­ nder foreign rule. Jones concluded from ­these changes that the close alliance between Buddhism and the monarchy was a serious structural weakness of Buddhism: A religion that depends on nobles and kings can only spread with royal support. If nobles and kings no longer support it, the faith will perish. . . . The [Christian] religion, by contrast, w ill increase over the years thanks to the power of God, because it does not depend on worldly kings. It can continue to exist. . . . See for yourself whether this religion is true or not true or credible or not credible. . . . Buddhism is vanishing, is becoming almost non-existent. It w ill soon disappear, just as the Buddha had disappeared into Nirvana. Is that sublime? . . . The [Christian] religion is growing every day and every year. In the near f uture, the disciples of God will cultivate and spread it to all countries, and Christianity will take root in regions where it has hitherto been unknown, and w ill soon displace all other religions. Then t here w ill be no unbeliever in the world anymore. The religion w ill flourish in all directions, as if Jesus had never left. Yet your religion will die out, disappear and [finally] become untraceable.64 Most arguments in Jones’s narrative are highly ideological, informed by a par­ tic­u­lar American Protestant view of the relationship between religion and state and based on standards of “objectivity” that did not do justice to Buddhist world views and practices. His perspective on the f­ uture of Chris­tian­ity was certainly too optimistic for Siam, where the mission made not the slightest pro­gress. An enduring prob­lem for missionaries was that Buddhists had l­ ittle or nothing to say

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about many impor­tant issues within Chris­tian­ity. For example, Jones denounced Buddhism for its lack of the concepts of grace and mercy (kuson tham; กุศลธรรม), but it was difficult for Buddhists to grasp what grace or mercy means in a Christian context ­because they lacked the idea of a creator and an understanding of the concept of original sin. Jones knew about this prob­lem from years of preaching in Siam and did his best to explain ­t hese concepts, but the dogmatic language he used was not likely to convert his readers. The concept of Nirvana as the ultimate spiritual goal of the Buddhist path seemed frightening to him, and the state of “non-­self” (Pāli: anattā; Thai: อนัตตา) that all Buddhists w ­ ere apparently striving for seemed cold and desolate in his eyes. In his view, the message of Chris­ tian­ity, by contrast, was warm, comforting, and optimistic: God Jesus is merciful to humankind. Although he is free of sin, he took Man’s sins upon himself and gave his life for the sins of humankind in the hope of releasing people from sin. Three days after his death, he rose again and for 40 days presented himself to his 500 disciples. They could testify that he was alive. He stood before his disciples and asked the two angels to say: “You see, that I’m leaving you. I w ill return and do many t hings so that everyone w ill believe he is in heaven until today.” Can’t we see that this is more sublime? . . . The benefit for a disciple of the teachings of Jesus is that his sin will be forgiven. In heaven, he will see God’s countenance, who has a pure heart, is free from desire and untainted by sin. He will eternally benefit from this wealth, will not grow old, is immortal, and escapes from the cycle of birth and death [watta songsan; วัฏสงสาร].65 Jones’s comparative analy­sis of religious standards and practices revealed some striking dichotomies between Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity that he and his fellow missionaries did not believe could be bridged. ­There was no other way forward, they believed, than to destroy the entire intellectual and religious structures of Buddhism, which they regarded as “the dev­i lish faith,” so serious evangelizing could begin. Their missionizing strategy led to ever-­stronger demarcations between the two religions that they expressed in pamphlets and tracts written in Thai and E ­ nglish. In 1849, a­ fter some fifteen years of preaching in Siam, Dan Beach Bradley summarized the benefits of Chris­tian­ity in an article in the Bangkok Calendar, an annual almanac published in ­English: The Contrast. BUDHISM—The Budhist scriptures give no account of a creator and governor of all things, but ascribe all events to fate and merit. How sin entered the world or what are the real consequences of sin they cannot tell. They teach that men commit sin, but do not make known any

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way by which sin can be pardoned, and consequently sin and punishment must inevitably follow each other. A future state of rewards and punishments is taught, but the only place where the soul is said to be truly happy is Nikban, which is a state of total unconsciousness and really, annihilation. The fruit of such teachings is to sink men in ignorance in this life and eternal punishment hereafter. CHRISTINITY [sic]—The Christian scriptures reveal to us a creator and governor of all t hings, who is holy, just and good. They teach how sin entered the world, and what are the real consequences of sin. They also teach how sin can be forgiven and the soul be made happy, and that a glorious state of endless happiness is provided for t hose who accept and follow the terms of forgiveness, and a state of everlasting punishment for the wicked. The fruit of such teachings with the aid of the Holy spirit, leads men to confess and forsake sin, fills their souls with love to God and all mankind, enlightens the soul, purifies and prepares it for true happiness here and a glorious immortality hereafter. What a contrast!66 The aggressive tone of missionary prose did l­ittle to convince Siamese Buddhists of the superiority of the Christian faith, and the number of converts remained negligible over the years. Missionaries cited many reasons why their efforts in w ­ ere so unsuccessful a­ fter ­decades of intensive work. Buddhism was entirely dif­fer­ent from Chris­tian­ity in many re­spects. It was deeply rooted in Siamese society. The absence of a creator god and the importance of merit making (Thai: tham bun; ทำ�บุญ) as a Buddhist way to redemption w ­ ere difficult to overcome for the missionaries. The Siamese found it hard to understand Christian concepts such as “forgiveness,” “sin,” and “redemption” ­because ­t here was no place for t­ hese ideas in Buddhist belief. Religious tolerance (or indifference) was a major obstacle. The Presbyterian Stephen Mattoon noted in 1853 that p ­ eople believed that “­whatever god a man worships, or w ­ hatever he may believe or disbelieve, if he performs meritorious works he w ­ ill receive the reward of his merit. Works of merit may be said to hold a similar place in the Buddhist system which faith in Christ as a Saviour does in the Christian.”67 What was most puzzling for the missionaries was the fact that in everyday life the Siamese made no concerted attempt to prevent them from publicly agitating against Buddhism. Reporting on the Presbyterian mission in 1866, Rev. Patrick L. Carden wrote: The missionary here is universally received with politeness, listened to with deference and his books and papers willingly received and often read with deep attention. We verily believe a missionary could ascend the palace

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steps and preach salvation from the very doors thereof without fear of further molestation for his presumptions than a polite request to desist, and perhaps a laugh of derision from a few of the encroached attendants. We doubt if it be possible to win the immortality of a missionary martyr in Siam. And yet, while in possession of all these external advantages—after tens of thousands of dollars and many years of earnest Christian labor have been freely expended—the people approached through every avenue of influence, we regret exceedingly, and with deep Christian sorrow for any neglect on our part, to have to report that, instead of having a strong cooperative force of native communicants, to aid in the work of evangelization, we have not on this the close of the 19th year of the missions’ existence sufficient native church members to fill a body pew in a first class village church at home [in the United States].68 However, in 1866, the patience of Siamese Buddhists would not last much longer. In princi­ple, they regarded the two religions as not fundamentally opposed to each other and sought to continue a policy of religious tolerance to avoid cultural conflicts. Siamese kings in the past had even supported Chris­tian­ity in dif­ fer­ent ways, for instance by granting land to Christian communities in Siam for the building of churches. Yet Protestant propaganda had become so massive that an appropriate answer was required to prevent the missionaries from further insulting Buddhism and Buddhist authorities in the kingdom.

Religious Communication and the Rise of a Public Sphere The Siamese elite noted with astonishment that the American missionaries disseminated their ideas very effectively among the reading public in the kingdom. The printing press became one of the most successful technological innovations in Siam and was instrumental for creating what the German p ­ hilosopher Jürgen Habermas has called the public sphere (Öffentlichkeit), a discursive space where private ­people can publicly express their views on m ­ atters that are of concern to the p ­ eople and the state.69 Habermas argued that the public sphere in E ­ urope developed from two interconnected trends: the exchange of goods and the exchange of information. The emergence of merchant capitalism and overseas trade in the early modern period called for a new structure for h ­ andling information and brought about a new type of sociopo­liti­cal actor who specialized in mediating relations between citizens and the state. A news market evolved in economic centers such as Amsterdam, Lisbon, London, Nuremberg, and Venice, first as a

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by-­product of regional and global commercial networks, then as an i­ ndependent social force in a broad arena of critical thought and public opinion.70 Print, news reporting, and the rise of literacy gradually undermined traditional forms of public repre­sen­ta­tion in ­Europe. By the end of the eigh­teenth ­century, it was no longer sufficient for a ruler to represent his or her authority before the p ­ eople; he or she had to engage in debate with the ­people. The ­people who established the public sphere ­were everyday citizens who used publicity to criticize and control governments. This transformation had far-­reaching consequences for the relationship between the state and its citizens, as historian T. C. W. Blanning has noted: “While the feudal public sphere had been founded on authority, received passively, the essence of the bourgeois public sphere is rational argument. The bourgeois public sphere can be defined as the medium through which private persons can reason in public.”71 Secularization was another consequence of this ­process, albeit a contested one. Rational argument pushed discussion of religion out of the public sphere and relegated it to the private realm. At first glance, the Siamese case fits well into this pattern. The opening of the kingdom for international trade with the Bowring Treaty of 1855 and the similar “unequal treaties” concluded with other Western countries increased the demand in Siam for newspapers and other public sources of information. ­Because successful trade depended on strong ­legal guarantees from the state, one impor­tant goal of publishing newspapers was to rationally discuss how to make the ­legal, ­political, and administrative decisions of the Siamese government transparent. As the ­century proceeded, the production of local newspapers and magazines proliferated and the market for ­popular lit­er­a­t ure in vernacular language began to flourish, as did other media and institutions of bourgeois culture such as museums, libraries, and cinemas.72 By the end of Chulalongkorn’s reign, new publishing ­houses had emerged, most of them owned by young Thai entrepreneurs who expanded the publishing market beyond the city of Bangkok and its adjacent provinces. Many of the titles they published ­were light entertainment. Th ­ ese ­were dismissed by the more educated readers in the kingdom, who doubted that p ­ opular tales and romantic novels would increase p ­ eople’s general knowledge or wisdom. Another category of printed lit­er­a­ture in Siam was publications by private scholars, journalists, and publishers, such as K. S. R. Kulap and Thianwan Wannapho, who became impor­tant figures of public discourse and openly challenged royal views of the Thai nation and its history, society, and politics.73 However, when publishing in Siam began, the principal forces ­behind the introduction of print ­were religious; ­t hose who owned printing presses ­were not primarily driven by economic or p ­ olitical concerns.

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The Protestant missionaries who first used the printing press in Siam looked back on a tradition of public religious controversy that began with the Reformation in the sixteenth ­century. The German professor Martin Luther celebrated the invention of print as “God’s highest and extremest act of grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is driven forward” and made ­great use of it in his campaigns against the pope and the Catholic Church.74 The Reformation sparked a storm of printed tracts, pamphlets, and newspapers on theological issues and their social and ­political ramifications. During the same period, religious wars and revolutions fundamentally altered the ­political landscape of ­Europe. Nineteenth-­century Protestant missionaries ­were certainly aware that the printing press had been a major agent of ­these changes, and they firmly believed in the transformative power of the printed page. In 1849, Stephen Mattoon declared that “not to have a press is like ­going to war without weapons.”75 The Protestants o ­ rganized their missionizing strategy as a propaganda campaign that was largely based on print technology. The first set of Thai printing types was cast by George H. Hough in 1819 in Burma. The letters w ­ ere designed by the American Baptists Adoniram Judson and Ann Hazeltine Judson, who had learned the Thai language from Siamese captives in Rangoon and had a first catechism printed in Thai letters. In 1835, Bradley brought over from Singapore a printing press made of wood and stone. In the 1840s, the Baptists established their own printing press, which was operated by the printer John H. Chandler.76 Within a few ­decades, Siam was flooded with devotional lit­er­a­ture and translated sections of the Bible. Tens of thousands of copies of Christian books on vari­ous aspects of the faith came off the mission presses and began to circulate in the kingdom. In the period 1839 to 1842, the Baptists printed twenty-­five titles, each 24 to 272 pages long. Among t­ hese publications w ­ ere three editions of A Summary of Chris­tian­ity, the four gospels, the book of Acts, the story of Daniel, and lit­er­a­ture on language and religious instruction.77 According to an ABCFM report, the ­organization published more than twelve million pages of religious texts from 1835 to 1848.78 In the 1860s, all of the mission stations in Siam maintained their own printing departments and published their own religious tracts, textbooks, and gospel translations. The Presbyterian mission printed over 4,000 copies of Christian titles in 1866 alone, including a small “child catechism” and a guide to the scriptures, both prob­ably meant for schoolwork.79 Between around 1829 and 1885, the books of the New Testament went through several editions and ­were available in dif­fer­ent versions. The books of Acts, Matthew, and Luke ­were reprinted up to eleven times, ­either in part or in full, with print runs of 500 to 5,000 copies.80 In early nineteenth-­century Thailand, ­people w ­ ere still unfamiliar with the possibilities and technological requirements of printing. ­Because books ­were

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scarce and ­were therefore considered a prestigious property, many commoners appreciated books for their symbolic value irrespective of their content. This helps explain why the distribution of Christian lit­er­a­ture was so successful in the beginning.81 Missionaries frequently reported that the demand for their books among residents of Siam was ­great, but they also realized ­after a while that few of the recipients would actually read the books and seriously consider their religious message. Dan Beach Bradley used printing not only as a medium of spreading his faith but also as a source of income for the Siam mission. In addition to religious lit­er­ a­ture, he printed royal edicts and laws on behalf of the Siamese government and filled printing o ­ rders from Chinese tax collectors.82 He published travel accounts, court poetry, and pieces of Chinese lit­er­a­ture in Thai that sold fairly well, along with several books on language, history, science, medicine, and the arts. Bradley was also the editor of the Bangkok Calendar and the Bangkok Recorder, Siam’s first newspaper written in vernacular language.83 The Bangkok Recorder was published in 1844–1845 and again in 1865–1867, first monthly and then fortnightly, for about 100 subscribers; 300 copies w ­ ere published of each issue. It started as a scientific magazine for members of the Siamese elite. Jesse Caswell noted in 1844 that ­there was a growing interest among Siamese authorities in information about Western countries. He thought a newspaper would be “a suitable channel for such ­matter as we desire to spread before the p ­ eople, but which would hardly be thought proper to be published in a religious tract.”84 In the second phase of its publication, 1865– 1867, the paper was concurrently printed in E ­ nglish and Thai. It increasingly became an instrument Bradley used to comment on religion and politics. He translated into Thai and published a part of the United States Constitution to demonstrate the blessings of civil liberties, the rule of law, ­political participation, and the republican form of government. Much to the distress of the king, Bradley also openly condemned slavery, especially ­after the end of the US Civil War (1861–1865). As a publisher, Bradley reflected the spirit of his time and his culture. Few American newspaper publishers in the nineteenth ­century saw themselves as neutral witnesses of con­temporary events. Many w ­ ere devoted to a par­tic­u­lar moral or p ­ olitical agenda and w ­ ere funded, at least in part, by churches or p ­ olitical parties.85 Even the out­spoken businessman James Gordon Bennett Sr., the publisher of the New York Herald, sought to make his paper a “­great organ and pivot of government, society, commerce, finance, religion, and all ­human civilization.” In 1835, he wrote in a famous mission statement that “a newspaper can send more souls to heaven and save more from hell then all the churches or chapels in New York—­besides making money at the same time.”86

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Bradley was no less ambitious. The Bangkok Recorder was part of a broader strategy to merge the teaching of Christ with the teaching of civilization. His aim was to use the paper to uncover grievances in the kingdom and “see what can be done ‘for the ­people.’ ” He had a clear idea of what social pro­gress should look like and sought to encourage “industry, sobriety and economy” in Siam. Bradley criticized the Siamese for holding on to ancient and outdated traditions at the expense of h ­ uman development. He recommended the technological advances, modern education systems, liberal economies, and demo­cratic regimes of “Western civilization” as a model for p ­ olitical reform in Siam.87 He believed that social and technological pro­gress in Siam would not be pos­si­ble u ­ nless the Siamese embraced Western culture, including Chris­tian­ity, which he thought was the only way to overcome “the unbroken lethargy u ­ nder which Siam has so long been resting.”88 However, Bradley must have realized that his vision of establishing the press as a “fourth estate” in the kingdom (as his British con­temporary F. Knight Hunt had called it) was impossible to reconcile with the p ­ olitical plans of the royal gov89 ernment in Bangkok. The Siamese court wanted to strengthen the power of the monarchy and took m ­ easures to tighten ­political control of the kingdom’s territory, p ­ eople, and provinces. Liberal concepts such as social equality and ­political participation of “the p ­ eople” did not seem desirable to most members of the government. The preeminence of democracy was also by no means evident to the Siamese. They knew that all the power­f ul states in ­Europe ­were monarchies, while the US Civil War and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865 raised doubts about the superiority of the US republican system.90 For a number of years, the Bangkok Recorder served as an impor­tant arena for critical writing on vari­ous issues related to ­political and social life in Siam. It became “an open forum for the public expression of dissent and injustice,” as the historian Thanapol Limapichart has remarked, demonstrating to the Siamese government both the ­political power and the potential dangers of print.91 The paper published articles on a variety of topics, including domestic and foreign politics, history, religion, lit­er­a­ture, science, court news, and business news.92 Most contributions came from Bradley’s own pen, but he also included translations of items from international newspapers and magazines to keep readers in Siam up to date with events of the wider world. Bradley also gave room for complaints of Siamese commoners, who used the new medium to denounce the corruption of government officials or criticize the l­egal system of the kingdom. It was difficult for the Siamese government to control literary production in the kingdom. Many missionaries cultivated close friendships with members of the nobility and thus had l­ ittle reason to fear personal consequences if some of their publications displeased the court. Moreover, citizens from the United States or

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­ urope ­were virtually untouchable ­because they ­were subject to the jurisdiction E of their home countries. However, that did not mean that private publishers ­were entirely f­ ree to print and circulate w ­ hatever they liked. In 1850, King Rama III ­stopped the printing of the Siamese law code Kotmai tra sam duang ­because he considered the laws to be the exclusive property of the state. Some years ­later, his successor Mongkut suppressed the publication of court lit­er­a­t ure authored by ­earlier Chakri kings ­because he thought it was inappropriate to make ­t hese royal rec­ords accessible to a wider public. Bradley’s critical articles on the l­egal system of the kingdom w ­ ere a constant source of irritation for Mongkut, who issued an official notification entitled “Warning against the Trustworthiness of Publications on Litigation in Newspapers” to discourage Bradley from reporting on current lawsuits.93 ­Because printing was expensive and the payment practices of subscribers left much to be desired, the newspaper turned out to be a financial disaster. However, the most serious assault on Bradley and the Bangkok Recorder came from Gabriel Aubaret, the acting French consul. Bradley was extremely hostile to foreign intervention in Siam, particularly by Catholic France. When Louis Napoleon expanded French power in Southeast Asia by establishing a protectorate over Cambodia and dispatched Aubaret as envoy in 1865 to obtain Siam’s recognition of France’s p ­ olitical claim, Bradley fiercely attacked French imperialistic designs in the region. In 1867, he published some clauses of the French-­Siamese Treaty, which was then still unratified, in the Bangkok Recorder, together with a most unfavorable comment on its content. Bradley’s public interference caused serious diplomatic discord in Siam.94 In January 1867, he was sentenced to a fine of 107 US dollars and forced to publish a ­humble apology in the Bangkok Recorder. He de­cided to give up the newspaper shortly a­ fter that.95 However, many restrictions on the press w ­ ere lifted in the following years, when the Siamese court became a more active publisher. The number of publications grew and their content became more diverse. The German scholar Adolf Bastian, who was traveling around Siam in 1863, spoke of growing literary activity in Bangkok during the Fourth Reign. Mongkut and his court published a yearly almanac, a court periodical, and numerous royal proclamations.96 Printing and publishing became a lucrative business and even produced Siam’s first bestsellers. In 1861, Bradley published the Chotmaihet lae nirat London of Mom Ratchothai, one of the delegates of the Siamese embassy to London in 1857–1858.97 His book contained an account (chotmaihet) of his journey in ­Europe and a travel poem (nirat) that was very p ­ opular among Thai readers. Another successful title in Bradley’s cata­logue was the Thai translation of the fourteenth-­century Chinese historical novel Sam kok (Romance of the Three Kingdoms), which was widely read by aristocrats and members of the royal f­ amily.98

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­After the Bangkok Recorder ceased publication, Bradley was superseded by a youn­ger generation of Western residents who ­were less ideological in their choice of topics.99 Among them was John H. Chandler from the Baptist mission, who became the most impor­tant foreign teacher at the Siamese court on subjects relating to printing and engineering. Chandler was continually at odds with his Baptist colleagues and quit his ­service for the Baptist Missionary Society in 1868. He established a business as a machinist in Bangkok, assisted the Siamese court in operating a printing station with Thai fonts, and published the English-­language newspaper Siam Times.100 Chandler also acted as a vice consul for the United States, became a personal teacher to the young Prince Chulalongkorn, and introduced Prince Pinklao to the intricacies of steam power and modern military technology.101 One of his assistants was Samuel Jones Smith. ­After the Baptist station was suspended in 1869, Smith opened an i­ ndependent printing office called Rongphim bang khorlaem (Publishing h ­ ouse at Bang Kho Laem). He accepted some of the o ­ rders from the king and his court that Bradley had been unwilling to fulfill and provided local intelligence for foreigners in the Siam Weekly Advertiser and the Siam Directory. He also printed Christian catechisms and a number of works on language, but his major source of income came from printing Thai folk tales, travel narratives, and romances for Siamese readers.102 Although the publication of ­popular Thai lit­er­a­ture was quite profitable for Smith, his engagement in ­political journalism was less successful. In 1869, he launched the Siam Repository, a quarterly magazine for an English-­speaking readership that covered a broad range of topics, including “Science, Language, History, Philosophy, Religion, Moral and ­Political Economy.”103 However, the potential readership was still comparatively small, so the Repository never reached the profit zone. Smith made a second attempt with the monthly Thai newspaper Sayam Samai, which first appeared in 1882 and fulfilled similar functions as Bradley’s Bangkok Recorder had. Like Bradley, Smith propagated Western and especially Christian values, often in radical opposition to the conservative mainstream in the Siamese government. Smith was an enthusiastic supporter of King Chulalongkorn’s first reforms, but he had no consideration for the sensitivities of traditional Siamese nobles, who watched the activities of ­political reformers with ­great suspicion, believing (correctly) that some of ­these reforms ­were aimed at decreasing the power of the nobility. In addition to propagating Chris­tian­ity in his paper, Smith criticized the state of Siamese civilization with regard to almost ­every aspect of life. He denounced Siamese taxes as unjust and arbitrary, printed complaints of commoners about the abuse they suffered in the corvée system at the hands of officials and nobles, and crusaded against the unlimited power of the king.104

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It is no won­der that Smith ultimately shared the fate of his ­predecessor. Like Bradley, he was accused of defamation and was found guilty. He closed down his newspaper in 1886 and eventually gave up the printing business.105 Smith seemed to have anticipated from the start that the establishment of a f­ ree press in Siam would be an arduous business. In a curious introduction to his Siam Repository (which was reprinted in e­ very volume from 1869), Smith remarked with some resignation: “We do not flatter ourselves that a liberal public ­w ill reward us for our toil. The Editors who have gone before us, have, in e­ very instance been obliged to stop short of a triumph. He has been a thankless public servant, here-­to-­fore in Siam, who catered for the literary public. Wait has been written on the poor editor’s history.”106

C HA P T E R F OU R

The Siamese Response

You must not think that any of my party will ever become Christians. We will not embrace what we think is a foolish religion.

The introduction of print in Siam opened a new space for discussions on vari­ous issues of public concern that eventually altered how questions of religion, politics, and culture ­were negotiated in the kingdom. It was new for Siamese Buddhists to argue with Western missionaries about religious topics based on Christian texts. Such discussions w ­ ere pos­si­ble ­because ­those texts ­were written in vernacular language that most Siamese readers could understand and ­were distributed in substantial numbers by boat or overland in the capital and adjacent provinces. Siamese elites soon understood the impact printing could have on education and public communication and sought to make use of it themselves. In the beginning, one of the main purposes of Siamese printing was to increase p ­ eople’s knowledge of the Buddhist religion. In 1841, missionaries reported that Chao Fa Yai (i.e., Mongkut) had received from E ­ ngland “a printing press, and three fonts of Roman type, with matrices and moulds for casting type of three dif­fer­ent sizes. His object, we understand, is to Romanize the Ba­li [i.e., Pāli].”1 Some years l­ater, Mongkut asked the missionaries to cast or purchase typing fonts that would enable him to publish Buddhist texts and sermons in Thai. His request was denied. Siamese elites realized that as long as they had no printing presses of their own, missionaries had a mono­poly on printing and to some extent ­were able to control the discourse established by print. Even though Bradley helped the Siamese government by publishing public proclamations (including a royal edict against the introduction and sale of opium in the kingdom), he would not lend his press to Siamese printers and did not accept printing jobs that ran ­counter to his religious convictions.2 In 1860, he rejected a request to print 3,000 copies of a book on Buddhist meditation. Five years l­ater, he refused to print an edition of a Buddhist prayer book designed for use in t­ emple schools. On another occasion, Bradley denied the use of his press for the publication of Chaophraya Thiphakorawong’s 113

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book on comparative religion, the Nangsue sadaeng Kitchanukit (A book on vari­ ous ­t hings), b ­ ecause he found it to be too critical of Chris­tian­ity. Other Christian missionaries ­were even stricter. Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists ­were willing to publish books and tracts in vari­ous languages (including Thai, Chinese, V ­ ietnamese, and Malay), but only as a means of spreading their faith.3

The Religious Debate in the Bangkok Recorder It comes as no surprise that Siamese elites felt that missionaries w ­ ere effectively censoring Thai texts that advocated Buddhism or criticized Chris­tian­ity. Moreover, Thai readers of the Bangkok Recorder felt that Bradley was biased in his choice and treatment of the topics covered in the paper. In the October 1865 issue, an anonymous reader complained in a letter to the editor about the one-­sided way Bradley commented on questions of religion. This reader doubted that it was appropriate at all for Bradley to write about religion in a newspaper that should be neutral. Bradley was actually using the Bangkok Recorder as a tool for his missionary campaigns, the writer argued, ­because he continually mixed information on politics and science with religious writing. Bradley, who was committed to undermining Buddhism, openly condemned it.4 That letter was the beginning of a debate that went on for several months. Bradley published a long response in the same issue of the Bangkok Recorder, saying that he would never support an erroneous belief such as Buddhism ­because it prevented Siamese ­people from achieving social and spiritual pro­gress. “Since I love Thailand,” he wrote, “I want the country to prosper, but I d ­ on’t want to speak as if I ­were the priest of the Siamese.”5 At the same time, he thought it was impossible to disentangle religion from politics or science. Bradley believed that all ­great intellectual achievements of the world came directly or indirectly from the Christian religion. In his view, Western civilization was a unified ­whole of three parts: Chris­tian­ity, a liberal ­political system, and technological advancement. He firmly believed that it was his duty as a Christian to spread this truth to other countries. According to Bradley, Buddhists w ­ ere largely unconcerned with their fellow ­human beings and w ­ ere fundamentally unaware of man’s condition. Although they believed in the superiority of their faith, they did not attempt to share their wisdom with foreigners. Bradley conjectured that Siamese monks ­were prob­ably aware of their own spiritual and intellectual weakness and thus preferred to hide in monastic seclusion. The consequences of their ignorance appeared obvious to Bradley, especially in the field of education. He thought that Buddhists w ­ ere deeply anti-­intellectual and totally lacking in inquisitiveness, while Chris­tian­ity created

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a hunger for knowing. A pious Christian constantly strives to understand God’s creation, he argued, just as fervently as he seeks personal knowledge of God. The spread of Chris­tian­ity in Ceylon, the site of “the cradle of Buddhism,” was a perfect case in point for Bradley, b ­ ecause Buddhism was vanis­hing t­ here as soon as ­people w ­ ere educated in Christian schools. Using a binary rhe­toric of light and darkness, he concluded that the difference between the two religions could not be greater: I understand that the Siamese love Buddhism more than the benefits of education. Buddhism cannot develop under the light of science, which had emerged from Christianity. It’s just like darkness disappearing in daylight. I realize that it w ill be like in Lanka, the cradle of Buddhism. When the Christians began to teach the children of Lanka, Buddhism disappeared, as you have already noted. I ask you why Buddhism cannot stand the light. If the tenets of Buddhism were as good as the Thai appear to believe, why do they not appreciate the light? Why are t here no learned school directors like in Europe? In Burma, China and Siam, where Buddhism still prevails, you cannot find a single scholar who is equally learned in languages, mathematics, astronomy, anatomy and biology. . . . If Buddhism were so sublime, why are there no beautiful and strong cities like in Christian countries? How do you want to answer these questions? Why don’t you admit that the light is born from Christianity and not from Buddhism?6 Bradley’s attack was very familiar to his Siamese readers. By 1865, American missionaries ­were building on the experiences of roughly four ­decades of evangelizing work in Buddhist countries. Most of Bradley’s arguments had been expressed in e­ arlier religious encounters, e­ ither by Bradley himself or by a missionary from another station. He also reflected, perhaps unwittingly, the kind of religious criticism that Catholic missionaries had conveyed in the seventeenth ­century. What was new was that the Bangkok Recorder reached an audience beyond the narrow circle of Thai religious specialists, who ­until then had been almost the only serious readers of missionary lit­er­a­ture in Siam. The newspaper made it pos­si­ble for Bradley to address a wider public that included larger groups of Siamese commoners as well as the growing number of Westerners who read the paper’s E ­ nglish edition. King Mongkut responded with furious personal notes to the editor, but he soon realized that he needed a broader stage to c­ ounter Bradley’s attacks more effectively. The next issue of the Bangkok Recorder carried a Siamese response to Bradley’s critique. The name of the author is not mentioned, but ­there can be ­little doubt that it was the king himself. Buddhists did not spread their religion to new

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lands as the Christian missionaries did, he argued, ­because the teachings of Buddhism w ­ ere too complicated to be easily a­ dopted in other countries. Buddhism was alien to most p ­ eople from outside the Hindu-­Buddhist world and was therefore difficult to explain to an audience unfamiliar with its background and spiritual context. From a practical point of view, he added, Buddhist monastic rules did not easily accommodate ­human nature and everyday life ­because they require sacrifice and g­ reat discipline. Mongkut doubted, moreover, that belief in Chris­tian­ity was a precondition for social prosperity or scientific pro­gress. He knew of many individuals from ­Europe and the United States who ­were not Christians but ­were nonetheless wealthy and well versed in the sciences. The personal lives of Christians in Siam, on the other hand, did not seem exemplary or particularly attractive in his eyes. Christian ministers, missionaries, and converts had to endure the same hardships of life as other ­people did, they often suffered harsh economic conditions, and they did not live longer than Muslims or Buddhists. They did not seem to benefit from Chris­tian­ity that much.7 Although Mongkut acknowledged that Western countries ­were more advanced in science and technology than Asian socie­ties, he found no proof of an intrinsic connection between scientific pro­ gress and Chris­tian­ity: As regards the assertion you make concerning the Buddhist religion, that it is plunged in utter darkness, and does neither spread nor enlarge at all: I would answer by saying that the precepts of that religion are opposed to the depraved passions and natural bent of the human heart, just like a man rowing up a boat against the current of a rapid stream. Only those who have great patience and perseverance can succeed in stemming the current. Buddhism is very deep and intricate, and difficult to understand, because it opposes the will of man. It is not a religion to satisfy the present want as scratching satisfies the desire exited by itching. For this reason, those who have arrived at an understanding of it have done so by the attainment, in the first place, of a state of indifference to every thing. If we should go abroad and teach this religion in other countries, nobody would believe or receive it. Not even t hose who hold to it are able to live up to its precepts. It is only those who have firm unshaken belief in it that can live up to it all. What you said with reference to light and darkness, that those who believe in the Christian religion have great prosperity—that the country flourishes, and light and knowledge abounds, because of the power of that religion, I cannot yet agree with. I have understood that there are many in Europe who do not hold to the Christian religion, who yet have light and knowledge just the same as t hose who hold to it. What light is this

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that shines and gives them the prosperity, pray? Again the Siamese, Chinese, Peguans [Burmese] and Cochin Chinese in this country who have become Christians, hold to that religion more firmly than the people of Europe do, and yet I have not seen them have any prosperity. On the contrary, they are much in debt, and in slavery. Why does not that light come and shine upon them better than on them who are not Christians? If Christians had more prosperity than any other sects, if they had more wealth, lived to a greater age, had more happiness, and do not grow old nor die, nor ever become poor, I would agree with you that the Christian religion is indeed a great blessing. But this blessing I do not yet see, so how can I hold to it?8 Bradley was at first delighted to receive such a response and reserved much space for the debate in the coming weeks, although his contributions in the Bangkok Recorder ­were much longer and more numerous that ­t hose of his Buddhist opponent. In answering the queries of the Buddhist Advocate (as Bradley referred to him in the Recorder), Bradley emphasized that “­every country that takes the Bible as an example is educated, prosperous, enlightened and g­ reat. ­Every country that does not take the Bible as an example is in darkness and ­w ill not develop or become wealthy.” He conceded that not all ­Europeans believed in Chris­tian­ ity, but they ­were growing up in a Christian environment and thus indirectly profited from Christian culture: “The benefit of Chris­tian­ity lies in the light and in the spiritual motivations, which are stronger than in Buddhism, as I have found out.”9 However, t­ here ­were more reasons why Mongkut could not acknowledge that Chris­tian­ity was a precondition for ­human pro­gress. He shared with Protestant missionaries an obsession with scripture and canon that had its roots in the religious policy of King Rama I. Mongkut believed that pure Buddhism was textual and canonical Buddhism, and he knew that Protestant Christians attached just as much importance to the Bible as Buddhist reformers did to the Traipidok. By 1865, some books of the Bible had been available in Thai for a number of years and Mongkut was familiar with their content. ­After recapitulating at some length what he had read in the Old Testament, he concluded that it was impossible for him to believe in the biblical narrative of creation or to make sense of the story of Noah and the Flood and other biblical episodes. He found that the Bible was full of fantastical stories that contradicted ­human reason and the insights of modern science. Equally perplexing for him was the fact that biblical stories w ­ ere told in a language that was as ­simple as that used in schoolbooks for ­children.10 It was hard for the king to understand why Bradley was learned enough to discard most

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assumptions of Buddhist cosmology as superstitious and outdated but at the same time rejected any criticism of the many incredible events recounted in the Bible. Mongkut also found no sign in the Bible of a deep understanding of natu­ral phenomena, although Bradley claimed that Christians had privileged access to scientific knowledge: [When] one desires to know the causes of the rainbow, and goes to the Bible and reads about it in the story of the flood (what does he there learn?) God spoke concerning the use of bow and arrow dwelling on the theme for two full pages of the book of Genesis. But when we read about the rainbow how are we to learn from the record the truth . . . about what produces it? These remarks are only given as specimens (of the darkness of the Bible) at the beginning of the book.11 In January 1866, Bradley de­cided to pause the debate in the Thai edition of the Bangkok Recorder—­only to move it (without further explanation) to the ­English edition, where the controversy continued ­until May 1866. As soon as he was writing only for English-­speaking readers, Bradley’s tone became more didactic, even martial. The first t­ hing he did was to reveal the identity of his opponent as Mongkut and declared his intention to “buckle on our armour to combat with a very extraordinary man, the most learned man among all the Siamese—­ the very Goliath of Buddhism as held by the new school Buddhism.” Bradley was extremely sensitive to any kind of criticism of the Bible and dismissed Mongkut’s questions as “utterly weak and puerile in argument against the Bible and Chris­tian­ity.”12 Bradley emphasized that the Bible was not a textbook on science, but even though the kind of enlightenment it provides is spiritual, its teachings are “always in harmony with all the new discoveries that have been made.”13 In another article, Bradley engaged in a scholarly discussion on biblical miracles that tried to prove that biblical stories did not contradict the findings of modern science.14 Bradley became increasingly partial and polemical, including critiques of Buddhism in every­t hing he wrote in this debate. Mongkut felt that Bradley’s enduring attacks on Buddhism, his confrontational language, and the condescending tone of his articles ­were inappropriate for a religious discussion. He admonished his adversary not to abuse the newspaper with religious combat. In a final statement of April 1866, he wrote: “The religion of Jesus is like unto c­ hildren calling to one another in sport—­O ­children! it is late and you are not yet asleep. Let the Tookaas [tuk-­kae, or geckos] come and eat out your livers! ­There is no profit in using religion as a t­ hing to sport with in this way.”15

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Nangsue sadaeng Kitchanukit: A Book on Various Things (1867) The divisions that marked the debate about Chris­tian­ity and Buddhism persisted over the years. In practical terms, the principal prob­lem for Siamese elites was that the discussion did not take place on equal terms. Bradley repeatedly made use of his authority as editor of the Bangkok Recorder to control the discussion, mostly to the disadvantage of his Buddhist interlocutor. In some cases, Bradley summarized the arguments of his opponent instead of quoting from the original text, then responded with long sermons that repeated familiar arguments in ­favor of Chris­ tian­ity. On one occasion, Bradley censored what the “Buddhist Advocate” had said ­because he regarded his critique of the Bible as blasphemy.16 Siamese reformers realized that they needed more space for their arguments and de­cided to respond to the missionaries in a separate book. The outcome of their endeavors was the Nangsue sadaeng Kitchanukit, or A Book on Vari­ous ­Things (hereafter referred to as Kitchanukit). Two hundred copies went on sale in Bangkok on November 23, 1867. It was the first textbook on science and comparative religion in Thai and the first book printed by a Siamese publisher without the assistance of a Westerner.17 The book is prob­ably one of the first original statements of a practicing Buddhist on comparative religion and was therefore considered impor­tant enough for distribution in the West.18 It was partly translated into E ­ nglish in 1870 and published in London u ­ nder the title The Modern Buddhist.19 The author of the Kitchanukit was the high-­ranking nobleman Kham Bunnag, also known u ­ nder his royal title Chaophraya Thiphakorawong. He had begun his c­ areer in the Harbor Department during the reign of King Rama III. From an early age, he had maintained regular contacts with Westerners. In 1855, Thiphakorawong became the head of the Ministry of Trade and Foreign Affairs, so many Westerners referred to him simply as Phra Khlang (minister of financial affairs). His prominent position gave him g­ reat influence on the politics of the country and privileged access to information from abroad. Western envoys and missionaries characterized his attitude as curious and open-­minded, although the minister was highly critical of Euro-­American culture, especially Chris­tian­ity. He was able to discuss religious and worldly issues without prejudice and derived valuable information about Western culture and science from t­ hese conversations. He studied the Christian tracts Western missionaries circulated and like his king, he frequently argued with them about religions topics. Over the years, Thiphakorawong became a key figure in cross-­cultural encounters between Siam and Western countries ­because virtually all Westerners had to pass through his office ­after entering the kingdom. As phra khlang, he could choose which Westerners it would be worthwhile to contact and would interrogate his visitors about all kinds

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of subjects, especially Western sciences, philosophy, and religion.20 Thiphakorawong retired in 1867 and spent his final years writing books and essays on Thai history, culture, and religion. His chronicles of the first four kings of the Chakri dynasty (written around 1869) w ­ ere major contributions to Thai court historiography in the nineteenth c­ entury, rivaled only by the work of Damrong Rajanuphap a generation l­ ater.21 Thiphakorawong was well acquainted with Buddhist learning and was a determined supporter of Mongkut’s reform program. Although his Kitchanukit was designed to be a textbook for ­temple schools, it also offered a view of the religious agenda of the Thammayut movement. Most readers understood his statements on Buddhism and science to be the official position of the Thammayut. A considerable part of the work was devoted to a comparative study of religions. The Kitchanukit covers all religions represented in the Siamese kingdom in the mid-­ nineteenth ­century, including Brahmanism, Judaism, and Islam, but it was above all a detailed response to the debate about the relative merits of Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity.22 Thiphakorawong abandoned the conventional Siamese strategy of looking for commonalities between the religions. He made clear distinctions between dif­fer­ent religious doctrines and described their history and geo­ graph­i­cal diffusion. In his account of the history of Chris­tian­ity, Thiphakorawong explained some of the basic tenets of Roman Catholicism, the conflicts between the pope and his Protestant critics, the emergence of new Christian denominations during the Reformation, and the continuing strug­gle between the denominations over questions of orthodoxy. He argued that internal dissent and religious intolerance had seriously weakened the Christian religion and had had a detrimental effect on its spread to Siam and other Buddhist countries. Not surprisingly, Thiphakorawong’s unflattering portrait of Chris­tian­ity contrasted sharply with his narrative of the teachings of the Bud­d ha, whom he believed to have promoted a realistic and rational way of being in the word, unbounded by religious f­ anaticism or the superstitious belief in an invisible external deity. “It [Chris­tian­ity] is one religion,” Thiphakorawong stated, “yet how can we join it when each party threatens us with hell if we agree with the other, and ­there is no one to decide between them. I beg comparison of this with the teaching of the Lord Bud­dha, that whoever endeavours to keep the Commandments, and is charitable, and walks virtuously, must attain heaven.”23 Thiphakorawong o ­ rganized his book as a sequence of questions and answers to evoke the familiar dialogue form of class teaching. ­There are no chapters or subheadings to structure the text. The first part is devoted to a discussion of science and nature. Thiphakorawong de­cided not to defend the indefensible. He freely acknowledged that the pre­sent state of monastic education in Siam was poor and

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that most of the traditional Buddhist ideas on nature and the cosmos w ­ ere wrong. He accepted the rational explanations for natu­ral phenomena he had heard from his Western i­nformants, including their views of astronomy, their explanations of why floods and earthquakes happened, and the reasons they gave for the appearance of comets, the outbreak of epidemic diseases, and so on. School teaching in Siam, the author contended, should no longer rely on obsolete intellectual princi­ples that contradicted empirical observation and the laws of nature: I propose to write a book for the instruction of the young. To my mind, the course of teaching at present followed in the temples is unprofitable. That course consists of the spelling-book, religious formulae, and tales. What knowledge can anyone gain from such nonsense as “O Chan, my little man, please bring rice and curry nice, and a ring, a copper thing round my little brother’s arm to cling”?—jingling sound without sense, a fair example of a large class of reading exercise. I shall endeavor to write fruitfully on various subjects, material knowledge and religion, discussing the evidence of the truth and falsity of things. The young will gain more by studying this than by reading religious formulae and novels, for they will learn to answer questions that may be put to them. My book will be one of questions and answers, and I shall call it A Book Explaining Various ­Things. . . . Our Siamese literature is not only scanty but nonsensical, full of stories of ghosts stealing women, and men fighting with ghosts, and extraordinary persons who could fly through the air, and bring dead people to life. And even t hose works which profess to teach anything generally teach it wrong, so that there is not the least profit, though one studies them from morning to night. Though I may be wrong, still, what I write w ill serve to stimulate men’s thoughts, and lead to their finding out the truth.24 Thiphakorawong clearly saw that E ­ urope and the United States had a virtual mono­poly on modern technology and scientific innovation. Like Mongkut, he was particularly critical of ancient Siamese cosmography and advocated a fundamental revision of the traditional frame of knowledge based on empirical study and ­human reason. He repeatedly described the Traiphum as unreliable in this regard and urged his readers to reassess all of its assumptions that w ­ ere inconsistent with the insights of modern science: Now as to the cause of the dry and wet seasons, I will first give the explanation as it stands in the “Traiphoom.” When the sun goes south near the heavenly abode of the Dewa Wasawalahok, the Lord of Rain, the Dewa finds it too hot to move out of his palace, and so it is dry season. But when

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the sun is in the north, out he goes, and sets the rain falling. . . . Another statement is that in the Himaphan forest there is a great lake, named Anodat, and that a certain kind of wind sucks up its waters, and scatters them about. Another statement is that the Naga King, when playing, blows water high up into the air, where it is caught by the wind, and falls as rain. There is no proof of these stories, and I have no faith in them.25 Thiphakorawong’s expertise in the natu­ral sciences was still superficial and in many cases inaccurate. Most of his scientific knowledge came from discussions with his Western ­informants. Although he accepted most propositions of Western learning, he was reluctant to completely reject all of the miracle stories about the power of the Bud­dha. His transformation into an apostle of pure reason was at best incomplete. Yet the Kitchanukit is an impor­tant document for illustrating the intellectual strategies the Siamese intelligent­sia used to come to terms with the intrusion of Western knowledge and modern scientific epistemology. Thiphakorawong’s discussions with Christian missionaries began in the late 1820s when Karl Gützlaff arrived in Bangkok. His book was thus the result of an almost lifelong engagement with the topic. He summed up the difficulty of harmonizing Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity as mainly due to the contradictions of the most fundamental assumptions of Christian theology. Moreover, experience had shown him that Christians w ­ ere not richer or happier in life than non-­Christians, even though they claimed exclusive access to a higher truth that provided answers to both secular and metaphysical questions. However, the Bible, the epitome of Christian teachings, did not pass this test. Thiphakorawong, who engaged in a critical examination of the holy scriptures in much the same way that he had studied his own religious traditions, considered the stories in the Bible to be as irrational and fantastical as t­ hose in the Traiphum: I said to the missionary [Gützlaff], “how about the Dewas the Chinese believe in, are t here any?” He said “No; no one has seen them; they do not exist; t here are only the angels, the servants of God, and the evil spirits whom God drove out to be devils and deceive men.” I said, “Is there a God Jehovah?” He answered, “Certainly, one God!” I rejoined, “You said t here ­were no Dewas because no one had seen them, why then do you assert the existence of a God, for neither can we see him?” The missionary answered, “Truly, we see him not, but all the works of creation must have a master; they could not have originated of themselves.” I said, “There is no evidence of the creation, it is only a tradition; why not account for it by the selfproducing power of nature?” The missionary replied, that he had no doubt that God created every thing, and that not even a hair, or a grain of

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sand existed of itself, for the t­ hings on the earth may be likened to dishes of food arranged on a t­ able, and though no o ­ wner should be seen, none would doubt but that t­ here was one; no one would think that the t­ hings came into the dishes of themselves. I said, “Then you consider that even a stone in the bladder is created by God!” He replied, “Yes. Every­t hing. God creates every­t hing!” “Then,” answered I, “if that is so, God creates in man that which ­w ill cause his death, and you medical missionaries remove it and restore his health! Are you not opposing God in so ­doing? Are you not offending Him in curing t­ hose whom he would kill?” When I had said this the missionary became angry, and saying I was hard to teach, left me. . . . ​Another time I said to the missionary Gützlaff, “It is said in the Bible that God is the creator of all men and animals. Why should he not create them spontaneously, as worms and vermin arise from filth, and fish are formed in new pools by the emanations of air and w ­ ater? Why must ­t here be procreation, and agony and often death to ­mothers? Is not this ­labor lost? I can see no good in it.” He replied, “God instituted procreation so that men might know their ­fathers and ­mothers and relatives, and the pains of childbirth are a consequence of the curse of Adam.” I said, “If procreation was designed that men should know their relatives, why are animals, which do not know their relatives, produced in the same manner? And why do they, not being descendants of Eve, suffer pain in l­abor for her sin of eating a l­ittle forbidden fruit? Besides, the Bible says, by belief in Christ man s­ hall escape the consequences of Eve’s sin, yet I cannot see that men do so escape in any degree, but suffer just as o ­ thers do.” The missionary answered, “It is a waste of time to converse with evil men who ­w ill not be taught,” and so left me.26 The missionaries’ ­resistance to any rational critique of the Bible puzzled Thiphakorawong b ­ ecause all he was ­doing was applying the same method of inquiry to all religions, irrespective of their cultural or geo­g raph­i­cal origin. Protestant missionaries could not tolerate that. As a result, Thiphakorawong rejected all missionary lit­er­a­ture on Buddhism as misguided by prejudice, including the Nangsue trachu thong (The golden balance) by John Taylor Jones and Pallegoix’s Maha Kangwon (­Great care). He concluded that the missionaries ­were insincere; they condemned Buddhist learning as primitive and inherently wrong but insisted on a literal understanding of the Bible.27 Buddhist reformers, by contrast, ­were able to learn from o ­ thers and w ­ ere therefore capable of self-­improvement. Thiphakorawong acknowledged that within its own cosmology, Siamese Buddhism was far from scientific, but the Thammayut reconstruction emphasized the ele­ments that could be construed as compatible with modern science and suppressed or rendered

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allegorical ­t hose that could not.28 Thiphakorawong believed that the best way to compete with the West was to demonstrate that Western superiority in understanding the material world did not necessarily imply the spiritual superiority of Chris­t ian­ity over Buddhism. He questioned many nonscientific assumptions, myths, and superstitions that dominated Siamese Buddhism and cosmology in his lifetime. He believed that a reformed version of Buddhism would be compatible with (or at least would not contradict) modern scientific thought, and he insinuated in his text that Chris­tian­ity was not. ­Because the Christian missionaries in Siam knew next to nothing about the Theravāda canon, it was easy for Thiphakorawong to maintain that even though the Bud­dha “did not teach the truths of modern science, he taught nothing opposed to them.”29 His words mirrored ­earlier statements Bradley had made about the Bible during the debate in the Bangkok Recorder, but Thiphakorawong gave the argument a twist. The pure and au­t hen­ tic Buddhism reformers proposed, he argued, was better prepared to withstand scientific scrutiny than Chris­tian­ity was. The Thammayut vision of Buddhism tended to deny Buddhism its metaphysical character. Adolf Bastian concluded ­after a conversation with Thiphakorawong that “the difference between religion and philosophy, as we understand it in Western civilization, does not exist” in Siamese Buddhism.30 Thiphakorawong in fact dismissed any idea of calling on external powers for help and advocated the use of one’s own senses and ­mental capacities to arrive at enlightenment, thus limiting the scope of Buddhism to that of a moral philosophy. Thiphakorawong’s radical stance on Chris­tian­ity naturally provoked opposition from his Christian readers in Siam. Samuel Jones Smith published a critical review in the Siam Repository of 1872 that acknowledged Thiphakorawong’s attempt to rationalize Buddhism along the lines of Western scientific thought but found the author “infantile when he attempts to grapple with the ­great truths of Chris­tian­ity.”31 Bradley published a short note in the Bangkok Calendar that dismissed the book as “prodigiously erroneous as a ­whole” and said that it was mainly “intended to protect the rising generation of Siamese from becoming Christians.”32 Thiphakorawong’s judgments of Chris­tian­ity may have appeared superficial or simply wrong to con­temporary Western readers who ­were more familiar with its princi­ples, but his work demonstrated that Siamese Buddhists had developed an intellectual strategy of bifurcation to deal with the challenges Western scientific epistemology posed. Its core ele­ment was a strict separation of the material world from the realm of the spirit, however tentative and imprecise such a distinction turned out to be in practice. It was thus difficult for Western missionaries to convince Siamese intellectuals to accept any Christian truth claim that went beyond the material world. The Buddhist reformers created a dual cosmos to

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integrate rationalist assumptions about nature and the universe into their religious system but at the same time held fast to the moral and philosophical preeminence of Buddhism.33 Thiphakorawong proposed a strategy of emulating the procedural logics of pro­gress—­establishing an efficient administration, introducing modern science, reforming traditional educational institutions, and so on—­without adapting the moral, p ­ olitical, or religious ideologies of Western civilization.

King Mongkut and the Politics of Science When Mongkut became king in 1851, he appointed Prince Pawaret as his successor at Wat Bowonniwet. Although the new abbot was a loyal supporter of Mongkut’s religious reform agenda, he did nothing to increase the number of monks in the order. He followed a policy of restricting ordinations and accepted only young men from families he was familiar with. Many of Mongkut’s former students left Wat Bowonniwet to pursue their vocation in other ­temples and provinces; they ­were soon scattered across the kingdom. During Mongkut’s reign, the Thammayut remained a small, exclusive, and somewhat fragmented group within the Sangha. Mongkut’s transformation from abbot to monarch necessitated that he change his perspective on religious policy. In order to avoid open conflict with the traditional forces in the Sangha, he carefully preserved a balance between the monks of the Thammayut order and ­t hose of the much larger Mahanikai. In institutional terms, the position of the reformers did not become much stronger ­after Mongkut’s ascendancy to the throne.34 However, ­there ­were other reasons why it was difficult to put his reform program into practice. First, Thammayut views on religion ­were very strict. Even pious monks found it difficult to follow all the rules of conduct for monastic life. The reestablishment of Pāli as the language of religious learning posed a barrier to many novices, and the meditation exercises prescribed for the attainment of enlightenment required time and g­ reat discipline. Second, reforming the Buddhist world system implied, in some sense, a return to the rational teachings of the Bud­ dha. But Buddhist laymen found it difficult to cope with the rationalist foundations of modern Buddhism. This purified vision of the faith took ­little account of the spiritual needs of most Siamese, who at the end of the Fourth Reign still consulted soothsayers about the f­ uture, hired monks to perform magical rituals, purchased love potions or magic amulets, and went to miracle healers to restore their health. Third, Mongkut faced strong opposition from conservative members of the Sangha, who feared his inclination ­toward Western learning would undermine p ­ eople’s belief in Buddhism. His ­battle against all kinds of “superstition” was tilting at windmills, even though he published numerous decrees on

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the administration of the Sangha, admonished monks to observe the monastic rules of the Vinaya more strictly, and explained the meaning of Buddhist rituals in order to teach monks and laypeople how to behave as true Buddhists.35 In 1866, perhaps out of frustration, Mongkut published a statement in the ­English version of the Bangkok Recorder that denounced the majority of Buddhist monks in the kingdom as hopelessly mired in ignorance. He argued that although they ­were entrusted with the responsibility of educating youth and served as teachers of nobles and kings, most of them w ­ ere ignorant about the sciences and stubbornly clung to obsolete princi­ples that contradicted empirical observation and the laws of nature: But the truth is the priests who are the teachers and leaders of the Buddhist religion are yet very ignorant, not knowing geography or astronomy, and still persist in holding the notions that the Eclipses are caused by the jealousy of the great Yak who comes to bite and swallow up the sun and moon—that the earth and the heavens are of equal size, and that the sun and moon differ in size but little, and other ignorant notions do they hold.36 Astronomy was a particularly controversial topic ­because it was one of the oldest sciences in Siam and many educated Siamese considered it to be the most sublime among the scholarly disciplines. Astronomical instruments ­were among the main items of cross-­cultural exchange in the seventeenth c­ entury; French Jesuits had presented King Narai with a telescope to introduce him to Chris­tian­ity and ­European ways of learning.37 ­Europeans in Siam became familiar with the Siamese astronomical calendar, which used numerical series rather than ­tables or charts.38 In the nineteenth ­century, astronomy was among the first disciplines to be subjected to critical revision in Siam. The study of the movements of celestial bodies had always been an impor­tant subject for Siamese princes and kings, and quite a few of them ­were well versed in it.39 Mongkut even claimed astronomy as his major field of scientific expertise. He had engaged in the observation of astronomical objects since he was a monk, and he pursued this interest ­until the end of his life. He exchanged ideas on astronomical m ­ atters with almost e­ very educated visitor he met. In 1836, John Taylor Jones noted that he had conversed with the prince on scientific topics several times. Mongkut seemed to understand well “the Copernican system of astronomy, and to believe in it,” and Jones hoped that this would also “affect his religious belief.”40 By 1844, the number of progressive monks had increased and had formed what Jones called a “new party” of “­free thinkers,” the Thammayut order, whose members had ­adopted Western views of geography and astronomy.41

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The debate on astronomy continued throughout Mongkut’s reign. One reason for its endurance was that it addressed several overlapping power strug­gles that ­shaped p ­ olitical discourse in the kingdom. One line of conflict ran within the court and the Buddhist priesthood. The scientific approach of the Thammayut order provoked r­ esistance rather than enthusiasm among other Siamese religious authorities, who feared that adopting Western methods of scientific inquiry would damage the reputation of established institutions. This was especially true for the rather traditional-­minded office of the court astrologer, the horathibodhi, who occupied a prominent position in the royal hierarchy. The Siamese made no clear-­cut distinction between astronomy and astrology. They believed that the movements of planets had an impact on p ­ eople’s lives. Stellar constellations determined the rhythm of sowing and harvesting in agriculture. Astronomy-­based calculations ­were indispensable for choosing auspicious days for royal ceremonies, coronations, marriages, military campaigns, and other impor­tant events. Traditionally, astronomical rec­ords (chotmaihethon) provided the basis for the work of court chroniclers ­because the horathibodhi was responsible for correlating ­great events in history (such as wars, famines, floods, or dynastic changes) with the position of the planets in orbit. Mongkut repeatedly thwarted the authority of the horathibodhi by editing his proclamations pertaining to the correct calculation of time, explanations of the appearance of comets in the sky, and other celestial phenomena.42 ­Because modern astronomy was particularly loaded with symbolic meaning and in many ways challenged traditional forms of knowledge, it became an issue in Siam’s enduring ­political strug­gle with Western powers. Modern science and technological pro­gress w ­ ere impor­tant markers of Euro-­America’s self-­proclaimed superiority over non-­Western cultures. Missionaries and colonial officials frequently used it to draw the line between civilized ­people and ­people they considered “primitive.”43 Mongkut was aware that most British and French looked down upon his ­people as “wild and savage.” ­There was no other way forward for the Siamese, he believed, than to use their soft power to protect the kingdom from falling ­under foreign rule. In a letter to Phraya Suriyawongse Vayavadhana, his ambassador to Paris, he wrote: “The only weapons that ­w ill be of real use to us in the ­f uture ­w ill be our mouths and our hearts, constituted so as to be full of sense and wisdom for the better protection of ourselves.”44 Astronomy was the field of wisdom the king was most familiar with, even though his knowledge of the subject prob­ably did not go beyond that of an ambitious amateur. Throughout his intellectual life, Mongkut sought to compete with his Western counter­parts on scholarly grounds and sought recognition in the West as a civilized and scholarly king. Sir John Bowring noted that Mongkut searched

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the kingdom for historical manuscripts, built up an excellent library, collected items for display in a newly erected museum, and spared no effort to acquire the latest astronomical textbooks and mechanical instruments.45 When Mongkut dispatched the first embassy to London in 1857, he instructed Mom Ratchothai, the interpreter of the embassy, to collect E ­ nglish works on vari­ous fields of knowledge. Ratchothai reportedly purchased a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; lexicons of vari­ous languages; and works on navigation, astronomy, naval and military tactics, gunnery, and engineering as well as the most recently in­ven­ted astronomical instruments. An ­English observer of the Illustrated Times noted that Ratchothai “talks of the instruments of our most celebrated makers with a knowledge of the subject which is somewhat surprising.”46 The competition between Siamese and ­European astronomers reached its climax in August 1868, when the path of a total eclipse of the sun was to cross the southern part of Thailand. Mongkut, who had made his own calculations to determine the exact time of the eclipse and its maximum duration, identified Hua Wan in the region of Sam Roi Yot (Prachuap Khiri Khan) on the eastern coast of Siam as the best point of observation on land.47 Against the advice of his court astrologers (who thought he was wrong), Mongkut equipped an expedition to Hua Wan to witness the eclipse and test his calculation. He invited distinguished French scientists to join the expedition, among them Édouard Stephan, the young director of the Marseille Observatory, and the astronomers François-­Félix Tisserand and Georges Rayet. The king also invited other foreigners to participate, such as the governor of Singapore; Sir Harry St. George Ord, the British acting consul in Siam; Henry Alabaster and his wife; Dan Beach Bradley and his ­family; Rev. Noah A. McDonald; and other American missionaries.48 Royal proclamations ­were issued to announce the event, and “thousands of Siamese, Chinese, ­Europeans and Americans” came from Bangkok to attend it, as Bradley ­later reported.49 The idea b ­ ehind the expedition was not only to strengthen Mongkut’s royal authority vis-­à-­v is his opponents at court and in the Sangha but also to support his image as an enlightened Oriental king who was as civilized as ­European monarchs. The expedition was orchestrated like a royal festival. The journey to Hua Wan took several days by boat. The king sailed from Bangkok with an impressive retinue of almost 1,000 p ­ eople. The court had splendid pavilions erected on the shore to serve as temporary accommodations for the king, his ministers, and prominent foreign guests, who ­were entertained in the ­evenings with opulent dinners, theater ­performances, and a royal brass band. When the eclipse was fully vis­i­ble on the morning of August 18, 1868, a crowd of several thousand ­people assembled at the spot to observe the extraordinary natu­ral phenomenon. Bradley celebrated the event in the Bangkok Calendar as a

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triumph of Western science and noted with satisfaction that in the moment when the eclipse had passed, the Siamese prime minister turned to his wives and exclaimed “­will you not henceforward believe the Foreigners?”50 The French astronomers, on the other hand, ­were entirely unimpressed by the king’s competence as an astronomer and judged his attempts to demonstrate his erudition to be naïve or incomprehensible.51 The Siamese had their own views on the issue. Immediately a­ fter the eclipse ended, rumor spread in the Thai camp that Mongkut’s prediction was more correct than that of the French astronomers by two seconds.52 Mongkut also was ­eager to dispel the impression that Western science had succeeded over Oriental learning. He claimed in a statement addressed to the French scientists that he had acquired his knowledge in astronomy before his first encounter with E ­ uropean learning and did not depend on Western methods alone for his calculations but derived his competence from a variety of Asian and E ­ uropean sources, including the Hindu text Sûriya Siddhânta (Sun treatise).53 Thiphakorawong highlighted the synergetic effects of the king’s scientific work. His chronicle of the Fourth Reign contains a chapter on the expedition that meticulously described the preparations for the journey, the erection of encampments on the beach, and the g­ reat number of politicians, diplomats, and scientists from Western countries who had convened at the location. In an almost sardonic tone, he wrote that the French astronomers ­were disoriented and wandered around the field, unable to locate the precise path of the sun. “It was a­ fter the Chief Minister of Military Affairs [Chaophraya Si Suriyawong] had started the construction work for the king’s temporary quarters at the district of Wako, opposite of Caan Island, that the French scientists asked if they, too, might erect their own quarters ­t here in order to witness the eclipse.”54 According to the chronicler, “The king had calculated this event by using the old astrological texts of Siamese and Mon, as well as many old American and E ­ nglish texts. The king made use of all t­ hese texts, to come to one and the same conclusion. He insisted that the eclipse would definitely take place.”55 In Thiphakorawong’s narrative, identifying the time and place of the eclipse was not a victory of Western science over Siamese nonscientific traditions, as many Western observers tended to believe. Instead, the successful prediction was attributable to the m ­ iddle path King Mongkut had chosen. His calculations had combined Eastern and Western scientific traditions, thus creating a unique Thai version of astronomy. The expedition to Hua Wan could have been a resounding success for the king, who had demonstrated his mastery of the Siamese cosmos and his intellectual superiority over all his opponents, namely the court astronomers at home and the

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crème de la crème of French scientists assembled on site. When he returned to Bangkok, however, Mongkut learned that the horathibodhi and his assistants did not show the slightest interest in the m ­ atter. He asked them about the details of the solar eclipse as witnessed in the capital and became furious when even the most respected scholars at his court could not give a correct answer. The king, who was well known for his short temper, raged in the palace for the rest of the day and had all his astrologers and three ­women of the palace arrested or sentenced to penalty work, reportedly ­because of his anger about their ignorance of and indifference to astronomical affairs.56 Even worse, the Hua Wan area was infested with malaria at the time of the excursion. Within a few days, eight of the ten French scientists fell ill, as did many nobles and members of the royal ­family, including Prince Chulalongkorn and the king himself. This unfortunate coincidence was, of course, grist to the mill for Mongkut’s opponents and strengthened the less educated among his subjects in their belief in heavenly signs and bad omens. Mongkut’s illness lasted for two weeks, then he died on October 1, 1868, at the age of sixty-­t hree. Th ­ ose who ­were with him on his last days wrote highly stylized eulogies that emphasized the monarch’s faithfulness to Buddhism.57 Bradley was aware that Siamese trust in Western knowledge was restricted to science, although he found it perfectly convincing to pre­sent Chris­t ian­ity and Western advances in science as inseparable and mutually dependent components of Western modernity. Siamese elites, however, did not see that a close relationship between Chris­tian­ity, science, and technological pro­gress was evident at all. It was obvious that steamboats would go, printing presses would run, and cannons would fire with or without Chris­tian­ity. Bradley published a long and respectful obituary for the monarch in his Bangkok Calendar, but his lasting disappointment about Mongkut’s erroneous beliefs was clear. “Truly the king died as a ­philosopher,” Bradley wrote. “But a­ fter all that his philosophy did to sustain him in death, how gloomy must have been the prospect before him!”58 Bradley may have hoped to succeed in his missionary work by attacking the imaginary conception of nature that was common among the Siamese and to convince them of the true and divine princi­ples of Christ that, in his eyes, lay b ­ ehind all natu­ral phenomena. However, the roughly three d ­ ecades of debates on science and religion had only widened the gap between Buddhists and Christians. Mongkut had always recognized missionaries’ achievements as healers, scholars, and teachers, but he regarded their religious beliefs as nonsense. In a particularly blunt statement, he told a missionary: “You must not think that any of my party ­w ill ever become Christians. We ­w ill not embrace what we think is a foolish religion.”59

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“Protestant Buddhism” in the Theravāda World? The Thammayut-­nikai was part of a large wave of Buddhist reform movements that evolved in the second half of the nineteenth c­ entury. Everywhere in Asia, Buddhists ­were looking for ways to cope with the dominant cultural and intellectual forces of Western modernity and its technological offshoots, which they mostly faced in combination with unequal treaties, colonial interventions, and uncompromising forms of Christian missionizing. Progressive Buddhists in Siam, Cambodia, Burma, Sri Lanka, Japan, and China responded to the challenge in ways that often converged or overlapped. They all shared the belief that Buddhism was uniquely compatible with modern science (or even scientific in some sense from the beginning) and that it offered more profound explanations of ­human nature and the origin and structure of the objective world than Chris­tian­ity did. Some of ­t hese claims still dominate interreligious debates ­today.60 The reformist ideas King Mongkut, Chaophraya Thiphakorawong, and the Thammayut-­nikai proposed ­were based on ­t hese assumptions, and the reformers soon found congenial companions in many other Asian countries.61 Another common issue among Buddhist reformers was the desire to revive Buddhism by returning to what they regarded as Gau­ta­ma’s original teachings. They all shared an inclination t­oward scriptural authenticity and orthodox monastic practice that was expressed in an indefatigable quest for the oldest manuscripts and the most au­t hen­tic lineages of the Vinaya. The religious agenda of Siamese Buddhists was strikingly similar to ­those of the ­Japanese scholar Shaku Sōen in this regard or ­those of Hikkaḍuvē Sumaṅgala and Anagārika Dharmapāla in Ceylon. They all attempted to construct a relationship to modern scientific rationalism using the philosophical ele­ments of Buddhist doctrine, which they sought to retrieve from the oldest Pāli scriptures.62 ­Behind their yearning for originality lurked a sense of loss caused by the rupture with premodern traditional patterns that had been brought about not only by the growing dominance of ­European ­political and economic systems, as in Sri Lanka and French Indochina, but also by internal decline. Religion became a central ele­ment of cultural and national identity that needed to withstand the challenges of colonial modernity. However, the dif­fer­ent Buddhist schools in Asia disagreed about which written traditions ­were to be considered as au­t hen­tic and what part of Buddhist lit­er­a­ture should be regarded as noncanonical. For instance, the Mahayana canon contains many sūtras that Theravāda schools regard as apocryphal, while Chinese Buddhists incorporated early texts from Indian Esoteric Buddhism that w ­ ere unknown in Theravāda countries.63

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The Pāli canon was conveyed orally by recitation before it was written down in the first c­ entury AD, and it underwent several revisions a­ fter that. Originally, the Pāli term Tipiṭaka (the “Three Baskets”) did not refer to a closed list of documents but rather to three dif­fer­ent genres within Buddhist lit­er­a­ture. In the Theravāda tradition, the Three Baskets contain the Vinaya Piṭaka on monastic discipline; the Sutta Piṭaka, or sermons and discourses of the Bud­dha; and the Abhidhamma Piṭaka, a collection of treatises on the philosophical foundations of the Buddhist doctrine. The canon assumed its specific and final form centuries ­after Gau­ta­ma’s lifetime, in the time of Buddhaghosa in the fifth ­century AD.64 (Buddhaghosa also authored much of what are now the standard Pāli commentarial works.) Yet even in the nineteenth ­century Buddhist scholars disagreed about its content. In a conversation with Adolf Bastian, Thiphakorawong argued that the Jātakas “­were nothing but stories compiled by learned men, and that even the five canonical books of the Sutra, although they contained some good and valuable t­ hings, w ­ ere in many ways mixed with interpolations and l­ ater additions. Only the Phra-­Arya-­Sat and the Phra-­Baramatt (Paramatta) could be considered the most original words of Phra-­Phuttha.”65 Although opinions may have differed among Buddhists about what exactly constituted scriptural authenticity, even Mahayana Buddhists acknowledged that the Theravāda tradition represented the oldest form of Buddhism and considered Ceylon to be its most prominent location. This was prob­ably due to its undisputed relevance for the history of Buddhism in general. Ceylon became a paradigmatic case of religious revival in the nineteenth ­century ­because the threat to Buddhism was greater ­t here than in any other Theravāda country. Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere have labeled Sinhalese reform Buddhism as “Protestant Buddhism,” a term they coined to describe the modernizing tendencies in Ceylonese Buddhism that emerged from religious contacts with Protestant Chris­ tian­ity. The term contains a dialectic move b ­ ecause it describes a discourse on Buddhism that was si­mul­ta­neously imitative of and resistant to the foreign faith. The Sinhalese Buddhist revival was articulated in opposition to Christian missionizing and at the same time ­adopted many of its themes and values. For example, Protestant forms of religious association provided a model for lay Buddhists at the expense of traditional monastic institutions. In addition, Sinhalese Buddhists emphasized the rationalist and scientific character of Buddhism. The Protestant belief in the exclusive authority of the Bible increased the interest of Buddhists in scripture and canon, and Sinhalese Buddhists immediately a­ dopted the printing press as a means of propagating their own religious ideas. They also depended on the ­English language to express their religious doctrines. Many of them studied the canonical scriptures in ­English rather than in Pāli, and leading

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Buddhist scholars, such as Anagārika Dharmapala, preached and published in both Sinhalese and E ­ nglish.66 The transformation of Buddhism in Ceylon began in the nineteenth c­ entury, when the island came ­under British rule and both Anglican and nonconformist missionaries set out to spread their faith in their new colonial possession. In 1837, ­t hese missionaries launched a propaganda campaign that aimed at dissociating the traditional ties between the government and the Buddhist clergy. Christian attacks on Buddhism w ­ ere enduring and offensive. They used the growing enthusiasm of the British colonial government for Christian missionizing to systematically dismantle Buddhist institutions and built their own infrastructure of churches, schools, and printing facilities. In the period 1819 to 1853, the British colonial government confiscated vast amounts of ­temple land and left Buddhist institutions in an impoverished state.67 Another weapon missionaries used against Buddhism was modern Orientalist scholarship. British missionaries in Ceylon w ­ ere much better informed about Buddhism than their American counter­parts in Siam, who had l­ittle or no knowledge of the Pāli canon. British Wesleyan Methodists became the first serious Western students of Theravāda Buddhism. With the assistance of a range of Sinhalese converts, they translated, extracted, and explained Sinhalese and Pāli manuscripts to a Western audience, although Buddhist philosophy clearly offended their religious sensibilities. Erudite missionaries such as Robert Spence Hardy and Daniel John Gogerly studied the philosophical foundations of Buddhism at a depth that was previously unknown in Ceylon or other Theravāda countries and published critical accounts of the religion based on a penetrating analy­sis of sacred Pāli texts. Hardy is best known for Eastern Monachism (1850), Manual of Buddhism in Its Modern Development (1853), and vari­ous other publications on Buddhism. Gogerly’s Kristiyani Prajnapti (Christian institutes) of 1848 was a pioneering study of the Theravāda canon and at the same time a devastating critique of con­temporary Sinhalese Buddhism. Trained in the methods of classical philology and Protestant theology, he subjected Buddhism to an exegetical exercise informed by biblical hermeneutics. He approached the Buddhist religion through its most ancient texts and uncovered a pristine Buddhism whose fundamentals he found in the books of Pāli canon. This pure Buddhism was focused on spiritual enlightenment and the ways to attain Nirvana. It contrasted sharply, according to Gogerly, with the “affective” (kammatic) form of Buddhism most Ceylonese adhered to. He deemed their religious practices to be corrupted and far from the scriptural ideal.68 Buddhist monks responded to ­t hese assaults in dif­fer­ent ways, but they found that the most successful way of defending Buddhism was to challenge the religion

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of its Christian enemies in public debate. The idea of conducting a religious debate came from members of the Anglican seminary at Baddegama, located on the southern tip of the island. Protestant missionaries had acquired ample experience in religious disputation at Buddhist t­emples and ­were at first confident about refuting the faith of the “heathens” more effectively when ­t hese discussions w ­ ere held in public. The Sinhalese monks accepted the invitation, and on February 8, 1864, a series of discussions on Chris­tian­ity and Buddhism began that attracted ­great attention in both Asia and the West. The last and most famous of t­ hese public debates took place in 1873 at Pānadurē (referred to as the Pānadurē Vādaya in Sinhalese). This event captured the attention of interested readers well beyond the borders of Ceylon thanks to two accounts in ­English that ­were published shortly thereafter. John Capper, an ­English reporter for the Ceylon Times, published the Full Account of the Controversy Held at Pandura in the same year. In 1878, the American spiritualist, writer, and former Unitarian minister James Martin Peebles published another version of the debate that openly expressed his sympathy for the Buddhist case. They both described the event as a fierce religious contest that was often conducted in an acrimonious and irreconcilable manner.69 Historians of Buddhism in Sri Lanka/Ceylon think of this event as a turning point in the history of Buddhist revivalism. It soon became clear that public confrontations such as the Pānadurē Vādaya strengthened rather than weakened the position of Buddhism in the country. The majority of the Sinhalese population turned out to be less indifferent to Buddhism than the missionaries had expected and clearly took the side of their traditional faith. Buddhist clerics, in turn, began to systematically expand their activities to make their understanding of Buddhism known to a wider audience by disseminating their ideas in newspapers and publishing Buddhist tracts. Although the notion of “Protestant Buddhism” describes well the tense and ambiguous relations between the religions in Ceylon, it perhaps tends to overemphasize the impact of colonial rule in shaping modern Theravāda Buddhism as a ­whole and overlooks the influence of other Buddhist groups on the making of Buddhist modernism. Critics have argued that Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere, who coined the concept in 1988, fostered a view on Reform Buddhism that is essentially diffusionist in character, that it is characterized by a Eurocentric notion of modernity and tradition that always puts Asians at the receiving end of cultural transfer. Siamese Buddhists closely watched religious developments in Ceylon ­because their religious ties with the Sinhalese Sangha had traditionally been close. They had long been aware that Buddhism in Ceylon was in a most critical condition; the Sangha ­t here was split into several factions and

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sects and was frequently challenged by well-­organized Christian missionaries from vari­ous denominations. As Anne Blackburn has shown, the reformulation of the social ­organization and intellectual practices of Sri Lankan Buddhist monasticism dates back at least to the eigh­teenth c­ entury, when the visit of a del­ e­ga­tion of Siamese monks resulted in the founding of the Siyam Nikāya, a new Buddhist sect modeled a­ fter the Siamese (or Ayutthayan) tradition that aimed to reestablish scriptural orthodoxy and monastic discipline in the Sangha. The search for authenticity thus preceded the arrival of Protestant missionaries, and many characteristic features that would l­ater constitute Buddhist reformism in Ceylon ­were rooted in religious contacts with Buddhist communities from Siam and other Asian countries.70 Relations between dif­fer­ent Buddhist communities in Asia intensified during the last quarter of the nineteenth c­ entury, when religious authorities and a growing number of lay scholars began to look beyond the confines of their national cultures and languages. J­apanese Buddhists w ­ ere particularly active in this regard. Facing serious opposition from the Meiji government (which was driven by the allure of Western colonial modernity), they labored to reshape and modernize the practice of J­apanese Buddhism and became increasingly interested in other Buddhist traditions that they had had l­ ittle contact with.71 In the 1870s, ­Japanese clerics such as the Zen master Shaku Sōen and the Shingon monk Shaku Kōzen began traveling to South and Southeast Asia to visit impor­tant Buddhist sites and study the sacred scriptures of Southern Buddhism, as the Theravāda tradition was called at that time. From a ­political point of view, they envisioned a revival of their religion that could serve as a defense against the intrusion of Chris­tian­ity in Asia. When the ­Japanese pilgrims arrived at Ceylon in 1887, Sinhalese Buddhists welcomed them as allies in their strug­gle against British colonial rule and Christian missionizing. Two d ­ecades ­later, Shaku Kōzen spent roughly one year in Siam to learn more about the monastic rules practiced in the ­temples. In 1908, he returned to Japan with more than fifty statues of the Bud­dha, numerous Pāli texts, and an edition of the Tipiṭaka written in Siamese script.72 Japan was more determined than Siam to repel Western influence in the East. ­Japanese Buddhists not only traveled through South and Southeast Asia, they also dispatched several del­e­ga­tions of priests to China with instructions to help the Chinese monkhood rebuild their religious institutions a­ fter years of suffering and decline during the Taiping War (1850–1864). The Taipings had been driven by a particularly militant and iconoclastic ideology that blended fragments of Protestant Chris­tian­ity with nationalist and communist ideas, culminating in the destruction of numerous Buddhist ­temples and monasteries.73 As in other Buddhist

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countries in Asia, the ­Japanese government used Buddhism as a means of securing ­political and cultural influence in China. The ultimate goal was a pan-­Asian alliance of Buddhists led by Japan.74 Religious exchanges within the Theravāda ecumene ­were even more frequent than t­ hose between East Asian Mahayana Buddhists and the Theravāda schools of South and Southeast Asia and had a much longer tradition. The earliest traces of religious contacts between Siamese and Sinhalese monks date to around the thirteenth c­ entury AD, a­ fter King Parakramabahu I’s rule in Sri Lanka (ca. 1123– 1186). During his reign, King Parakramabahu unified the dif­fer­ent o ­ rders of the Sangha into one community. He convened a Buddhist Council (the seventh, according to Theravāda Buddhist counting) to edit and correct the sacred scriptures, and he reestablished monastic discipline in the Buddhist community. In subsequent ­decades, news of the religious revival in Sri Lanka spread to Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka became a center for Buddhist learning.75 Del­e­ga­tions of monks from Siam, Cambodia, and Burma came to Sri Lanka to visit the ­temples and monasteries on the island and to learn more about the monastic practices of the Sinhalese monks. Many of them a­ dopted the Sri Lankan ordination lineage and borrowed, copied, or translated old Buddhist Pāli manuscripts that w ­ ere previously unknown or ­were not available in their home countries.76 The exchange of manuscripts and vari­ous other ways of religious borrowing between Asian Theravāda communities are characteristic features of the history of Theravāda Buddhism. Mongkut was well aware of this tradition and had cultivated a relationship with Ceylonese monks since his time in monkhood. He sent a Siamese del­e­ga­tion of monks to Ceylon during the reign of Rama III and translated the letters and addresses they brought back home a year ­later.77 To some extent, Siamese students of Buddhism had turned into teachers. Siamese reform Buddhism became a strong influence on Sinhalese revivalists throughout the nineteenth c­ entury. Sinhalese monks acknowledged that the Thai religious tradition had preserved a knowledge of Buddhism that was lost in their own country that they ­were e­ ager to regain. Siamese monks, in turn, w ­ ere always in search of old Buddhist scriptures to add to their collections and more than once asked Sinhalese monks for support in this regard. In 1840, a group of Ceylonese monks came to visit Siamese ­temples and shrines in Bangkok. ­Senior Buddhist scholars such as Bulatgama Siri Sumanatissa and Hikkaḍuvē Sumaṅgala ­were in close correspondence with their Siamese counter­parts, who recommended that they establish the Thammayut ordination lineage among the Sinhalese monastic community. Mongkut also encouraged Buddhist monks in Ceylon to engage in a comparative study of religions to c­ ounter attacks from Christian missionaries.78

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The ­political situation in Siam was fairly dif­fer­ent from that in Ceylon. The majority of Protestant missionaries in Siam came from the United States, not from Britain. Protestant influence posed no serious threat to Siamese Buddhism and its institutions ­because the Christian mission was not backed by a colonizing power and the missionaries had few Siamese converts. Although the authority of Sri Lankan kings as protectors of Buddhism had already vanished in the face of enduring colonial rule (the Sri Lankan monarchy had ended in 1815), the Thai monarchy had actually expanded its power in the kingdom and tightened its control over the Buddhist monkhood. Although the reform of the Thai education system in the nineteenth c­ entury a­ dopted many ele­ments of Christian missionary schools, especially during the tenure of the first director of the Education Department, Prince Damrong, Chris­tian­ity was rigorously excluded from the curriculum. The influence of missionaries on Thai education was thus secular rather than religious. Siamese reformers used the tools missionaries provided to establish their own ideas about the education of the p ­ eople. The education system was an effective way to establish a par­tic­u­lar notion of cultural identity that became firmly tied to Buddhism, the monarchy, and the nation-­state. Although the religious attitude of Christian missionaries was radically intolerant, most maintained harmonious relations with the Siamese government. Even though their attacks on Buddhism came to nothing, they still served as interpreters, physicians, and “native ­informants” about Western culture at the Siamese court. Their contributions to the development of the country w ­ ere appreciated. In a public address in the early 1880s, King Chulalongkorn spoke about the close relationship between missionaries and Siamese ­people: “The American missionaries have lived in Siam a long time; they have been noble men and ­women, and have put their hearts into teaching the ­people, old and young, that which is good, and also vari­ous arts beneficial to my kingdom and p ­ eople. Long may they live, and never may they leave us!”79 The cross-­cultural religious discourse in Siam was conducted in Thai rather than in a E ­ uropean language. In contrast, Buddhists in Ceylon heavi­ly depended on the use of E ­ nglish to defend their faith against Christian evangelizers. The colonizers and the colonized in Ceylon w ­ ere deeply entangled in ways that had no equivalent in Siam. One effect of the colonial predicament was that Sinhalese Buddhism became better known in the West. U ­ ntil recently, most Western scholars of Theravāda Buddhism conducted their research using sources collected in Sri Lanka and described Sri Lankan religious practices based on what they ­were able to observe among Sinhalese Buddhists. However, in many re­spects, Siam has a more continuous Theravāda Buddhist tradition and has been less affected by

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colonial rule. Thai Buddhism was still fairly unknown to Western scholars in the nineteenth ­century. Even though some ­Europeans had been interested in the topic since the seventeenth c­ entury, Buddhist lit­er­a­ture reached the West only in fragments for a long time. The earliest notices about Buddhism reached E ­ urope through the accounts of French Jesuits and diplomats who ­were in Ayutthaya in the 1680s.80 However, ­political conflicts with the new Siamese government ­a fter the death of King Narai and a more cautious Siamese policy ­toward Western powers throughout the eigh­teenth c­entury prevented E ­ uropeans from studying Buddhism further. Occasional visitors to Siam such as the French scholar Pierre Poivre, who traveled t­ here in 1745, believed that the religion of the Siamese was “the same that prevails in Indostan, and which the Talapoins alone know any ­thing about.”81 The Baltic-German botanist and physician Jean Gerald Koenig, who was in Siam in 1779, had l­ittle to say about Buddhism that went beyond what was already known from e­ arlier accounts, reportedly b ­ ecause Siamese priests avoided speaking with Western foreigners about religious issues.82 John Crawfurd, head of the British embassy to Siam and Cochin-­China in 1821, knew ­little about the origin of Buddhism and did not have access to its scriptures, but he knew enough to distinguish Buddhism from other Indian religions.83 It was not u ­ ntil the second half of the nineteenth c­ entury that Orientalist scholars turned to Siamese Buddhism in a more systematic way. By then, Buddhism had already found determined supporters in the West who often had a critical attitude ­toward Chris­tian­ity. Intellectually curious and secular-­minded colonial officers, ­political advisors, and traveling scholars from ­Europe and the United States inquired about Buddhism, wrote about it, and translated part of its scriptures into ­European languages, providing Western readers with alternative sources of information about a Buddhism that was less tainted by colonial influence.

C HA P T E R F I V E

The Making of Modern Buddhism in Siam and the West

Good kings are the enemies of democracy.

From the seventeenth c­ entury ­until well into the nineteenth c­ entury, Christian missionaries ­were the only Westerners to study Theravāda Buddhism in more detail. Scholarly priests like Louis Laneau, Dan Beach Bradley or John Taylor Jones contributed to the early study of Siamese Buddhism in vari­ous ways, including translation, ethnological observation, and comparative religion studies. While their work often had a religious agenda, their engagement with Buddhism also had the unintended consequence of introducing Western scholars to Buddhist texts and ideas. Over time, this interaction helped pave the way for more sympathetic studies of Buddhism in the West. Buddhism became ­popular not only on the scholarly level, but also among the educated public as a ­whole. Books such as James M. Peebles’s Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity Face to Face (1878) had impor­tant intellectual ramifications.1 One of its most distinguished readers was the American Henry Steel Olcott, who, a­ fter studying Peebles’s book, was convinced of the superiority of Buddhism over Chris­tian­ity. He ­later became one of the most impor­ tant promoters of Buddhism in the West—­a “white Buddhist,” as Stephen Prothero called him. Olcott closely cooperated with Ceylonese monks and lay scholars in their b ­ attle against the influence of Chris­tian­ity in the British colony.2 Another founding figure of Buddhist studies in the West was the British Orientalist Thomas W. Rhys Davids, who spent ten years in the Ceylon Civil ­Service in the period 1866–1877. He prepared the first authoritative Pāli-­English dictionary, published numerous editions of Buddhist texts, and, a­ fter his return to Britain, became responsible for the creation of such prestigious academic institutions as the Pāli Text Society and the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.3 Buddhism fit well into the E ­ uropean religious discourse of the time b ­ ecause it met a widespread desire for spiritual renewal that moved p ­ eople to look beyond Western thought and culture. Professed Buddhists from the West such as Rhys Davids constructed a rational Buddhism to replace what they saw as irrational Chris­tian­ity.4 Another remarkable expression of ­Europe’s fascination with ancient 139

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Eastern wisdom, albeit of a very dif­fer­ent character, is the theosophical movement, which helped p ­ opularize Asian religions in the West through its vari­ous activities and numerous publications. The Theosophists formed a bricolage of Western occultism and Eastern religions (especially of Buddhism) to establish, according to a programmatic treatise published in 1887, a “Universal brotherhood of Humanity without distinction of race, creed, or color” that would supersede the dogmatic antagonisms that in their eyes had separated the world’s religions. The eclectic ideas they employed ­were a projection of Western ideas and did not derive from original Buddhist scriptures, and they contained esoteric ele­ments that ­were often criticized as pseudo-­scientific and eccentric.5 Nonetheless, central representatives of theosophical teachings such as Helena Blavatsky, Henry Steel Olcott, and Annie Besant not only served as impor­tant intermediaries for Americans and E ­ uropeans interested in Eastern religions but also gave assistance to the revival of Hindu and Buddhist self-­awareness and self-­respect in Asia.6 Initially, Buddhist passions in the West w ­ ere ignited by a growth in the study of Eastern religions and philosophies in the eigh­teenth ­century, when British and French Orientalists, in tandem with the imperial expansion in the East, “discovered” the antiquities of India and Southeast Asia and began to theorize about the deep past of Oriental culture and philosophy. The British conquests in South Asia made it pos­si­ble for Western researchers to unearth texts and traditions from ancient Indian periods that hitherto had been unknown in E ­ urope. According to the French historian Edgar Quinet, ­t hose texts appeared “more profound, more philosophical, and more poetical than that of Greece and Rome.”7 Western scholars learned that Buddhism was some five centuries older than Chris­tian­ity and that ­there had been early encounters between Greeks and Indian Buddhists in the aftermath of the Indian campaign of Alexander the ­Great in the fifth ­century BC. The exchange of ideas between the civilizations is documented in the semi-­ canonical Buddhist text Milinda Pañha (Questions of Milinda), the oldest versions of which date to the second ­century BC. ­European Orientalists such as the Danish Carl Wilhelm Trenckner and the British Rhys Davids provided the first translations of the Milinda Pañha in E ­ uropean languages in 1880 and 1890–1894, 8 respectively. Some scholars began to speculate about an influence of Indian thought on Chris­tian­ity, truly fascinated by the possibility of reversing the direction of transmission e­ arlier E ­ uropean ­philosophers had proposed. The contours of an “Asian ­Renaissance” began to emerge from ­t hese studies that attracted the attention of scholars and common readers alike. With ever-­increasing curiosity, ­t hose readers sought wider understandings of the history and culture of Asian civilizations.

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Henry Alabaster and The Wheel of the Law Nineteenth-­century Western scholars had devoted ­little attention to Siamese Buddhism ­because they ­were interested mainly in the original canonical Pāli texts; they spent much more time studying Buddhism in Ceylon. Only few of them ­were willing, therefore, to acquire the depth of knowledge of the language they would need to study Siamese religious lit­er­a­ture. A notable exception was the British diplomat and l­awyer Henry Alabaster, who came to Bangkok as an interpreter for the British consul in 1856. In 1872, he became a personal advisor to King Chulalongkorn, a position he retained u ­ ntil 1884. In that capacity he served the court in multiple roles: he worked as an interpreter, started the Post and Telegraph Office in Bangkok, helped found a museum located inside the royal palace, and advised the king on ­matters related to international politics and law. He also contributed to the development of the kingdom’s urban infrastructure and industry. Alabaster played a leading role in the construction of roads, including the Thanon Charoen Krung in the capital, the first road in Thailand to be built using modern construction methods. “Day by day,” reported the Siam Repository in 1872, Alabaster “went through the fruit orchards, and rice fields, jumping ditches, wading through mud, surveying the ground to plot out t­hese roads.”9 In 1873, he and the British mining geologist Charles Twite began an expedition to explore the copper mines at Lopburi.10 Alabaster was one of the few Westerners in the nineteenth ­century who settled permanently in the kingdom and fully integrated into Thai society. He married a Thai ­woman and assumed a new ­family name that their descendants in Thailand are still known by t­oday, Savetsila (shiny white stone), a name that translated the meaning of “Alabaster” in Sans­krit terms.11 He died highly honored in 1884 at the age of forty-­eight and was buried with the rank of a phraya in the Bangkok Protestant Cemetery. Alabaster was endowed with both an admirable practical sense and broad scholarly interests that ranged from geography and botany to politics, international law, history, and religion. He was awarded a membership in the Royal Asiatic Society of ­Great Britain and Ireland, prob­ably ­because he provided one of the first detailed studies of Theravāda Buddhism based on Siamese sources, filling a gap in Western Orientalist scholarship.12 His central work was The Wheel of the Law, written during an intermediate stay in E ­ ngland in 1871. The book consisted of three parts. The first section contained extracts from Thiphakorawong’s Kitchanukit, the second part was a translation of a Siamese text on the life of the Bud­dha, and the third part consisted of an essay from Alabaster’s pen on the veneration of the Bud­dha footprint in Siam (Thai: roi phraphuttabat; รอยพระพุทธบาท).13

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Alabaster’s book appeared at a time when Buddhism had become increasingly ­ opular among ­European and American readers, superseding to some extent the p study of Hinduism and Islam, which u ­ ntil then had dominated Western scholarship on Asian religions. During the first ­decades of the nineteenth ­century, a considerable number of studies w ­ ere published on Buddhism. Interest began with Brian Houghton Hodgson’s discovery of the Sans­k rit collection of Nepal during the 1820s and Eugène Burnouf’s Introduction à l’histoire du la Bouddhisme indien (1844) and continued with the translations and Buddhist catechisms of Rhys Davids and Paul Carus. Other remarkable intellectual achievements w ­ ere the famous works by the German Orientalist Friedrich Max Müller (1823–1900), prob­ ably the greatest authority of his time in the fields of Buddhist scholarship and Indology. Buddhism began to reach a wider audience in ­Europe and the United States, where poems, novels, and tracts devoted to its wisdom came off the printing presses, addressing above all the rationalist sentiments of Christian readers who had become critical of their own religious tradition. Ele­ments of Buddhist thought entered dif­fer­ent fields of Western philosophy and culture, for example in the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, Richard Wagner, and Friedrich Nietz­sche. Each of them appropriated dif­fer­ent facets of Buddhism. Schopenhauer was fascinated by its denial of the ­w ill, Wagner adored the philosophical sublimity of Gau­ta­ma’s teachings, and Nietz­sche was attracted by the strict atheism that Orthodox Buddhists seemed to pursue.14 The most startling part of The Wheel of the Law was the E ­ nglish translation of Thiphakorawong’s Kitchanukit. A slightly shorter version had previously been published ­u nder the title The Modern Buddhist. It had been well received by ­European scholars, and Alabaster felt encouraged to do more. His ­English rendering of the text was in general reliable and accurate, but he did not translate the book in full. In par­tic­u ­lar, he skipped or summarized some passages on science in the first part of the Kitchanukit. The E ­ nglish text also contained many interpolations in which Alabaster further elucidated or “corrected” Thiphakorawong’s arguments according to his judgment, as if he was certain that he knew the thoughts of the author better than Thiphakorawong could possibly have known himself. The Modern Buddhist was therefore both a translation of and a commentary on the Kitchanukit. Alabaster’s book addressed readers “who, in ­these days of criticism and doubt, have lost all the faith and hope that was in them, and search in vain for some foundation on which to rebuild their belief.”15 He observed a new receptiveness of Western culture to alternatives to Chris­tian­ity that had become particularly strong in the nineteenth ­century, when a general crisis of faith began to be felt at almost all levels of Western socie­ties. Th ­ ere w ­ ere several reasons for this. A growing

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scientific skepticism among the educated bourgeoisie and the advent of Darwinian evolutionary theory had undermined the Christian doctrine of creation, while many p ­ eople in E ­ urope ­were suffering from the social dislocations caused by industrialization and urbanization.16 In the aftermath of the French Revolution, Catholic ­Europe experienced an unpre­ce­dented attack on the authority and material basis of the Church, resulting in a vigorous policy of expropriation of Church property and the separation of church and state. The liberal thinker John Stuart Mill, for example, recommended that religion be removed from public life and ­limited to a place in the domestic sphere, while the radical social scientist Karl Marx famously condemned religion altogether as the “opiate of the masses” in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843–1844).17 At the time Alabaster published his Wheel of the Law, the Prus­sian state, headed by Minister President Otto von Bismarck, was fighting a Kulturkampf (culture strug­gle) against the Catholic Church in the newly established German Empire that sought to exclude religious authorities from public education and ­political discourse.18 Proponents of a modern secular state usually associated religion with superstition, backwardness, and intolerance and argued that it was incompatible with an envisioned secular social order founded purely on “rationality.” However, the ­process of “secularization” in E ­ urope was neither straightforward nor all-­ encompassing. Even ­t hose who ­were skeptical about Chris­tian­ity came to realize that while religious belief might be in decline among the educated elites, the masses remained devout. The uncompromising form of evangelical Chris­t ian­ity that emerged in the nineteenth ­century was one way of responding to the disenchantment with the world and the disillusionment with mainstream denominations such as Anglicanism. But evangelical zealots attracted only a minority of Christians in Western countries, and the faith they advocated had a rather deterrent effect on ­others who ­were attracted to the calm and tolerant attitude of Buddhism. However, the secularizing forces of modern science, anthropology, and ­political theory could not completely replace the old religious patterns and paradigms. Instead, they left a spiritual lacuna waiting to be filled. Orientalist scholarship provided a vocabulary and a conceptual framework for appeasing p ­ eople’s appetite for spirituality while at the same time deploying the methods and tools of modern scholarship inherited from eighteenth-­century Enlightenment thought.19 Although Alabaster never converted to Buddhism, he exhibited much sympathy for a religious doctrine that did not depend on the idea of a creator God and was f­ ree from naïve rejection of purely rational judgements. What is more, the idea of religious tolerance—­which did not evolve in E ­ urope ­until ­after centuries of cruel and destructive warfare—­was one of Buddhism’s oldest princi­ples. The Buddhists in Alabaster’s narrative w ­ ere aware that questions of religion transcend

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the sphere of the mere intellect and the world of sensual experience. They had learned, according to Alabaster, to accept the limitations of ­human perception and to confine their assumptions to that which is empirically observable. He concluded from the Kitchanukit that Buddhism is not a religion but an anthropological doctrine b ­ ecause its major theme is h ­ uman nature. In Buddhism, Alabaster argued, the basic characteristics of man and the calculable social consequences of his natu­ral inclinations are balanced by a set of social rules and moral concepts derived from h ­ uman experience. Thus, Alabaster’s “modern Buddhism” was in its essence not a religion of revelation but a science of man. The religion of Buddha meddled not with the Beginning, which it could not fathom; avoided the action of a Deity it could not perceive; and left open to endless discussion that problem which it could not solve, the ultimate reward of the perfect. It dealt with life as it found it; it declared all good which led to its sole object, the diminution of the misery of all sentient beings; it laid down rules of conduct which have never been surpassed, and held out reasonable hopes of a f uture of the most perfect happiness. Its proofs rest on the assumptions that the reason of man is his surest guide, and that the law of nature is perfect justice. To the disproof of these assumptions we recommend the attention of those missionaries who wish to convert Buddhists.20 Alabaster’s translation was not unnoticed in the West. In 1870, the Bavarian Allgemeine Zeitung München printed sections from The Modern Buddhist in German as an example of the deep wisdom of the East.21 A critic for the Westminster Review found it “extremely instructive, especially for ­t hose who may be tempted to lend themselves to the encouragement of fruitless, and worse than fruitless, Oriental Christian Missions.”22 A reviewer for the British Spectator described Thiphakorawong as “a Buddhist Matthew Arnold, in other words, a layman of perfect culture, of much subtlety of thought, with something of ‘distinction’ in style, perfect tranquility of nature, a keen eye for the physiognomy of faith, a skeptical intellect, and a spirit of strongly religious leanings.”23 The comparison was deliberately chosen. Matthew Arnold, the famous E ­ nglish essayist, had written a series of essays on the state of Chris­tian­ity in which he harshly criticized the Christian belief in miracles and pleaded for a renewal of Chris­tian­ity exclusively based on humanistic princi­ples.24 The second part of The Wheel of the Law presented an ­English version of the life of the Bud­dha based on a Siamese narrative, commencing with events of his ­earlier incarnations up to his attainment of Buddhahood. Biographies of the

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Bud­dha ­were in high demand in the nineteenth ­century and in many ways complemented the quest for the historical Jesus in biblical studies. E ­ uropean scholars such as Ernest Renan, Albert Schweitzer, and David Friedrich Strauss pioneered academic efforts to determine the history of Christ and floated theories about what words and actions could be attributed to him with any certainty while rejecting all super­natural events and mythical elaborations in the Bible that run ­counter to rational thought. In a similar manner, Western readers interested in the Bud­dha’s teachings wanted to learn more about the historical figure that was hidden ­behind the “legendary narratives that Buddhists relate concerning the f­ounder of their faith,” as the German Orientalist Hermann Oldenberg had put it.25 The prob­lem was that no single authoritative biography of the Bud­dha had been passed down from the Pāli canonical texts. E ­ uropean travelers and missionaries had long tried in vain to obtain such a biography ­because religious texts presented the Bud­dha’s story as a spiritual princi­ple rather than an individual life course. For Buddhists, the existence of Gau­ta­ma is less impor­tant than his teachings, so the question of ­whether he was born in India, Sri Lanka, or Siam was long considered irrelevant to the Buddhist tradition.26 For Christians informed by a rational and scientific spirit, it appeared natu­ ral to grasp the doctrines of other religions by looking at the living examples of their paradigmatic teachers. In the Christian tradition, the life of Jesus provided the model for an exemplary religious life. His life path was full of perils and setbacks and fi­nally ended in self-­sacrifice, but it was also a spiritual journey that ­every true believer should follow, one that led from ignorance to enlightenment and ultimately from this world to the next. Even nonreligious thinkers in the West could not ­free themselves from this par­tic­u ­lar trajectory. Critical scholars examined the information concerning the Bud­d ha’s life that could be reconstructed from the posthumous rec­ords of his sermons, separating as far as pos­si­ble religious myths from historical facts, plotting his life path according to ­European standards of writing about religious life. Narratives of the life of the Bud­dha based on Burmese, Tibetan, and Sinhalese sources appeared in print from the 1860s onward. Examples include Jules Barthélmy Saint-­Hilaire’s Le Bouddha et sa religion (1860), Philippe-­Édouard Foucaux’s Histoire du Bouddha Sakya Mouni (1860), and Paul Ambroise Bigandet’s The Life or Legend of Gaudama (1866).27 ­These works prepared the ground for a range of p ­ opular renderings of the Bud­dha’s life story. For example, Sir Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia: Being the Life and Teaching of Gau­ta­ma, Prince of India and F ­ ounder of Buddhism (1879) became an international best seller that has been translated into over thirty languages, including Hindi and other Asian languages. In 1887, the verse narrative Sakya-­Muni: The Story of Bud­dha from the E ­ nglish poet Sidney A. Alexander won the prestigious

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Newdigate Prize at Oxford. Biographies of the Bud­d ha became fash­ion­able in Western p ­ opular culture and sold well on the book market.28 Alabaster added to the picture by translating into ­English a Siamese text on the life of the Bud­dha entitled Pathomma Somphothiyan (First [festival of] omniscience), which sketches the life of the Bud­dha (Pathamasambodhi) written by the Supreme Patriarch Prince Paramanuchit Chinorot, a work then p ­ opular in Siam but unknown in the West.29 Works of this kind w ­ ere part of a “dhammographical tradition,” as the Thai historian Nidhi Eoseewong has called it, ­because they embraced a perspective in which the deeds, sermons, and life course of the Bud­ dha w ­ ere often told through miraculous stories. They provided no tangible account of the life of the historical Gau­ta­ma but illustrated the religious foundations of his teachings. However, Nidhi perceived in Prince Paramanuchit’s narrative a new sense of historicity that reflected a general trend ­toward a “rationalization” of world views observed among the Siamese bourgeoisie in the early Bangkok period, superseding in the long term the older dhammographical narratives of the life of Gau­ta­ma, at least among the metropolitan elites. Prince Paramanuchit endowed the Bud­d ha with a ­human life course (however fragmentary) and recorded his work in this world in a sequence of historical time. L ­ ater authors such as the Supreme Patriarch Sa Pussadeva and Prince-­Patriarch Wachirayān would further strengthen this temporal perspective in Thai religious writing.30 The manuscript that Alabaster translated was incomplete ­because almost thirty chapters of Prince Paramanuchit’s original text w ­ ere missing in his E ­ nglish version.31 And even though the Pathomma Somphothiyan was a first move away from the meta­phorical way of storytelling of traditional Buddhist lit­er­a­t ure, at least in part, it was still far from the ideal of a historical biography that con­ temporary Western readers may have had in mind. Alabaster noted, in a somewhat Orientalist manner, that in its original form the Pathomma Somphothiyan resembled a prayer rather than a real life story ­because it was inspired by vari­ous “superstitions grafted on to Buddhism” by p ­ eople who w ­ ere “ignorant of their religion.”32 He aimed to override t­hese mistaken renderings by tracing the real path of the historical Bud­dha from the earliest and most reliable testimonies of his life, eradicating from the Siamese narrative all the fantastical ele­ments that had superimposed the story of Gau­ta­ma’s life over past centuries. Not surprisingly, the notes he made to the text are more voluminous than the translation itself. They meticulously explain the religious terms that appear in the narrative and elucidate the general ideas b ­ ehind them. The notes ­were full of references to the latest publications of modern Western scholarship and frequently compared the Siamese text with other versions of the Bud­dha’s life story that scholars had located in Tibet and Burma.

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The Wheel of the Law had a twofold purpose. First, the book was written to ­ opularize the knowledge of Buddhism in the West and convey an idea of Siap mese literary style. Second, Alabaster wanted to encourage his Siamese readers to engage in a deeper study of their own religion. His book contained information on Siamese religious culture that hitherto was unknown to Western scholars and was also meant to serve as a guide to Siamese students to the superior epistemology of Western scholarship. Even Samuel Jones Smith, other­wise a harsh critic of Buddhism, admitted that “Siam affords peculiar opportunities for the study of the simpler and . . . ​purer form of Southern [i.e., Theravāda] Buddhism.” He heartily recommended Alabaster’s book to his readers b ­ ecause it unfolded “the mysteries of Buddhism to the large circle of readers, who would be deterred by more abstruse treatises.”33 Alabaster’s remarks on the history of Buddhism ­were informed by a par­tic­u­ lar narrative of decline that was firmly embedded in Western Orientalist discourse. ­European scholarship in the nineteenth c­ entury fostered an idealized vision of a classical Oriental past and denigrated the pre­sent state of Asian cultures. Alabaster felt that the “primitive form” of Buddhism with its Four Noble Truths was perfectly clear and unadulterated but thought that the pure teachings of the g­ reat ­founder had become corrupted by the ignorant. A “professional religious class,” wrote Alabaster, “has in­ ven­ ted an intolerable terminology, has multiplied ridicu­lous distinctions, has twisted the elementary princi­ples into all manner of shapes, and has in­ven­ted a system of meditation which, in lieu of expanding the mind, tends to contract it almost to idiocy.”34 Alabaster never supported the Christian mission in Siam, yet his critique of ­popular Buddhism reveals a par­tic­u­lar Protestant habit of judging religious practices. It is easy to recognize the specter of Catholicism lurking ­behind Alabaster’s unflattering portrait of the Siamese priesthood. It would be wrong, though, to describe Alabaster’s approach as simply an educated way of assuming power and intellectual control over Buddhism. The hypostatized object called “Buddhism” that Alabaster had in mind was not without referent in Siam. It fits well with the religious vision presented in the Kitchanukit, which was commonly understood to be the official position of the Thammayut-­nikai in Siam. ­These “modern Buddhists” ­were able to surpass the obsolete traditional views on cosmology that ­were still taught in most t­ emple schools of the kingdom by proposing a Buddhism that was open to the insights of modern science and was f­ ree from superstitions and metaphysical speculation.35 How closely Alabaster followed the reformers’ critiques of “­popular Buddhism” in Siam is demonstrated in the final chapter on the cult of the Bud­dha footprint, called phrabat in Alabaster’s rendering.36 This p ­ opular cult, which was widespread

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among believers in Siam and elsewhere in Buddhist Asia, contrasted markedly with the rational attitude ­toward the figure of the Bud­dha described in the Kitchanukit. Thiphakorawong emphasized that the Bud­dha was a ­human being with all the qualities of man, rejecting all of the p ­ opular fables that endowed Gau­ta­ma with godlike attributes. Alabaster referred to Thiphakorawong as a quin­tes­sen­tial example of “reasonable religious teaching and beautiful morality.” In contrast, the fantasies of p ­ opular Buddhism demonstrated for him “how far Buddhists have strayed from the course they acknowledged their g­ reat Teacher pointed out to them.” The adoration of holy footprints was a childish superstition in the eyes of ­every modern Buddhist, Alabaster argued, in­ven­ted in the past by small-­minded ­people who w ­ ere dissatisfied with the m ­ ental and moral qualifications of the Bud­ dha alone and “insisted on adding to them a number of the most absurd physical characters.”37 His obvious disdain for the cult itself did not prevent Alabaster from elucidating its history and examining its par­tic­u ­lar features, however. In December 1868, he journeyed to the most prominent site of pilgrimage in Thailand and visited Wat Phra Phutthabat in the province of Saraburi, where a natu­ral depression in a stone was kept that ­people believed to be the footprint of the Bud­ dha. He used the occasion to describe the towns and villages he passed on his way, among them the famous ruins of Ayutthaya, the old capital of the kingdom, which then lay “half-­buried among jungle and ruined ­temples.”38 Half of the chapter was devoted to a meticulous description of the footprint at Wat Phra Phutthabat. Alabaster carefully described the inscription, symbols, and motifs that cover its surface; explored their meaning; and m ­ easured their size. He thus annexed to his narrative a detailed explanation of the figures on the footprint showing the 108 auspicious signs of the Bud­dha’s spiritual supremacy.39

Divine Kingship and Its Critics The Wheel of the Law is a good example of the par­tic­u­lar ways the ideas of Buddhist reforms cross-­fertilized with the discourses of Western Orientalist scholarship. Alabaster and Siamese reformers shared a nostalgia for an “au­then­tic Buddhism” that contrasted sharply with the apparent corruption of con­temporary Buddhism. They went on a painstaking search for the historical Bud­dha, delved into the study of the most ancient scriptures to retrieve his true words and actions, and established philological methods of distinguishing an essential, clearly defined, and in fact purely textual Buddhism from the degradations of its “­popular” version. However, the figure of the monarch is conspicuously absent from ­t hese accounts, although his moral authority rested upon his charisma as a pious ruler

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who reigned in accordance with the Dhamma. Like Thiphakorawong, Alabaster dismissed traditional views of Buddhist cosmology and disparaged many p ­ opular rituals and beliefs as folklore. But he never questioned the mythological power of the king, as presented, for example, in the Traiphum or criticized the order of state and society that text described. He wrote with unwavering sympathy about Buddhism and presented a remarkably tolerant view of the monarch’s policy of assuming almost unlimited power in the kingdom. Alabaster published his book at a time when Chulalongkorn was still young and the kingdom was ruled by a regent, Chaophraya Si Suriyawong (Chuang Bunnag), Thiphakorawong’s elder b ­ rother. Chaophraya Si Suriyawong dominated court politics ­until 1873, when the king reached maturity and was crowned a second time before beginning a decade-­long strug­gle to take back royal power from the nobility. Alabaster supported the Young Siam Society (Samakhon sayam num) that emerged in the mid-1870s by assembling princes and government officials who shared Chulalongkorn’s ideas about social and p ­ olitical reforms. The group published a weekly newspaper called Darunowat (ดรุโณวาท; Teachings for a young generation), to which Alabaster made contributions as a translator of ­English articles by Samuel Jones Smith.40 The editors of Darunowat, Prince Kasemsansophak (Chulalongkorn’s half-­ brother) and Phraya Phatsakorawong (the king’s private secretary), used the paper as a way to bring “pro­gress” (charoen) to the Siamese. They printed articles about vari­ous issues of public concern, including news on foreign affairs (khamnokrachakan), essays on science and the arts (tamra saedaeng baep phaen wichatangtang; i.e., books on dif­fer­ent disciplines), Thai poetry and drama (nangsue botklon kaph khlongphak chan), and advertisements (khao bok rakha sinkha lae gan lelang; literally: news on prices and auctions).41 They also devoted much space to descriptions of public ceremonies and the speeches of the king, who featured in the articles as the spearhead of pro­gress in the country. Darunowat published enthusiastic pieces about modern developments in the country, such as revisions of the tax code, judicial reforms, and the establishment of the new Royal Museum and its exhibitions, cherishing the first light of pro­gress in the kingdom that Rama V ignited. Darunowat was a mouthpiece for the monarch and his party at court, reflecting the intellectual currents that moved the young Siamese elite during the first years of Chulalongkorn’s reign. The exact composition of the Young Siam group is not known, but many of them must have been relatives of the king who had been taught by Thai and Western court teachers. This dual education enabled them to look beyond the confines of their own culture and distinguished them from the older generation of court officials who w ­ ere more suspicious of foreign influence in Siam. B ­ ecause the young princes w ­ ere part of the royal elite and had

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trained for higher duties in the government, however, their ­political ideas ­were not particularly radical and did not seriously question the king’s authority.42 Alabaster, who was a personal advisor to King Chulalongkorn for many years, expressed no serious concern about Siam’s ­political system in his writings. Other Western observers ­were much more critical of Siamese government and society, pointing, for example, to the ubiquitous presence of slavery in the kingdom or the strict hierarchy that existed in Siamese society. They criticized the obsession of the Siamese with titles, social distinctions, and status; complained about the ­inequality of men and ­women; and scorned the unlimited power the king ostensibly had over his subjects. Many regarded the strong ties between Buddhism and the monarchy that w ­ ere expressed in numerous state ceremonies and saw exalted court rituals as rooted in an obsolete idea of divine kingship that modern Western socie­ties had long left ­behind. Writing in the same year as Alabaster, the Presbyterian missionary Noah A. McDonald offered ­t hese notes on the Siamese form of government: The king is an absolute despot. No hereditary aristocracy or legislative assemblies control his will. There is an aristocracy or nobility, it is true, but their power is felt only as instruments in carry ing out the will of the king. The people exist for the monarch, and not the monarch for the people. The laws, as a general thing, are laws of the king and not of the country. . . . He is the absolute master of the persons, property, liberty and lives of his subjects. . . . The person of the king is held in extreme sacredness and reverence, and in addressing him the same titles and attributes are applied to him which are applied to Budha. For one of his subjects to inquire after the king’s health would be an almost unpardonable offence, as it is presumed that the king never takes sick, or dies, as common people do. Some of t hese absurd ideas appeared in the late reign [of Rama IV] to have become obsolete, but are evidently being renewed again in the present.43 It seems natu­ral that an American churchman such as Rev. McDonald would see the intimate relationship between Buddhism and kingship as highly problematic. However, other Western visitors found similar words to describe the nature of the Buddhist monarchy in Siam, regardless of their religious or p ­ olitical background. Bishop Pallegoix called the Siamese form of government “despotic in the full significance of the term.” The country was ruled by a king who was revered by his subjects like a deity and was endowed with numerous royal titles that confirmed his godlike status.44 The British ambassador John Crawfurd believed in an intrinsic connection between religion and the form of government of a ­people. He conjectured that Buddhism had a most detrimental effect on the character,

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manners, and p ­ olitical regime of the Siamese. A ­ fter a long summary of what he had learned about that religion during his stay in the East, he concluded: ­

This is not to say that the monarchy had become obsolete in ­Europe. The only full-­fledged republics in the Western world at that time ­were the United States and Switzerland. ­After the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, a period of restoration began in ­Europe. In the mid-­nineteenth ­century, long ­after the French Revolution, monarchy resurfaced as the dominant form of government. Almost all countries in E ­ urope ­were monarchies of some kind, although they often differed significantly from one another. In Britain’s constitutional monarchy, the power of the ruler was tempered by a parliament, while the R ­ ussian tsar in Moscow reigned with absolute power and, not unlike Buddhist kings in Asia, based his legitimacy on the blessing of the religious class (the R ­ ussian Orthodox Church). The Habsburg monarchy maintained a close relationship with the Catholic Church, while the German emperor was a secular monarch who ruled in tandem with a strong prime minister whose p ­ olitical authority was firmly anchored in the Prus­sian constitution. The monarchs of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian countries fostered an image as “citizen

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kings,” avoiding the pomp and lavish spending of ­earlier monarchs and seeking support from the wealthy bourgeoisie that had begun to dominate p ­ olitical life in their countries.46 Monarchies in Southeast Asia ­were no less diverse. The V ­ ietnamese emperor presided over a complex court bureaucracy modeled ­after that of the Chinese Empire. ­There ­were many larger and smaller Muslim sultanates scattered across maritime Southeast Asia, often competing with or threatened by ­European colonial powers that ruled in the Philippines, the Malay Peninsula, and Java.47 The Buddhist kingdoms of Cambodia, Burma, and Siam stood out in Western lit­er­a­ ture as particularly drastic examples of a despotism that allegedly prevailed in the East. The Siamese monarch was the Lord of Life (Chao Jivit), surrounded by arcane rituals and restrained only by the Ten Kingly Virtues of the Thammasat. He lived a secret life ­behind the walls of his palace, concealed from his subjects and revered by the p ­ eople as an imminent Bud­dha. In 1931, one year before the abolition of the absolute monarchy in Thailand, the British Orientalist H. G. Quaritch Wales published Siamese State Ceremonies: Their History and Function, in which he expanded on the Siamese form of “divine kingship,” listing the many taboos connected with the person of the king. It was forbidden to touch the monarch’s body, especially his head and his hair; to look at the face of the king; to inquire ­after his health; to spell out or even know his personal name; and so on. All t­ hese royal taboos surrounded the king with an “air of mystery and sanctity” that according to Wales was characteristic of the Hindu-­Buddhist form of divine kingship.48 However, Western observers ­were often deceived by the pompous rituals of Siam’s ceremonial monarchy. ­There had always been a huge difference between ­political theory and government practice in Siam. Elaborate court rituals and state ceremonies belied the fact that the king’s real power was often quite ­limited. He was bound by strict court protocol and stifled by a host of power­ful advisors, noble families, wealthy traders, and crafty court astrologers. King Mongkut ruled by the grace of the wealthy Bunnag f­ amily, which had supported his claim to the throne and whose p ­ olitical influence in the kingdom lasted well into the Fifth Reign. King Chulalongkorn spent the first ten or twelve years of his reign fending off internal enemies and competitors and was careful to balance the interests of conservative and progressive factions at court. His reform policies gained momentum only ­after the older and more traditional generation of ministers had died or retired. Moreover, the precolonial p ­ olitical order in Southeast Asia was fluid and unstable. The ­political claims of Siamese kings over vassal states such as Cambodia, Chiang Mai, and Patani ­were frequently subverted by competing Asian powers

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such as Burma or Vietnam and l­ ater by Britain and France. Th ­ ere w ­ ere no clearly defined borders that separated the territories of kingdoms and empires from one another. The power of kings in t­ hese states depended on their abilities as charismatic leaders and on hierarchies of patron-­client relations rather than on a bureaucracy, and that power faded quickly when a monarch’s luck began to run out. Thus, the power of Southeast Asian states waxed and waned according to the strength of their leaders.49 The rise of ­European colonial states to ­political dominance in Southeast Asia was both a cause and a consequence of this instability. In some sense, Siam was a “theater state” (to borrow a term from Clifford Geertz) in which the figure of the monarch was the center of mass ritual, public spectacle, and court ceremonialism rather than of tyrannical power.50 Westerners’ comments about Siam’s p ­ olitical system ­were firmly entrenched in Western p ­ olitical thought. ­There is a long tradition in E ­ uropean lit­er­a­ture of describing the differences between Asian and ­European socie­ties. Rooted in Greek philosophy, the concept of “Oriental despotism” was particularly impor­tant for ­European ways of interpreting and representing Asian socie­ties. In his Politics, Aristotle made a distinction between the concept of tyranny as the decay of a form of kingship known in ­Europe and tyranny as an established ruling system, which he associated with the ­political conditions in Oriental empires (specifically that of the Persians). For Aristotle, the distinction between E ­ uropean and Asian constitutional norms was not only ­legal but anthropological. He argued that the inhabitants of Asia w ­ ere more submissive than the p ­ eoples of ­Europe and therefore endured despotic government willingly, even if it meant that their ruler treated them like slaves.51 Since the sixteenth ­century, ­European travel writers, ­philosophers, merchants, diplomats, colonizers, and missionaries had labored to confirm and generalize this distinction (even though “real” despots w ­ ere in fact difficult to find in the East) and often used it to justify E ­ uropean colonial rule.52 The Western critique of “divine kingship” in Siam also derived from a specifically ­European historical experience. The history of Chris­tian­ity (like that of the two other m ­ onotheistic religions, Judaism and Islam) is marked by abiding conflicts between religion and the state. Chris­tian­ity emerged in the Near East in opposition to both the Jewish religious tradition and the worldly authority of the Roman Empire. In medieval ­Europe, where Catholicism had become the dominant religion on the continent, ­t here was constant strug­gle over the question of which of the two powers, the king or the pope, would represent the ultimate authority of the state. The Reformation, religious civil wars, and the ideas of Enlightenment philosophy further deepened the conflict between secular and spiritual authority in ­European socie­ties. The unity of the Christian faith crumbled, and monarchs made ­legal provisions to exclude religion from the ­political sphere. The

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antagonistic forces of spiritual and secular power in ­Europe enforced the separation of church and state. This is of course only a rough sketch of Christian ­Europe’s historical trajectory, but it is impor­tant to acknowledge that the ­political experiences of Buddhist countries ­were fairly dif­fer­ent from this model. Before the colonial period, ­t here was no strug­gle with worldly powers in Buddhist kingdoms. Gau­ta­ma had no intention of interfering in ­political affairs, as that would have been contrary to the purely spiritual and meditative purposes of his teachings. In addition, a missionary movement was not essential to the Buddhist faith. Buddhist influence on state affairs resulted more indirectly from the Indian custom of asking religious authorities for advice. The Buddhist monkhood was maintained exclusively by laypeople; that is, t­hose who could not yet lead a strict monastic life but who professed the teachings of the Bud­dha and engaged in charity as a way of merit making. Among ­these lay Buddhists w ­ ere the g­ reat kings of India, such as King Pasenadi of Ko­sa­la and King Bimbisāra of Ma­ga­dha. The most famous royal supporter of Buddhism was King Ashoka of the Maurya dynasty, who ruled on the Indian subcontinent from circa 268 to 232 BC. Max Weber has argued that the reign of Ashoka was a turning point in the history of Buddhism b ­ ecause he was the first king to act as its patron and officially made its tenets the princi­ples of his rule. His abilities as a charismatic and forceful leader transformed Buddhism from a soteriology practiced only by a small group of intellectuals (Intellektuellensoteriologie) to a religious mass movement.53 Ashoka became a model for ­later Buddhist rulers in South and Southeast Asia who sought to follow his example as a r­ ighteous monarch and legislator (dhammarāja) or universal monarch (cakkavatti). His successors took Buddhism to Sri Lanka in the third ­century BC, and it spread from ­t here to Southeast Asia in the centuries thereafter. However, it was not the case that the conversion of a monarch meant that his subjects ­were also won for the Buddhist faith. The princi­ple cuius regio, eius religio was unknown in ancient Asian kingdoms. Rather, Buddhism developed through persuasion and the example followers set.54 Siamese kings have always referred to t­ hese traditions to legitimize their rule, invoking the moral ideal of a universal monarch who acts as a wise legislator for the p ­ eople while supporting the Buddhist religion with generous donations and meritorious actions. In Siam ­t here had been an almost uninterrupted tradition of cooperation between or even symbiosis of kingship and the Sangha since the thirteenth c­ entury. Siamese kings had founded numerous ­temples and monasteries in the Thai capitals of Sukhothai, Ayutthaya, and Bangkok. Among them ­were magnificent buildings that shone like cathedrals where countless monks worshipped, meditated, and studied Buddhist texts. Although the king was the

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embodiment of the state and granted royal patronage to the monkhood, Buddhism served as the authentication of the entire p ­ olitical system.55 ­There was no reason for e­ ither party to question this division of l­ abor. The decline of Buddhism in colonized countries encouraged kings and Sanghas to foster this reciprocal relationship. The Western critique of Siam’s “god-­k ings” and their despotic regimes thus did not resonate in the kingdom. From a ­political point of view, Siam’s relations with Western countries ­were ambiguous and often strained. Many Siamese elites w ­ ere impressed with the sophisticated methods of ­European scholarship and felt encouraged to adopt its basic princi­ples, while the religious and ­political agenda of Westerners was feared as expansive and aggressive. Conservative forces at the Bangkok court lamented that Western influence in the kingdom had been growing too strong since the Bowring Treaty of 1855. Siam’s integration into the world economy increased the influence of E ­ uropean and Chinese trading ­houses, which soon dominated the major export-­oriented industries of the country.56 Geopo­liti­cal developments in the region seemed even more frightening to the Siamese monarch. The British intrusion in Burma and Ma­la­ya and France’s imperial expansion in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos left Siam as the only i­ ndependent country in Southeast Asia. Chulalongkorn’s motivation for reforming the Sangha was not only to centralize and tighten administrative control in the provinces, especially in the north and northeast, but also to enhance the ­political and spiritual authority of the Siamese monarchy vis-­à-­v is the nobility in order to mold the system of government more to his own wishes, thus leaving Siam in a better position to confront the growing influence of ­European powers in the region. In the 1880s, he began strengthening the royal institutions (mainly at the expense of the power­f ul Bunnag ­family), and he modernized the kingdom’s administration and education systems, always using Buddhism as an instrument to legitimize his ever more absolutist rule. Chulalongkorn’s reform policy was thus progressive and despotic at the same time. An early call for a limitation of royal power came from a group of prominent young courtiers, who in 1885 drafted a memorandum on the p ­ olitical position of Siam in the face of the challenges ­European colonial powers posed. The astonishingly forthright petition, which was signed, among o ­ thers, by Prince Naret Worarit and Prince Prisdang Chumsai, recommended a number of radical steps to modernize the kingdom, including the abolition of slavery; the introduction of new, less ceremonial palace manners; and a thorough reor­ga­ni­za­tion of the Siamese administration. Above all, the petitioners suggested a system of government that would balance the power of the king with a cabinet of ministers who would administer the country. The responsibilities of government, they argued, w ­ ere too

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complex to be handled by one person alone. Instead of further cultivating diplomatic relations with E ­ uropean colonial powers, they argued, the king would be well advised to concentrate on internal reforms in the country.57 The king quickly rejected the proposal. Chulalongkorn believed the Siamese ­people ­were not ready for such extreme ­measures. The petition, which became well known in Siam in subsequent years as Ror Sor 103 (Petition of the 103rd year of the Chakri dynasty), did not have an immediate effect on Chulalongkorn’s ­political agenda.58 The petitioners’ main fear was that the growing power of France and Britain in Southeast Asia would eventually jeopardize Siam’s ­independence and that diplomacy alone would not protect the kingdom from Western imperialism. They feared both the military strength of E ­ uropean powers, which seemed insurmountable, and the ­political ideology that nurtured colonial expansion. By this time, the Christian message in Siam had been replaced by a secular narrative based on the idea of “Western civilization,” which no longer considered Chris­tian­ity as its core ele­ment. The new promise of salvation was based on technological, social, and ­political pro­gress that the West would bring to the rest of the world. ­Europeans and Americans believed they w ­ ere at the forefront of a comprehensive world-­historical movement of pro­gress and w ­ ere therefore entitled to disseminate “Western civilization” to what they perceived as primitive or barbaric cultures in the East.59 This “civilizing mission” put to the test all Siamese traditions that could appear uncivilized in the eyes of the West, including the absolute power of the king and his almost divine status in the Siamese ­political cosmos. Prince Prisdang believed that the only way to escape from the threat of ­European colonialism was to become more ­European in outlook. He pleaded for a fundamental reform of Siam’s p ­ olitical institutions along Western lines in order to deny the E ­ uropeans a pretext for an invasion. The ideas presented in Ror Sor 103 w ­ ere doubtless inspired by examples such as the constitutional monarchy in Britain, where Prisdang had served as Thai ambassador from 1881 to 1886. However, for most Siamese elites, including the king, Western models of government ­were not translatable into local ­political practice and would eventually lead to chaos. Prisdang’s personal and ­political fate was sealed when rumors circulated (­whether they ­were true or not) that he was the leading author of the petition. He fell from royal f­ avor, was recalled from London the following year, and went into exile in 1890.60 The Siamese government treated dissident commoners even more harshly. In 1882, the Buddhist scholar and writer Thien Wan (also known as T. W. S. Wannapho) was sentenced to sixteen years and eight months in prison ­because he had written a paper criticizing corruption in the provincial administration and the abuse of office within the civil s­ ervice.61 In the last two d ­ ecades of

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the nineteenth ­century, power was systematically concentrated in the hands of the monarch, much to the distress of ­t hose who ­were hoping for broader participation of the ­people in government decisions.

Religious Policies during the Reign of King Chulalongkorn Chulalongkorn’s religious policy was to a large degree a continuation of Mongkut’s ­earlier attempts to “purify” the Sangha and to establish an administrative structure that would make pos­si­ble more systematic relations with the royal government. Yet Mongkut’s reforms, impor­tant as they ­were, did not seriously alter the heterogeneous structure of the Buddhist monkhood in the kingdom. At the end of his reign, Buddhism in Siam was still dominated by members of the traditional order. They ­were far superior in number and could therefore afford to ignore the strict monastic rules of the Thammayut monks. The same is true for the general state of Buddhist learning in the kingdom, which had not improved that much during Mongkut’s tenure as king. Chulalongkorn became a more active promoter of modernization than his f­ ather had been, not least ­because he was better prepared to deal with the challenge of Western imperialism. He received a Western education first from Anna Leonowens and l­ater from an ­English tutor, Robert L. Morant.62 The young prince’s travels in the early 1870s to some of the centers of E ­ uropean colonial empires in Java, India, and Burma left a deep impression on him and instilled in him the desire to learn more about modern administration and statecraft. Lacking the religious background of his f­ ather, Chulalongkorn showed less consideration for the concerns of conservative ele­ments in the priesthood. He elevated like-­minded monks and close relatives to high positions in the Sangha, thus tightening the bonds between the monarchy and the Buddhist monkhood. In 1892, the king assigned his youn­ger ­brother Wachirayān Warorot the task of using the t­emple schools as a basis for a modern education system in the provinces. This complemented similar attempts by his b ­ rother, Prince Damrong, who was responsible for the establishment of public government schools in Siam.63 They are both regarded t­oday as the foremost intellectuals of their generation. Damrong was an able administrator, a celebrated statesman, and the founding figure of modern Thai historiography. He is the author of numerous books and essays on Thai history and was the first Siamese historian to adopt from Western scholarship both the critical use of historical sources and the framing of history as national history, thus departing from traditional forms of religious and dynastic historical writing.64

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Wachirayān is considered to be the most impor­tant Thai Buddhist scholar of his time. Born in 1860 as a son of King Mongkut and his concubine Phae, he was given the name Ma­nuṣyanāgamānob (he who is a nāgā among men), a Pāli phrase whose components allude to Buddhist my­thol­ogy. The prince had a thorough education in both Thai and Western knowledge. His principal Thai teacher was the Princess Varaseṭhasutā, who introduced him to Siamese lit­er­a­ture, astrology, and Siamese arithmetic. He learned E ­ nglish, French, and mathe­matics from an En­ glishman named Francis George Patterson, and he ­later met Peter Gowan, a Scottish physician who assisted him in translating and condensing ­English textbooks on science and pedagogy. ­A fter his ordination as a monk in 1879, Wachirayān commenced a serious study of the Pāli language, passed a number of exams, and climbed the ecclesiastical hierarchy. He became abbot of Wat Bowonniwet in 1892 and one year ­later became the patriarch of the Thammayut-­nikai. As a respected Buddhist scholar, Wachirayān played a crucial role in developing new curricula for Pāli examinations and authored a number of textbooks on Buddhism for school pupils and newly ordained monks. He went on several inspection tours in the provinces to learn more about religious and intellectual life in the countryside and carefully recorded his experiences in daily journals. The Bangkok government knew l­ittle about t­hese remote areas of the kingdom and urgently needed such local information ­because ­temple schools ­were the main locations of learning in Siam. The implementation of a nationwide elementary education system directed from Bangkok required a centralized ecclesiastic administration. The Sangha Act of 1902 put the Buddhist monkhood u ­ nder monarchical control. “Central Thai Buddhist practices and teachings,” noted historian Peter A. Jackson, “­were standardised and subsequently imposed on the regional forms of the religion as a symbol of the ­political domination of Bangkok.”65 Wachirayān was among the masterminds of this agenda and made impor­tant contributions to the o ­ rganization of the clergy, monastic life, and the national education system. When he became supreme patriarch of the Siamese Sangha in 1910, he used the councils of elders to enforce changes in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, published numerous decrees on monastic discipline, and issued a monthly journal, Thalaeng kan khanasong (Announcements of Sangha affairs), which reported on the pro­gress of religious reforms. All of his endeavors aimed at unifying the Sangha u ­ nder a national umbrella centered on the person of the king.66 A principal prob­lem was that Wachirayān’s religious reforms would necessarily suppress the magical ele­ments of the faith that prevailed among ordinary believers and thus would devalue or ignore the a­ ctual religious practice of most Siamese ­people. In effect, the reconstruction of Buddhism as a rational faith

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had deepened the gap between urban elites who adhered to a renewed version of Buddhism and a “village religion” practiced in the hinterlands that the elites regarded as impure, superstitious, and essentially un-­Buddhist. In this subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) form of epistemic vio­lence, educated Buddhists regarded the rest of Siamese society as a ­silent majority of “uncivilized” half-­ Buddhists in need of spiritual education. In 1893, in order to improve the standard of monastic learning according to the Thammayut doctrine, Chulalongkorn founded the Mahamakut Acad­emy at Wat Bowonniwet (now Mahamakut Buddhist University) and installed Wachirayān as its first president. The new Buddhism taught at the acad­emy was built on rational foundations and was devoted to scriptural orthodoxy. During this same period, Chulalongkorn strove to centrally ­organize Buddhism and encouraged systematic research of the faith so it could take its place among the g­ reat world religions. Chulalongkorn followed a twofold strategy: building up a modern, centralized nation-­state and seeking recognition for Siam from Western countries as a civilized nation with a civilized religion. At the end of the nineteenth ­century, however, Siam’s relations with ­Europe had arrived at a critical juncture. In 1893, French gunboats bombarded the Siamese fort at Paknam and blockaded the mouth of the Chao Phraya River. Although the military confrontation was brief, the Siamese understood that they could not endure a prolonged war against France and, perhaps more impor­tant, that the British w ­ ere not prepared to intervene on Siam’s side against the French. In the aftermath of the conflict, Siam gave up ­political claims to Laos and subsequently lost the remaining bit of territory it still held in Cambodia, thus enabling the French to further expand their empire in Southeast Asia.67 Although the kingdom’s ­political and geo­graph­i­cal position between the British and French colonial spheres became increasingly precarious, intellectual and religious exchange with the West continued to flourish. In 1893, King Chulalongkorn was invited to the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. The ­organizers cordially addressed him as “the only crowned representative of pure Buddhism now living, since the downfall of the King of Burmah,” alluding to both the reputation of the Theravāda school as the most au­t hen­tic Buddhist tradition and E ­ uropean conquests in Asia.68 The Parliament assembled 200 speakers and papers from prominent religious scholars from all over the world. Thousands came to listen to the speakers during the seventeen days of the conference. ­Because he was in the midst of a major p ­ olitical crisis, Chulalongkorn was unable to leave the country, but his b ­ rother, Prince Chandradat Chudhadharn, wrote an essay on Siamese Buddhism that was read on the fifth day of the event.69 Other Buddhist delegates came from Ceylon and Japan, among them Anagārika Dharmapāla,

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Hikkaḍuvē Sumaṅgala, Zitsuzen Ashitsu, and Soyen Shaku. The German Indologist Friedrich Max Müller sent a treatise on Greek philosophy and the Christian religion, and Samuel G. McFarland from the Presbyterian mission in Siam presented a paper on Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity.70 The World’s Parliament of Religions was held in conjunction with the Columbian Exposition to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus. The exposition, a cele­bration of Western values and might, presented the latest technological masterpieces created in Western industrial countries. The halls for the major exhibits from the United States and ­Europe illustrated the advanced state of civilization Western countries had achieved. The exhibition area occupied 686 acres on the shores of Lake Michigan, where a virtual city had been erected in stone. The buildings ­were illuminated with electric lights and shone like ­temples at night. They ­were filled with machine guns, hydraulic elevators, colossal steam engines, locomotives, and so on. Siam’s exhibition space spread over several halls on the fairgrounds. The Siamese pavilions displayed the most remarkable natu­ral products of the country, Thai art, examples of Thai manufacturing, and “a most picturesque collection of costumes, worn by the dif­fer­ent classes of [Siam’s] inhabitants” in the Ethnological Building.71 Critics of the parliament questioned how representatives of the religions had been selected to attend the assembly, and ­t here can be no doubt that the entire exposition embraced a colonial perspective on world history. In many ways, the parliament complemented the narrative of the Columbian Exposition. The items featured in the White City (as the building complex for the exposition was called) demonstrated the material pro­gress of Western nations, while the parliament was intended to reveal the superiority of the Christian faith over all other religions. One of the o ­ rganizers, the Presbyterian cleric John H. Barrows, published a lavishly illustrated two-­volume set about the parliament that provided a broad panopticon of the world’s religions there assembled. In the introduction, he explained the o ­ rganizers’ intentions: This Book w ill also be read in the cloisters of Japanese scholars, by the shores of the Yellow Sea, by the watercourses of India and beneath the shadows of Asiatic mountains near which rose the primal habitations of man. It is believed that the Oriental reader will discover in these volumes the source and strength of that simple faith in Divine Fatherhood and Human Brotherhood, which, embodied in an Asiatic Peasant who was the Son of God and made divinely potent through Him, is clasping the globe with bands of heavenly light.72

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From the outset, the parliament strug­gled with a number of contradictions. Barrows promised to re­spect the religions of “­others,” but in fact he and his colleagues had devised the event as an “exercise in Christian triumphalism in which the superiority of the faith would be demonstrated in an interfaith context,” as religious studies scholar E. Allen Richardson put it. It was difficult for non-­ Christian participants to understand how religious tolerance would be pos­si­ble when the rationale of the ­organizers was to prove that their religious faith was the fulfillment of all o ­ thers.73 What is more, the peacefulness of the Christian message was frequently subverted by E ­ urope’s aggressive colonial policy in the rest of the world. Christian powers conquered foreign countries, stole their natu­ral resources, and subdued their inhabitants. The incredibly violent Anglo-­Burmese Wars, France’s military interventions in Vietnam, and most recently the Paknam Incident in Siam only confirmed this contradiction and made Christians look like hypocrites. Barrows tried to address the presence of colonialism while at the same time keeping it at bay, emphasizing that a parliament of religions was urgently needed, particularly in light of the fact that “­Europe’s Eastern question . . . ​Asiatic aggrandizement[,] and African colonization, had brought together rival nations and rival races to divide the spoils of war.”74 ­These formulations reveal the ambivalence of the entire proj­ect, and it is no won­der that the real­ity of the parliament turned out to be very dif­fer­ent from what Barrows had anticipated. Far from being a triumph for the Christian faith, the congress became a global platform for propagating ideas about religious tolerance and issuing anticolonial critiques. Asian delegates, such as the Indian Hindu monk Vivekananda and the Sinhalese Buddhist Anagārika Dharmapāla, used the opportunity to level charges against Western colonial powers and their Christian missions while eloquently defending their own religious traditions against the exclusivist stance of their Christian counter­parts. Anagārika even carried 20,000 copies of the Five Buddhist Precepts to Chicago to distribute to interested readers in the West.75 The religious climate in the United States was favorable for a vision of interfaith harmony that fueled many of the p ­ resentations, especially ­t hose by Hindu and Buddhist delegates. Asian religions had gained some popularity in late nineteenth-­century Amer­i­ca. One reason for this was the presence in the United States of Asians from India and China who emigrated to the United States in response to the discovery of gold in Sutter’s Creek in California in 1849 and the rapid expansion of the railroads in the second half of the nineteenth ­century. Also, t­ here was a new receptiveness to Buddhism, particularly among East Coast intellectuals, who looked to Asia as an alternative source of spirituality. Edwin Arnold’s

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The Light of Asia, a best seller in the United States, encouraged Unitarian Christians such as James Freeman Clarke and Francis Ellingwood Abbot to engage in a comparative study of Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity. Members of the ­Free Religious Association, which had been founded in Boston in 1867, used “rationalized” Buddhism as a vehicle for breaking away from ­organized religion and encouraging the scientific study of theology beyond the narrowness of Jewish and Christian dogmatism.76 Even the former court teacher Anna Leonowens, who was other­ wise critical of social and ­political conditions in Siam, commented on Buddhism with genuine affection. Impressed by a public lecture she had delivered in Chicago in 1876, a reviewer wrote: “­A fter listening to the lecture, one arose with the impression that, if the Buddhists would return the compliment Christians have paid them, and send a few missionaries to Christian lands, it might in some re­spects be a good ­t hing.” 77 Anagārika Dharmapāla became a leading voice at the parliament. He gave two speeches. One was “Points of Resemblance and Difference between Chris­tian­ity and Buddhism,” in which he rejected the claims of superiority of the Christian faith and insinuated that Chris­t ian­ity may have borrowed ele­ments from Buddhism through the Greek tradition. His other paper considered “The World’s Debt to Bud­dha,” wherein he presented a history of Buddhism that “culminated in the overthrow of ­monotheism [in India] [and] priestly selfishness, and the establishment of a synthetic religion, a system of life and thought which was appropriately called Dhamma—­philosophical Religion.” 78 He also attended a discussion about the Christian missions in Asia, where he openly attacked the methods and attitudes of missionaries in his country.79 American newspapers printed headlines with quotes from one of Anagārika’s sermons given in Chicago that accused Christians of betraying their own teachings. Other Asian delegates confirmed his critique, especially t­ hose from India, China, and Japan. As a result, the parliament almost became a tribunal where the crimes of the Christian West ­were put up for discussion.80 The Siamese delegate, Prince Chandradat, by contrast, carefully avoided any allusion to con­temporary politics or religious conflict. Although Anagārika frequently quoted from the works of Western authorities such as Friedrich Max Müller and Hermann Oldenberg, Chandradat made no reference to foreign scholars to bolster his arguments. In his paper, “Buddhism as It Exists in Siam,” he explained the idea of the Dhar­ma based purely on the Pāli scriptures, addressed the reasons for h ­ uman suffering according to the Buddhist doctrine, and elucidated at some length the wisdom of the Four Noble Truths “as taught by our merciful and omniscient Lord Bud­dha.”81 Prince Chandradat’s rather abstract paper was written in a nonconfrontational tone, stressing the temperance and mildness of

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the Buddhist faith as well as the tolerance the Siamese practiced in dealing with other religions. His p ­ resentation pertained exclusively to the metaphysical level of religion and contained no provocative ideas. Chandradat made no attempt to compare Buddhism with other religions and he did not mention Chris­tian­ity at all in his paper. Only his almost Humean remarks on the nature of ­human existence, which radically questioned the Christian notion of individualism and the self, addressed a topic of enduring controversy between Christians and Buddhists: The consciousness of self-being is a delusion, so that, until we are convinced that we ourselves and whatever belongs to ourselves is a mere nothingness, until we have lost the idea or impression that we are men, until that idea becomes completely annihilated and we have become united to Dharma, we are unable to reach spiritually the state of Nirvana, and that is only attained when the bodies dissolve both spiritually and physically.82 Prince Chandradat was not pre­sent at the Chicago congress. His paper was read by William Pipe, a private secretary to the chairman of the general committee. The only Siamese delegate to physically appear on the stage was Phra Suriya Nuvatr, the royal commissioner of Siam, who gave a short introduction to Chandradat’s paper and acted as chief ­organizer of the Siamese exhibition in the White City. Phra Suriya used other channels of communication to explain and promote Siamese culture in the West. In an essay titled “Status of ­Women in Siam,” he tried to refute the Western prejudice that ­women in Siam ­were oppressed, rejecting also the idea that Buddhism was the source of social ­inequality in his country.83 The debate over ­women’s rights had gained considerable importance in the late nineteenth c­ entury, when numerous ­women’s ­organizations emerged in ­Europe and the United States that claimed the right to the vote and demanded equality of the sexes in law and in everyday life. A distinctive feature of the Columbian Exposition was that it included a ­Women’s Building to serve as a forum for ­women’s clubs and associations from all over the world. In the nineteenth ­century, Western travelers had painted a particularly dark picture of the status of ­women in Siam. Books such as Anna Leonowens’s The ­English Governess at the Siamese Court had been very ­popular in Western countries since its first publication in 1870, adding to a narrative of Siam as an underdeveloped country where a “forlorn despot” purchased his concubines like ­cattle.84 In the book, Anna Leonowens appears as a civilizer who was convinced of the superiority of her own values and way of life. In this spirit, she educated not only the Siamese students entrusted to her (including Crown Prince Chulalongkorn), but also the king himself and the entire country. Although Siamese readers soon

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realized that Leonowens had not always been precise with the truth in her writings, they had ­little means to correct her misrepre­sen­ta­tions.85 Three years ­later, Leonowens published The Romance of the Harem, a semi-­fictional story set in King Mongkut’s palace, that again accused Siamese men of harsh and unjust treatment of ­women.86 The books featured progressive ­political views, including pleas for ­women’s rights and the abolition of absolutism and slavery. They sold well in Western bookshops and brought Leonowens some literary recognition. She even became a kind of authority in all t­ hings Oriental and gave countless public lectures, particularly a­ fter her relocation from Siam to the United States in 1867. Although Leonowens’s writings on Siam are an inextricable mix of personal observations, Orientalist fantasies, and traveler tales, she did address a number of real grievances in Siamese society that undermined King Chulalongkorn’s goal of creating an image of Siam as a civilized nation-­state.87 Phra Suriya sought to c­ ounter the arguments of Western critics by referring to the many roles and functions ­women occupied in Siamese society. He highlighted their dominance in local trade and the freedom they enjoyed in their choice of a husband, emphasizing that a husband was a ­woman’s partner, not her lord.88 He admitted that i­ nequality and social distinctions w ­ ere not alien to the Siamese and that ­t here ­were ­great differences between customs in towns and the lives of ­women in rural areas, but he noted that “the laws and especially the religion of the country make no distinction ­whatever in the classes.” Phra Suriya also argued that the Siamese based their be­hav­ior on the moral prescriptions of Buddhism, which aim at overcoming lust, pain, and suffering in order to reach happiness. All in all, he created a fairly idealized image of Siam’s Buddhist society, especially when he claimed that the Siamese did not need public poor­houses ­because Buddhism had instilled in the ­people a deep sense of charity that prevented the spread of poverty in the kingdom. “The poor, the invalid, the sick, and the destitute,” he noted, “are all well fed and taken care of by their neighbors.” He also stated that contrary to what Westerners might believe, ­t here had been no famines in Siam for more than one hundred years. “Although the bulk of the Siamese population possesses less wealth as compared with western nations,” Phra Suriya concluded, “their happiness is far greater.” ­European history, by contrast, was full of examples of the evils of selfishness and ambition. In the final section of his essay, Phra Suriya used the rise and fall of Napoleon to illustrate the ­human inclinations Buddhism sought to transcend: Napoleon worked his way up from a most humble position in the ranks to that of a great Emperor. In the course he pursued, which was prompted by selfishness and ambition, he was the cause of the loss of hundreds of

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thousands of innocent lives, of all t hose cruelties of war and its appalling consequences. And was he in any degree more happy than he was before? No! On the contrary, his life would perhaps have been a happier one had he remained only a private soldier. Lust, I repeat, brings on suffering, and is therefore an evil; so is covetousness and avarice.89 Phra Suriya spoke at a time when E ­ uropean colonial powers w ­ ere tightening their grip on Asian countries. The warlike spirit of Napoleon may have been banished from ­Europe, but it obviously lived on in Asia and Africa. Siam’s independence became virtually an anomaly on the map, always in danger of falling victim to Western expansionist designs in the region. Chulalongkorn’s religious policy was part of a larger diplomatic initiative that sought to pacify potential foreign invaders by making territorial concessions and concluding international treaties. In 1897, the king went on a long goodwill tour of E ­ urope designed to strengthen ties of friendship with the royal ­houses in London, Paris, Vienna, and Saint Petersburg, among o ­ thers.90 Chulalongkorn also took advantage of the growing interest in Buddhism in Western countries to improve Siam’s image in the West. Although he lacked the religious authority of his ­father, Chulalongkorn actively supported Buddhist learning in Siam and maintained close relationships with scholars from abroad. Chulalongkorn played a key role in founding the Pāli Text Society in E ­ ngland and cosponsored the publication of Friedrich Max Müller’s fifty-­volume set of the Sacred Books of the East (printed in 1879–1910). The king had no fear that a new scientific attitude t­ oward Buddhism would lead to a disenchantment with his religion; instead, he encouraged researchers from all backgrounds to study it. It was not so much a quarrel but rather a s­ ilent complicity that connected him with the Western Orientalist scholarship of his time. Chulalongkorn’s personal understanding of Buddhism was firmly rooted in Thammayut doctrines, but it also owed much to the writings of Thomas W. Rhys Davids, whose work on the Pāli scriptures he admired and whose scholarly methods he a­ dopted for his own purposes. Buddhist authorities in Siam, such as Wachirayān, exchanged ideas with Western scholars and from time to time provided them with Pāli manuscripts from their collections, always e­ ager to gain recognition as religious scholars on a par with their colleagues from E ­ urope. In 1898, Wachirayān was given an honorary membership in the Royal Asiatic Society of ­Great Britain. The Thai court, in turn, awarded Edwin Arnold, author of The Light of Asia, the title Officer of the Order of the White Elephant to honor him for his contributions to Buddhist scholarship.91 A landmark achievement of Siamese Buddhist scholarship was the publication of the first printed edition of

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the Theravāda canon in the Thai language, which was completed just in time for the king’s ­European tour 1897. In the introduction to the first volume, which Chulalongkorn himself wrote, he explained to his readers why he believed that publishing this work constituted part of his royal duties, emphasizing in par­tic­u ­lar the central role the Thai monarchy had played in preserving the Buddhist faith: In early times Buddhist kingdoms were still independent; the king of each was a Buddhist, and both endowed and supported Buddhism. This was the case in many countries, to wit, Siam, Ceylon, Burma, Laos, and Cambodia. When accident or injury befell the sacred books, so that portions of the Canon were lost, each kingdom was able and was wont to borrow from others, and so to restore its own copy to a complete state; and such exchange was mutual. But in the present time Ceylon and Burma have come under English dominion; the governors of t hose countries are not Buddhists; they take measures to foster the secular rather than the spiritual welfare of the people; and they do not maintain Buddhism as did the old Buddhist kings. . . . Hence it is only in Siam that Buddhism stands inviolate. It follows, then, that the present is a fitting time to look into the scriptures, to purge them, and to multiply copies of them for circulation, so as to form an immutable standard of true Buddhism for future times.92 Western scholars received the edition with enthusiasm. When the king visited ­England during his ­European journey, he presented a full set of the scriptures to the British Royal Asiatic Society. On August 16, 1897, a del­e­ga­tion of distinguished members of the society thanked him in an official address at Taplow Court, Berkshire, which Rhys Davids read to the audience: And this magnificent edition of the Three Pitakas, edited with great learning and accuracy by Siamese scholars, w ill also be, by your Majesty’s generous gifts, of the greatest assistance to those European scholars who are endeavouring to solve the impor tant problem of the real historical meaning and value of that great religion of which your Majesty is the acknowledged head.93 However, Chulalongkorn’s leading role in the Buddhist world had less p ­ olitical impact than many may have hoped. In Ceylon, his pious rhe­toric encouraged monks from the Siyam Nikāya and the Amarapura Nikāya to look for royal patronage in Bangkok. When Chulalongkorn visited Ceylon on his way to E ­ ngland in 1897, the monks presented a petition that enthusiastically welcomed him as the only reigning Buddhist monarch in the Southern ­Hemisphere and asked him to

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grant “the protection of the religion of our Lord Bud­dha and the advancement of our spiritual welfare.” The petition was authored by respected religious authorities such as Hikkaḍuvē Sumaṅgala and Vaskaduve Subhuti. Prince Prisdang, who in 1896 had taken on the yellow robe during his exile in Ceylon (assuming the ordination name Jinawarawansa), was also among the signatories. They ­were all hoping to overcome monastic disunity in the Sinhalese Sangha and to rebuild the Buddhist institutions on the island with the patronage of the Siamese king. They even envisioned a pan-­Asian alliance to unify the branches of “Southern Buddhism” in Burma, Ceylon, and Siam “­under one international Ecclesiastical Council with Your Majesty’s august patronage and protection.”94 The ambitious proposal was supported by the American Theosophist Henry Steel Olcott, who was involved in the creation of the petition and drafted an ­English version to be read aloud at the king’s arrival in Colombo. But the petition did not have the desired effect. Chulalongkorn half-­heartedly promised to consider their request, but both the king and the Siamese Sangha carefully avoided any closer involvement with Ceylonese monastic affairs in the years thereafter. The British colonial government was attentively watching the p ­ olitical movements the Siamese ­were making in the region. Although the British claimed to rule in Ceylon as a purely secular power and w ­ ere principally unwilling to interfere in religious affairs, the petition was po­liti­cally sensitive ­because many Sinhalese adhered to a traditional idea of a Buddhist monarchy. This concept had the potential to challenge British influence ­t here. Chulalongkorn was aware of the dangers of a politicized Buddhism that not only challenged traditional ecclesiastic hierarchies and ways of practicing the faith but was also well suited to ­resistance against foreign rule. The kingdom’s delicate position between the colonial and the noncolonial had profoundly s­ haped the hybrid character of Thailand’s modernity. Chulalongkorn carefully avoided any confrontation with E ­ uropean powers while at the same time borrowing from Western imperialists methods and techniques for subjecting the Siamese population to centralized rule. In such circumstances, Siam could hardly become a center of anticolonial movements. According to American historian Laurie  J. Sears, “The price of Thailand’s ­independence seems to have been an uncanny ability to preempt would-be conquerors by joining them.”95 If we are to believe Prince Prisdang, the king did the opposite of what progressive-­minded Siamese intellectuals recommended in the early 1890s. In a confidential note on Chulalongkorn’s reign written in 1892, Prisdang accused the monarch of rigorously silencing all critical voices at court and in public discourse and of turning the government into a despotic regime. “The King is absolute, has no fear of anyone and need consult no-­one except it be a question the success of

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which is doubtful and he wishes the Senabody to share the blame and responsibility,” he wrote. Prisdang provided numerous examples of royal arbitrariness and the lack of sense of duty on the part of the king, whose ignorance discouraged his ministers and made government business difficult. Prisdang also rebuked the extravagances of the court that devoured astronomical sums of money and the enormous amounts spent on useless royal ceremonies and criticized the king for his submissive attitude ­toward Western powers.96 Many of Prisdang’s statements may have been made out of disappointed ambition. In fact, the king followed many of his recommendations, but only a­ fter a considerable delay. Chulalongkorn initiated the abolition of slavery in 1874 and ended the traditional patron-­client system that had dominated Thai society, but the p ­ rocess was gradual and was not completed ­until 1910. At the end of Chulalongkorn’s reign, the borders of the kingdom had been more or less clearly defined, the provincial administration had been centralized to a degree unknown in previous centuries, and the Sangha had become dominated by the ideas of the Thammayut-­nikai. Monastic education followed a reformed curriculum, the traditional Khòm script in which most religious texts ­were written became gradually replaced by the Thai script, and the syllabi in public ­temple schools had been revised based on E ­ uropean science and modern Buddhist orthodoxy. When King Chulalongkorn died in 1910, the Buddhist state he had created during his long reign was not yet a modern nation in all of its parts, but it could not be compared with the Siam of the 1860s.

The Twilight of Christianity in Thailand Chris­tian­ity never had the prestige and influence in Siam that it had in other Asian countries such as ­Korea or the Philippines. It did not become an intellectual resource for peasant protest as it did in China during the Taiping Rebellion and it was not considered impor­tant or dangerous enough to be banned from the country, as it was in Japan during the Edo period (1603–1868). The Siamese welcomed Christian missionaries as agents of technological pro­gress and Western civilization, but Chris­t ian­ity remained a marginal phenomenon in their country. The missionaries tried ­every strategy for spreading their faith. Throughout the nineteenth c­ entury, they printed tens of thousands of copies of Bible translations and catechisms each year to distribute to Siamese p ­ eople.97 Presbyterian preachers traveled to distant provinces in Siam and founded schools, churches, and medical stations in Ratchaburi, Petchaburi, Nakhon Si Thammarat, and Chiang Mai. At the turn of the twentieth c­ entury, Daniel McGilvary had spent more than fifty years at the northern fringe of the Siamese Empire, with Chiang Mai serving as

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his home base. From ­there he went on extensive preaching tours throughout northern Siam, eastern Burma, Laos, and southwestern China, teaching ­people to read, opening small boarding schools, and dispensing medicine for the sick. Yet in terms of conversions, the results of his endeavors ­were meager. Looking back on his missionary experiences, McGilvary wrote in his biography: “Our ideals, it is true, have not been realized. We have not witnessed among the Siamese or the Lao any racial movement t­ owards Chris­tian­ity; nor have t­ here been any g­ reat revivals resulting in large accessions to the church.”98 McGilvary self-­critically remarked that the church had failed to build up a Siamese clergy. A proper Christian education was essential for this task, but it had been difficult to establish Christian schools on a larger scale b ­ ecause of a lack of funding for buildings and personnel. During the d ­ ecades of McGilvary’s s­ ervice, the Siamese government had recognized the importance of a nationwide education system and had begun to establish a network of public and t­ emple schools. King Chulalongkorn and his successors had learned from the missionaries to look at modern education as a central instrument for nation building. They had ­adopted Western ideas about administration, science, religion, and cultural identity and had translated them into practices that ­were suitable for a Thai-­Buddhist national context. One result of t­hese hybrid practices was that missionaries, certainly unwittingly, operated as a force that supported the consolidation of an explic­itly royalist and Buddhist idea of “Thainess” (khwam pen thai), while Chris­tian­ity increasingly served as an antithesis to distinguish Thai culture from that of the farang, as Westerners w ­ ere collectively called in Siam. The reason that missionaries played an active role in the creation of this counter-­image was the fact that their work was informed by a vision of Christian exceptionalism that was based on firm distinctions that led them to insist that they ­were spiritually superior to Siamese Buddhists and that Chris­tian­ity offered absolute truth over all other religions. This vision did not allow for cultural syncretism. This notion of purity also prevailed in Bible translation. In their attempts to come to terms with the Thai language, missionaries wrote and read grammar books and dictionaries that would provide them with the means of communicating the authority of God so they could bypass the religious ambiguities of the Thai language in their translations. American church historian Herbert Swanson has argued that the Protestant mission in Siam is marked by a long history of “ecclesiastical colonialism”; that is, a firm determination to dominate and control converts in almost all aspects of religious and social life. In contrast to the traditionally egalitarian structure of Protestant churches in the United States, church institutions in Siam ­were from the outset based on missionary-­centered structures with strict hierarchies that left

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l­ ittle room for local p ­ eople to participate in decisions relating to church affairs.99 Moreover, the missionaries ­were not content with scattering small parishes of a handful of Christians h ­ ere and t­ here; they wanted to turn the entire region into an all-­embracing Christian state.100 American missionaries merged the messianic ideology of Christian revivalism with the ideas and practices of Western imperialism, exploring the pagan land like modern crusaders in order “to plant in another kingdom the standard of the Redeemer,” as one Christian commentator put it.101 Even though the kingdom they ­imagined was not of this world, the imperative of evangelizing instilled in them a sense of spiritual domination. Chris­tian­ity often had a profound impact on notions of authority and submission in nineteenth-­century colonial socie­ties, both complementing and expanding the reach of overlords. Where local kingship was abolished ­under ­European rule (as was the case in Sri Lanka in 1815 and in Burma in 1885), Buddhist institutions w ­ ere seriously weakened b ­ ecause they lost royal patronage. In noncolonial Siam, in contrast, the king strengthened his alliance with the Sangha and enhanced his spiritual aura as the foremost supporter of the Buddhist faith. The nationalistic policy of Chulalongkorn’s successor, King Vajiravudh (Rama VI; r. 1910–1925), is an even better example of the complex ways that Buddhist concepts of p ­ olitical legitimacy interacted with Western notions of nationalism. Vajiravudh advised his subjects to be loyal to king and country and to understand that the Thai, as the only ­independent p ­ eople in Asia who adhered to Theravāda Buddhism, had a duty to preserve and protect their faith. Even the speeches the king made to the soldiers of his Wild Tiger Corps w ­ ere marked by Buddhist piety; he required his troops to swear to bravely defend their religion against non-­Buddhist enemies. Religion, nation, and kingship formed an indissoluble unity in Siam in the early twentieth ­century. When the monarch coined the famous phrase Chat, Sasana, Phra Mahakasat (Nation, Religion, King), Sasana stood for an official and socially respectable Buddhism that represented the positions of the court and the metropolitan elite without necessarily reflecting the practices and concerns of many lay Buddhists. The slogan imitated a range of almost identical phrases known from ­European ­political propaganda, for example in Britain, where the Royal Army went to war in 1914 ­under the motto “For God, King and Country,” and in Germany, where Frederick William III coined the slogan “Mit Gott für König und Vaterland” (With God for King and Fatherland) in 1813 to evoke the unbreakable bonds between religion, monarchy, and the Prus­sian state.102 Vajiravudh was certainly aware of ­t hese parallels. He had spent nine years in ­England, from 1895 to 1904, where he received special military training at the Royal Military Acad­emy Sandhurst and studied history and law at Oxford. His

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­ olitical concept of nationhood and his enthusiasm for military proj­ects reflected p strong Western influence. The Wild Tiger Corps (Kong suea pa) is an example; when Vajiravudh created it in 1911 he modeled it ­after the Volunteer Force of Britain. The king was well acquainted with the habits of the British upper class, whose views and lifestyle he admired and often imitated, yet it seems that his encounters with ­European religious ideas sharpened his sense of Siam’s unique cultural identity. His encounters with pious Christians in ­Europe emphasized for him the significance of Buddhism as a major pillar of national unity, and he drew a sharp distinction between Siamese and Western state ideologies. Adopting the views of the Thammayut-­nikai, he considered Buddhism primarily as a rational philosophy or system of morality that had been created to prevent men from falling into barbarism. He did not believe that a super­natural being had been involved in its creation or that its teachings had been received by revelation. Instead, he believed that Buddhist teachings derived from “researches and experiments in nature’s own laboratory,” as he noted on one occasion. Buddhism, in short, was superior to Chris­tian­ity and other theistic religions b ­ ecause of its profoundly rational stance.103 Vajiravudh’s religious education began ­after his return from ­England in 1904, when he was ordained as a novice at Wat Phra Kaeo in Bangkok and spent four months in monkhood, as was common for young men of his age in Siam. During that time, he became familiar with the administration of the Sangha and learned the Vinaya rules from a syllabus that Supreme Patriarch Wachirayān had developed. The young king also studied Pāli and Sans­k rit texts and passed an exam at Wat Bowonniwet. He did not become a Buddhist scholar like his grand­father Mongkut, but his time in monkhood further strengthened his conviction that the Bud­dha, as the ­predecessor of Jesus and Muhammad, was the wisest of the three teachers. In Vijiravudh’s view, what spoke in f­avor of Buddhism was that Gau­ ta­ma preached religious tolerance and made no claims to be a god or speak for a god. What was good in Christian or Muslim teachings, the king believed, had been enunciated much ­earlier in the Pāli scriptures. The harsh opposition that Buddhists faced in their encounters with Christian missionaries only confirmed for him the fact that Buddhism was a serious challenge to their religious tenets. Vajiravudh also knew how to use religion as a means of promoting his nationalistic ideas. He was a diligent writer who pop­u­lar­ized Buddhism in a wide range of literary works. He wrote essays, poems, pamphlets, and plays in which he ­imagined the ideal Siamese citizen as a devoted Buddhist guided by the restraints of the moral law of the Dhamma.104 Although Vajiravudh’s p ­ olitical agenda appropriated many symbols and techniques of Western civilization, he explained it in terms of the traditional Buddhist

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theory of kingship. The king inherited his notion of an ideal Buddhist state from his ­father’s generation. Although he never changed the traditional ­political princi­ples that secured the power of the monarchy, the instruments he used to preserve Siam’s dynastic autocracy ­were radically modern. The Buddhist state that Vajiravudh had in mind was neither secular nor republican; he ­imagined it as a bulwark for absolute monarchy against both the enduring threat of Western imperialism and the internal forces that challenged the king’s p ­ olitical authority.105 Given the importance of state Buddhism for the king’s legitimacy and the enduring popularity of Buddhist folk belief and tradition, conversion to Chris­tian­ ity did not provide an ave­nue for social advancement in Siam. Such a move would have led to alienation from the Buddhist majority of Siamese society. From a practical point of view, t­here was l­ittle incentive for a Siamese Buddhist to convert when t­ here was a realistic danger of becoming an outsider who was marginalized and considered as essentially “un-­Thai” by relatives and neighbors. ­After centuries of missionizing work in Siam (now Thailand), Chris­tian­ity is still seen as a foreign religion, and t­here is no indication that the number of Christians w ­ ill significantly increase in the near ­f uture. According to an estimate by the Joshua Proj­ect, an evangelical website that provides information about “the world’s least-­reached ethnic ­people groups,” only 2 ­percent of the population of Thailand professes Chris­tian­ity ­today, and many of that group are members of ethnic minorities.106 At the same time, Chris­tian­ity was always more than just a religion for the Siamese. It also provided a way of knowing and mastering nature, an effective system for ­organizing society, and a strikingly dif­fer­ent view of the mysteries of ­human existence. In the p ­ rocess of refashioning Buddhism, the Siamese educated elite accepted a set of epistemological assumptions that formed the basis for cross-­ cultural religious discourse. Missionaries forced their Buddhist counter­parts to compare their religion with that of the “­others,” to define the differences between the faiths, to construe Buddhism in terms that ­were compatible with the categories of Western religious thought, and to form an idea of Buddhism that could meet both the requirements of a modern, rational religion and the moral standards of Western civilization.107 The ­process of making Buddhism “modern” consisted of a number of intellectual operations. Siamese scholars incorporated ele­ments of a more abstract Western notion of (scriptural) religion and used the methods of Western critical scholarship to trace what they regarded as the original sources of the Buddhist faith. They construed a deep history of Buddhism and its founding figure, Siddhartha Gau­ta­ma, whose teachings preceded that of Jesus Christ by several hundred years. They engaged in a painstaking search for the most ancient Theravāda

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Buddhist tradition and cultivated the use of its sacred language in t­emples and monasteries. They operated in an international network of scholars to keep pace with the pro­gress of Western Orientalist learning, which in turn inspired Siamese religious scholars to establish an ever more refined image of “modern Buddhism.” The Buddhism that emerged from this reinvention was in some ways akin to Protestant Chris­tian­ity ­because it was devised along the lines of a scientific epistemology that in many ways was predicated on the methods of Protestant biblical studies. The attraction of Chris­tian­ity therefore lay in a distinctive combination of similarity and difference, of a par­tic­u ­lar way of reasoning about nature that was fascinating to the Siamese, and of a theistic superstructure that ultimately remained foreign.

Notes

Introduction 1. Naengnoi Suksri, Narisa Chakrabongse, and Thanit Limpabandhu, The ­Grand Palace and Old Bangkok (Bangkok: River Books, 2014), 138. The painting of the reception of the Siamese envoys at Fontainebleau is a copy of Jean-­Léon Gérôme’s Réception des ambassadeurs siamois par Napoléon III et l’Impératrice Eugénie (1861–1864). The original is kept at the Musée national des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon in Versailles. For a detailed description, see Meredith Martin, “History Repeats Itself in Jean-­Léon Gérôme’s Reception of the Siamese Ambassadors,” Art Bulletin 99, no. 1 (2017): 97–127. 2. Maurizio Peleggi, Lord of ­Things: The Fashioning of the Siamese Monarchy’s Modern Image (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002), 80–81. The construction was planned and executed by the British architect John Clunich. 3. Koompong Noobanjong, The Aesthetics of Power: Architecture, Modernity, and Identity from Siam to Thailand (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2013), 52–71; Koompong Noobanjong, “Tales from the Throne Hall: The Chakri Maha Prasat Unveiled,” Journal of Industrial Education [warasan khrusat utsakam วารสารครุศาสตร์อตุ สาหกรรม] 5, no. 1 (2005–2006): 39–40. 4. Günter Lanczkowski, “Das sogenannte Religionsgespräch des Königs Mongkut” [The so-­called religious talk of King Mongkut] Saeculum 17 (1966): 119–130. 5. See, e.g., Volker Grabowsky, Kleine Geschichte Thailands [A short history of Thailand] (Munich: Beck Verlag, 2010), 125–145; David K. Wyatt, Thailand: A Short History, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 166–209; Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, A History of Thailand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 47–80; Barend J. Terwiel, A History of Thailand from the Thirteenth C ­ entury to Recent Times (Bangkok: River Books, 2011), 146–229. 6. David K. Wyatt, The Politics of Reform in Thailand: Education in the Reign of King Chulalongkorn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969), vii; see also Tej Bunnag, The Provincial Administration of Siam 1892–1910 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1977). Wyatt stresses the role Chulalongkorn’s half-­brother, Prince Damrong, played in Siam’s reform policy of the late nineteenth c­ entury. 7. Tamara Loos, “Competitive Colonialisms: Siam and the Malay Muslim South,” in The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand, ed. Rachel V. Harrison and Peter A. Jackson (Aberdeen, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 79–81. 8. Udom Srisuwan, Thai keung-­meuang-­kheun [Thailand: A semi-­colony] (Bangkok: Mahachon, 1979). See also Benedict  R. O’G. Anderson, “Studies of the Thai State: The State of Thai Studies,” in The Study of Thailand, ed. Eliezer B. Ayal (Athens, OH: Ohio Center for International Studies, Southeast Asia Program, 1978), 193–247.

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176   Notes to Pages 4–6 9. Lysa Hong and Craig J. Reynolds, “Marxism in Thai Historical Studies,” Journal of Asian Studies 43, no. 1 (1983): 77–104; Peter A. Jackson, “Autonomy and Subordination in Thai History: The Case for Semicolonial Analy­sis,” Inter-­Asia Cultural Studies 8, no. 3 (2007): 329–348. 10. Michael Herzfeld, “The Absent Presence: Discourses of Crypto-­Colonialism,” South Atlantic Quarterly 101, no. 4 (2002): 899–926; Michael Herzfeld, “The Conceptual Allure of the West: Dilemmas and Ambiguities of Crypto-­Colonialism in Thailand,” in The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand, ed. Rachel V. Harrison and Peter A. Jackson (Aberdeen, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 173–186. 11. For a careful overview of the conceptual history of the term “civilization,” see Jörg Fisch, “Zivilisation, Kultur” [Civilization, culture], in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch–­sozialen Sprache in Deutschland [Historical concepts. Historical encyclopedia of ­political and social language in Germany], vol. 7, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett-­Cotta, 1972–1997), 679–774; and Lucien Febvre, “Civilization: Evolution of a Word and a Group of Ideas,” in A New Kind of History: From the Writings of Febvre, ed. Peter Burke (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 219–257. 12. Adam Smith, “1st, the Age of Hunters; 2dly, the Age of Shepherds; 3dly, the Age of Agriculture; and 4thly, the Age of Commerce,” in Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. R.  L. Meek, D.  D. Raphael, and P. G. Stein, Glasgow Edition of the Works of Adam Smith, vol. 5 ­(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 14. Frank Palmeri has meticulously described the genealogical relations between Enlightenment conjectural history and modern social theory; see State of Nature, Stages of Society: Enlightenment Conjectural History and the Origins of Modern Social Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 13. J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 2, Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 309–329. As Karl Löwith has noted, however, this ostensibly secular way of philosophical reasoning still remains bound to Jewish messianism and the Christian idea of salvation; see Meaning in History, 4th ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 110–114. 14. See, for example, Friedrich Schiller’s definition of universal history in his inaugural lecture in Jena in 1789: “The discoveries which our ­European mari­ners have made in distant oceans and on remote coastlines, pre­sent us a spectacle as constructive as it is entertaining. They show us tribes which surround us at the most diverse levels of culture, like ­children of dif­fer­ent ages gathered around an adult, reminding him by their example of what he used to be, and where he started from.” “What Is, and to What End Do We Study, Universal History?” in Friedrich Schiller, Poet of Freedom, vol. 2 (Washington: New Benjamin Franklin H ­ ouse, 1985), 258–259. 15. For a general critique of the ­European “historicist” discourse on the non-­European world, see Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing ­Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2000), 3–16. For a deconstruction of the myth of “Western civilization,” see John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 16. Michael Adas, “Contested Hegemony: The G ­ reat War and the Afro-­Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology,” Journal of World History 15, no. 1 (2004): 31–63. For a general view of the history of the civilizing mission, see Jürgen Osterhammel, ­Europe, the “West” and the Civilizing Mission (London: German Historical Institute, 2006). 17. Thongchai Winichakul, “The Quest for ‘Siwilai’: A Geo­graph­i­cal Discourse of Civilisational Thinking in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth C ­ entury Siam,” Journal of Asian Studies 59, no. 3 (2000): 528–549.

Notes to Pages 6–9   177 18. For a critical assessment of Siam’s “hybrid” modernity, see the contributions in Rachel V. Harrison and Peter A. Jackson, eds., The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand (Aberdeen, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010). 19. David Streckfuss, “The Mixed Colonial Legacy in Siam: Origins of Thai Racialist Thought,” in Autonomous Histories, Par­tic­u­lar Truths: Essays in Honour of John R.W. Smail, ed. Laurie J. Sears (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 123–153; Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-­Body of a Nation (Bangkok: Silkworm Books, 1998). 20. See, for example, Peter Koret, The Man Who Accused the King of Killing a Fish: The Biography of Narin Phasit of Siam, 1874–1950 (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2012); and Tamara Loos, Bones around My Neck: The Life and Exile of a Prince Provocateur (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), a book on the life and ­career of Prince Prisdang (1851–1935), a diplomat and a member of the royal f­ amily. 21. Thongchai Winichakul, “The O ­ thers Within: Travel and Ethno-­Spatial Differentiation of Siamese Subjects 1885–1910,” in Civility and Savagery: Social Identity in Tai States, ed. Andrew Turton (London: Curzon Press, 2000), 38–62; Tamara Loos, Subject Siam: F ­ amily, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). 22. Davisakd Puaksom, “Kan-­t ham tawan-­tok hai pen tawan-­ork khorng sayam: kan-­ torp-to rap meu kap wathakam khwam-­pen-­eun khorng michanari tawan-­tok doi panyachon sayam nai ­chuan ton sattawat thi 19” [Orientalizing the Occidental of Siam: Responses by early nineteenth-­century Siamese intellectuals to the discourse of otherness produced by Western missionaries”], Ratthasatsan 20, no. 3 (1998): 253–313. 23. Wyatt, Thailand: A Short History, 160–163; Nidhi Eoseewong, Pen and Sail: Lit­er­at­ ure and History in Early Bangkok (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2005), 278–286. 24. The most detailed account in ­English is Craig J. Reynolds, “The Buddhist Monkhood in Nineteenth-­Century Thailand” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1973), 63–112. 25. Eoseewong, Pen and Sail, 1–151. 26. Pipat Pasutthanchat, Khrat lae khwinin: rue sang “pak kai lae bai rua” khong nithi eeoseewong [Eclipse and quinine: Deconstructing Nidhi Eeoseewong’s “Pen and Sail”] (Bangkok: Illuminations Editions, 2017), 39, 64–70. 27. Christof Dejung, David Motadel, and Jürgen Osterhammel, “Worlds of the Bourgeoisie,” in The Global Bourgeoisie: The Rise of the ­Middle Class in the Age of Empire, ed. Christof Dejung, David Motadel, and Jürgen Osterhammel (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2019), 6. 28. Sven Trakulhun and Ralph Weber, “Modernities: Editors’ Introduction,” in Delimiting Modernities: Conceptual Challenges and Regional Responses (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 1–24. 29. José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994). 30. Wolfgang Knöbl, Die Kontingenz der Moderne: Wege in Europa, Asien und Amerika [The contingency of modernity: Pathways in E ­ urope, Asia, and Amer­i­ca] (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2007), 71–83. 31. Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Die Vielfalt der Moderne [The diversity of modernity] (Weilerswist: Velbrück, 2000). 32. Heinz Bechert, Buddhismus, Staat und Gesellschaft in den Ländern des Theravāda-­ Buddhismus [Buddhism, state and society in the countries of Theravāda Buddhism], vol. 2 (Göttingen: Seminar für Indologie und Buddhismuskunde, 2000), xiii.

178   Notes to Pages 10–16 33. On Catholic modernism, see Arnold Claus, “Der Antimodernismus unter Pius X. Von Alfred Loisy zu Charles Maurras” [Antimodernism ­under Pius X. From Alfred Loisy to Charles Maurras], Historisches Jahrbuch 125 (2005): 153–168. 34. A classic work on Buddhist kingship is Stanley  J. Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). For a collection of more recent studies on the topic, see Ian Harris, ed., Buddhism, Power and P ­ olitical Order (London: Routledge, 2007). 35. G. P. V. Somaratne and R. V. Young, Vain Debates: The Buddhist-­Christian Controversies of Nineteenth-­Century Ceylon (Vienna: Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, 1996). 36. Philip C. Almond, The British Discovery of Buddhism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 4. For a critique, see Charles Hallisey, “Roads Taken and Not Taken in the Study of Theravāda Buddhism,” Curators of the Bud­dha: The Study of Buddhism ­under Colonialism, ed. Donald S. Lopez Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), esp. 31–33. 37. Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and “The Mystic East” (London: Routledge, 1999), 148–160.

1. The Origins of Buddhist Reformism 1. Damrong Rajanubhap, The Chronicle of Our Wars with the Burmese: Thai-­Burmese Conflict 1539–1767 (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2001), 298–300, 350–357. 2. For a nuanced assessment of Taksin’s rise and reign, see Barend Jan Terwiel, Thailand’s ­Political History From the Thirteenth ­Century to Recent Times (Bangkok: River Books, 2011), 60–79. See also Charnvit Kasetsiri and Thamrongsak Petchlert-­anan, eds., Mum mong mai Somdet Phrachao Krung Thonburi Taksin Maharat [A new perspective on Taksin the G ­ reat, King of Thonburi], 8th rev. ed. (Bangkok: ­Toyota Foundation, 2560 [2017]). 3. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, eds., The Palace Law of Ayutthaya and the Thammasat: Law and Kingship in Siam, trans. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 2016), 66–68. 4. Andrew Huxley, “Introduction,” in Thai Law, Buddhist Law: Essays on the ­Legal History of Thailand, Laos and Burma, ed. Andrew Huxley (Bangkok: White Orchid Press, 1996), 1–29. 5. The text is prob­ably as old as the Traibhumikatha (or older), although the versions that exist ­today are of much more recent date; see Andrew Huxley, “Thai, Mon and Burmese Dhammathats—­W ho Influenced Whom?” in Huxley, Thai Law, Buddhist Law, 81–131. 6. Baker and Pasuk, The Palace Law of Ayutthaya, 38. 7. Dhani Nivat, “The Old Siamese Conception of the Monarchy,” in The Journal of the Siam Society’s 50th Anniversary Commemorative Publication, vol. 2 (Bangkok: Siam Society, 1954), 93–96. 8. ­Until ­today, coronation ceremonies of Thai kings include a mixture of Buddhist and Brahmin traditions, most recently performed in the three-­day coronation of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, May 4–6, 2019. For a detailed description of the procedure, see Horace Geoffrey Quaritch Wales, Siamese State Ceremonies: Their History and Function (1931; repr,. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1992), 67–120. 9. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, A History of Ayutthaya: Siam in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 107–111. E ­ uropean visitors also stressed the “proud titles” of Siamese kings and the absolute power they held over the country and their subjects. See, for example, M. Glanius, A New Voyage to the East Indies (London: Printed for H. Rodes, 1682), 150–154.

Notes to Pages 16–20   179 10. Yoneo Ishii, Sangha, State, and Society: Thai Buddhism in History (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1986), 38–39. 11. For an examination of t­ hese manuscripts, see Barend J. Terwiel, “On the Trail of King Taksin’s Samutphāp Traiphūm,” Journal of the Siam Society 102 (2014): 41–66. 12. Most famously the priest-­general Chao Phra Fang, who temporarily ruled in Sawangkhaburi in the northern part of Siam; see Jirí Stránský, Die Wiedervereinigung Thailands unter Taksin, 1767–1782 [The Reunification of Thailand ­under Taksin, 1767–1782] (Hamburg: Gesellschaft für Natur-­und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, 1973), 46–47. 13. See Jean-­Baptiste Pallegoix, Description du royaume Thai ou Siam [Description of the Thai or Siam kingdom], vol. 2 (Paris: Au profit de la mission de Siam, 1854), 263–270. Pallegoix described Taksin’s conflicts with the Catholic community in Thonburi from a French perspective. 14. ­These four stages are sotāpanna, sakṛdāgāmin (once-­returner), anāgāmī (nonreturning), and arahant (a person who has gained insight into the true nature of existence and has achieved Nirvana). 15. Craig J. Reynolds, “The Buddhist Monkhood in Nineteenth-­Century Thailand” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1973), 34. 16. Stránský, Die Wiedervereinigung Thailands unter Taksin, 138–158. 17. Terwiel, Thailand’s ­Political History, 81–99. 18. Tamara Loos, Subject Siam: ­Family, Law, and Colonial Modernity in Thailand (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), 29–71; Michael Vickery, “The Constitution of Ayutthaya: The Three Seals Code,” in Thai Law, Buddhist Law: Essays on the L ­ egal History of Thailand, Laos and Burma, ed. Andrew Huxley (Bangkok: White Orchid Press, 1996), 133–210. 19. The ­temple is known t­ oday as Wat Mahathat. It is located between Sanam Luang and Tha Phra Chan Pier, near Thammasat University in Bangkok. 20. Klaus Wenk, The Restoration of Thailand u ­ nder Rama I, 1782–1809 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1968), 38–42. 21. Louis de la Vallee Poussin, The Buddhist Councils (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi & Co., 1976). 22. Somdet Phra Phonnarat, Sankhitiyawong, phongsawadan ruang sangkhayana phratham phrawinai, trans. Phraya Pariyattithammarathada (1798; repr., Bangkok: N.p., 1923). The text was originally written in Pāli and was partly translated into French in George Coedés, “Une recencion palie des annales d’Ayuthya,” Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-­Orient 14, no. 3 (1914): 1–31. 23. Craig J. Reynolds, Seditious Histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 143–160. 24. George Coedés, “The Traibhūmikathā Buddhist Cosmology and Treaty on Ethics,” East and West 7, no. 4 (1957): 349–352. 25. In the year 1900 of the Buddhist era (AD 1357), the Thai monarch Lithai even provided a detailed timeline of religious retrogression; see Alexander B. Griswold and Prasert Na Nagara, “The Epigraphy of Mahadharmaraja I of Sukhodaya. Epigraphic and Historical Studies, No. 11, Part I,” Journal of the Siam Society 61, no. 1 (1973): 71–180, esp. 94–103. 26. To demonstrate the faithfulness of the Chakri rulers, Phra Phonnarat endowed Rama I with the title of a saddhādhika (a bo­dhi­sat­tva associated with superior faith) and described his youn­ger ­brother as a paññādhika (the one who takes the path of wisdom); see Peter Skilling, “King, Sangha and Brah­mans: Ideology, Ritual and Power in Pre-­Modern Siam,” in Buddhism, Power and P ­ olitical Order, ed. Ian Harris (London: Routledge, 2007), 191.

180   Notes to Pages 20–23 27. Chaophraya Thiphakorawong, The Dynastic Chronicles: Bangkok Era, The First Reign. Chaophraya Thiphakorawong Edition, vol. 1, ed. and trans. Thadeus and Chadin Flood (1869; repr., Tokyo: Center for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1978), 158. 28. Merit-­making, known as tam bun (ทำ�บุญ) in Thai, is a central aspect of Buddhist practice in Thailand. Deriving from the Pāli term puñña (merit, meritorious action, virtue), tam bun involves performing actions and deeds that accumulate positive spiritual energy with the aim of improving one’s current life, ­f uture lives, and ultimately progressing ­toward enlightenment. Merit can be achieved through ethical conduct, meditative practice, worship, devotion, and generosity (especially by offering food, money, or other necessities to monks and monastic communities). The specific practices and emphasis on merit-­making can vary between Buddhist traditions and cultures, but the core princi­ples remain consistent. For a short definition, see Robert E. Buswell Jr. and Donald S. Lopez Jr., eds., The Prince­ton Dictionary of Buddhism (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2014), 681 (“Puṇya”). 29. Thiphakorawong, The Dynastic Chronicles: Bangkok Era, The First Reign, 1:153. The reference to “the Laos or Mon scripts” prob­ably refers to the Dhamma script that was in use in northern Thailand and Laos. “Chamun Waiworanat” was the title of a high official post at the court, then occupied by Mun Sisena. 30. Reynolds, “The Buddhist Monkhood,” 35–50. 31. Wenk, The Restoration of Thailand, 39. 32. Ishii, Sangha, State, and Society, 64–66. 33. David K. Wyatt, “The ‘Subtle Revolution’ of King Rama I of Siam,” in Wyatt, Studies in Thai History: Collected Articles (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1994), 131–173, esp. 145–154. 34. See, for example, Thiphakorawong, The Dynastic Chronicles: Bangkok Era, The First Reign, 1:179–182. For an intellectual history of the first reign, see Saichon Wannarat, “Phutthasatsana kap naew khwamkhit than kanmueang mai ratchasamai phrabat somdet phra phuddhayotfachulalok (BE 2325–2352)” [Buddhism and p ­ olitical thought in the reign of King Rama I (AD 1782–1809)] (MA thesis, Chulalongkorn University, BE 2525/AD 1981). 35. Nidhi Eoseewong, Pen and Sail: Lit­er­a­ture and History in Early Bangkok (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2005), 127–131, 280–282. 36. The Jātaka tells the story of Prince Vessantara, the last life of the Bud­d ha prior to his rebirth as Siddhattha Gau­ta­ma, who was known for his perfect generosity (Pāli: dāna); see Patrick Jory, Thailand’s Theory of Monarchy: The Vessantara Jātaka and the Idea of the Perfect Man (Albany: SUNY Press, 2016), 23–44. 37. Klaus Wenk, Thai Lit­er­a­ture: An Introduction (Chiang Mai: White Lotus, 1995), 28–31. 38. Santosh N. Desai, “Ramayana—­A n Instrument of Historical Contact and Cultural Transmission between India and Asia,” Journal of Asian Studies 30, no. 1 (1970): 5–20. 39. Dhani Nivat, “The Reconstruction of Rama I of the Chakri Dynasty,” in Collected Articles by H. H. Prince Dhani Nivat Kromamun Bidayalabh Brdihyakorn (Bangkok: The Siam Society, 1969), 153–159. 40. S. Singaravelu, “The Rama Story in the Thai Cultural Tradition,” Journal of the Siam Society 70 (1982): 50–70. 41. Neil A. Englehart, Culture and Power in Traditional Siamese Government (Ithaca: Cornell University, Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2001), 49. 42. Tansen Sen, ed., Buddhism across Asia: Networks of Material, Intellectual and Cultural Exchange (Pasir Panjang, Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2014). For an epigraphic study of the origin of Thai Buddhism, see Karl-­Heinz Golzio, Die Ausbreitung des Buddhismus in Süd-­ und

Notes to Pages 24–28   181 Südostasien. Eine quantitative Untersuchung auf der Basis epigraphischer Quellen [The Spread of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia. A quantitative study based on epigraphic sources] (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010), 92–94. 43. Yoneo Ishii, “A Note on Buddhistic Millenarian Revolts in Northeastern Siam,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 6, no. 2 (1975): 121–126; Constance M. Wilson, “The Holy Man in the History of Thailand and Laos,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 28, no. 2 (1997): 345–364. 44. Chatthip Nartsupha, “The Ideology of Holy Men Revolts in Northeast Thailand,” in History and Peasant Consciousness in South East Asia, ed. Andrew Turton and Shigeharu Tanabe (Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology, 1984), 114–115. For the historical background of the kingdom of Ngoen Yang, see Sarassawadee Ongsakul, History of Lan Na (Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2005), 21–26. 45. Charles F. Keyes, “Millennialism, Theravada Buddhism, and Thai Society,” Journal of Asian Studies 36, no. 2 (1977): 288. 46. The king had dif­fer­ent names during his lifetime. Born as Mongkut (crown), he used his ordination name Vajirayan when he was in monkhood. During that time, foreigners also called him Chao Fa Yai. His coronation name was Phra Chom Klao Chao Yu Hua (in short), but most Western historians refer to him as Rama IV. For ­convenience, I ­will use the name Mongkut throughout the book. 47. Abbot Low Moffat, Mongkut, the King of Siam (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1961), 11–22. 48. Phra Dr. Anil Dhammasakiyo (Sakya), “A Modern Trend of Study of Buddhism in Thailand: King Mongkut and Dhammayutikanikaya,” 37, unpublished paper, https://­archive​.­org​ /­details​/­mongkut​-­a nd​-­d hammayut​-­modern​-­t rend; Günther Grönblod, Der buddhistische Kanon: Eine Biblio­graphie (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1984), 12. 49. Stanley J. Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 211–212. 50. A. Thomas Kirsch, “Modernizing Implications of 19th ­C entury Reforms of the Thai Sangha,” Contributions to Asian Studies 8 (1975): 8–23. 51. Mongkut, Wa Duai Kan Nai Phra Phuthsasna [On Buddhist affairs]. Printed on the occasion of the funeral of Mrs. Sun Ontrakan on April 1, BE 2471 (Bangkok: Rongphim Aksonsrismit, BE 2470 [AD 1927]), 3–6, 9, 13–15. The text first appeared in 1889. 52. Quoted in William L. Bradley, “Prince Mongkut and Jesse Caswell,” Journal of the Siam Society 54, no. 1 (1966): 39. 53. Reynolds, “The Buddhist Monkhood,” 89–91. 54. See Robert Lingat, “The History of Wat Pavaraniveça,” Journal of the Siam Society 26, no. 1 (1933): 81–82. 55. See Kanai Lal Hazra, History of Theravada Buddhism in South-­East Asia with Special Reference to India and Ceylon (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1981), chapter 6. 56. Christopher A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 330–365. 57. Quoted in Charles Ralph Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire: 1415–1825 (London: Hutchinson, 1969), 65. 58. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 228–248. 59. Charles Ralph Boxer, “A Note on Portuguese Missionary Methods in the East: 16th to 18th ­Century,” Ceylon Historical Journal 1–4 (1960/1961): 77–90; Alan Strathern, Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-­Century Sri Lanka (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

182   Notes to Pages 28–31 60. Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Ceylon and the Dutch (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), chapters xvi–­x ix. 61. Kitsiri Malalgoda, Buddhism in Sinhalese Society, 1750–1900: A Study of Religious Revival and Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 55–60. 62. Oscar Frank­f urter, “Siamese Missions to Ceylon in the 18th ­Century,” Journal of the Siam Society 4, no. 1 (1907): 23–27. 63. Religious Intercourse between Ceylon and Siam in the Eigh­teenth C ­ entury, vol. 1 (Bangkok: Siam Observer Office/The American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1908–1914), 65. 6 4. Damrong Rajanubhap, Ruang praditsathan phra song sayam wong nai langka thawip [On the establishment of the Siamese Sangha in Sri Lanka] (Bangkok: N.p., 1960). This text was written in 1914 and presented to Prince Naritsaranuwatiwong. 65. Robert Lingat, “History of Wat Mahādhātu,” Journal of the Siam Society 24, no.  1 (1930): 11–12. 66. Chaophraya Thiphakorawong, The Dynastic Chronicles: Bangkok Era, The Fourth Reign, vol. 1, trans. Chadin (Kanjanavanit) Flood (Tokyo: Center for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1965), 96–105. 67. Mongkut, Wa Duai Kan Nai Phra Phuthsasna, 11–12. 68. Quoted in Phra Dr. Anil Dhammasakiyo (Sakya), “A Modern Trend of Study of Buddhism in Thailand,” 32. 69. Anne M. Blackburn, Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010), 143–150. 70. Tilman Frasch, “A Pāli Cosmopolis? Sri Lanka and the Theravāda Buddhist Ecumene, c. 500–1500,” in Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History, ed. Zoltán Biedermann and Alan Strathern (London: UCL Press, 2017), 76. 71. Heinz Bechert, Buddhismus, Staat und Gesellschaft in den Ländern des Theravāda-­ Buddhismus [Buddhism, state and society in the countries of Theravāda Buddhism], vol. 2 (Göttingen: Seminar für Indologie und Buddhismuskunde, 2000), 329. 72. Tilman Frasch, “Buddhist Councils in a Time of Transition: Globalism, Modernity and the Preservation of Textual Traditions,” Con­temporary Buddhism 14, no. 1 (2013): 43. 73. See Khammai Dhammasami, Buddhism, Education and Politics in Burma and Thailand: From the Seventeenth ­Century to the Pre­sent (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 68–78. 74. Religious reform movements in Siam, Lanka, and Burma shared the similar purpose of purification and w ­ ere in many ways historically related. As Michael Charney has argued, “Sri Lanka and Burma experienced the same reformation, led by the monks of the Siyam Nikāya in the case of Sri Lanka and the Sudhamma monks in the case of Burma, in both cases with royal support.” Power­ful Learning: Buddhist Literati and the Throne in Burma’s Last Dynasty, 1752–1885 (Ann Arbor: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, 2006), 13. 75. Dhammasami, Buddhism, Education and Politics in Burma and Thailand, 220n76. 76. Blackburn, Locations of Buddhism, 163. 77. Walter F. Vella, Siam ­under Rama III, 1824–1851 (Locust Valley, NY: Augustine, 1957), 101; Shawn McHale, “Ethnicity, Vio­lence, and Khmer-­Vietnamese Relations: The Significance of the Lower Mekong Delta, 1757–1954,” Journal of Asian Studies 72, no. 2 (2013): 367–390. 78. David Chandler, A History Of Cambodia, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2008), chapter 7.

Notes to Pages 32–35   183 79. Anne Ruth Hansen, How to Behave: Buddhism and Modernity in Colonial Cambodia, 1860–1930 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), 49, 89–108. 80. Katherine Ann Bowie, Of Beggars and Bud­dhas: The Politics of Humor in the Vessantara Jātaka in Thailand (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017), 222–225. See also Premwit Tawkaew, Kan kotang lae khayai tua khong thammayutikanikai nai phak tawan ok chiang nuea, BE 2394–2473 [The establishment and expansion of the Thammayut sect in the Northeast, BE 2394–2473 (AD 1851–1930)] (Bangkok: N.p, 1991). 81. Kamala Tiyavanich, Forest Recollections: Wandering Monks in Twentieth-­Century Thailand (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997), 198–201. 82. John B. Murdoch, “The 1901–1902 ‘Holy Man’s’ Rebellion,” Journal of the Siam Society 62, no. 1 (1967): 47–66. 83. Somboon Suksamran, Buddhism and Politics in Thailand: A Study of Socio-­Political Change and ­Political Activism of the Thai Sangha (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1982), 37–39. For an E ­ nglish translation of the Sangha Act of 1905, see Mahamakuta Educational Council, ed., Acts of the Administration of the Buddhist Order of Sangha of Thailand B.E. 2445, 2484, 2505 (Bangkok: Buddhist University, 1989), 3–17. 84. Ishii, Sangha, State, and Society, 71–72.

2. Christianity in Siam 1. According to Damrong Rajanubhap, “During that period the Portuguese appear to have brought to the Siamese three ­t hings, namely, the art of making firearms, the way to use firearms in warfare, and the adoption of fortifications against firearms”; “The Introduction of Western Culture in Siam,” Journal of the Siam Society 20, no. 2b (1926): 90. 2. On the Portuguese Catholic diaspora in Ayutthaya, see Stefan Halikowski Smith, Creolization and Diaspora in the Portuguese Indies: The Social World of Ayutthaya, 1640–1720 (Leiden: Brill, 2011), chapter 6. 3. Luigi Bressan and Michael Smithies, Siam and the Vatican in the Seventeenth C ­ entury (Bangkok: River Books, 2001), 23–31. 4. Michel Jacq-­Hergoualc’h, L’­Europe et le Siam du XVIe au XVIIIe siecle. Apports culturel [­Europe and Siam from the 16th to the 18th ­century. Cultural contributions] (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1993), 125–155. 5. Michael Smithies, “Eclipses in Siam 1685 and 1688, and their Repre­sen­ta­tions,” in Seventeenth ­Century Siamese Explorations: A Collection of Published Articles (Bangkok: Siam Society, 2012), 137–150. 6. Catherine Jami, The Emperor’s New Mathe­matics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority during the Kangxi Reign, 1662–1722 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 7. Guy Tachard, Voyage de Siam de peres Jesuites. Envoyés par le roy, aux Indes à la Chine, avec leurs observations et astronomiques, & leurs remaques de physique, de géographie, d’hydrographie, & d´histoire [Voyage to Siam by Jesuit ­fathers. Sent by the King, to India and China, with their astronomical observations, & their remarks on physics, geography, hydrography, & history] (Paris: Chez Arnould Seneuze et Daniel Horthemels, 1688). 8. Dirk van der Cruysse, Siam and the West, 1500–1700 (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2002). For a portrait of Constantine Phaulkon, see Giōrgos Athanasiu Sioris, Phaulkon: The  Greek First Counsellor at the Court of Siam: An Appraisal (Bangkok: Siam Society, 1998).

184   Notes to Pages 35–40 9. Alain Forest, Les missionnaires français au Tonkin et au Siam (XVIIème–­XVIIIème siècles): Analyse comparée d’un relatif succès et d’un total échec [French missionaries in Tonkin and Siam (17th–18th centuries): Comparative analy­sis of relative success and total failure], vol. 1 (Paris: Éditions L’Harmattan, 1998), 236–299. 10. Adrien Launay, Siam et les missionaires français (Tours, 1896), 161. 11. Adrien Launay, Histoire de la mission de Siam, vol. 2 (1920; repr., Paris: Mission Étrangères de Paris, 2000), 290. On the ceremony, see Horace Geoffrey Quaritch Wales, Siamese State Ceremonies: Their History and Function (1931; repr., Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1992), 193–198. 12. John Crawfurd, Journal of an Embassy to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China (London: Henry Colbourn, 1828), 162–163. 13. Barthelemy Bruguière, “Lettre de Mgr. Bruguière, évêque de Capse, à M. Bouisquet, vicaire-­général d’Aire. Bangkok 1829” [Letter from Msgr. Bruguière, Bishop of Capse, to M. Bouisquet, Vicar-­General of Aire. Bangkok 1829], in Annales de l’association de la propagation de la foi [Annals of the Association for the Propagation of the Faith], tome 5 (Lyon: L’editeur des Annales, 1831), 41. On Bruguière, see Kennon Breazeale, “Bishop Barthelemy Bruguière, 1792–1845,” Journal of the Siam Society 96 (2008): 51–72. “Talapoin” (Portuguese: talapão) is the term commonly used by ­Europeans to refer to Buddhist priests. The origin of the expression is unclear. Some say it derives from the name of the fan they hold in their hand (Thai: talapat ตาลป ตั ร); ­others trace the term back to the Mon language (tala: “lord” and poin: “wealth”). 14. “Lettre de Mgr. Bruguière,” 38. 15. “Lettre de Mgr. Bruguière,” 128–129. 16. “Lettre de Mgr. Bruguière,” 109–110, 133–134. 17. An anonymous translator of Bruguière’s letter of 1829 argued in a footnote that the Catholics “have in Siam carried the princi­ple of conformity to such an extent, as to render it extremely difficult in some cases to draw the line of distinction between their forms and ­t hose of pagan worship.” Barthelemy Bruguière, “Notices of the Religion, Manners, and Customs of the Siamese,” Chinese Repository 13, no. 4 (April 1844): 178. 18. William L. Bradley, “Prince Mongkut and Jesse Caswell,” Journal of the Siam Society 54, no. 1 (1966): 29–41. 19. S. J. Barnett, The Enlightenment and Religion: The Myths of Modernity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 52. 20. Michael John Gorman, The Scientific Counter-­Revolution: The Jesuits and the Invention of Modern Science (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). 21. Robert K. Merton, “Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth C ­ entury E ­ ngland,” Osiris 4 (1938): 360–632. 22. Herbert Hovenkamp, Science and Religion in Amer­i­ca 1800–1860 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), ix. 23. Herbert R. Swanson, “Prelude to Irony: The Prince­ton Theology and the Practice of Presbyterian Mission in Northern Siam, 1867–1880” (PhD diss., Melbourne University, 2003), 15–20. For a more general outlook on the issue, see Sydney E. Ahlstrom, “The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology,” Church History 24, no. 3 (1955): 257–272. 24. Locke as quoted in Daniel Carey, Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson: Contesting Diversity in the Enlightenment and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 80. 25. Carey, Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson, 201–202.

Notes to Pages 41–46

185





186   Notes to Pages 46–49 pastor Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg remained an exceptional case ­until the end of the eigh­teenth ­century; see Heike Liebau, Cultural Encounters in India: The Local Co-­Workers of Tranquebar Mission, 18th to 19th Centuries (London: Routledge, 2018). 4 4. Thomas Schirrmacher, “Be Keen to Get G ­ oing,” in William Carey: Theologian—­ Linguist—­Social Reformer, ed. Thomas Schirrmacher (Bonn: Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, 2013), 109–153. 45. William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen Reprinted in Facsimile from the Edition of MDCCXCII (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1891), 10–11. 46. John M. Court, Approaching the Apocalypse: A Short History of Christian Millenarianism (London: I. B. Tauris, 2008), 165–172. 47. Hamlet Bareh Ngapkynta, William Carey in a New Perspective (Guwahati: Spectrum Publications, 2004); David Kopf, British Orientalism and the Bengal R ­ enaissance, 1773–1835 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 51–55, 76–80. 4 8. Andrew Porter, “Religion, Missionary Enthusiasm, and Empire,” in The Nineteenth ­Century, vol. 3 of Oxford History of the British Empire, ed. Andrew Porter (Oxford: Oxford ­ University Press, 1999), 230; Ian Copland, “Chris­t ian­ity as an Arm of Empire: The Ambiguous Case of India ­u nder the Com­pany, c. 1813–1858,” Historical Journal 49, no.  4 (2006): 1025–1054. 49. Cecil Northcott, Glorious Com­pany: 150 Years Life and Work of the London Missionary Society 1795–1945 (London: Livingstone Press, 1945); Kevin Ward and Brian Stanley, eds., The Church Mission Society and World Chris­tian­ity, 1799–1999 (­Grand Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans, 2000). 50. Horst Gründer, Welteroberung und Christentum. Ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der Neuzeit [World conquest and Chris­tian­ity. A guide to modern history] (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1992), 315–338. 51. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American ­People (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), 858–864. The American Baptist Missionary ­Union and the Presbyterian Western Foreign Missionary Society ­were established in 1814 and 1837, respectively. 52. Roger H. Martin, Evangelicals United: Ecumenical Stirrings in Pre-­Victorian Britain, 1795–1830 (London: Scarecrow Press, 1983); Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 116–135. 53. Thomas J. Nettles, “Baptists and the ­Great Commission,” in The ­Great Commission: Evangelicals and the History of World Missions, ed. Martin I. Klauber, Scott M. Manetsch, and Erwin W. Lutzer (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2008), 95. 54. William L. Bradley, Siam Then: The Foreign Colony in Bangkok before and ­after Anna (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1981), 51–56. 55. Christopher A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 333. 56. Sukanya Tirawanit, Mor Bradley kap kan nangseuphim haeng krung sayam [Dr. Bradley and the newspaper business in Siam] (Bangkok: Matichon, 1985). 57. ­After a Hundred Years: A P ­ opular Illustrated Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society for the Centenary Year 1903–4 (London: The Bible H ­ ouse, 1904). 58. Felicity Jensz, “The Function of Inaugural Editorials in Missionary Periodicals,” Church History 82, no. 2 (2013): 374–380; Felicity Jensz and Hanna Acke, “The Form and Function of

Notes to Pages 50–53   187 Nineteenth-­Century Missionary Periodicals: Introduction,” Church History 82, no. 2 (2013): 368–373. 59. Nancy F. Cott, “Young W ­ omen in the Second G ­ reat Awakening in New E ­ ngland,” Feminist Studies 3, nos. 1/2 (1975): 15–29. 60. Dana Lee Robert, American W ­ omen in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996), 3. 61. Janice Holmes and Susan O’Brien, “­Women Preachers in the New Order,” in World Christianities, c. 1815–1914, ed. Sheridan Gilley and Brian Stanley, vol. 8 of Cambridge History of Chris­tian­ity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 84–102. 62. According to her husband, Eliza used Philip Doddridge’s The Rise and Pro­g ress of Religion in the Soul (1745) “for daily devotional reading”; John Taylor Jones, “Letter from Jones, 30 March 1838,” International Ministries, Group 1: American Baptist Mission Society, Correspondence 1814–1900 China-­Siam, reel 110-7, American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, GA. Doddridge’s work intended to show the way to salvation, laying out the stages of the ­process with constant reference to the Bible. See R. K. Webb, “The Emergence of Rational Dissent,” in Enlightenment and Religion: Rational Dissent in Eighteenth-­Century Britain, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 31. 63. Eliza Grew Jones, Memoir of Eliza Grew Jones, Missionary to Burmah and Siam. Revised by the Committee of Publication (Philadelphia: American Baptist and Sunday School Society, 1842). 64. George Bradley McFarland, Historical Sketch of Protestant Missions in Siam, 1828–1928 (1928; repr., Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1998), 1–9. 65. Edmund Roberts, Embassy to the Eastern Courts of Cochin-­China, Siam, and Muscat (New York: Harper and B ­ rothers, 1837), 268. 66. Jessie G. Lutz, “The Legacy of Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 24, no. 3 (July 2000): 123–128. 67. For an assessment of Gützlaff’s work as a translator in China, see Jost Zetzsche, “Gützlaff’s Bedeutung für die protestantischen Bibelübersetzungen ins Chinesische” [Gützlaff’s importance for the Protestant translations of the Bible into Chinese] in Karl Gützlaff (1803–1851) und das Christentum in Ostasien. Ein Missionar zwischen den Kulturen [Karl Gützlaff (1803– 1851) and Chris­tian­ity in East Asia. A missionary between cultures], ed. Thoralf Klein and Reinhard Zöllner (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2005), 155–171. For a full bibliography of Gützlaff’s works, see Hartmut Walravens, Karl Friedrich Neumann und Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff. Zwei deutsche Chinakundige (Stuttgart: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001), 120–183. 68. Karl Gützlaff, Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China, in 1831, 1832, & 1833 (London: Frederick Westley & A. H. Davis, 1834), 64. 69. Peter Merker, “Gützlaffs Rolle im Opiumkrieg. Zum Verhältnis von Mission, Handel und Imperialismus im China des 19. Jahrhunderts” [Gützlaff’s role in the Opium War. On the relationship between mission, trade and imperialism in 19th-­century China] in Thoralf Klein and Reinhard Zöllner, Karl Gützlaff (1803–1851) und das Christentum in Ostasien. Ein Missionar zwischen den Kulturen [Karl Gützlaff (1803–1851) and Chris­t ian­ity in East Asia. A missionary between cultures], ed. Thoralf Klein and Reinhard Zöllner (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2005), 41–60. 70. Jacob Tomlin, Missionary Journals and Letters, Written during Eleven Years’ Residence and Travels amongst the Chinese, Siamese, Javanese, Khassias, and Other Eastern Nations (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1844).

188   Notes to Pages 53–57 71. See [Alexander Wylie], Memorials of Protestant Missionaries to the Chinese Giving a List of Their Publications and Obituary Notices of the Deceased with Copious Indexes (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1867), 50–51. 72. Crawfurd, Journal of an Embassy to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China. 73. Jacob Tomlin, Journal of a Nine Months’ Residence in Siam (London: Frederick Westley & A. H. Davis, 1831), 148. The text of the treaty is reproduced in ­Great Britain Foreign and Commonwealth Office, British and Foreign State Papers. Vol. 23, 1834–1835 (London: James Ridgway & Sons, 1852), 1153–1159. 74. Walter F. Vella, Siam u ­ nder Rama III, 1824–1851 (Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustine, 1957), 123–124. 75. Barend J. Terwiel, Thailand’s ­Political History from the Thirteenth ­Century to Recent Times (Bangkok: River Books, 2011), 153–163. 76. Abeel’s most extensive theological work is The Missionary Convention at Jerusalem; Or an Exhibition of the Claims of the World to the Gospel (New York: John S. Taylor, 1838), in which he used the example of the apostles to argue for the Christian duty of evangelizing all nations. 77. Thomas G. Oey, “David Abeel: Missionary Wanderer in China and Southeast Asia. With Special Emphasis on His Visit with Walter Medhurst in Batavia, January–­June 1831,” in The Role of the American Board in the World: Bicentennial Reflections on the ­Organization’s Missionary Work, 1810–2010, ed. Clifford Putney and Paul T. Burlin (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), 142–164. 78. David Abeel, Journal of a Residence in China and the Neighboring Countries, from 1829 to 1833 (New York: Leavitt, Lord & Co., 1834), 212–221. 79. One of the first ­European accounts of Siamese “tyranny” is prob­ably that of the Dutch com­pany official Jeremias van Vliet, who wrote in the 1640s; see Chris Baker, Dhiravat Na Pombejra, Alfons van der Kraan, and David K. Wyatt, eds., Van Vliet’s Siam (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2005). For a general assessment of the concept of “Oriental Despotism,” see e.g., Joan-­Pau Rubiés, “Oriental Despotism and E ­ uropean Orientalism: Botero to Montesquieu,” Journal of Early Modern History 9, nos. 1–2 (2005): 109–180. 80. William Gammell, A History of American Baptist Missions in Asia, Africa, ­Europe and North Amer­i­ca ­under the Care of the American Baptist Mission ­Union (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1854), 187–208; George Smith, Missionary Sketches: A Concise History of the American Baptist Missionary ­Union (Boston: Mission Rooms, 1883), 173–182; see also Sven Trakulhun, “Among a ­People of Unclean Lips: Eliza Grew and John Taylor Jones in Siam (1833–1851),” Asiatische Studien/Etudes Asiatiques, no. 4 (2013): 1205–1236. 81. John Taylor Jones, “Journal of Rev. J. T. Jones,” ABFMS: Siam/China (1833), International Ministries, Group 1: American Baptist Mission Society, China-­Siam, reel 110–15, reel FM 110-15, American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, GA., emphasis in the original. 82. McFarland, Historical Sketch of Protestant Missions in Siam, 29–30. 83. See Charles F. Keyes, “Why the Thai Are Not Christians: Buddhist and Christian Conversion in Thailand,” in Christian Conversion in Cultural Context, ed. Robert Hefner (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 259–284. 84. Baptist Missionary Magazine 26, no. 5 (1846): 132. 85. Samuel J. Smith was an orphan of Indo-­British descent whom the Joneses ­adopted during their stay in Burma. See Kenneth E. Wells, History of Protestant Work in Thailand, 1828– 1958 (Bangkok: Church of Christ in Thailand, 1958), 17.

Notes to Pages 57–61   189 86. McFarland, Historical Sketch of Protestant Missions in Siam, 31. 87. Jones, Memoir of Eliza Grew Jones, 68, 79–80. 88. Jones, Memoir of Eliza Grew Jones, 129. 89. The “Resolutions” are annexed to John Taylor Jones, “Letter from Jones, 30 March 1838,” International Ministries, Group 1: American Baptist Mission Society, Correspondence 1814– 1900 China-­Siam, reel 110-7, American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, GA. Matthew 12:36 states: “But I say unto you, That ­every idle word that men ­shall speak, they ­shall give account thereof in the day of judgment” (King James version). 90. John Taylor Jones, “Letter from Jones, Singapore 14 November 1832,” International Ministries, Group 1: American Baptist Mission Society, Correspondence 1814–1900 China-­ Siam, reel 110-05, American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, GA. 91. Donald C. Lord, Mo Bradley and Thailand (­Grand Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans, 1969), 69–92. 92. Ernest Adolphus Sturge, general superintendent of the J­ apanese Presbyterian Church (1886–1934), quoted in Richard L. Popp, “American Missionaries and the Introduction of Western Science and Medicine in Thailand, 1830–1900,” Missiology 13, no. 2 (1985): 149. On Christian healing traditions, see Gary B. Ferngren, Medicine and Health Care in Early Chris­tian­ity (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). 93. C. Pierce Salguero, Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). On Buddhism and medicine, see Justin McDaniel, The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern Thailand (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), chapter 2. 94. J. Mulholland, “Thai Traditional Medicine: Ancient Thought and Practice in a Thai Context,” Journal of the Siam Society 67, no. 2 (1979): 82–83. 95. Samuel R. ­House, “Letter of H ­ ouse, Sept 12, 1853,” Thailand (Siam), 1840–1910, Incoming, Siam Letters, 1847–1864, vol. 2, reel 181, frames 288–289, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA. 96. George H. Feltus, Samuel Reynolds H ­ ouse of Siam: Pioneer Medical Missionary, 1847– 1876 (New York: Fleming H. Revell Com­pany, 1924), 67–69. 97. Mary Lourie Mattoon, “Sketch of the Rev. Stephen Mattoon of Siam,” unpublished manuscript (1928), Mattoon ­Family Collection, 1827–1945, United Presbyterian Missions Library, Philadelphia. 98. Bradley, Siam Then, 95–98. 99. Frederick Arthur Neale, Narrative of a Residence in Siam (London: Office of the National Illustrated Library, 1852), 34. Neale was a British mercenary officer in Siamese ­service during the years 1840–1841. 100. Theologians use vari­ous terms to describe this concept, such as “Christian perfection,” “entire sanctification,” or, as Bradley did, “sanctification in this life.” Individuals used a wide range of methods in church history to achieve this goal. For a survey of the history of the concept, see R. Newton Flew, The Idea of Perfection in Christian Theology (London: Oxford University Press, 1934). 101. Lord, Mo Bradley and Thailand, 121–127. 102. Dan Beach Bradley, A Letter to American Christians, Being an Account of the Removal of Rev. Messrs. Bradley & Caswell from the ­Service of the A.B.C.F.M., with a Full Statement of Their Views of Sanctification in This Life (N.p.: Printed for the Author, 1848), 14. For Caswell’s views on the topic, see George H. Feltus, ed., “Missionary Journals of Rev. Jesse Caswell and of

190   Notes to Pages 61–68 Rev. and Mrs. Asa Hemenway of Siam,” Troy, New York, 1931, unpublished typescript, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. 103. Bradley, A Letter to American Christians, 19. 104. John R. Tyson, Charles Wesley on Sanctification (­Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986). 105. Entry of January 1, 1841, in George H. Feltus, “Missionary Journals of Rev. Jesse Caswell and of Rev. and Mrs. Asa Hemenway of Siam,” 17, Presbyterian Historical Society Library, Philadelphia, PA. 106. Bradley, “Prince Mongkut and Jesse Caswell,” 33. 107. “Diary of Mary Lourie Mattoon,” Mattoon F ­ amily Collection, 1827–1945, Rec­ord Group 275, box 1, United Presbyterian Missions Library, Philadelphia; George H. Feltus, ed., Abstract of the Journal of Rev. Dan Beach Bradley, M.D., Medical Missionary in Siam, 1835– 1873 (Cleveland, OH: Multigraph Department of the Pilgrim Church, 1936), 126–127. 108. Roberts, Embassy to the Eastern Courts of Cochin-­China, Siam, and Muscat, 268. Robert Hunter was a Scottish merchant and an unofficial diplomat in Bangkok. In Roberts’s time, Dit Bunnag was the phra khlang. 109. Bhawan Ruangsilp, Dutch East India Com­pany Merchants at the Court of Ayutthaya: Dutch Perceptions of the Thai Kingdom, c. 1604–1765 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 13–14. 110. Jacques de Bourges, Relation du voyage de Monseigneur l’Evêque de Bèryte, Vicaire Apostolique du Royaume de la Cochinchine, par la Turquie, la Perse, les Indes, ­etc., jusqu’au Royaume de Siam et autres lieux, par M. de Bourges, prêtre, missionaire apostolique [Account of the journey of the bishop of Bèryte, apostolic vicar of the kingdom of Cochin China, through Turkey, Persia, India, e­ tc., to the Kingdom of Siam and other places, by M. de Bourges, priest, apostolic missionary] (Paris: Denys Bechet, 1666), 166; translated in Michael Smithies, “Jacques de Bourges (c. 1630–1714) and Siam,” Journal of the Siam Society 81, no. 2 (1993): 122. 111. Kristin Beise Kiblinger, Buddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes t­ owards Religious O ­ thers (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). 112. Bhikkhu Bodhi, “Tolerance and Diversity,” Access to Insight (Barre Center for Buddhist Studies edition), updated June 5, 2010, http://­w ww​.­accesstoinsight​.­org​/­lib​/­authors​/ ­bodhi​ /­bps​-­essay​_­24​.­html. 113. M. R. Seni Pramoj and M. R. Kukrit Pramoj, eds. A King of Siam Speaks, trans. M. R. Seni Pramoj and M. R. Kukrit Pramoj (Bangkok: Siam Society 1987), 180. 114. See J. Abraham Velez de Cea, The Bud­dha and Religious Diversity (Hoboken, NJ: Taylor & Francis Group, 2012), 2. 115. John Taylor Jones, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Jones,” Baptist Missionary Magazine 16, no. 10 (1836): 235. 116. Jones, “Extracts from the Journal of Mr. Jones,” 236. 117. Jesse Caswell, “Journal of Mr Caswell. Reception of the Gospel,” Missionary Herald 41, no. 8 (1845): 273. Other Protestant missionaries in Buddhist countries, for example in Sri Lanka, cultivated similar confrontational mission strategies; see Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1988), 203. 118. Jones, Memoir of Eliza Grew Jones, 123–124. 119. Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism, 1–5, 26–28. 120. Nyanaponika Thera, Buddhism and the God-­Idea: Selected Texts (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 2008).

Notes to Pages 68–73   191 121. Caswell, “Journal of Mr Caswell,” 272–273. 122. Entry of December 27, 1840, in “Extracts from the Journals of Dan Beach Bradley,” unpublished manuscript compiled by Barend J. Terwiel, in author’s possession. The twenty-­five volumes of the original journal are in the Dan Beach Bradley ­Family Papers at the Oberlin College Archives. Barend J. Terwiel kindly provided a typescript of parts of the manuscript from which this quotation is taken. Bradley kept his diary over more than forty years, including most of the time of his residence in Siam, from 1835 u ­ ntil his death in Bangkok in 1873. It provides insight into his daily life and valuable information about more than thirty years of Siamese history that cannot be found elsewhere. Extracts have been published in Feltus, Abstract of the Journal of Rev. Dan Beach Bradley and (in a p ­ opular rendering) Bradley, Siam Then. 123. See Jean-­Baptiste Pallegoix, Dictionarium Linguae Thai (Paris: Jussu Imperatores Impressum, 1854), 37. Pallegoix translated bab kamnot as “original sin” (บาป กำ�หเนิด; บาปกำ�เนิด in modern Thai spelling, “a sin that ­every h ­ uman is born with”). 124. For a short explanation of ­t hese terms, see Robert E. Buswell and Donald S. Lopez, eds., The Prince­ton Dictionary of Buddhism (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2014), 28, 620. See also Genjun H. Sasaki, “The Buddhist Concept of Sin and Its Purification,” Oriens Extremus 26, nos. 1/2 (1979): 151–155. 125. Barend J. Terwiel, Through Travellers’ Eyes: An Approach to Early Nineteenth-­Century Thai History (Bangkok: Editions Duang Kamol, 1989), 14–18. 126. Cornelia Kneedler Hudson, “Daniel McGilvary in Siam: Foreign Missions, the Civil War, and Presbyterian Unity,” American Presbyterians 69, no. 4 (1991): 283–293. 127. Entry for December 14, 1856, in “Extracts from the Journals of Dan Beach Bradley,” unpublished manuscript compiled by Barend J. Terwiel. 128. Entry for December 25, 1856, in “Extracts from the Journals of Dan Beach Bradley,” unpublished manuscript compiled by Barend J. Terwiel. 129. Entry for December 13, 1856, in “Extracts from the Journals of Dan Beach Bradley,” unpublished manuscript compiled by Barend J. Terwiel. 130. Entry for February  9, 1859, in “Extracts from the Journals of Dan Beach Bradley,” unpublished manuscript compiled by Barend J. Terwiel. 131. Frederick J. Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” in Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Henry Holt and Com­pany, 1921), 3. For an analy­ sis of Turner’s concept and its relation to American Chris­t ian­ity, see John B. Boles, “Turner, the Frontier, and the Study of Religion in Amer­i­ca,” Journal of the Early Republic 13, no. 2 (1993): 205–216. 132. Herbert  R. Swanson, “Evangelical Qualified Dualism and Presbyterian Missionary Thought in Siam, 1840–1860,” n.d., 1–2, unpublished paper in author’s possession. 133. Entry for February 11, 1859, Extracts from the Journals of Dan Beach Bradley,” unpublished manuscript compiled by Barend J. Terwiel. The banyan tree or Bodhi tree (Ficus religiosa) has a g­ reat significance in the history of Buddhism, since it is said that it was the tree ­under which Siddhartha Gau­ta­ma attained enlightenment, or Bodhi. However, the palmyra palm (Borassus) was much more useful for agriculture, since the wood is hard, heavy, and durable and is highly valued for construction. The leaves ­were used to make mats, fans, and baskets and served as writing material. 134. Entry for December 15, 1856, in “Extracts from the Journals of Dan Beach Bradley,” unpublished manuscript compiled by Barend J. Terwiel.

192   Notes to Pages 73–77 135. For a recent survey of the history of education in Thailand, see Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, “History and Development of Thai Education,” in Education in Thailand: An Old Elephant in Search of a New Mahout, ed. Gerald W. Fry (Singapore: Springer, 2018), 3–75. 136. David K. Wyatt, The Politics of Reform in Thailand: Education in the Reign of King Chulalongkorn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969), 1–34. 137. Craig J. Reynolds, Seditious Histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 214–242; Peera Panarut, Cindamani—­The Odd Content Version: A Critical Edition (Segnitz bei Würzburg: Zenos Verlag, 2018), 2. Dan B. Bradley’s Cindamani was published posthumously in 1879 and was entitled จินดามณี ฉบับหมอบรัดเล [Cindamani chabap mo bratle; Dr. Bradley’s edition of the Cindamani booklet]. 138. Reynolds, Seditious Histories, 162–163. 139. Frank E. Reynolds and Mani B. Reynolds, trans., Three Worlds According to King Ruang: A Thai Buddhist Cosmology (Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press/Motilal Banarsidass, 1982), 49–50. 140. For a reproduction of ­these illustrations see Reynolds and Reynolds, Three Worlds According to King Ruang, 244–245. 141. Sakdina (Thai: ศ กั ดินา) literally means “power over rice fields,” which has led historians to assume a kind of feudal system. However, ­t here is no evidence that it was employed literally. A seminal work on the topic is Akin Rabibhadana, The ­Organization of Thai Society in the Early Bangkok Period, 1782–1873 (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Dept. of Asian Studies, Cornell University, 1970). 142. See Reynolds and Reynolds, Three Worlds According to King Ruang, 135–172. 143. Peter A. Jackson, “Thai Buddhist Identity: Debates on the Traiphum Phra Ruang,” in National Identity and Its Defenders: Thailand ­Today, ed. Craig J. Reynolds (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2002), 155–188. 144. Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-­Body of a Nation (Bangkok: Silkworm Books 1998), 20–22 ff.; Klaus Wenk, “Zu einer ‘Landkarte’ Süd-­und Ostasiens” [On a map of South and East Asia], in Felicitation Volumes of Southeast Asian Studies Presented to His Highness Prince Dhaninivat Kromamum Bidyalabh Bridhyakorn, vol. 1, ed. Gordon H. Luce et al. (Bangkok: The Siam Society, 1965), 119–122. 145. See, e.g., John Taylor Jones, “Extracts from Letters of Mr. Jones,” Baptist Missionary Magazine 16, no. 10 (October 1836): 233–237. 146. John Taylor Jones, “Extracts from Letters of Mr. Jones,” Baptist Missionary Magazine 24, no. 9 (September 1844): 274. 147. “Letter in Behalf of the Mission of the ABCFM in Siam, Bangkok June 1, 1841,” Thailand (Siam), 1840–1910, Incoming, Siam Letters, 1840–1844, vol. 1, reel 181, frame 61, Presbyterian Historical Society. 148. Feltus, “Missionary Journals of Rev. Jesse Caswell and of Rev. and Mrs. Asa Hemenway of Siam,” 93–94. 149. Feltus, “Missionary Journals of Rev. Jesse Caswell and of Rev. and Mrs. Asa Hemenway of Siam,” iv–­v. 150. Jesse Caswell, Tamrah hon chu chan suriyawithi: wa duai thang duang chan lae duang athit lae dao thang lai pen khambucha wisatchana. A Treatise on Astronomy, Prepared by the Late Rev. J. Caswell, trans. and rev. D. B. Bradley (Bangkok: A.M.A. Mission Press, 1870). 151. David K. Wyatt, “Education and the Modernization of Thai Society,” in Wyatt, Studies in Thai History: Collected Articles (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Press, 1994), 223–248.

Notes to Pages 77–83   193 152. For a detailed account of the background and genealogy of the Bunnag f­amily, see Edward Van Roy, “Bangkok’s Bunnag Lineage from Feudalism to Constitutionalism: Unraveling a Genealogical Gordian Knot,” Journal of the Siam Society, vol. 108, no. 2 (2020): 17–46; and Shane Bunnag, Chariot of the Sun: An Informal History of a Siamese F ­ amily (Bangkok: River Books, 2022). 153. David  K. Wyatt, “­Family Politics in Nineteenth-­Century Siam,” in Studies in Thai History: Collected Articles (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Press, 1994), 107–127. 154. Chaophraya (เจ า้ พระยา) is the highest rank of the ancient Thai civil nobility. For a detailed biography of Thiphakorawong in ­English, see Somjai Phirotthirarach, “The Historical Writings of Chao Phraya Thiphakorawong” (PhD diss., Northern Illinois University, 1983), 30–80. 155. Mattoon, “Sketch of the Rev. Stephen Mattoon,” 24–34. 156. Samuel R. ­House, “Annual Report of the Siam Mission for the Year Ending Oct. 1st, 1850,” Thailand (Siam), 1840–1910, Incoming, Siam Letters, 1847–1864, vol. 2, reel 181, frames 263–264. 157. Abbot Low Moffat, Mongkut, the King of Siam (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1961), 164–165. 158. Herbert  R. Swanson, “A New Generation: Missionary Education and Changes in ­Women’s Roles in Traditional Northern Thai Society,” Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia 3, no. 2 (1988): 187–206. The first girls’ school in Bangkok opened in 1875 and was managed by Samuel R. and Harriet M. ­House; see McFarland, Historical Sketch of Protestant Missions in Siam, 71–91. The school still exists and is now called Rong Rian Watthana Witthayalai (Wattana Wittaya Acad­emy). 159. Quoted in McFarland, Historical Sketch of Protestant Missions in Siam, 209. 160. Mary Lourie Mattoon, “Visits of Missionary Ladies to the King’s Palace. Sept. 1853,” Foreign Missionary 12, no. 10 (March 1854): 208–209. 161. Mongkut, “Royal Proclamation Pledging Royal Permit to Ladies of the Inner Palace to Resign,” 1854, in Pramoj and Pramoj, A King of Siam Speaks, 197–200. 162. Feltus, Abstract of the Journal of Rev. Dan Beach Bradley, 207–208. 163. See Susan Morgan, Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of The King and I Governess (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 88–117. 164. Wyatt, The Politics of Reform, 37. 165. For a history of the school, see McFarland, Historical Sketch of Protestant Missions in Siam, 71–91; and Mary Bulkley Stanton, Siam Was Our Home: A Narrative of Edna Bruner Bulkley’s Years in Thailand in the Early 1900’s (Seattle: Ha­ra Publishing, 2003). 166. Wyatt, Studies in Thai History, 223–270; Herbert R. Swanson, Khrischak Muang Nua [History of the northern churches] (Bangkok: C ­ huan Press, 1984). 167. Wyatt, The Politics of Reform, 33.

3. Translating Christianity 1. Simona Bunarunraksa, Monseigneur Louis Laneau, 1637–1696: Un pasteur, un théologien, un sage? (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2018), 227–253. 2. Alain Forest, Les missionnaires français au Tonkin et au Siam (XVII–­XVIII siècles): Analyse comparée d’un relatif succès et d’un total échec [French missionaries in Tonkin and Siam (17th–18th centuries): Comparative analy­sis of relative success and total failure], vol. 1 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998), 228, 241, 250.

194   Notes to Pages 83–87 3. Reprinted as M. L. Manich Jumsai, ed., Nangsue kham son Christang Phàc ton [Book of Christian learning] (1796; repr. Bangkok: Chalermnit Press, n. d.). 4. Bunarunraksa, Monseigneur Louis Laneau, 223–227. 5. Jacob Tomlin, Missionary Journals and Letters, Written during Eleven Years’ Residence and Travels amongst the Chinese, Siamese, Javanese, Khassias, and Other Eastern Nations (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1844), 188. 6. Thoralf Klein, comp., “Gützlaff über die Revision der chinesischen Bibelübersetzung” [Gützlaff on the revision of the Chinese translation of the Bible], in Karl Gützlaff (1803–1851) und das Christentum in Ostasien: ein Missionar zwischen den Kulturen [Karl Gützlaff (1803– 1851) and Chris­tian­ity in East Asia: A missionary between cultures], ed. Thoralf Klein (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2008), 303–304. 7. Vicki A. Spencer, Herder’s ­Political Thought: A Study on Language, Culture and Community (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 9. 8. Karl Gützlaff, “Remarks on the Siamese Language,” The Siam Repository, vol. 1, nos. 1–4 (January 1869): 52. This was a reprint; the article first appeared in 1835 in the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society. Laneau made a translation of Luke’s gospel in the seventeenth ­century that Gützlaff did not mention; see E. W. Hutchinson, “The Earliest Translation of the Gospel into Siamese,” Journal of the Siam Society 28, no. 2 (1935): 197–199. 9. Gützlaff, “The Budhism of Siam,” Chinese Repository 1, no. 7 (November 1832): 274. 10. Gützlaff, “Remarks on the Siamese Language,” 54–56. 11. Jessie G. Lutz, Opening China: Karl F. A. Gutzlaff and Sino-­Western Relations, 1827– 1852 (­Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 53. 12. Thoralf Klein, comp., “Bericht der Erfurter Zeitung über Gützlaff’s Übersetzungstätigkeit (17. 10. 1850)” [Report in the Erfurter Zeitung about Gützlaff’s translation work (October 17, 1850)], in Karl Gützlaff (1803–1851) und das Christentum in Ostasien: Ein Missionar zwischen den Kulturen [Karl Gützlaff (1803–1851) and Chris­tian­ity in East Asia: A missionary between cultures], ed. Thoralf Klein and Reinhard Zöllner (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2005), 314–315. 13. Gützlaff, “Remarks on the Siamese Language,” 52. 14. Quotes are from Tomlin, Missionary Journals and Letters, 149–150, 161, 329–330. 15. Tomlin, Missionary Journals and Letters, 188. 16. Lutz, Opening China, 48–49. 17. David Abeel, Journal of a Residence in China and the Neighboring Countries, from 1829 to 1833 (New York: Leavitt, Lord & Co., 1834), 227. 18. Lutz, Opening China, 54. The manuscript came off the presses in Singapore in 1834; see Anthony Farrington, Early Missionaries in Bangkok: The Journals of Tomlin, Gutzlaff and Abeel 1828–1832 (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2001), 164n2. 19. Tomlin remarked in his journal: “Three or four men, employed by the king, are engaged in the same work. They are translating some of the tracts, but, not having a good knowledge of both Chinese and Siamese, make many gross blunders. Hence the king complains that he can neither find head nor tail!”; Tomlin, Missionary Journals and Letters, 161 (entry of December 29, 1828). 20. See Barend J. Terwiel, “Cultural Goods and Flotsam: Early Thai Manuscripts in Germany and Th ­ ose Who Collected Them,” Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 2, no. 1 (2017): 90–91. 21. “Biblische Geschichten,” unpublished leporello manuscript from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, n.d. [before 1834]. The inscription on the back of the manuscript reads: “C. Gützlaff,

Notes to Pages 87–92   195 für die Königl.[ich] Preuß.[ische] Bibliothek zu Berlin. Biblische Geschichten im Siamesischen.” The Thai name for the Bud­d ha is slightly dif­fer­ent ­today: Phra Phuttha Chao. 22. Jean-­Baptiste Pallegoix, Dictionarium Linguae Thai (Paris: Jussu Imperatores Impressum, 1854), 578. 23. Undated manuscript from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Ms. or. fol. 336). The cover text reads in German “C. Gützlaff, für die Königl. Preuß. Bibliothek zu Berlin. Das Evangelium Lukas im Siamesischen.” 24. The text gives two variants for the word “angel”: Phra In (พระอิน), the Hindu deity In­ dra in Thai (พระอินทร์; Phra In­dra in modern spelling) and Thewada (เทวะดา), or deva, a spirit or angel in Thai (เทวดา). 25. “Gützlaff, Life of Christ in Siamese—­A Part of His Work in Siam,” 3, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The precise meaning of the sermon could not be determined. Judging from its poor language and spelling, it was prob­ably not written by a native speaker. 26. “Gützlaff, Life of Christ in Siamese,” 20 ff. 27. Christopher A. Daily, Robert Morrison and the Protestant Plan for China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 187. 28. Jessie G. Lutz and R. Ray Lutz, “Karl Gützlaff’s Approach to Indigenization: The Chinese ­Union,” in Chris­tian­ity in China: From the Eigh­teenth ­Century to the Pre­sent, ed. Daniel H. Bays (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 269–291. 29. Karl Gützlaff, Bericht seiner Reise von China nach E ­ ngland und durch die verschiedenen Länder Europa’s im Interesse der Chinesischen Mission. Hg. v. der Direction der Chinesischen Stiftung [Account of his travels from China to E ­ ngland and through the vari­ous countries of ­Europe on behalf of the Chinese Mission. Published ­under the direction of the Chinese Foundation] (Cassel: Verlag und Druck der Expedition der Chinesischen Stiftung, 1851); see also Herman Schlyter, Der China-­Missionar Karl Gützlaff und seine Heimatbasis (Studien über das Interesse des Abendlandes an der Mission des China-­Pioniers Karl Gützlaff und über seinen Einsatz als Missionserwecker) [The China Missionary Karl Gützlaff and his home base (Studies on the interest of the West in the mission of the China pioneer Karl Gützlaff and on his commitment as a mission awakener)] (Lund: Gleerup, 1976), 102–133. 30. Martha  P.  Y. Cheung, “Translation Activities in Hong Kong—1842 to 1997,” in Übersetzung–­Translation–­Traduction. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Übersetzungsfor­ schung. An international Encyclopedia of Translation Studies. Encyclopédie internationale de la recherche sur la traduction, vol. 3, ed. Harald Kittel et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2011), 2195– 2201. On the Taiping movement, see Jonathan D. Spence, God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996). 31. See Herbert R. Swanson, “Reflections on the History of Bible Translation in Northern Thailand,” Bulletin: United Bible Socie­ties 170/171 (1994): 30–36. 32. The first Western textbook on Thai is James Low, A Grammar of the Thai, or Siamese Language (Calcutta: Printed at the Baptist Mission Press, 1828). Jones also published a textbook on Thai in which he traced the origin of the Thai language to Laos and Cambodia; John Taylor Jones, Brief Grammatical Notices of the Siamese Language; with an Appendix (Bangkok: Mission Press, 1842), 3–4. 33. John Taylor Jones, “Preface,” in The New Testament, Translated from the Greek by J. T. Jones, 2nd ed. (Bangkok: U ­ nion Press, 1850), vii. 34. Jones wrote in the preface to his 1850 edition of the New Testament: “It w ­ ill sufficiently characterize his translation to say that it embraced the w ­ hole of the Old and New Testaments

196   Notes to Pages 92–98 executed with two other translations of the same extent in three years, without any previous knowledge of ­either of the three languages—­Siamese, Kambojan and Laos—­a nd executed too while the translator was preaching in Chinese, making Siamese and Cochin-­Chinese vocabularies, and practicing medicine and surgery”; “Preface,” iv. 35. John Taylor Jones, “Address of Mr. Jones: The Work of a Missionary,” Baptist Missionary Magazine 21, no. 1 (1841): 2. 36. S. F. Smith, “Rev. John Taylor Jones,” Baptist Missionary Magazine 34, no. 1 (1853): 6. 37. William Gammell, A History of American Baptist Missions in Asia, Africa, ­Europe and North Amer­i­ca U ­ nder the Care of the American Baptist Mission U ­ nion (Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1854), 192; Donald C. Lord, Mo Bradley and Thailand (­Grand Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans, 1969), 99. The task was ­later fulfilled by Dan B. Bradley, who published the first volume of his Dictionary of the Siamese Language in 1855. 38. Lydia H. Sigourney, Letters to My Pupils: With Narrative and Biographical Sketches (New York: Robert Car­ter & ­Brothers, 1851), 294–295. 39. Jones particularly highlighted the edition of German Protestant theologian Georg Christian Knapp, in addition to consulting vari­ous other editions regarded as authoritative in the nineteenth c­ entury; see John Taylor Jones, “Preface,” v–vi. 40. John Taylor Jones, “Preface,” vi, italics in the original. 41. George Bradley McFarland, Historical Sketch of Protestant Missions in Siam, 1828–1928 (1928; repr., Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1998), 35–50. 42. Examples are taken from translations of Luke in Jones’s New Testament edition of 1850 and from Gützlaff, “Life of Christ in Siamese.” Thut sawan means angel or divine messenger in Thai; thep means angel or denotes a (Brahmanic) deity. 43. Jumsai, Nangsue kham son Christang Phàc ton, 1, 10. 44. See Chula Chakrabongse, Lords of Life: A History of the Kings of Thailand (London: Redman, 1967), 16 ff. 45. Charles Robinson, “Letter from Mr. Robinson, dated at Bangkok, July 30, 1835,” Missionary Herald 32, no. 5 (May 1836): 177–179. 46. See, for example, the title pages of The Four Gospels and Acts (Bangkok: ­Union Press, 1849) and the New Testament, Translated from the Greek by J. T. Jones (1850). In the latter case, the first line is a Pāli phrase in Khòm script, which transcribes as Saccaṃ saññāṇaṃ lakkhaṇaṃ. I thank Prof. Volker Grabowsky for this information. The phrase can be rendered as “Truth is the mark of knowledge.” 47. Dan B. Bradley gives the names of the arrestees as K[h]ru (teacher) Thean, K[h]ru Oane, and K[h]ru That; see George H. Feltus, Abstract of the Journal of Rev. Dan Beach Bradley, M.D., Medical Missionary in Siam, 1835–1873 (Cleveland, OH: Multigraph Department of the Pilgrim Church, 1936), 126–127. 48. McFarland, Historical Sketch of Protestant Missions in Siam, 249–254. 49. Lord, Mo Bradley and Thailand, 96–97. 50. Feltus, Abstract of the Journal of Rev. Dan Beach Bradley, 47. 51. Dan B. Bradley, Nangsue ni pen ruang kitchakan haeng Phrayesu Chao [Book on the life of Jesus] (Bangkok: ABCFM Mission Press, 1841), 3–4, 6. 52. “Letter of Jones, Bangkok, 15 November, 1833,” International Ministries, Group 1: American Baptist Mission Society, Correspondence 1814–1900 China-­Siam, reel 110-05, American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, GA.

Notes to Pages 99–106   197 53. On the tradition of forest monks, see Stanley J. Tambiah, The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 54. Louis Laneau, Recontre avec un sage Bouddhiste [Meeting with a Buddhist sage] (Geneva: Ad Solem, 1998). 55. Laneau, Recontre avec un sage Bouddhiste, 114. 56. Kennon Breazeale, “The 1731 Edict on Missionary Activities,” Journal of the Siam Society 105 (2017): 141–150. 57. The book first appeared in 1844 in Latin script ­under the title Butxa Visatxana [Questions and answers]. 58. For a summary of the Maha Kangwon in French, see Bunarunraksa, Monseigneur Louis Laneau, 244–249. 59. The book was reprinted in Thai script ­until 1958 but was fi­nally withdrawn from the book market and hidden in the archive of the Catholic Mission in Bangkok; see Thongchai Winichakul, “Buddhist Apol­o­getics and a Genealogy of Comparative Religion in Siam,” Numen 62, no. 1 (2015): 80–81. 60. John Taylor Jones, “Journal of Rev. J. T. Jones,” International Ministries, Group 1: American Baptist Mission Society, China-­Siam, reel 110-15, American Baptist Historical Society, Atlanta, GA, emphasis in the original. 61. John Taylor Jones, The Golden Balance. Nangsue Trachu Thong, 4th ed. (Bangkok: A.M.A. Press, 1853), 5. Three thousand copies of this edition ­were printed. 62. Jones, The Golden Balance, 9. Somnakotom is a Thai rendering of Sommonacodom, the ­European name for Siddhartha Gau­ta­ma used in the seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries. 63. Jones, The Golden Balance, 10–11, 17–18, 25–28, 31–32. 6 4. Jones, The Golden Balance, 22–23. 65. Jones, The Golden Balance, 12–13, 21. 66. Bangkok Calendar (October 1849): 330. 67. See, e.g., Stephen Mattoon, “A Letter from the Rev. S. Mattoon. Bangkok, Siam, Feb. 21, 1853,” Foreign Missionary 12, no. 4 (September 1853): 76–77. “Nikban” refers to Nirvana (Thai: nipphan; นิพพาน). 68. Patrick L. Carden, “Report of the Presbyterian Mission, Bangkok, October 1, 1866,” Thailand (Siam), 1840–1910, Incoming, Siam Letters, 1865–1876, vol. 3, reel 294, frames 194– 196, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA. 69. Thanapol Limapichart, “The Emergence of the Siamese Public Sphere: Colonial Modernity, Print Culture and the Practice of Criticism (1860s–1910s),” South East Asia Research 17, no. 3 (2006): 361–399. 70. Jürgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft [The Structural transformation of the public sphere. An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990), 69–85. 71. T. C. W. Blanning, The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture: Old Regime ­Europe 1660–1789 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 8. 72. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit, A History of Thailand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 107–109. 73. On Kulap, see Craig J. Reynolds, Seditious Histories: Contesting Thai and Southeast Asian Pasts (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 55–79. The life and writings of Thianwan are covered in Klaus Rosenberg, Nation und Fortschritt: Der Publizist Thien Wan und

198   Notes to Pages 107–110 die Modernisierung Thailands unter König CulǎlongkYn, r. 1868–1910 [Nation and pro­gress: The publicist Thien Wan and the modernization of Thailand u ­ nder King CulǎlongkYn, r. 1868– 1910] (Hamburg: Gesellschaft für Natur-­und Völkerkunde Ostasiens e.V., 1980). On Luang Wichit Wathakan, see Scott Barmé, Luang Wichit Wathakan and the Creation of a Thai Identity (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1993). 74. Quoted in Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern ­Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 304. 75. Stephen Mattoon, “Letter of Stephen Mattoon, June 29, 1849,” Thailand (Siam), 1840– 1910, Incoming, Siam Letters, 1847–1864, vol. 2, reel 181, frame 164, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA. 76. Michael Winship, “Early Thai Printing: The Beginning to 1851,” Crossroads 3, no. 1 (1986): 45–61. 77. John Taylor Jones, “Extracts from Letters of Mr. Jones,” Baptist Missionary Magazine 23, no. 10 (1843): 257. 78. Limapichart, “The Emergence of the Siamese Public Sphere,” 369. 79. Carden, “Report of the Presbyterian Mission.” 80. See the list in Harald Krahl, “The History of the Translation of the First Siamese Bible” (MA thesis, Columbia International University, Deutscher Zweig, Studienzentrum Korntal, 2005), Appendices III and IV. 81. Lutz, Opening China, 45. 82. Feltus, Abstract of the Journal of Rev. Dan Beach Bradley, 207. 83. On Dan  B. Bradley’s activities as a publisher, see Lord, Mo Bradley and Thailand, 93–102. 84. Jesse Caswell, “Journal of Mr Caswell. Reception of the Gospel,” Missionary Herald 41, no. 8 (1845): 272. 85. Frank Luther Mott, American Journalism: A History, 1690–1960, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1962). 86. Quoted in David A. Copeland, ed., The Antebellum Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1820 to 1860 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003), 172. 87. Parkpume Vanichaka, “The Beginning of Liberalism in Thailand: Dan Beach Bradley and Bangkok Recorder,” Waseda University Journal of the Gradu­ate School of Asia-­Pacific Studies 29, no. 3 (2015): 21–36. 88. Bangkok Recorder (­English) 1, no. 4 (March 1, 1865): 33–34. 89. Frederick Knight Hunt, The Fourth Estate: Contributions ­towards a History of Newspapers, and of the Liberty of the Press (London: David Bogue, 1850). 90. Bangkok Recorder (Thai) 2, no. 22 (July 1865): 4–6. 91. Limapichart, “The Emergence of the Siamese Public Sphere,” 375–376. 92. Feltus, Abstract of the Journal of Rev. Dan Beach Bradley, 245. 93. M. R. Seni Pramoj and M. R. Kukrit Pramoj, eds., A King of Siam Speaks, trans. M. R. Seni Pramoj and M. R. Kukrit Pramoj (Bangkok: Siam Society, 1987), 81–83. 94. Lawrence Palmer Briggs, “The Aubaret versus Bradley Case at Bangkok 1866–67,” Far Eastern Quarterly 6, no. 3 (1947): 262–82. 95. Bangkok Recorder 2, no. 52 (January 16, 1867); see also George C. Kingston, James Madison Hood: Lincoln’s Consul to the Court of Siam (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013), 162–183.

Notes to Pages 110–116   199 96. Adolf Bastian, Reisen in Siam im Jahre 1863 [Travels in Siam in 1863] (Jena: Costenoble, 1867), 87–88. Mongkut established the Royal Thai Government Gazette (Ratchakitchanubeksa; ราชก จิ จาน เุ บกษา) in 1858  in order to publish royal announcements and inform the general public of news relating to the kingdom; see Pramoj and Pramoj, A King of Siam Speaks, 31–33. 97. Bangkok Calendar (1862): 109. For a modern edition, see Siamese and ­English Rec­ords of the Siamese Embassy to E ­ ngland: A Collection of Chronicles (Bangkok: N.p., 1927). 98. Malinee Dilokwanich, “A Study of Samkok: The First Thai Translation of a Chinese Novel,” Journal of the Siam Society 73 (1985): 77–112. 99. Lord, Mo Bradley and Thailand, 193–198. 100. Limapichart, “The Emergence of the Siamese Public Sphere,” 373. 101. William L. Bradley, Siam Then: The Foreign Colony in Bangkok before and a­ fter Anna (Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1981), 51–56. 102. McFarland, Historical Sketch of Protestant Missions in Siam, 32–34. The Baptist mission fi­nally gave up its work in Siam in 1927. 103. Samuel J. Smith, “The Siam Repository,” The Siam Repository 1, no. 1 (1869): n.p. 104. Kullada Kesboonchoo Mead, The Rise and Decline of Thai Absolutism (London: Routledge, 2004), 108–109. 105. For more on Smith and his printing office, see Surapong Jankasamepong, “Bot-­bat thang kan phim lae khunupakan khorng mor Samit tor sangkhom thai” [The contributions of Samuel J. Smith to Thai society], Sinlapa watthanatham 27, no. 9 (2006): 78–92. 106. Samuel J. Smith, “Introduction to the Fourth Volume,” Siam Repository: Containing a Summary of Asiatic Intelligence 4, no. 1–4 (1872): n.p.

4. The Siamese Response Epigraph: King Mongkut, as quoted in Dan B. Bradley, “Reminiscences of the Late Supreme Monarch of Siam,” Bangkok Calendar (1869): 123. 1. Samuel  R. ­House, “Letter in behalf of the mission of the BFM in Siam, Bangkok June 1, 1841.” Thailand (Siam), 1840–1910, Incoming, Siam Letters, 1840–1844. Vol. 1, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA, Reel 181, frame 61. In fact, Mongkut had in­ven­ted his own script (ariyaka) for transcribing the Pāli language according to its original pronunciation. The script was a­ dopted from Roman characters. See Robert Lingat, “The History of Wat Pavaraniveça,” Journal of the Siam Society 26, no. 1 (1933): 80–81. 2. The edict of 1839 was republished in Sir John Bowring, The Kingdom and P ­ eople of Siam, 2 vols. (London: John W. Parker & Sons, 1857), 2:368–377. 3. George H. Feltus, ed., Abstract of the Journals of Rev. Dan Beach Bradley, M.D., Medical Missionary in Siam, 1835–1873 (Oberlin: Oberlin College Library, 1936), 41; Donald C. Lord, Mo Bradley and Thailand (­Grand Rapids, MI: William Eerdmans, 1969), 100; Bangkok Recorder (Thai) 1, no. 15 (October 5, 1865): 135; Somjai Phirotthirarach, “The Historical Writings of Chao Phraya Thiphakorawong” (PhD diss., Northern Illinois University, 1983), 63. 4. Bangkok Recorder (Thai) 1, no. 16 (October 19, 1865): 140–141. 5. Bangkok Recorder (Thai) 1, no. 16 (October 19, 1865): 142. My translation. 6. Bangkok Recorder (Thai) 1, no. 15 (October 19, 1865): 143–144. My translation. 7. Bangkok Recorder (Thai) 1, no. 19 (December 4, 1865): 175.

200   Notes to Pages 117–122 8. Bangkok Recorder (­English) 1, no. 20 (November 1, 1865): 201. The original letter was printed as “Kan thi than kae duai Sasana” [­Things that Buddhism can explain], Bangkok Recorder (Thai) 1, no. 17 (November 3, 1865): 151–152. 9. Bangkok Recorder (Thai) 1, no. 18 (November 8, 1865): 161–162. My translation. 10. In a response to this point, Dan B. Bradley explained that the language of the Bible was plain and ­simple ­because God wants to speak to man just like a ­father talks to his ­children. He believed, as did other Protestant missionaries, that this was the only way to make every­one understand the holy message, irrespective of age and intellectual capacity; Bangkok Recorder (Thai) 1, no. 18 (November 18, 1865): 162. 11. Bangkok Recorder (­English) 2, no. 2 (January 18, 1866): n.p. 12. Bangkok Recorder (­English) 2, no. 13 (April 5, 1866): n.p., italics in the original. 13. Bangkok Recorder (­English) 2, no. 3 (January 25, 1866): n.p.; Thanapol Limapichart, “The Emergence of the Siamese Public Sphere: Colonial Modernity, Print Culture and the Practice of Criticism (1860s–1910s),” South East Asia Research 17, no. 3 (2006): 374. 14. Bangkok Recorder (­English) 2, no. 20 (May 24, 1866): n.p. 15. Bangkok Recorder (­English) 2, no. 16 (April 26, 1866): n.p. 16. Bangkok Recorder (­English) 2, no. 13 (April 5, 1866): n.p. 17. The edition used h ­ ere is Chaophraya Thiphakorawong, Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit [A book explaining vari­ous ­t hings] (Bangkok: Sueksaphanit, 1971). 18. On the impact of the Kitchanukit on the emergence of a global discourse on religion, see Adrian Hermann, Unterscheidungen der Religion. Analysen zum globalen Religionsdiskurs und dem Prob­lem der Differenzierung von “Religion” in buddhistischen Kontexten des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts [Distinctions of religion: Analyses of the global religious discourse and the prob­lem of differentiating “religion” in Buddhist contexts of the 19th and early 20th centuries](Göttingen: V&R, 2015), 338–349. 19. Henry Alabaster, The Modern Buddhist; Being the Views of a Siamese Minister of State on His Own and Other Religions (London: Trübner & Co, 1870). Alabaster published a slightly expanded version of the text in The Wheel of the Law—­Buddhism (London: Trübner & Co., 1871), 1–73, a study of Buddhism based on Siamese texts. 20. Adolf Bastian, Reisen in Siam im Jahre 1863 [Travels in Siam in 1863] (Jena: Costenoble, 1867), 84. 21. For a detailed account of Thiphakorawong’s life, see Phirotthirarach, “The Historical Writings of Chao Phraya Thiphakorawong,” 30–80. 22. For an analy­sis of references to Islam in the Kitchanukit, see Ruth Streicher, “Imperialism, Buddhism and Islam in Siam: Exploring the Buddhist Secular in the Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit, 1867,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 52, no. 1 (2021): 7–25. 23. Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, 33. 24. Thiphakorawong, Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit, 1–3. Translations follow Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, 4–5. Thiphakorawong used the Pāli word sasana (Thai: [ทาง] สาศนา), which Alabaster translated as “religion.” However, elsewhere in the Kitchanukit, sasana may denote Buddhism more specifically, as distinguished from other faiths such as Chris­tian­ity or Islam. The term prob­ably maintained this ambiguity ­u ntil 1932, when the authors of Siam’s first permanent constitution extended its meaning to religion in general (in the modern Thai spelling: satsana; ศาสนา). 25. Thiphakorawong, Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit, 13–15; translation from Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, 6. Anodat is the Thai name of the mythical Himalayan Lake, the source

Notes to Pages 123–128   201 of the ­great rivers of India. Phaya Naga (พญานาค) is a mythical serpent often associated with ­water. 26. Thiphakorawong, Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit, 108, 119; translation follows Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, 18–26. The word “dewa” (modern spelling deva; in Thai: เทวา/เทว) derives from Sans­k rit and denotes dif­fer­ent types of super­natural beings in Hinduism and Buddhist my­t hol­ogy. However, Gützlaff may have also been referring to Daoist deities such as Guanyin, who would not have been venerated by Siamese Buddhists at the time and could thus easily be dismissed by Thiphakorawong as an example of the beliefs of the Chinese. 27. Thiphakorawong, Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit, 104–105. 28. Thiphakorawong, Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit, 80–81. 29. Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, 5. 30. Bastian, Reisen in Siam im Jahre 1863, 73. 31. Samuel J. Smith, “Modern Buddhists,” Siam Repository 4, no. 1–4 (1872): 257–258. 32. Dan Beach Bradley, Bangkok Calendar (1868), 125. 33. Thongchai Winichakul, “Coming to Terms with the West: Intellectual Strategies of Bifurcation and Post-­Westernism in Siam,” in The Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand, ed. Rachel V. Harrison and Peter A. Jackson (Aberdeen, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010), 132–151. 34. Craig J. Reynolds, “The Buddhist Monkhood in Nineteenth-­Century Thailand” (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1973), 103–112. 35. See, for example, his decrees against smoking opium in the ­temple (no. 13), on the religious ceremony at Wat Phra Kaew Morakot in Bangkok (no. 23), or on the punishment and amnesty of monks who have sexual relations with w ­ omen (nos. 27 and 45): Charnvit Kasetsiri, ed., Prachum prakat ratchakan thi 4 [Collected decrees of the fourth reign] (Bangkok: Foundation for the Promotion of Social Science and Humanities Textbooks Proj­ect, 2004). 36. “A translation from the Siamese. Dictated by the King. In reply to an article we published in the Siamese ‘Recorder’ of the 18th ult.,” Bangkok Recorder (­English) 2, no. 2 (January 18, 1866): n.p. The Yak (ยักษ์ ) is a g­ iant demon from the Ramayana epic of India. 37. Ian Hodges, “Western Science in Siam: A Tale of Two Kings,” Osiris 13 (1998): 80–95. 38. J. C. Eade, The Calendrical Systems of Mainland South-­East Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 1. 39. See Horace Geoffrey Quaritch Wales, Siamese State Ceremonies: Their History and Function (1931; repr., Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1992), 60. 40. John Taylor Jones, “Extracts from Letters of Mr. Jones,” Baptist Missionary Magazine 16, no. 10 (1836): 233. 41. John Taylor Jones, “Extracts from Letters of Mr. Jones,” Baptist Missionary Magazine 24, no. 9 (1844): 274. 42. See Kasetsiri, Prachum prakat ratchakan thi 4, decree nos. 152 (“No worries when viewing comets”), 203 (“Comet in the year of the chicken”), 204 (“On a solar eclipse”), 207 (“Mercury before the sun”), 302 (“Total solar eclipse”), 305 (“Specification of time calculation”), and 307 (“When the sun reaches the fixed star”). 43. Michael Adas, Machines as the ­Measures of Man: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989). 4 4. Mongkut, “Letter to Phraya Suriyawongse Vayahadhana, Siamese Ambassador to Paris,” in M.  R. Seni Pramoj and M.  R. Kukrit Pramoj, eds., A King of Siam Speaks, trans. M. R. Seni Pramoj and M. R. Kukrit Pramoj (Bangkok: Siam Society, 1987), 174, 178. 45. Bowring, The Kingdom and ­People of Siam, 1:410–411.

202   Notes to Pages 128–133 46. “­Presentation of the Ambassadors to the Queen,” Illustrated Times, November 28, 1857, in Siamese and E ­ nglish Rec­ords of the Siamese Embassy to E ­ ngland: A Collection of Chronicles, vol. 45 (Bangkok: N.p., 1927), 80. 47. Posthumously published as “His Majesty’s Predictional Calculations,” August 15, 1868 (i.e., three days before the eclipse), Bangkok Calendar (1869): 98. 48. Feltus, Abstract of the Journals of Rev. Dan Beach Bradley, 276. 49. “­Great Solar Eclipse August 18th, 1868,” Bangkok Calendar (1869): 88. 50. “­Great Solar Eclipse August 18th, 1868,” Bangkok Calendar (1869): 94. 51. David Aubin, “Eclipse Politics in France and Thailand,” in The Heavens on Earth: Observatories in Nineteenth-­Century Science and Culture, ed. David Aubin, Charlotte Bigg, and H. Otto Sibum (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 99–100. 52. Feltus, Abstract of the Journals of Rev. Dan Beach Bradley, 278. 53. Aubin, “Eclipse Politics in France and Thailand,” 100. 54. Chaophraya Thiphakorawong, The Dynastic Chronicles: Bangkok Era, The Fourth Reign, trans. Chadin (Kanjanavanit) Flood, 4 vols. (Tokyo: Center for East Asian Cultural Studies, 1965), 2:533. 55. Thiphakorawong, The Dynastic Chronicles: Bangkok Era, The Fourth Reign, 2:532. 56. Thiphakorawong, The Dynastic Chronicles: Bangkok Era, The Fourth Reign, 2:540–541. 57. Pramoj and Pramoj, A King of Siam Speaks, 225–235. 58. Bradley, “Reminiscences of the Late Supreme Monarch of Siam,” 140. 59. King Mongkut, quoted in Bradley, “Reminiscences the Late Supreme Monarch of Siam,” 123. 60. David L. McMahan, “Modernity and the Early Discourse of Scientific Buddhism,” Journal of the American Acad­emy of Religion 72, no. 4 (2004): 898. See also David L. McMahan, The Making of Buddhist Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 61. Donald S. Lopez, The Scientific Bud­dha: His Short and Happy Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012). 62. Aihua Zheng, “Buddhist Networks: The ­Japanese Preparation for the World’s Parliament of Religions, 1892–1893,” ­Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 46, no. 2 (2019): 247–276; Maria Moritz, “ ‘The Empire of Righ­teousness’: Anagarika Dharmapala and His Vision of Buddhist Asianism (c. 1900),” in Asianisms: Regionalist Interactions and Asian Integration, ed. Marc Frey and Nicola Spakowski (Singapore: NUS Press, 2016), 19–48. 63. Holmes Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China: With a Section of Photo­graphs by Henri Cartier-­Bresson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 173–179. 6 4. Steven Collins, “On the Very Idea of the Pali Canon,” Journal of the Pali Text Society 15 (1990): 89–126. 65. Bastian, Reisen in Siam im Jahre 1863, 84. Bastian referred to the Four Noble Truths (in Thai: ariyasat; อร ยิ ส จั ) and the Paramathamanjusa of Dhammapala, a commentary on Buddhaghosa’s work on Buddhist practice (Visuddhimagga). In the first-­ever printed version of the Tipiṭaka, the Jātaka book was excluded from the edition; see Patrick Jory, Thailand’s Theory of Monarchy: The Vessantara Jātaka and the Idea of the Perfect Man (Albany: SUNY Press, 2016), 147–149. 6 6. Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere, Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1988), 215–224. 67. M. U. De Silva, “Suppression of Buddhism u ­ nder the British and the R ­ esistance of the Buddhists,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka, n.s. 49 (2004): 15–52.

Notes to Pages 133–138   203 68. R. V. Young and G. P. V. Somaratne, Vain Debates: The Buddhist-­Christian Controversies of Nineteenth-­Century Ceylon (Vienna: Publications of the De Nobili Research Library, 1996), 80–102. 69. John Capper, Full Account of the Controversy, Held at Pantura, in August, 1873 (Colombo: Ceylon Times, 1873); James Martin Peebles, ed., Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity Face to Face: Or, An Oral Discussion Between the Rev. Migettuwatte, a Buddhist Priest, and Rev. D. Silva, an ­English Clergyman. Held at Pantura, Ceylon (London: Published by James Burns, 1878). 70. Anne M. Blackburn, Buddhist Learning and Textual Practice in Eighteenth-­Century Lankan Monastic Culture (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2001), 50–52. 71. Richard M. Jaffe, “Seeking Śākyamuni: Travel and the Reconstruction of J­ apanese Buddhism,” Journal of ­Japanese Studies 30, no. 1 (2004): 81–83. 72. On Shaku Kōzen’s visit to Siam, see Richard M. Jaffe, Seeking Śākyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of J­ apanese Buddhism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 61–62. 73. G. Scott, Building the Buddhist Revival: Reconstructing Monasteries in Modern China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 43–87. 74. Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China, 160–173. 75. Stephen C. Berkwitz, South Asian Buddhism. A Survey (London: Routledge, 2009), 147–148. 76. In the thirteenth c­ entury, Nakhon Sri Thammarat became a center of Sinhalese Buddhism in Siam; see Somboon Bunrit, “Lankawong ni Siam lae Siamwong ni Sri Lanka” [The Lankavamsa in Siam and Siamvamsa in Sri Lanka], Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya Journal 1, no. 2 (2560 [2011]): 35–53. 77. Damrong Rajanubhap, Ruang praditsathan phra song sayam wong nai langka thawip [On the establishment of the Siamese Sangha in Sri Lanka] (Bangkok: N.p., 1960), 373, 401. 78. Phra Dr. Anil Dhammasakiyo (Sakya), “A Modern Trend of Study of Buddhism in Thailand: King Mongkut and Dhammayutikanikaya,” 32, unpublished paper, https://­archive​.­org​ /­details​/­mongkut​-­a nd​-­d hammayut​-­modern​-­t rend; Anne Blackburn, Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 146–153. 79. As quoted in Mary Backus, Siam and Laos: As Seen by Our American Missionaries (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1884), 7. 80. In 1687, the French ambassador in Ayutthaya, Simon de la Loubère, commissioned a French version of the Story of Thewathat (Pāli: Devadatta), a cousin of Gau­ta­ma who is depicted in the Theravāda canon as a villain challenging the Bud­d ha’s authority. La Loubère published the text in the second volume of his book Du Royaume de Siam (Paris 1691), thus providing one of the first translations from the Theravāda Buddhist written tradition in any E ­ uropean language. Due to the expulsion of the French from Siam in 1688, however, t­ here was no one in ­Europe to continue La Loubère’s studies; see Sven Trakulhun, “Accommodating Buddhism: ­European Travellers and Siamese Religion in the 18th ­Century,” in ­European Perceptions of Religion in Southeast Asia: Travel Accounts, 16th to 20th Centuries, ed. Monika Arnez and Jürgen Sarnowsky (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016), 135–319. 81. Pierre Poivre, Travels of a P ­ hilosopher: Or, Observations on the Manners and Arts of the Vari­ous Nations in Africa and Asia (Glasgow: Robert Urie, 1770), 62. 82. J. G. Koenig, “Journal of a Voyage to Siam and Malacca in 1779,” Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 26 (1894): 139. 83. John Crawfurd, Journal of an Embassy to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China (London: Henry Colbourn, 1828), 361–362.

204   Notes to Pages 139–143

5. The Making of Modern Buddhism in Siam and the West Epigraph: Oscar Wilde, Vera, or The Nihilists (1880; repr., London: Methuen & Co., 1927), 97. 1. James Martin Peebles (1822–1922) was an American physician, spiritualist, author, and lecturer known for his contributions to the spiritualist movement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Peebles traveled extensively during his long life, both in the United States and abroad, to promote his spiritualist beliefs and engage with like-­minded individuals. In 1873, he traveled to Ceylon, where he witnessed the Pānadurē debate. ­A fter his return to the United States, he wrote an account of the event based on available information in the press; Dehigaspe Pan Nasara, “Foreword,” in J. M. Peebles, The ­Great Debate—­Buddhism and Chris­tian­ity Face to Face (Colombo: P.K.W. Siriwardhana, 1955), i–ii. 2. Stephen Prothero, The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), 85–101. 3. See Ananda L. Wickremeratne, The Genesis of an Orientalist: Thomas Rhys Davids and Buddhism in Sri Lanka (Delhi: Motilal Banrasidass, 1984). 4. See Charles Hallisey, “Roads Taken and Not Taken in the Study of Theravāda Buddhism,” in Curators of the Bud­dha: The Study of Buddhism u ­ nder Colonialism, ed. Donald S. Lopez Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 31–61. 5. Quoted in Yoshinaga Shin’ichi and Orion Klautau, “­A fter Olcott Left: Theosophy and ‘New Buddhists’ at the Turn of the ­Century,” Eastern Buddhist, n.s., 43, nos. 1/2 (2012): 107. 6. Joscelyn Godwin, The Theosophical Enlightenment (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994). Annie Besant (1847–1933) even became an icon of the Indian i­ndependence movement; see Angelika Malinar, “Western-­born but in spirit Eastern . . .’—­Annie Besant between Colonial and Spiritual Realms,” Asiatische Studien—­Études Asiatiques 67, no. 4 (2013): 1115–1154. 7. Quoted in J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought (London: Routledge, 1998), 71. 8. Heinz Bechert, “Einleitung” [Introduction], in Milindapañha: Ein historisches Gipfeltreffen im religiösen Weltgespräch [Milindapañha: A historic summit in the discussion of world religions], ed. and trans. Nyanatiloka (Bern: O. W. Barth Verlag, 1998), 15–22. 9. Siam Repository (July 1872): 311. 10. Siam Repository (1873): 207. 11. Voravudhi Chirasombutti, “Some Observations on Mi­g rants’ Acquisition of Thai ­Family Names,” Journal of Ritsumeikan Social Sciences & Humanities 6, no. 5 (2013): 47. 12. “List of Members of the Royal Asiatic Society of ­Great Britain and Ireland,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of G ­ reat Britain and Ireland, n.s. 6, no. 2 (1873): 1–16. 13. Henry Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law—­Buddhism (London: Trübner & Co., 1871). 14. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment, 76–92. 15. Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, xv. 16. Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the ­European Mind in the Nineteenth ­Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 17. Karl Marx, “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie” [On the critique of Hegel’s philosophy of law], in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Marx Engels Werke, vol. 1: 1839–1844 (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1972), 378. 18. Rudolf Schlögl, Religion and Society at the Dawn of Modern E ­ urope: Chris­tian­ity Transformed, 1750–1850 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), 67–75.

Notes to Pages 143–148   205 19. Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, With a new afterword (London: Penguin Books, 1995), 120–121. 20. Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, 73. 21. “Ein siamesischer Minister über Christenthum und Buddhismus” [A Siamese minister on Chris­t ian­ity and Buddhism], Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung München 74 (March 15, 1870): 1129–1130, 1151–1152. 22. Westminster Review 184 (April 1870): 268. 23. “A Buddhist Matthew Arnold,” in Littell’s Living Age, April 23, 1870, 235. 24. Laurence W. Mazzeno, Matthew Arnold: The Critical Legacy (Rochester, NY: Camden ­House 1999), 127. 25. Hermann Oldenberg, The Bud­dha: His Life, His Doctrine, His Order (London: Williams and Norgate, 1882), 72. 26. Compare Nidhi Eoseewong, Pen and Sail: Lit­er­a­ture and History in Early Bangkok (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2005), 260–265. 27. Jules Barthelmy Saint-­Hilaire, Le Boudha et sa religion [The Bud­d ha and his religion] (Paris: Didier, 1860); Philippe-­É douard Foucaux, trans., Histoire du Bouddha Sakya Mouni: Traduite du tibétain [Story of Sakya Muni Bud­d ha: Translated from Tibetan] (Paris: Duprat, 1860); Paul Ambroise Bigandet, The Life or Legend of Gaudama, the Bud­dha of the Burmese, annotations by P. Bigandet (Rangoon: American Mission Press, 1866). 28. J. Jeffrey Franklin, The Lotus and the Lion: Buddhism and the British Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 25–29. 29. For a description of the oldest manuscripts of the Pathamasambodhi in Southeast Asia that may have served Prince Paramanuchit as a model, see Anant Laulertvorakul, “Pathamasambodhi in Nine Languages: Their Relation and Evolution,” Manusya Journal of Humanities 6, no. 1 (2003): 11–34. 30. Eoseewong, Pen and Sail, 270–274. 31. Donald K. Swearer, “Bhikkhu Buddhadāsa’s Interpretation of the Bud­d ha,” Journal of the American Acad­emy of Religion 64, no. 2 (1996): 322–324. 32. Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, xlvi. 33. Samuel  J. Smith, “Modern Buddhists,” Siam Repository 4, nos. 1–4 (April  1872): 351–352. 34. Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, xxix. 35. Siamese biographies of the Bud­d ha written ­later in the ­century, such as the Pathomsomphot Katha by the Thammayut monk Sa Pussadeva, came much closer to Western ideals of historical accuracy than ­earlier versions of the Bud­d ha’s life, although the text still retains the character of a sermon. The first three parts of the book ­were first published by Prince Damrong in 1903; see Prapod Assavavirulhakarn and Peter Skilling, “Tripiṭaka in Practice in the Fourth and Fifth Reigns: Relics and Images According to Somdet Phra Saṅgharāja Pussadeva’s Paṭhamasambodhi Sermon,” Manusya Journal of Humanities 4 (2002): 3. 36. An early description of the most significant site of the cult in Saraburi is contained in Dhiravat na Pombejra and Remco Raben, eds., In the King’s Trail: An 18th ­Century Dutch Journey to the Bud­dha’s Footprint (Bangkok: Royal Netherlands Embassy, 1997). 37. Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, 245–246. 38. Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, 269. 39. Alabaster, The Wheel of the Law, 290–310.

206   Notes to Pages 149–154 40. Kullada Kesboonchoo Mead, The Rise and Decline of Thai Absolutism (London: Routledge, 2004), 49. 41. Darunowat 1, no. 1 (July 1874): 1. The paper was printed from July 1874 to June 1875 and ceased due to a lack of funding. Another short-­lived attempt, prob­ably made by the same group, was Nangsue Court khao ratchakan (Book of the court news), printed from September 1875 to September 1876. See Surangsri Tonsiengsom, “Western Knowledge and Intellectual Groups in Japan and Thailand in the Nineteenth C ­ entury: The Meirokusha and Young Siam” (PhD diss., University of Washington, Seattle, 1990), 77–78. 42. Tej Bunnag, “Review of Darunowat (ดรุโณวาท), Published on the Occasion of the Cremation to Police ­Colonel H.S.H. Prince Manunsiri Kasemsan, Phrae Kan Chang Press, Bangkok, 1969,” Journal of the Siam Society 58, no. 2 (1970): 145–149. 43. Rev. Noah A. McDonald, Siam: Its Government, Manners, Customs, &c. (Philadelphia: Alfred Martien, 1871), 34–35. It is worth pointing out that the nobility (especially the Bunnag ­family) exercised considerable authority over the monarchy and the government. McDonald’s account of Siamese absolutism was therefore greatly exaggerated. 4 4. Jean-­Baptiste Pallegoix, “Le gouvernement de Siam est despotique dans toute la force du terme; le roi y est craint et re­specté presque comme un dieu” [The government of Siam is despotic in the full sense of the term; the king is feared and respected almost like a god], in Description du royaume Thai ou Siam: Comprenant la topographie, histoire naturelle, moeurs et coutumes, législation, commerce, industrie, langue, littérature, religion, annales des Thaï et précis historique de la mission [Description of the Thai or Siam kingdom: Including topography, natu­ral history, manners and customs, legislation, trade, industry, language, lit­er­a­ture, religion, annals of the Thais and precise history of the mission]. (Paris: Au profit de la mission de Siam, 1854), 1:259–260. 45. John Crawfurd, Journal of an Embassy to the Courts of Siam and Cochin China (London: Henry Colbourn, 1828), 371–372. Berhampur is located at the Indian east coast; the “river of Kamboja” is prob­ably the Tonle Sap River in Cambodia. 46. Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt. Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts [The transformation of the world. A 19th ­century history] (Munich: Beck, 2009), 828–848. 47. David J. Steinberg, ed., In Search of Southeast Asia: A Modern History, rev. ed. (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1987), 60–95. 48. Horace Geoffrey Quaritch Wales, Siamese State Ceremonies: Their History and Function (1931; repr., Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1992), 32–41. 49. Thak Chalerntiarana, Thailand: The Politics of Despotic Paternalism (Ithaca: SEAP, 2007), xii. 50. Geertz wrote, “Power served pomp, not pomp power.” Clifford Geertz, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-­Century Ba­li (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1980), 13. 51. Richard Koebner, “Despot and Despotism: Vicissitudes of a P ­ olitical Term,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14, nos. 3–4 (1951): 275–302. 52. ­There is a broad lit­er­at­ ure on the topic; see, for example, Joan-­Pau Rubiés, “Oriental Despotism and E ­ uropean Orientalism: Botero to Montesquieu,” Journal of Early Modern History 9, no. 1 (2005): 109–180; and Jürgen Osterhammel, Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s Encounter with Asia (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2018), 334–383. 53. Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie [Collected essays on the sociology of religion], 8th ed., vol. 3 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1986), 259.

Notes to Pages 154–160   207 54. Hellmuth Hecker, “Buddhismus und Staat in Südostasien” [Buddhism and the state in Southeast Asia], Verfassung und Recht in Übersee/Law and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin Amer­i­ca 1, no. 1 (1968): 176. 55. Stanley J. Tambiah, World Conqueror and World Renouncer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 162–164. 56. Akira Suehiro, Capital Accumulation in Thailand, 1855–1985 (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 1996). 57. M. L. Manich Jumsai, Prince Prisdang’s Files on His Diplomatic Activities in E ­ urope, 1880–1886 (Bangkok: Chalermnit, 1977), 254–258. 58. Tonsiengsom, “Western Knowledge and Intellectual Groups in Japan and Thailand,” 83. 59. Jürgen Osterhammel, “ ‘The ­Great Work of Uplifting Mankind.’ Zivilisierungsmission und Moderne” [The civilizing mission and modernity], in Zivilisierungsmissionen: Imperiale Weltverbesserung seit dem 18. Jahrhundert [Civilizing missions: Imperial world improvement since the 18th ­century], ed. Boris Barth and Jürgen Osterhammel (Konstanz: UVK, 2005), 363–425. 60. Nigel Brailey, Two Views of Siam on the Eve of the Chakri Reformation (Whiting Bay, Arran: Kiscadale Publications, 1989); Tamara Loos, Bones around My Neck: The Life and Exile of a Prince Provocateur (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), 45–49. 61. Klaus Rosenberg, Nation und Fortschritt: Der Publizist Thien Wan und die Modernisierung Thailands unter König CulǎlongkYn, r. 1868–1910 [Nation and pro­gress: The publicist Thien Wan and the modernization of Thailand ­under King CulǎlongkYn, r. 1868–1910] (Hamburg: Gesellschaft für Natur-­und Völkerkunde Ostasiens e.V., 1980), 37–40. 62. Morant ­later wrote a confidential memorandum on Siamese politics in the aftermath of the Paknam incident of 1893; see Brailey, Two Views of Siam, 85–105. 63. David K. Wyatt, The Politics of Reform in Thailand: Education in the Reign of King Chulalongkorn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1969), 102–144. 6 4. Charnvit Kasetsiri, “Thai Historiography,” in Routledge Handbook of Con­temporary Thailand, ed. Pavin Chachavalpongpun (London: Routledge, 2019), 27–29. 65. Peter A. Jackson, Buddhism, Legitimation, and Conflict. The ­Political Functions of Urban Thai Buddhism (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1989), 26–27. 66. Craig J. Reynolds, ed., Autobiography: The Life of Prince Patriarch Vajiranana of Siam, 1860–1921, trans. Craig J. Reynolds (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1979), xvii–­liv. 67. Patrick Tuck, The French Wolf and the Siamese Lamb: The French Threat to Siamese ­Independence, 1858–1907 (Bangkok: White Lotus 1995), 99–133. 68. John Henry Barrows, ed., The World’s Parliament of Religions: An Illustrated and ­Popular Story of the World’s First Parliament of Religions Held in Chicago in Connection with the Columbian Exposition of 1893, vol. 1 (Chicago: The Parliament Publishing Com­pany, 1893), 32. 69. Barrows, The World’s Parliament of Religions, 645–649. 70. For a list of papers read at the convention, see Dorothea Lüddeckens, Das Weltparlament der Religionen von 1893: Strukturen interreligiöser Begegnung im 19. Jahrhundert [The World Parliament of Religions of 1893: Structures of interreligious encounters in the 19th ­century] (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2002), 145–147, 291–315. 71. Frederic Mayer, The Siamese Exhibits at the World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago: N.p., 1893), 15. A view of the Siamese pavilion can be gleaned from Hubert Howe Bancroft, The Book of the Fair: An Historical and Descriptive ­Presentation of the World’s Science, Art, and

208   Notes to Pages 160–165 Industry, as Viewed through the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 (New York: Bounty Books, 1894), 1:221. See also Maurizio Peleggi, Lords of ­Things: The Fashioning of the Siamese Monarchy’s Modern Image (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002), 151–160. 72. Barrows, The World’s Parliament of Religions, 1:ix. 73. E. Allen Richardson, “Asian Religions in the United States: The Role of the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Shaping an Evolving Pluralist Ideology,” in The Cambridge History of Religions in Amer­i­ca, vol. 2, ed. Stephen J. Stein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 417. 74. Barrows, The World’s Parliament of Religions, 1:6. 75. Maria Moritz, “ ‘The Empire of Righ­teousness’: Anagarika Dharmapala and His Vision of Buddhist Asianism (c. 1900).” In Asianisms: Regionalist Interactions and Asian Integration, ed. Marc Frey and Nicola Spakowski (Singapore: NUS Press, 2016), 19–48. 76. Carl T. Jackson, The Oriental Religions and American Thought: Nineteenth-­Century Explorations (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1981), 141–156. 77. “Lecture in the Sunday After­noon Course by Mrs. Leonowens,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 1, 1875, 8. 78. Anagārika Dharmapāla, “The World’s Debt to Bud­d ha,” in The World’s Parliament of Religions: An Illustrated and ­Popular Story of the World’s First Parliament of Religions Held in Chicago in Connection with the Columbian Exposition of 1893, vol. 2, ed. John Henry Barrows (Chicago: The Parliament Publishing Com­pany, 1893), 863. 79. Barrows, The World’s Parliament of Religions, 2:1093. 80. Lüddeckens, Das Weltparlament der Religionen von 1893, 204–216. 81. Chandradat Chudhadharn, “Buddhism as It Exists in Siam,” in The World’s Parliament of Religions: An Illustrated and ­Popular Story of the World’s First Parliament of Religions Held in Chicago in Connection with the Columbian Exposition of 1893, vol. 1, ed. John Henry Barrows (Chicago: The Parliament Publishing Com­pany, 1893), 1:647. 82. Chudhadharn, “Buddhism as It Exists in Siam,” 646. 83. Phra Suriya Nuvatr, “Status of W ­ omen in Siam,” Contributor’s Magazine 1, no. 3 (1894): 24–29. 84. Anna H. Leonowens, The ­English Governess at the Siamese Court: Being Recollections of Six Years in the Royal Palace (London: Trübner & Co, 1870), 94–95, 99. 85. Naturally, Chulalongkorn disapproved of Leonowens’s work on Siam and found it particularly unfair to his f­ather, King Mongkut. When he met his former E ­ nglish teacher in Leipzig in 1897, he reportedly asked her: “Mem, why did you write such a wicked book about my f­ ather King Mongkut? You know that you have made him utterly ridicu­lous and now the ­whole world laughs at your descriptions of him and at his memory. Oh, why, how could you do it?”; quoted in Alfred Habegger, Masked: The Life of Anna Leonowens, Schoolmistress at the Court of Siam (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 354. 86. Anna H. Leonowens, The Romance of the Harem (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co., 1873). 87. Susan Morgan, Bombay Anna: The Real Story and Remarkable Adventures of The King and I Governess (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 167–185. 88. Nuvatr, “Status of ­Women in Siam,” 25–27. 89. Nuvatr, “Status of ­Women in Siam,” 28–29. 90. For a collection of essays on the journey, see Pornsan Watanangura, ed., The Visit of King Chulalongkorn to ­Europe in 1907: Reflecting on Siamese History (Bangkok: Center for ­European Studies, Chulalongkorn University, 2008).

Notes to Pages 165–172   209 91. Patrick Jory, Thailand’s Theory of Monarchy: The Vessantara Jātaka and the Idea of the Perfect Man (Albany: SUNY Press, 2016), 143–149. 92. Robert Chal­mers, “The King of Siam’s Edition of the Pāli Tipiṭaka,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of ­Great Britain and Ireland (1898): 2–3. 93. “Notes of the Quarter (July, August, September, 1897),” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of ­Great Britain and Ireland (October 1897): 946. 94. Anne M. Blackburn, Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 168, quoting the Ceylon Observer, March  16, 1897, 170. 95. Laurie J. Sears, “The Contingency of Autonomous History,” in Autonomous Histories, Par­tic­u­lar Truths: Essays in Honour of John Smail, ed. Laurie J. Sears (Madison, WI: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1993), 4. 96. The memorandum, along with other documents from Prisdang, is reproduced in Brailey, Two Views of Siam, 49–79, quote on 50. The Senabodi (เสนาบดี) was a term that referred to the six ministers at court. 97. Bertha Blount, a teacher at the Wang Lang missionary girls’ school in Bangkok, reported that the Presbyterian mission in Bangkok had printed 19,000 copies of Christian lit­er­ a­ture in 1910 alone; see “Annual Report, Bangkok Station, for the Year Ending September 28 Sept 1910,” Thailand (Siam), 1840–1910, Out­going, Siam Reports, 1900–1910, vol. 294, 1900– 1910, pages 7–8, reel 297, frames 882–883, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA. 98. Daniel McGilvary, A Half ­Century among the Siamese and the Lao (New York: Revell, 1912), 413. 99. Herbert R. Swanson, “Ecclesiastical Colonialism: The Protestant Church in Northern Thailand,” talk given to the Informal Northern Thai Group Alliance Française, Chiang Mai, Thailand, October 10, 2017, unpublished manuscript in author’s possession. 100. McGilvary, A Half ­Century among the Siamese and the Lao, 419. 101. S. F. Smith, “Rev. John Taylor Jones,” Baptist Missionary Magazine 34, no. 1 (1853): 2. 102. Michael Howard, “For God, King and Country,” The National Interest, September 2, 2008, https://­nationalinterest​.o ­ rg​/­article​/f­ or​-­god​-­k ing​-­and​-­country​-­2845​?­page​= ­0%2C2; Georg Ortenburg, Mit Gott für König und Vaterland (München: Bertelsmann, 1979). 103. Vajiravudh as quoted in Walter F. Vella, Chaiyo! King Vajiravudh and the Development of Thai Nationalism (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1978), 226. 104. Vella, Chaiyo! 223–240. 105. Eiji Murashima, “The Origin of Modern Official State Ideology in Thailand,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 19, no. 1 (1988): 80–96. 106. “Thai in Thailand,” Joshua Proj­ect, 2023, accessed July 17, 2021, https://­joshuaproject​ .­net​/p ­ eople​_ ­groups​/1­ 1277​/­TH. 107. David K. Wyatt, Thailand: A Short History, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 160–163; Eoseewong, Pen and Sail, 278–286.

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Index

Locators in italic refer to figures. Abeel, David, 50–51, 55, 86, 188n76 Alabaster, Henry: biographical details, 141; participation in the solar eclipse expedition organized by Mongkut, 128; Pathomma Somphothiyan by Prince Paramanuchit translated into English, 146; Siam’s political system not criticized by, 150; the Young Siam Society (Samkhon sayam num), supported by, 149 Alabaster, Henry–Wheel of the Law, 200n19; biography of the Buddha in, 144, 146; Kitchanukit translated and commented on, 119, 142, 144, 200; “modern Buddhism” understood as an anthropological doctrine, 144; publication of, 143; view of divine kingship in, 149 Almond, Philip C., 12–13 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM): Abeel’s work for, 55; expulsion of Bradley and Caswell, 61; Judson’s involvement with, 48; missionary stations founded in Asia and the Pacific, 47; publication of religious texts from 1835 to 1848, 107. See also Robinson, Charles Aristotle, 153 Ariyavangsagatayana (Sa Pussadeva), 146; Pathamasambodhikatha (Thai: Pathomsophot katha), 24–25, 205n35 Arnold, Edwin: The Light of Asia, 145, 161–162; title Officer of the Order of the White Elephant awarded to, 165

Ayutthaya period (1640–1720): Buddhist state ministers (ranked as chaophraya) during, 77; French friar Louis Laneau in Siam during, 35, 83; Jesuit missionaries in, 33, 42, 138; multireligious population of the capital at Ayutthaya, 65; sacking of Ayutthaya in April 1767, 10, 14, 20, 35; violent struggles for power during, 15 Ayutthaya period (1640–1720)–King Narai (r. 1656–1688): death of, 34–35; depiction in a painting at the Chakri Maha Prasat Throne Hall, 2; interest in Western arts, science, and religion, 34, 126 Ayutthaya period (1640–1720)–Ban Phlu Luang dynasty (1688–1767): Phra Phetracha (r. 1688–1703), 35; Uthumphon (Khun Luang Ha Wat), 14; Ekkathat (Khun Luang Ha Wat), 14 Bangkok Calendar: Bradley’s article on the benefits of Christianity, 103–104; Bradley’s publishing and editing of, 49, 108, 124, 130; eclipse of 1868 described by Bradley in, 128–129; Mongkut’s blunt criticism of Christianity as a foolish religion, 130 Bangkok Recorder: Bradley’s publishing and editing of, 49, 108–110, 119; Mongkut’s criticism of the Buddhist Sangha published in, 126; political and social life in Siam critically discussed in, 109–110; religious debate in, 114–118, 124

237

238  Index banyan tree (or Bodhi tree, Ficus religiosa): significance in Buddhism, 191n133; used by Bradley to illustrate the “crushing tendencies of Buddhism,” 69, 72 Baptist Missionary Magazine, The, 48 Baptist Missionary Society: Chandler’s distancing from, 11; founding as the Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Amongst the Heathen, 47; William Dean as missionary to Chinese residents of Siam, 56 Barrows, John Henry, 160–161 Bastian, Adolf, 110, 132 Bayly, Christopher A., 27 Besant, Annie, 140, 204n6 Bible criticism: Michaelis’s critical introduction to the New Testament, 44; Mongkut’s criticism of its lack of scientific rationality, 7, 117–118 Biblical texts–translation into Siamese, 82–114passim ; availability by 1865 of, 117; translation of Christian terms into proper Thai, 87, 95–97 Biblical translation, Biblical translation— chapters and verses–Psalms, work by Gützlaff and Tomlin, 86 Biblical translation—chapters and verses– Genesis: Bradley’s claims of scientific knowledge in, 118; Robinson’s translations of, 95; Siamese scholar Chaou Run’s translation of, 86 Biblical translation—chapters and verses– 1 Kings 18, 101 Biblical translation—chapters and verses– Psalms, Psalm 84:2 evoked by Eliza Jones, 57 Biblical translation—chapters and verses– Isaiah, Isaiah 6:5 evoked by Eliza Jones, 57 Biblical translation—chapters and verses– Daniel, Robinson’s translation of, 95 Biblical translation—chapters and verses– Gospel of Matthew: Catholic manuscripts of Thai translations of, 93; draft translation by Ann Hazeltine Judson, 84; “the kingdom of heaven”

utilized in the name Taiping Tianguo, 91; Matthew 12:36, 58, 183n89; Matthew 28:1, 92; Matthew 28:18–20, 46, 50; Siamese translations printed by the Presbyterian mission, 107 Biblical translation—chapters and verses– Gospel of John, Gützlaff’s translations of, 86 Biblical translation—chapters and verses– Gospel of Luke: Gützlaff’s translations of, 86, 88, 88, 89, 90, 95–96; Jones’s translation of Luke 1: 5–38, 95–96, 196n42; Laneau’s translation of, 83, 97, 194n8; Siamese translations printed by the Presbyterian mission, 107 Biblical translation—chapters and verses– Acts: Siamese translation by Tomlin and Gützlaff, 86; Siamese translations printed by the Presbyterian mission, 107 Biblical translation—chapters and verses–1 John 3:3, 61 Blackburn, Anne M., 135 Blanning, T. C. W., 106 Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, 12, 140 Blount, Bertha, 209n97 Bowring, John C., 60 Bowring, Sir John, depiction with King Mongkut on the western wall of the Charti Maha Prasta Htrone Hall, 2 Bowring, Sir John–The Kingdom and People of Siam: edict of 1839 published in, 199n2; on Mongkut’s intellectual life, 127–128 Bradley, Dan Beach, 63; appointment by the ABCFM to work in Siam, 59; article dismissing Thiphakorawong’s stance on Christianity in the Bangkok Calendar, 124; article on the benefits of Christianity in the Bangkok Calendar, 103–104; Bangkok Calendar edited by, 49, 108, 124, 130; Bangkok Recorder published and edited by, 49, 108–110, 119; Chotmaihet lae nirat London of Mom Ratchothai published by, 110; Christianity and Western advances in science presented as mutually dependent

Index  239 components of Western modernity, 130; Cindamani, 192n137; expulsion from the ABCFM, 61; interpretation of Christian concepts in his religious works, 98; printing used as a medium by, 108–110; refusal to print the Kitchanukit, 113–114; significance of his diaries, printed journals, calendars, and religious tracts, 51, 70–73; and the solar eclipse expedition organized by Mongkut, 128; unpublished manuscripts compiled by Terwiel, 191n122; vision of sanctification, 61–62 Bradley, Sarah Blachy, 79, 80 Britain and the British. See Europe, Europeans, and Americans–Britain and the British Bruguière, Barthélémy, critical views of Buddhism, 37–38, 184n13, 184n17 Buddhism: dichotomies between Buddhism and Christianity analyzed in Jones’s Nangsue Tra Chu Thong, 101–103, 123, 197n61; dichotomies between Buddhism and Christianity bridged by Bradley’s interpretations of Christian concepts, 98; Four Noble Truths, 147, 162; Noble Eightfold Path (Thai: ariyasat), 65, 75, 202n65; similarities to Christianity proclaimed by Buddhist priests, 65 Buddhism–biographies of the Buddha: in Alabaster’s The Wheel of the Law, 144, 146; Bigandet, The Life or Legend of Gaudama (1866), 145; Foucaux, Histoire du Bouddha Sakya Mouni (1860), 145; Milinda Pañha (Questions of Milinda), 140; Pathomma Somphothiyan by Prince Paramanuchit, 146, 205n29; Pathamasambodhikatha (Thai: Pathomsophot katha) by Sa Pussadeva, 24–25, 205n35; Saint-Hilaire, Le Boudha et sa religion (1860), 145; stories of Somnakotom (Siddhartha Gautama) dismissed in Jones’s Nangsue Tra Chu Thong, 101–102, 197n62; in Western popular culture, 144–146

Buddhism–Indian Buddhism: King Ashoka, 20, 154; merit-making kings of, 20, 154; speculation about the influence of Indian thought on Christianity, 140; transmission of Buddhist ideas to Southeast Asia, 23–24 Buddhism–Jātaka tales: political ideas expressed in terms of, 15; Vassantara Jātaka, 22, 180n36; viewed as uncanonical by the Thammayut-nikai, 25, 27 Buddhism–Theravāda Buddhism: in Burma, 30; cosmology of the Traiphum Phra Ruang, 16–17, 25, 27, 74–75, 121–122, 149; cosmology of the Traiphum Phra Ruang criticized by Thiphakorawong, 121–122; human proclivity to do evil addressed by, 69; merit-making (tam bun) as a central aspect of Buddhist practice, 20, 45, 79, 104, 154, 180n28; printed edition the Theravāda canon in the Thai language, 25, 165–166; religious exchanges within the Theravāda ecumene, 8, 136; in Sri Lanka/Ceylon, 12, 132–133, 135–136; Tipiṭaka (the “Three Baskets”), 132; Western concepts of. See under Thammayut-Nikai. See also Thammayut-nikai (Order of Those Who Adhere to the Dhamma) Buddhism–Western fascination with: concepts of Theravāda Buddhism influenced by the Thammayut-nikai, 13; as an imaginary projection of Western Orientalists, 12–13, 139–140; othering of Buddhism by Christian missionaries in Siam, 172–173; rational Buddhism constructed to replace irrational Christianity, 9–10, 142, 162; sources about Buddhism less tainted by colonial influence, 138; study of Eastern religions and philosophies in the eighteenth century, 140 Bunnag family: background of, 77, 193n152; Chaophraya Si Suriyawong (Chuang Bunnag), 149; influence at the Siamese court, 77, 152, 206n43; Kham Bunnag.

240  Index Bunnag family (continued) See Thiphakorawong, Chaophraya (Kham Bunnag); Kitchanuki written by Chaophraya Thiphakorawong (Kham Bunnag), 119–120 Burma (present-day Myanmar): Bagan as a center of Theravāda, 30; Ban Baw described by Bradley, 71; Judsons mission for the ABCFM, 48; purification program of King Mindon (1853–1878), 30–31; Siamese military campaigns in Tavoy (present-day southeast Myanmar), 22; Thammayut doctrines in, 30; viewed as despotic in Western literature, 152 Burnouf, Eugène, 12, 142 Cambodia: Ang Duong’s religious reforms, 31; French protectorate established by Napoleon, 110; subversion of its political order, 31, 151–152; Thammayut-nikai founded in, 31; viewed as despotic in Western literature, 152 Carden, Patrick L., 104–105 Carey, Daniel, 40 Carey, William, 46–47 Caswell, Jesse: as an agent of the ABCFM, 38; death in 1848, 63, 77; on explaining an all-powerful creator to Siamese monks, 68; expulsion from the ABCFM, 61; on his experiences as a preacher in Siam, 67; on Mongkut, 26; Mongkut’s support of, 76–77; on Siamese interest in the West, 0REVIEW; sinless perfection interpreted by, 62–63; translation of the New Testament into Siamese, 93, 94 Catholicism and the Catholic Church: attack on the authority and material basis of the Church after the French Revolution, 143; bishop Olivier Simon Le Bon’s refusal to swear his loyalty to King Taksin, 36; Bismarck’s Kulturkampf against, 143; Buddhism semantically incorporated into the Catholic universe by Pallegoix, 100; Catholic missionary activities in Sri Lanka/Ceylon, 28; De Propaganda Fide (1622), 33; French mission in Siam,

34–35; Jesuit missionaries in Ayutthaya, 33, 42, 138; Jesuit missionaries in China, 34; Jones’s criticism of, 98; Nangsue Kham son Chritang Phàc ton, 83, 95; Pope Pius IX’s correspondence with King Monkut, 65; Pope Pius X’s banning of liberal understanding of the Bible, 10; resemblance of Catholic customs to Siamese Buddhist practice, 45; in Siam during the Thonburi interregnum, 17, 35–36, 179n13 Ceylon. See Sri Lanka/Ceylon Chakri dynasty (1782–present): Bangkok court as the center of cultural life in Siam, 22–23; modernizing of Siam driven by forces originating in Asia, 8; royal views of the Thai nation openly challenged in printed literature, 106; Siamese modernism connected with European imperialism, 6–7. See also Prisdang Chumsai (1851–1935) Chakri dynasty–Phra Phutthaayotfa Chulalok (Rama I, r. 1782–1809): Buddhist council convened in Bangkok (1788), 18–21; consolidation of political power during his reign, 3; reestablishment of Buddhist written traditions, 18, 22; title saddhādhika (a bodhisattva associated with superior faith) bestowed on, 179n26; vernacular version of the Ramakien (Ramayana) compiled during, 22–23 Chakri dynasty–Rama II (r. 1809–1824): death of, 24; mission of Siamese monks dispatched to Kandy, 29 Chakri dynasty–Nangklao (Rama III, r. 1824–1851): Burney Treaty signed with Britain, 54; connection between religion and healing confirmed by, 59; education work of American missionaries during, 78; local language teachers at Jones’s missionaries arrested by, 97, 196n47; military campaigns against the Vietnamese, 31; printing of the Siamese law code Kotami tra sam duang suspended by, 110; project to translate

Index  241 Chinese tracts for foreigners into Thai, 87, 194n19; Siamese teachers at mission school arrested for their religious views, 64; succession of, 24 Chakri dynasty–Mongkut (Rama IV, r. 1851–1868): as abbot of Wat Bowonniwet, 27, 32, 76, 125; ascension to the throne, 77; Bowring Treaty concluded between Britain and Siam (1855), 54, 78, 106, 155; criticism of the irrationality of Christianity, 7, 117–118, 130; death of, 130; in depictions in the Chakri Maha Prasat Throne Hall, 1–3, 2, 175n1; embassy sent to London (1857), 110, 128; founding of the Thammayut-nikai, 7–8, 24; Anna Leonowens at the court of, 80, 162, 163–164, 208n85; missionaries accused of mixing religion with science and attacking Buddhism, 80; openness to Western influence, 38, 77, 126–128, 7879; plea for religious tolerance in his ater to Pope Pius IX, 65–66; Prince Pawaret appointed as his successor at Wat Bowonniwet, 25, 135; printing and publishing during his reign, 110; reforms of the Buddhist Sangha, 25–26, 125–126; role of Prince Wongsathiratsanit in his court, 77–78; Royal Thai Government Gazette (Ratchakitchanubeksa) established by, 199n96; script (ariyaka) invented for transcribing Pāli, 199n1; solar eclipse expedition to Hua Wan organized by, 128–130; years as a monk before ascending to the throne, 7, 24 Chakri dynasty–Chulalongkorn (Rama V, r. 1868–1910): brothers. See Chudhadharn, Chandradat; Rajanubhap, Damrong; Wachirayān Warorot, Supreme Patriarch; expansion of the publishing market beyond Bangkok, 106; impact of Western Orientalist scholarship on, 165–166; introduction to the first printed edition the Theravāda canon in the Thai language (1897), 165–166; painting in the dome of the Throne Hall of Phra Thinang Chari Maha Prasat

commissioned by, 1; Sangha Act of 1902, 32, 158 Chakri dynasty–Chulalongkorn (Rama V, r. 1868–1910)–reform policies in Siam, 3–4, 175n6; as both progressive and despotic, 155–156, 167–168; founding of schools based on modern Western standards, 80; position of crown prince introduced, 15; religious policies, 157–159, 165 Chakri dynasty–Vajiravudh (Rama VI, r. 1910–1925): Buddhist state envisioned in the phrase Chat, Sasana, Phra Mahakasat (Nation, Religion, King), 170, 172; religious education of, 171 Chakri dynasty–Maha Vajiralongkorn (Rama X, r. 2016–), 178n8 Chakri dynasty–Phra Thinang Chakri Maha Prasat: ceiling painting of Throne Hall of, 1–2, 2; construction of, 1–3, 175n2; symbolic meaning of, 1–3 Chandler, John H., 48, 111; as American vice consul in Siam, 60, 111; Baptist printing press in Siam operated by, 107; as a foreign teacher at the Siamese court, 111 Charney, Michael, 182n74 Chinese Repository: Gützalff’s account of his journey to China, 90; Tomlin’s writing for, 55 Christianity: idea of a creator god and original sin in, 68–69, 103; Jesus as the first medical missionary, 59; life of Jesus as a model of an exemplary life, 145; science and Christian European culture, 39–42; in Thailand compared with other Asian countries, 168–169. See also Catholicism and the Catholic Church Christian missions and missionaries: British Baptist William Carey, 46–47; Carden’s report on the Presbyterian mission (1866), 104–105; Christianity presented in combination with science, 34, 172–173; “ecclesiastical colonialism” of, 161, 169–170; female education and the strong role of women, 79–80; oath of fidelity required by King Taksin, 36;

242  Index Christian missions and missionaries (continued) othering of Buddhism by Christian missionaries in Siam, 169, 172–173; religious controversies among, 60–61; role of missionary publications in improving the image of, 48; social segregation of the Protestant mission in Siam, 59; Tranquebar mission to India, 185–186n43. See also Abeel, David; American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM); Baptist Missionary Society; Bradley, Dan Beach; Caswell, Jesse; Gützlaff, Karl Friedrich August; Joneses; Judson, Adoniram and Ann Hazeltine; London Missionary Society; McDonald, Rev. Noah A.; McFarland, Samuel G.; Tomlin, Jacob Chudhadharn, Chandradat, 159, 162–163 Chulalongkorn. See Chakri dynasty– Chulalongkorn (Rama V, r. 1868–1910) Clarke, James Freeman, 44, 162 Columbian Exposition. See under World’s Parliament of Religions (1893) Crawfurd, John, 36, 54, 138; on the detrimental effect of Buddhism in Siam, 150–151 Dharmapāla, Anagārika, at the World’s Parliament of Religions (1893), 159, 161, 162 Eoseewong, Nidhi, 8; on the “dhammographical tradition,” 146 Europe, Europeans, and Americans: bonds between religion, monarchy, and the state, 170–171; colonial segregation of Asian peoples from Europeans, 5–6; concept of “Oriental despotism,” 55, 152, 153; conjectural history, 5, 176n12; critique of “divine kingship” in Siam, 96, 150, 152–154; Dutch East India Company, 28; eighteenth-century study of Eastern religions, 49–50; France’s

imperial expansion in Southeast Asia, 155; German missionary societies, 47; Nederlandsch Zendelinggenootschap, 47, 52; secularization in, 9, 106, 143; Siam’s geopolitical status redefined by Western trade, 3–4; symbolical associations displayed in the ceiling painting of Chakri Maha Prasat Throne Hall, 1–2, 2. See also Buddhism–Western fascination with; Christian missions and missionaries Europe, Europeans, and Americans–Britain and the British: Bowring Treaty between Britain and Siam (1855), 54, 78, 106, 155; Burney Treaty between Britain and Siam (1826), 54; East India Company, 53; embassy in Siam, 53–54; missionary and evangelistic work, 46–47, 49, 133; Siamese embassy sent to London by Mongkut, 110, 128. See also London Missionary Society Europe, Europeans, and Americans–French: Jacques de Bourges, 34, 65; imperial expansion in Southeast Asia, 155, 159; Jesuit missionaries in Ayutthaya in the 1680s, 42, 138; mission in Siam, 34–35; Paknam incident, 159, 161, 207n62; protectorate over Cambodia established by Napoleon, 110 Europe, Europeans, and Americans– Portuguese: Catholic friars in Siam, 34; consulate in Bangkok, 52, 56; firearms brought to Siam, 33, 183n1; rule in Sri Lanka, 27–28 Europe, Europeans, and Americans–United States: American embassy established in Siam (1833), 54; “ecclesiastical colonialism” of, 169–170; popularity of Asian religion in the late nineteenth century, 161–162; Second Great Awakening, 47–48. See also American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM); Joneses France. See Europe, Europeans, and Americans–French

Index  243 Garnault, Arnaud-Antoine, Nangsue Kham son Chritang Phàc ton, 83, 95 Geertz, Clifford, 153 Gogerly, Daniel Jon, 133 Gombrich, Richard and Gananath Obeyeseker, 132, 134 Guignes, Joseph de, 43 Gützlaff, Karl Friedrich August, 194n8; Bible translations by, 86; concept of language influenced by Herder, 84; connections with the British colonial administration, 53; criticism of, 64, 86; evangelism in China, 90; as an independent missionary, 51, 90; missionary training, 52; work as a mediator between the East and the West, 85; writing on Siam, 52–53 Hardy, Robert Spence, 133 Heinz, Bechert, 9 Herzfeld, Michael, 4 Hikkaḍuve Sumaṅgala, 29, 131, 136, 160, 167 House, Harriet M., girls’ school opened in in Bangkok, 80, 193n158 House, Samuel R., 60, 77, 78 Hume, David: Chandradat’s remarks on the nature of human existence compared with, 163; epistemological skepticism, 40–42; Reid’s criticism of, 41–42; Witherspoon’s criticism of, 42 Indian Buddhism. See Buddhism–Indian Buddhism Jackson, Peter A., 158 Japan: Buddhism employed to secure political and cultural influence in China, 135–136; “crypto-colonialism” in, 4; missionizing in, 97, 131; Shingon monk Shaku Kōzen, 135; trade treaty with Siam, 54; Zen master Shaku Sēn, 131, 135 Jātaka tales. See Buddhism–Jātaka tales Joneses: background of, 48; missionary station established in Siam, 56; mission for the ABCFM in Burma (1812), 48; preaching, teaching, and translating the Christian message into Thai and other

Asian languages as their focus, 60; Samuel J. Smith adopted by, 188n85 Joneses–Eliza Grew Jones: memoir narrating her life course as a missionary, 50–51, 187n62; as a missionary heroine, 50; “Resolutions for, 57–58, 58, 1838”; on Siam and the Siamese, 57; Siamese response to the Christian message described in a letter, 67–68 Joneses–John Taylor Jones: account of his life as an itinerant preacher in Siam, 66; death of, 93; missionaries expected to have medical knowledge, 59; Nangsue Tra Chu thong (The Golden Balance), 101–103, 123, 197n61; on progressive views of educated Siamese, 75–76; “sacred characters” used in Pāli texts, 94, 97, 196n46; scientific topics discussed with Mongkut, 126; textbook on Thai, 195n32; translation of Luke 1: 5–38, 95–96, 196n42; translations of the Gospel used for his translations of the scriptures, 93, 196n39; wife Eliza. See Joneses–Eliza Grew Jones; wife Judith Leavitt, 57; wife Sarah Sleeper, 57, 79 Jones, William, 43–44 Judson, Adoniram and Ann Hazeltine: Adoniram Judson’s scholarly study of Burmese culture and language, 51; Ann Hazeltine Judson as a missionary heroine, 50; Ann Hazeltine Judson’s draft translation of the Gospel of Matthew, 84; letters for Thai printing types designed by, 107 Kitchanukit. See Thiphakorawong, Chaophraya (Kham Bunnag)–Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit (Kitchanukit) Koenig, J. G., 138 Kulap, K. S. R., 106 Laneau, Louis: arrest and imprisonment of, 35; Recontre avec un sage bouddhiste, 99, 100; Theravāda Buddhism studied by, 139; translation of Luke’s gospel, 83, 97, 194n8

244  Index Laos: Christian schools and missionary stations established by McGilvary in, 70, 169; Dhamma script used in, 180n29; Siam’s ending of its political claims to, 159; teachings of the Thammayut fraternity in, 32 Legge, James, 51, 91 Leonowens, Anna H., 80, 162, 163–164, 208n85 Locke, John, 40–41 London Missionary Society: founding of, 47; Gützlaff’s work with Tomlin at, 86; Jacob Tomilin, 51, 53, 194n19; Maria Newell as the first female missionary of, 52. See also Tomlin, Jacob Löwith, Karl, 176n13 McDonald, Rev. Noah A., 95, 128, 150, 206n43 McFarland, Samuel G., 80–81, 95, 160 McGilvary, Daniel, 70, 95, 168–169 Marx and Marxism: Nidhi Eoseewong’s Thai bourgeoisie compared with, 8; postwar interpretations of Thai history, 4; religion condemned as the “opiate of the masses,” 143; secularization as a defining characteristic of the modern, 9 Mattoon, Mary Lourie, 60, 70, 79; on Siamese resistance to Christianity, 79–80 Mattoon, Stephen: as American vice consul in Siam, 60; articles in missionary journals on Siamese Buddhism, 60; merit in Buddhism compared with faith in Christianity, 104 Merton, Robert K., 39 Missionary Herald, 0 missionary publications: Missionary Herald, 48; role in improving the image of Christian missions, 48. See also Baptist Missionary Magazine, The; Siam Repository Mom Rathchothai, 110, 128 Mongkut. See Chakri dynasty–Mongkut (Rama IV, r. 1851–1868) Morant, Robert L., 157, 207n62 Morrison, Robert, 86, 90

Müller, Friedrich Max, 142, 160, 162, 165 Narai. See Ayutthaya period (1640–1720)– King Narai (r. 1656–1688) Neale, Frederick Arthur, 61, 189n99 Noobanjong, Koompong, 3 Nuvatr, Phra Suriya, on the “Status of Women in Siam,” 163, 164–165 Olcott, Henry Steel: petition to welcome Chulalongkorn in Siam, 167; promotion of Buddhist studies in the West, 12, 139, 140 Oldenberg, Hermann, 145, 162 Orientalism, scholarship used to attack Buddhism, 133; Western accounts of Buddhism as an imaginary projection of Western Orientalists, 12–13, 139–140 others and othering: of Buddhism by Christian missionaries in Siam, 169, 172–173; colonial segregation of Asian peoples from Europeans, 5–6, 71–73; and the concept of “Oriental despotism,” 55, 152, 153; in the evolution of Buddhism in the West, 13 Pallegoix, Jean-Baptiste: bab kamnot translated as “original sin” by, 191n123; Buddhism semantically incorporated into the Catholic universe by, 100; Dictionarium Linguae Thai, 87; friendship with Mongkut, 38; the government of Siam called despotic by, 150, 206n44; Maha Kangwon, 100, 123, 197nn57–58; printing press utilized for religious publications, 49, 83; on Taksin’s conflicts with the Catholic community in Thonburi, 179n13; translation of God as Phraphuthichao (Lord Buddha), 87, 96 Pasutthanchat, Pipat, 8 Peebles, James Martin, 134, 139, 204n1 Phonnarat, Somdet Phra: Buddhist titles bestowed on Rama I and his younger brother, 179n26; the council of 1778 described in his Sangitiyavamsa, 19–20; Sankhitiyawong, phongsawadan ruang

Index  245 sangkhayana phratham phrawinai [Chronicle of the Buddhist councils], 179n22 Pocock, J. G. A., 176n13 Poivre, Pierre, 138 Portuguese. See Europe, Europeans, and Americans–Portuguese Prince Damrong. See Rajanubhap, Damrong Prince Prisdang. See Prisdang Chumsai print technology and printing presses: adoption by Sinhalese Buddhists, 132–133; as an agent of change, 11–12, 105–107; Darunowat (Teachings for a young generation) published by the Young Siam Society, 149, 206n41; literary production as a challenged to the Siamese government, 109–110; Pallegoiz’s utilization of, 49, 83; Presbyterian missionizing strategy tied to, 98, 107–108, 168–169; relations between Buddhist communities in Asia intensified by, 135; Thai script developed by Pallegoiz for Maha Kangwon, 100. See also Bangkok Recorder; Siam Repository Prisdang Chumsai (1851–1935): Chulalongkorn’s reign criticized by, 167–168; petition calling for a limitation of royal power signed by, 155–156; as Thai ambassador to Britain, 156 Prothero, Stephen, 139 Quinet, Edgar, 140 Rajanubhap, Damrong: on firearms brought to Siam by the Portuguese, 183n1; as the founding figure of modern Thai historiography, 120, 157; modern Thai education designed by, 137, 157; role in Siam’s reform policies, 175n6 Ramayana (Ramakien), 22–23 Reid, Thomas, 40, 41 Reimarus, Hermann Samuel, 44 Rhys Davids, Thomas W., 12, 139, 140, 142, 166 Richardson, E. Allen, 161 Roberts, Edmund, 54, 64

Robinson, Charles, 93, 96–97; on using Thai royal language to translate the Bible, 96–97 Schiller, Friedrich, 5, 176n14 Sears, Laurie J., 167 Siam. See Thailand (formerly called Siam) Siam Repository: on Henry Alabaster’s road construction in Thailand, 141; Samuel J. Smith’s publication of, 49, 111–112; Thiphakorawong’s radical stance on Christianity criticized in, 124 Smith, Adam, four historical stages of society, 5 Smith, Samuel J.: adoption by the Joneses, 188n85; on Alabaster’s history of Buddhism, 147; Alabaster’s translation of his English articles, 149; marriage to Sarah Sleeper, 57; political journalism of, 111–112; Ronghim bang khorlaem (Publishing house at Bang Kho Leam), 74, 111. See also Siam Repository Sri Lanka/Ceylon: as a battleground of Buddhist-Christian debate, 12, 102; Catholic missionary activities in, 28; confrontational mission strategies in, 190n117; decline of Buddhism in, 28; King Parakramaahu I’s unification of the Sanga, 136; monks sent from the Siyam Nikāya for help restoring religious unity, 29; Panadure Vadaya (1873), 134; Siyam Nikāya, 29, 135–136, 166, 182n74; Theravāda form of Buddhism practiced in, 12, 132–133, 135–136 Srisuwan, Udom, 4 Swanson, Herbert, 169–170 Tachard, Guy, 34, 35 Taksin. See Thonburi interregnum–Taksin (Phraya Tak, r. 1767–1782) Terwiel, Barend, unpublished manuscripts of Dan Beach Bradley compiled by, 191n122 Thailand (formerly called Siam): HinduBuddhist form of divine kingship, 15–16, 23, 152, 178n8; national independence

246  Index Thailand (formerly called Siam) (continued) maintained throughout the colonial period, 4; as the only independent country in Southeast Asia, 155; Phra Suriya Nuvatr on the “Status of Women in Siam,” 163, 164–165; spiritual power of, 16–17. See also Ayutthaya period (1640–1720); Chakri dynasty; Thonburi interregnum–Taksin (Phraya Tak, r. 1767–1782) Thammasat, 15–16, 152 Thammayut-nikai (Order of Those Who Adhere to the Dhamma): dissemination of its doctrines to Burma, 30; founding by Prince Mongkut, 7–8, 24; members of, 26–27; northern expansion of its doctrines, 32; reforms described as “Protestant Buddhism,” 132, 134–135; scripturalism of, 25, 27; Traiphum Phra Ruang viewed as uncanonical, 25, 27; Western concepts of Theravāda Buddhism influenced by, 13, 131 Theravāda Buddhism. See Buddhism– Theravāda Buddhism Thiphakorawong, Chaophraya (Kham Bunnag): on the Buddhist Council of 1788, 20–21; as a “Buddhist Matthew Arnold,” 144; on the eclipse of 1868, 129; on the Jātakas, 132; title of chaophraya awarded to, 77 Thiphakorawong, Chaophraya (Kham Bunnag)–Nangsue sadaeng kitchanukit (Kitchanukit): Alabaster’s translation of and commentary on, 119, 142, 144, 200; Bradley’s refusal to print it, 113–114; Christianity criticized in relation to Buddhism, 120–124; publication in 1867 of, 12 Thonburi interregnum–Taksin (Phraya Tak, r. 1767–1782): abdication and execution of, 17; Buddhist reformism traced to, 10, 16–17; conflicts with the Catholic community in Thonburi, 17, 35–36, 179n13; Rama I’s distancing from, 17; throne assumed as Borommaracha IV, 14–15

Tomlin, Jacob: New Testament translation work with Gützlaff, 86; on Rama III’s project to translate Chinese tracts for foreigners into Thai, 87, 194n19; travel to Malacca for the London Missionary Society, 53 Traiphum Phra Ruang (Three worlds according to King Ruang), 16–17, 25, 27, 74–75, 121–122, 149 Trenckner, Carl Wilhelm, 140 Turner, Frederick Jackson, on the concept of frontier, 71 United States. See Europe, Europeans, and Americans–United States Vajiravudh. See Chakri dynasty–Vajiravudh (Rama VI, r. 1910–1925) Vietnam: France’s military interventions in, 161; French mission stations established in Cochin-and Tonkin, 33; influence in Southeast Asia during the reigns of Gia Long and Minh Mang, 31; monarchy modeled after the Chinese Empire, 152; Rhodes’s transliteration system for the Vietnamese language, 83 Wachirayān Warorot, Supreme Patriarch, 146, 171; biographical details, 158; modernization of education in the provinces, 157; recognition as a Thai Buddhist scholar, 146, 158, 165; religious reforms of, 158–159 Wales, Horace Geoffrey Quaritch, 152n48 Wannapho, T. W. S. (Thien Wan), 106, 156 Weber, Max: on modern Western-style bourgeoisie, 8; on the reign of Ashoka, 154 Witherspoon, John, 40, 42 Wolf, Christian, 44 World’s Parliament of Religions (1893): Anagārika Dharmapāla as a leading voice at, 159, 161, 162; Chulalongkorn represented by Prince Chandradat Chudhadhar, 159, 162–163; Columbian Exposition as a complement to, 160, 163;

Index  247 critics of, 160–161; international representation of Buddhist delegates at, 159–160; Phra Suriya Nuvatr on the “Status of Women in Siam,” 163, 164–165 Wyatt, David K., 4, 22, 81, 175n6

Young Siam Society (Samkhon sayam num), 149; Darunowat (Teachings for a young generation), 149, 206n41

About the Author

Sven Trakulhun teaches history at the Department for Languages and Cultures of Southeast Asia, Universität Hamburg and is an adjunct professor for history at Universität Potsdam. Prior to his appointment in Hamburg, he held positions as a postdoctoral researcher at National University of Ireland, Galway, and Universität Konstanz and was assistant professor for Asian history at the University of ­Zurich. He has published widely on the history of Thailand and Europe-­Asia relations from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. He is the author of Siam und Europa. Das Königreich Ayutthaya in westlichen Berichten (2006) and ­Asiatische Revolutionen. Europa und der Aufstieg und Fall asiatischer Imperien, 1600–1830 (2017). He is co-­editor (with Ralph Weber) of Delimiting Modernities: Conceptual Challenges and Regional Responses (2015).

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