Deathpower: Buddhism's Ritual Imagination in Cambodia 9780231540667

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Deathpower

Deathpower

BUDDHISM’S RITUAL IMAGINATION IN CAMBODIA

Erik W. Davis

Columbia University Press New York

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright 2016 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Davis , Erik W., author. Deathpower : Buddhism’s ritual imagination in Cambodia / Erik W. Davis. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-16918-9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-54066-7 (electronic) 1. Buddhist funeral rites and ceremonies—Cambodia. I. Title. BQ5020.D38 2016 294.3 43809596—dc23

Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. This book is printed on paper with recycled content. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Jacket design by Noah Arlow References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

2015006821

A Buddha statue celebrates the possibility of a “good death” and monks are semi-dead individuals who aspire to the ultimate good-death condition. . . . In a sense, then, what the relic does is make the Buddha statue like the Buddha, by making it “dead” through the insertion of a “death-substance”—in the rather paradoxical sense that Buddha-hood implies death-in-life. —Alfred Gell, 1998

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Note on Transliteration

Introduction

xi

1

1. Getting Sited in Cambodia 2. The Funeral

27

42

3. Rice, Water, Hierarchy: The Wild and the Civil 4. Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty 5. Binding Mighty Death: The Craft and Authority of the Rag Robe in Cambodian Ritual Technology 6. Gifts and Hungry Ghosts

159

7. Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft

189

82 115

138

viii Contents 8. Buddhism Makes Brahmanism Notes

249

Khmer Glossary Works Cited Index

287

261 267

215

Acknowledgments

Accomplishing this book has taken more time and years of my life than I intended. My undying thanks to Leah, Freeman, and Nahanni for sharing that adventure with me when we could, and dealing with my preoccupation when we couldn’t. Thanks also to my parents, Meredith and William Davis, and to my siblings, JoYi, Adam, and John, all of whom helped make the person I am today. I have been fortunate to have had many mentors, those who “made me think” in important and long-lasting ways. Each bears some share of what credit exists. Special thanks go to Steve Collins, Cambodian Buddhist studies mentor Anne Hansen, and Khmer language instructor Frank Smith. Thanks also to Chan Sambath, David Chandler, Chhorm Pheap, Wendy Doniger, Martin Ja ee, Charles F. Keyes, Khun Sokhary, Judy Ledgerwood, Bruce Lincoln, Richard O’Connor, Heidi Pauwels, Martin Riesebrodt, Winnifred Sullivan, Richard Salomon, and Eugene Webb. During eldwork, a few people made an enormous positive di erence for me. My deep thanks to Heng Chhun Oeurn, Thon Than, and their family; Aik Sokhun, Iem Sreng, Alberto Pérez-Pereiro, Alison Carter, Sor Sokny and the Folklore Research Group from the Buddhist Institute, Emiko Stock, and Trent Walker. The excellent sta s at the National

x Acknowedgments

Library, the Buddhist Institute, CEDAC, and the Center for Khmer Studies were accommodating and helpful beyond any expectation. I was encouraged by their engagement with my research, their hard-working competence, and good humor. Even more thanks to all those Cambodian people from every walk of life, without whose often-enthusiastic engagement and participation this work would not exist in any fashion whatsoever, and whose names I have altered in order to protect their identities. In the various intersecting elds of Cambodian, Buddhist, and Southeast Asian studies, where I have joined a peculiarly collegial and interesting group, I’m grateful to Pattaratorn Chirapravati, May Ebihara, Penny Edwards, Kate Frieson, Jane Hanks, Ian Harris, Heng Kimvan, Caroline Hughes, Alexandra Kent, Ven. Khy Sovanratana, Kobayashi Satoru, Patrice Ladwig, John Marston, Justin McDaniel, Miech Ponn, Ingrid Muan, Richard O’Connor, Jonathan Padwe, Mick Powell, Frank Reynolds, Nikki Tannenbaum, Ashley Thompson, Alicia Turner (whose cogent suggestions for revising my rst chapter felt like being thrown a life preserver), Krisna Uk, John Weeks, Erick White, Paul Williams, Timothy Wood, Courtney Work, Teri Sha er Yamada, and Eve Zucker. Thanks to my colleagues at Macalester College in Religious Studies, Asian Studies, and Critical Theory for their kind welcome and support. I have been fortunate in receiving the trust and nancial support of many groups over the years, including the Association for Asian Studies, The Fulbright-Hays DDRA, The Center for Khmer Studies, the BlakemoreFreeman Advanced Asian Language Study Fellowship, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Charlotte Newcombe Fellowship, and Macalester College. Thanks to Cambridge and NIAS presses for granting permission to republish portions of articles, which appear in chapters 5 and 6. In the Twin Cities, I have found enormous support, meaning, and resilience in the Twin Cities IWW. My thanks to all my Fellow Workers. Finally, at Columbia University Press, thanks to Wendy Lochner, Christine Dunbar, and Leslie Kriesel, who shepherded me through this process with very little pain (at least, on my part), and to Bernard Faure and the two anonymous readers whose comments and critiques, though not entirely adopted, made the book better when they were. I have undoubtedly left some central people o of this list, whose in uence has become so foundational to me that I have lost sight of its existence. Forgive me: you have my thanks.

Note on Transliteration

The Khmer language has many words of Khmer origin and many others of Indian origin, expressed in the Khmer script, which is organized according to the classical Indian system and adapted for additional vowels in the Khmer language. Khmer vowels have context-dependent values, which creates a challenge and choice for scholars publishing in roman script: to transliterate or transcribe? I have chosen to transliterate the Khmer language using the American Library Association and Library of Congress’s system, created by Larry Ashmun. This has the advantage of properly rendering Indicderived words so that they remain recognizable to those unfamiliar with Khmer, and accurately representing the words as they are written, to avoid homonym-based confusion. Because the vowels have contextdependent values, occasionally the ALA system does not approximate the oral value of all vowels. English-language scholars of Cambodia have historically preferred to attempt transcription of spoken Khmer, so I have included the most frequent roman alphabet transcriptions in parentheses at the rst instance of a word. For the ALA/LOC romanization, see http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html. In the case of vowelnal words, I have included nal vowels when the word is obviously of

xii Note on Transliteration

Indic origin and excluded them when the word is solely of Khmer derivation. Thus p y (cooked rice), not p ya, but kuti (monastic dormitory), not kut. When I have quoted from other scholars, I have transformed alternative transcriptions to the ALA system, to avoid unnecessarily confusing the reader. Cambodian names are typically transcribed into roman script, rather than transliterated, and I have followed this practice, especially in order to preserve people’s own preferred spelling when they have elected to forgo my normal pseudonyms for interviewees, as well as with place names. I have also rendered a few words that have entered the English language in particular ways, such as “wat,” which under the ALA system should be “vatta.” Words like “nirvana” have entered the English language without the need for diacritical accuracy.

Deathpower

Introduction

When I moved to Cambodia in 2003 to study contemporary Buddhist funeral rituals, my wife, Leah, moved with me. She was then in the second trimester of her rst pregnancy, so perhaps there was no way for me to not see fertility and new life in the human management of death. After all, we had just sold everything we owned except for a few clothes and a large box of books, bringing these with us for a planned stay of three years. We had left one form of life for a new one. While I was attempting to understand what this would mean for my academic project, both of us were also expecting a brand-new form of life to take us over, as we became three from two. Two years later we became four, while in the same time, we also lost family and friends to old age, sickness, and accident, con rming a link between the constancy of new life and the universal process of death that is no less profound for being obvious. Anthropologists have long connected these two on the basis of their conjunction in funeral ritual, but it doesn’t take an anthropologist to make the connection.

2 Introduction

In 2003, Cambodia was already in the full swing of globalization. Ten years of Vietnamese-sponsored government (1979–1989) followed the devastation of Democratic Kampuchea (1975–1979). The con ict continued through the eighties and nineties, with remnants of the Khmer Rouge in pockets of the country. This meant that massacres remained a part of daily life, and danger from land mines increased during this period, though the terror was certainly less for most than under the Khmer Rouge. After the fall of the Soviet bloc, a UN-led transition to a free market, formally democratic state resulted in elections in 1993 and a new constitution founded on the basis of “Nation, Religion, and King.” The garment industry was booming in 2003, and in 2014 was the largest export industry and the second largest industry in the country as a whole, after agriculture. The creation of a large group of urban wage workers as a signi cant part of Cambodian social life was under way. At rst, my family settled into a house on the southern edge of Phnom Penh, closer to the factories than to the riverside. Death often seems to double life. Once there was an animate personality in a body; after death there is only a corpse. Death implies a subtraction and suggests that there was something more that must have gone somewhere. We are notoriously resistant to the idea that anything as important as a person might end. In this sense, we may imagine that death somehow multiplies life. The ability to master this paradoxically productive power, to manage that which death produces, and to put all the parts back into their proper places is at the heart of what I call deathpower. At death, Buddhist monks care for the dead and create new forms of social value. This pastoral care is backed by their ability to conquer and domesticate spirits that resist their appropriate moral stations. When I introduced myself in Cambodia as a student interested in funerals and the “things of death,” I was frequently told this mildly transgressive proverb: The treasures of man are women, wine, money, and villas; the treasures of gods include incense and candles, while the treasures of the Buddha are nirvana and the grave.

Introduction 3 There was genuine laughter in response, and nervousness about its content: associating Buddhism so straightforwardly with death and the grave seemed disrespectful. No one else recited it in the presence of respected authorities like Buddhist monks; I did. They would laugh gently and change the subject, or else insist that in spite of the humor, the proverb was correct. When the proverb was told to me by laypeople, it was clearly a joke. When monks interpreted the proverb for me, however, it became a code with a correct interpretation of each element. They explained that the poem identi ed treasures, or things of value (sampatti, a.w. sambat) for di erent types of beings: humanity—explicitly gendered male—values things of temporary and pleasurable use, including women, while the gods value sacri ces of incense and candles; the Buddha’s treasure—nirvana—rests in the same category as death. The interpretation speaks to what di erent beings consider valuable, and was my introduction to discussions of value and its transformations in Cambodia. The last line of the poem identi es the treasures of the Buddha with death and nirvana (a.w. nirv a, nibb na, nippean). Buddhist doctrine certainly holds up nirvana as the highest goal of ascetic practice, though it is famously di cult to explain (Collins 1998). To associate nirvana with death alludes to Buddhism’s central concern with mortality, as well as the apparent but doctrinally denied equivalence between the two states. Attaining nirvana may be understood as the conquest of death; given the apophatic nature of the concept, however, nirvana can never be fully distinguished from the mortality over which Buddhism asserts conquest. Death is simultaneously a value, and the conquest of that value. None of these re ections was foremost in my mind as we settled into our rst home in Cambodia. I leapt into my project as I conceived of it at the time: a study of the changes in Buddhist funeral ritual since the Khmer Rouge period. It took very little time to discover a problem: while ritual diversity throughout Cambodia had clearly diminished overall, current funeral practices were not signi cantly di erent from the practices that had been hegemonic prior to the civil wars. I was able to con rm this not only through many interviews with people involved in funerals both before and after but also through close examination of François Bizot’s

4 Introduction

work on pre-war Cambodian Buddhism, which, in spite of his consistent focus on heterodox initiatory practices and their possible relationship to a defunct sangha in Sri Lanka, contains close descriptions of “normal” funerals as well (Bizot 1976, 1981, 1994). In fact, in spite of my desire to focus precisely on the di erences, novelty, and change that had occurred as a result of Cambodia’s recent and violent history, I found that funeral rituals were profoundly unchanged, and almost exclusively relied on rural traditions. The only signi cant di erence was the increased hegemony of the already dominant funeral practices, a result of the suppression of traditional ritual diversity by the Khmer Rouge (Kobayashi 2005). While other practices were taking on new meanings—especially the communal festival of Bhju Pi a (a.w. Pchum Ben)—the funeral ritual itself had been largely una ected by the successive waves of change introduced by the various regimes of the last half century. What happened? Why were funerals so resistant to change and transformation, while other rituals were a ected in the ways I’d hypothesized (LeVine 2010)? Reproducing rituals without change is itself a strategic act; that this strategy is especially evident in funerals raises the question of their social value (Bell 1992). The value and persistence of agricultural imagery signi es that much of the force and avor of such imaginations rely on daily embodied experience, such as that which occupies over 80 percent of Cambodia’s population: the techniques and practices of xed- eld, rain-fed rice agriculture. But this explains the persistence of particular images and practices, not the special persistence of funeral rituals over others. My answer to the question of funeral rituals’ resilience is that they are a central act in the re-creation of the sociohistorical world in which Cambodians imagine moral possibility (Castoriadis 1975, 170–220). Funeral rituals perform, and through performance institute, key values in the Cambodian imagination that map geography and human beings, along with the techniques that mediate them for good and ill. Funerals are not the only rituals that engage these cosmological imaginations, but the moralization of the techniques that manipulate the dead in funerals and other death-focused ritual events is at the core of the morality of lived Buddhism. What I call deathpower is the social power to care for, and in so doing, manipulate, the dead. By “manipulate” I mean to transform the dead in

Introduction 5 either secular memory or ontological status. Deathpower implies pastoral care for the dead and transforms their social meaning through that care. In Cambodia, Buddhist monks assist in the processes of both proper re ection among the living and achieving improved rebirth for the deceased, and bind spirits into sites of ongoing value—such as relics, a spiritually defended sanctuary, or an urn of cremated remains that descendants continue to interact with for years. Deathpower is not a private property of a priestly elite, however, and multiple actors frequently compete for access. Monks may argue for preeminence on the grounds of moral legitimacy, while magicians argue on the basis of practical assistance or technical expertise. The technical and moral dimensions of deathpower may be separated in analysis. The rituals I examine in this book associate morality with hierarchy. To live in the Cambodian sociohistorical world, oriented to life, is to be part of a hierarchy. To refuse hierarchy, in turn, reveals one as demonic, savage, immoral, and oriented toward nonexistence. In contrast to both, the Buddha and the sangha—the community of monks—are those who confront death and the “lonely wastes” without fear, falling into a subordinate hierarchical status, or immorality. For kings and Buddhist monks alike, moral and political sovereignty are rooted in a fearless and practical engagement with death (Stone 2005). Against these moralized hierarchies range forms of deathpower portrayed as secretive and individualistic, including the forms of black magic examined in chapter 8. Buddhist control of spirits is technical and moral; non-Buddhist control of spirits is also technical, but deemed either amoral or immoral. The Buddhist dominance is emphasized in the funeral, where the shades of pastoral care are presented in greatest relief. I use the term “deathpower” to demonstrate the ways this care for the dead contrasts with Foucault’s in uential notion of biopower (Foucault 1978, 140). Foucault explicitly contrasted the power over life, biopower, with the power over death as emblematic of two di erent and opposed forms of sovereignty (Foucault 1997, 247–248; Agamben 1995; Mbembe 2003; Foucault 1997). Premodern sovereignty was the ability to “Make die or let live,” whereas for Foucault, modern forms of sovereignty and individual subjectivity were related through an inversion of this power. In the modern period, the state’s power is to “Make live or let die” (Foucault 1978, 138; Butler 1987). Achille Mbembe has extended Foucault’s

6 Introduction

critique of sovereignty via biopower by investigating, along with others like Agamben, how the traditional sovereign power of unleashing death is exercised in the current politics, which he calls “necropolitics” (Mbembe 2003; Agamben 1995). In contrast, the concept of deathpower I develop here attempts to outline the modality of a power that Foucault would likely identify as connected to a premodern form of sovereignty and subjectivity. However, if placed within the context of his later work on the “care of the self,” the obligation to care for the dead, associated with a particular modality of authoritative control over the dead, is a useful point of comparison with Foucault’s interpretation of the Greek imperative to care for oneself (Foucault 1985, 1988). The fact that it exists in contemporary Cambodia, alongside factories and peasants, foreign-dominated NGOs, and the trappings of modern democratic politics, challenges either the exclusive “modernity” of the notion of biopower or the wholesale replacement of previous forms of power with nascent regimes. In many ways, deathpower represents a more traditional means of instituting moral possibilities than does biopower: a means reliant on the control over and care for the dead. These moral possibilities, constructed on the basis of Buddhism’s ritual control over death, institute the repertoire of much of the Cambodian imagination, ranging from its ethnic others, personal moral discipline, the cultivation of rice, the existence and types of witchcraft, and the creative deployment of traditional metaphors, to the rapidly changing circumstances of Cambodia’s present. Buddhist domination of the legitimate ritualization of the dead—its deathpower—establishes and moralizes particular notions about fertility, social legitimacy, and morality, drawing on everyday notions and concepts from Cambodian agricultural life. The connection between funerals and the reproduction of core social values is not new. Bloch and Parry, anthropologists who have devoted substantial portions of their careers to the investigation of funerary rituals, assert that a near-universal in such ritual symbolism is the reproduction of fertility: “In most cases what would seem to be revitalised in funerary practices is that resource which is culturally conceived to be most essential to the reproduction of the social order” (Bloch and Parry 1982, 7). If funerals center around the recuperation of fertility, de ned as that thing culturally conceived as most essential to the reproduction

Introduction 7 of the society, then an examination of Buddhist funerals in Cambodia should tell us something about those core values. The cosmologies instituted in funerals are not only particular values but also dispositions toward those values, especially those key to the reproduction of social order. In Cambodia, the key to the material reproduction of society has been agriculture and the production of rice. The Cambodian imagination of rice is a key site through which to examine culturally conceived notions of value. The fertility on display as recoverable value in funerals is not, however, just rice, but also the social order and techniques through which rice is materially reproduced. Rice has been the resource most essential to the reproduction of the social order. It forms the basis of everything properly considered a meal; its production organized historical Khmer village communities; and raising it is the occupation in which over 80 percent of Cambodians still primarily labor. Core components of social value such as rice, the particular nature of Cambodian social hierarchies, and techniques of water management are enshrined in the social imagination at the heart of funerals, arguably the most important rituals in Buddhist practice. Cambodians have created an agricultural organization of this society in the imagination partly through imposing culturally instituted binaries such as eld and forest; the Cambodian situation also historically relied heavily on slavery, and today depends on patron-client relationships. Finally, rice’s potency is analogized to the potency of humans, so techniques for controlling one resemble the other. In funeral ritual, monks can be thought of as farmers of the dead; as farmers produce rice through practices of binding water into elds, so too monks produce sites of deathpower. The modes of production and the ways these sites are exchanged lend a moral dimension to the variety of practices, classifying some as moral and others as immoral. Most of these exchanges clearly associate hierarchical social relations with morality and oppose them to secretive, individualistic actions, which are seen as forms of black magic. Historically, Khmer society organized itself for the production of rice on the basis of the social value of hierarchal relationships, ranging from the practices of upland slave-gathering to today’s ubiquitous patron-client relationships. The Buddhist ritualization of death pulses near the heart of the Khmer imagination of the world; it generates and supports a view of

8 Introduction

the world as it is presumed to be and a moral potential that o ends against it. Buddhist monks replicate in funerals the techniques associated with Cambodian rice agriculture and the social organization based on it. Slavery is important to this story, and I argue that slavery has conditioned hierarchy and morality in Cambodia, as well as characteristic modes of social interaction. I follow the majority of Cambodian Buddhists and assume that there is no problem with the interaction between Buddhist monks and spirits. Instead, I focus on the presumed modes of interaction in ritual practice. The social organization of Khmer society—dependent on historical slavery transforming into contemporary hierarchical patron-client relationships, and based on culturally distinctive forms of bunded, paddy agriculture—con rms the ubiquity of the rebirth of fertility in rituals of death as social value. Finally, I argue that the funeral ritual is a privileged site through which to examine core institutions and values in Cambodian culture and society. Those values associate rice agriculture and social hierarchy with morality and present the nonagricultural and non-Buddhist highlands as populated by wild and savage beings—animals, spirits, and people— who are subject to slavery in order to introduce them to the moral discipline of Buddhist civilization. These values are personal and moral as well as social and geographical: just as slaves must be captured from the wild places where they prefer to live and bound into hierarchical forms of labor in Khmer civilization, so too each individual human being is made up of multiple souls that tend to wildness and escape to the forests, mountains, and deep waters (Edwards 2006; Thompson 1996; Ang Choulean 2004). In every case of physical or spiritual ight, the ritual answer is to bind the wild spirit into place, converting its moral ambiguity— also the source of its power—into morally authorized and directed social work. In Buddhist funerals, the dominant physical act is the binding of the spirit of the deceased into place—into the corpse prior to cremation, and into the urn containing the dead person’s remains.

IMAGINED BUDDHISM This book attempts to represent a portion of the Cambodian religious imaginary through a study of rituals involved in the management of

Introduction 9 death and spirits. I am primarily interested in how Buddhist practices relate to everyday Cambodian understandings of the world. My method has been primarily anthropological and ethnographic, and focused more on lay religiosity than on that of monks. The majority of eldwork took place from 2003 to 2006. I began by working primarily with funerary lay-ritual specialists called c rya (a.w. achaar) before proceeding to an examination of connected rituals. I often solicited initial responses to a subject through questionnaires, then followed up with structured and unstructured interviews. If I describe the subject of this book as a particular part of the Cambodian religious imaginary, I should stress that I too am necessarily caught within an imagination that is almost by de nition somewhat obscure to me. Aspects of it include the imaginary worlds of anthropology and religious studies, as well as of the Midwestern regions of America in which I was raised. This is partly to say that there is no reality experienced or ever even locatable prior to its encounter in the imagination, and that therefore this account, like all others, will necessarily be limited, incomplete, and informed but not fully determined by these imaginaries. Following the work of Cornelius Castoriadis on the social imagination, I deal with Cambodian Buddhist rituals as events that perform, and through performance institute, the central imaginary signi cations that compose the cosmology of the Cambodian world (Castoriadis 1975, 1997). When I discuss the “imaginary,” I mean something rather precise: society as an institution within the imagination. A serious exploration of Castoriadis’ thought and how it informs my method and presentation at each point is impossible here; I emphasize instead the following components of his theory of society as an “imaginary institution” (Castoriadis 1997). For Castoriadis, the radical individual imagination is the representational ux preceding conscious sense-making (Castoriadis 1997, 281). Meaning is created out of this ux and instituted as the grounds of the social imaginary, so that many people share in the creation of norms, values, methods, practices, etc.: the sorts of meaningful signi cations that together constitute a society. To institute such norms, or imaginary signi cations, as Castoriadis calls them, is to create and reproduce society itself. Therefore, “imaginary” is not a slander against something unacceptably unreal, but the necessary ground of all human creativity and collective life.1

10 Introduction

Castoriadis’ thought is de antly ontological, in a way that associates him broadly with a group of thinkers sometimes called neorealists. His attitude is easily grasped by scholars of Buddhist thought, and an overlapping, though not identical sense of the import is made by the rst verse of the Dhammap da, one of the oldest poems of the Buddhist tradition: Manopubbangama dhamma manosettha manomaya Phenomena are preceded by mind, made by mind, with mind as their chief. Manas is a tricky word to translate directly as “mind.” As the “sixth sense” of Indian philosophy of mind, it often seems to be something like the sense manifold itself, coordinating the representational ux generated by the contact between the other sense organs and their appropriate sense objects. But manas in Buddhist thought clearly also is a sui generis sense organ of its own, with its own appropriate sense objects. It is strikingly similar to what Castoriadis refers to as the individual radical imaginary—pure representational ux—to such an extent that I am encouraged to retranslate the above as: Phenomena are preceded by the imagination, made by the imagination, with the imagination as their chief. Everything we do as human beings not determined by our genetics exists at the level of the imagination. As Marx put it, the di erence between the constructions of bees and the social order of the human construction of buildings is that the human architect rst imagines the work that he then builds (Marx 1990, 283–284). The sheer diversity of human organization is su cient evidence of our proli c imagination, along with our ability to create for ourselves things that are not shared by all others. People live their lives in reference to social imaginations, attempting merely to succeed within, to preserve and restore, to challenge and undermine, or even to create completely new forms (Rappaport 1999, 319–323). Societies create themselves in imagination by instituting the social imaginary through practice, in what Castoriadis calls the “Socio-

Introduction 11 Historical Domain” (Castoriadis 1997). This could be a form of oldfashioned idealism, in which thought creates action and ideas themselves revolutionize reality. But Castoriadis focuses on the relationship between the social imagination and the socio-historical domain of actual practice, describing particular imaginations as gaining or losing autonomy in and over society through the process of alienation; if the particular imaginary signi cation becomes autonomous, the society becomes heteronomous in relation to it. What practices could mediate the reproduction of the social imagination? The answer partly depends on the imagination in question. In his book on the “Pali Imaginaire,” Steven Collins focuses on the imaginary worlds created and reproduced through the Buddhist world. His examination is largely limited to the Pali texts, which have been subjected to historical practices of editing and puri cation at Buddhist Councils throughout the history of Buddhism (Collins 1998; Hallisey 1991). For the imagination of the Pali canon, then, the practices of establishing and closing the canon and the practices that reinforce its value and centrality for Buddhists are central to the reproduction of the Pali Imaginary (Collins 1990). A canon is “closed,” and a code—a type of logic that Castoriadis calls “ensemblistic-identitarian” or “ensidic logic”— similarly tries to “close” culture (Klooger 2014; Castoriadis 2008). But even a brief glimpse at any culture over time demonstrates clearly that it is impossible to prevent change and transformation. A subsequent question, therefore, is: When imaginary signi cations persist relatively unchanged over time, what accounts for their persistence? As I attempt to demonstrate throughout this book, the e ort to encode values—norms, practices, meanings, signi cations—in binary form associates stark moral choices with a whole range of socially determined practices. Moreover, as I argue especially in the rst half, many of the particular—and especially the embodied—aspects of Cambodian Buddhist funeral rituals draw on similar practices in other rituals, and on physical techniques from everyday Khmer peasant life. Rituals have often been compared analogically to texts that can be interpreted. In such an approach, one might “read” a ritual. This approach has been e ectively challenged by performance studies of ritual, which point out that the structural-functionalist method results in an understanding of ritual as merely re ective of a society’s “structure.”

12 Introduction

Moreover, the functionalist approach assumes that symbols have clear or transparent meanings, equivalent to their “function.” In working with reformist and modernist Buddhist monks, I was frequently informed of the “correct” meaning of a particular symbol, number of incense sticks, etc. The existence of such an ensidic code cannot exhaust the potential of meaning, though its presence—and especially its use to shape morally distinct or binary choices—is signi cant. In the experience of lived Buddhism, however, few have access to or the knowledge to engage with texts in the Pali language; even fewer interpret rituals as texts of symbols containing univalent codes of meaning. This is not a new situation, but the norm for most Buddhists through history, who have also not spent signi cant time meditating. To understand the lived imagination of Cambodian Buddhists, we must look instead at the practices in which lay Buddhists engage most frequently (Hallisey 1995, 44–49). In this study, I focus on rituals, especially those involved with death or spirits, as privileged practices through which social meanings are embodied and performed, and thus reproduced as key imaginary institutions. Beyond the challenge to structural-functionalism’s reduction of meaning to code, Castoriadis critiques its well-known inability to account for novelty or agency, since it sees social practice as the enactment of social norms. Whence or how these norms emerged is rarely considered, or naturalized in a symbolic way, as in Freud’s murder of the father (Taylor 2003, 7–8). Instead of seeing embodied performances as merely the rei cation of norms, Castoriadis, most performance theorists, and myself view them as key moments in which to examine social agency and creativity (Castoriadis 1997, 2005). For Castoriadis, society is full of meaningful signi cations, which are necessarily imaginary, and inconceivable without them. These meanings are created by society, but there is no code, no necessary relationship between a signi er and a signi ed. The individual imagination seizes the signi cations and interprets them in its own light, shaped but not ultimately determined by the broader social imaginary and its institution in everyday life. The polyvalent possibilities of meaning are such that Castoriadis compares them to the intensity of magma owing from an active volcano (Rosengren 2014). Part of the reproduction of the existing

Introduction 13 social imaginary, and hence society itself, requires attempts to channel these magmatic associations into a network of signi cations. This institution of particular meanings is almost always heteronomous or a priori, and is therefore simultaneous with the attempt by most societies to foreclose possibilities of meaning outside of the society, and especially any attempt to put society itself into question (Castoriadis 1997). This attempt to foreclose possibilities outside of the society itself is central to Castoriadis’ understanding of the social imaginary in general. Such foreclosure, discussed by anthropologists as “claustration” or “embo tement,” is identical with the heteronomous creation of society itself (Castoriadis 1997; Condominas 1990; Macdonald 1957; Scott 2009). Such closures work very e ectively when they are instituted via a set of binary distinctions laden with moral and desirable or horri c associations, such as the Cambodian distinction between the “civilized farm eld” and the “wild and savage forest.” Judith Butler has gone to lengths to point out that no binary distinctions—such as, for instance, the binaries between man and woman (gender) or even between male and female (sex)—are naturally given; sex and gender are instead both assigned, usually at birth by a physician, and the binaries are reinforced and made unquestionable to most within the system (Butler 1988, 524, 530; 1990, xxviii; 1993). Cambodians challenge some binaristic and enclosed codes, and create and reinforce others. A society may therefore possess an authoritative interpretive code for ritual symbolism or actions, but this merely re ects the interpretation itself, rather than investigating how that interpretation was created and reproduced (Castoriadis 1975, 167–220; 1997). Practices and signi cations become autonomous through their repeated institution in daily life, an insight that gives priority to the practices of the everyday and the lived experience of individuals and groups over rare or elite practices (Mauss 1973 [1934]). These are the “ruling ideas” of a society, often sacred and unquestionable, resembling Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. Indeed, a value that has become autonomous in society appears to have gained its own life and force in the social world. One might almost call this the creation of a form of agency, or as David Graeber writes, “Gods in the process of construction.”2 In summary, human groups create themselves as a society in the imagination. The imagination is populated with signi cations that may

14 Introduction

become autonomous from the groups that instituted them in the rst place: they begin to travel through time and space, and gain a power that is independent. They are not merely “references” to “referents” but complex, polyvalent, and resistant to simpli cation. Religious authorities frequently attempt to reduce the Cambodian imagination to an ensidic code—the binary distinction with all its overladen moral burdens is perhaps the most obvious form—but the magmatic force of human imagination will constantly escape these bounds and engage in creative appropriations and transformations. We are introduced to imaginary institutions of our societies in everyday practice and introduced to the most central institutions in ritual practices, which gain durability and consistency as a virtue of their sacredness, and through their ability to rely on the everyday inculcation of a society’s particular imaginary in its members. Because of Buddhism’s social and historical dominance, outsiders and insiders alike often frame the question of religious diversity in mainland Southeast Asia as one of “Buddhism and its others.” Sometimes this is expressed as a problem of Buddhism and “spirit cults,” as if only local spirits and Buddhism constituted the regional mix (Tambiah 1970; Spiro 1970, 1996). Some have recently attempted to create or adopt more complex classi cation systems for these religions. A recent positive contribution can be found in Pattana Kitiarsa’s book, Mediums, Monks, and Amulets, where he follows the vefold classi cation system of a Thai spirit medium in rural Thailand named Wo Chinpradit: He splits the deities into ve groups: thep, phrom, chao, phi, and winyan phanechon. Thep (deity) and phrom (Brahma) refer primarily to Hindu gods and goddesses, while chao is used to indicated Chinese deities. Phi in this context are benevolent spirits (phi di) like ancestral and guardian spirits, while winyan phanechon are bad spirits (phi rai), such as those of people who died a violent or untimely death and were not given a proper funeral. (Kitiarsa 2012, 23)

This classi cation is a ne beginning, though there is some confusion already apparent: it doesn’t allow for all the actually existing

Introduction 15 possibilities and alludes to the possible, in nite proliferation of other spirit categories. Moreover, except among self-conscious spiritual professionals, I never encountered neat categorizations of the spirit world. While almost everyone is aware that the spirits with which they interact have di erent groups of origin, they imagine that all the spirits exist on the same plane, or at least interact with humans on the same plane. Thus, for example, ethnically Chinese spirits from Hainan can become local spirits who interact with Khmer and Chinese alike in Cambodia (Davis 2013). Instead of attempting to discover the correct classi catory scheme for religions in Southeast Asia, I suggest that we see each such scheme as a creative and argumentative attempt to institute a new imaginary signi cation. There is little agreement among scholars or Cambodian practitioners about the correct scheme, though there are some broad trends. Advocates of modern reformist Buddhism tend to represent the religious eld as composed of Buddhism and superstitious spirit cult remnants, an opinion perhaps surprisingly close to those of earlier scholars (McMahan 2008). Thus, forest spirits with Sanskrit names and healing spirits from China are lumped together, in a way that opposes them to Buddhism. My sense is that this is a function of the power and relative hegemony of modern reformist Buddhism in contemporary Cambodia. While some—especially, in my experience, lay spiritualists whose expertise is grounded in powers that modern reform Buddhism nds troubling or suspicious—accept complex and descriptive classi cations presented to them, most people today tend to re exively classify what Bourdieu calls the “religious eld” into a binaristic complex of Buddhism and its opposite. The words for the latter are multiple, but the term I encountered most frequently was brahma ya-s san , or “brahmanism.” I will use that term throughout the rest of the book to represent the way that most Cambodians talk about the “non-Buddhist” world (that formulation already betraying the binaristic distinction). I hasten to add that this use of the word “brahmanism” owes almost nothing to the scholarly brahamanism of Indic and Indological studies: it is not restricted to the worship of “Hindu” divinities, has no practices of caste, and is, for the most part, not rooted in a priesthood.3 While the use of the term could imply origins exclusively in the Indic lexicon and imaginary, it does not refer to this in practice, but includes a vast

F

I

.1

c rya in Kampong Cham at a p ram -empowered Buddhist temple.

Introduction 17 range of spirits of diverse and often indeterminate origins. This binaristic, complementary, and competitive classi cation can be seen in the description of the two sources of p ram —a type of spiritual power—and how they interact in the world. On a trip to a supernaturally endowed (p ram ) temple in Kampong Cham province, I encountered elderly lay teachers—called c rya—who told me some of the history of the structure, which began as a temple devoted to Hindu gods during the Angkor period and later became a Buddhist temple. Thus, this was an ancient site that had been transformed, dedicated rst to what they called “brahma ya-s san ” and then to what they called “buddha-s san .” The c rya described the opposition between these two “s san ” as total. I asked about Chinese religion, and the religion of minority groups speci cally. The former they dismissed without much explanation, saying that “Cambodia is Buddhist, regardless.” However, they explicitly included the religions of highland ethnic groups, whom they referred to derogatorily as bhnang (a.w. phnong), in the category of brahma ya-s san , which was common in the majority of my explicit conversations on this topic. Buddhism and Brahmanism were also opposed in terms of their attitudes toward violence and in their exclusive nature. Ever since its rededication as a Buddhist temple, kings have refused to enter. If they did so, the c rya told me, the king would lose his p ram , his supernatural power. The supernaturally empowered boundaries of the temple, also called p ram , were rooted in Buddhism, and the p ram of the king was rooted in Brahmanism, for all that the king is also assumed to be a pious Buddhist. Like witches and ghosts, kings are not permitted to enter a space empowered by an opposing supernatural p ram . Similarly and somewhat provocatively, the c rya also claimed that the Khmer Rouge were terri ed of the temple’s power, and although they destroyed many other nearby, nonsupernaturally protected Buddhist temples, they left this empowered one alone. “Contemporary politicians, however, are just normal men, and can enter and leave the temple as they wish.” The c rya themselves thus set up a binary analysis of supernatural power and its moral and e cient characteristics: both brahmanical and Buddhist p ram are potentially e ective in this world and create e ective spaces around their local instantiation, in which power based in the

18 Introduction

other form of p ram is ine ective. The distinction between Brahmanism and Buddhism is also a potent way of classifying moral behavior. Brahmanism, associated with kings, combatants, ghosts, the forests, and relations of power, at its heart associates the everyday, mundane world with violence, as well as spirits of variously moral dispositions. Buddhism o ends against this particular constellation of meaning—this social imaginary—through its association of monks with peacemaking, and the insistence that Buddhist monks exist outside of the everyday world’s hierarchy and therefore must be o ered the highest respect within that same hierarchy, as an expression of morality.

RITUAL PERFORMANCES OF DEATH AND THE DEAD Anthropologists and others have long attributed a particularly compelling power to ritual performance. Repetition and the self-discipline of performance may be said to help determine social consciousness, a formulation neatly revisited and restated by Rappaport: “Ritual, in the very structure of which authority and acquiescence are implicit, was the primordial means by which men [sic], divested of genetically determined order, established the conventions by which they order themselves” (Rappaport 1979, 197). Rituals of death are privileged locations for the observation of core social imaginations and values. Funerary rituals in particular have fascinated anthropologists since the beginning of the eld. Bachofen’s 1859 study of the presence of eggs and other symbols of rebirth in ancient Mediterranean funerals may be the earliest on this topic (Bloch and Parry 1982, 1). Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry are among the anthropologists who have studied funerals and funerary rituals most thoroughly. As I noted earlier, they emphasize that funeral rituals almost always attempt to reproduce a symbolic fertility (1982, 7). As I argue in the rst half of this book, the resource imagined to be most central to the reproduction of Cambodian culture is rice, and the social organization and techniques used to produce it (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993). This imagination is so powerful that people are imagined as animated by the same sorts of spiritual energy and amenable to the same sorts of ritual manipulation.

Introduction 19 The study of ritual has moved from a focus on enactment to a focus on performance, with an accompanying shift from a view of culture as a rei ed set of norms manipulating human beings toward a focus on human agency and creativity in performance, albeit often constrained by the very system in which that agency is enabled. With the increased attention to ritual performance and its e ects has come an increased estimation of ritual’s social power (Butler 1997; Hollywood 2002; Mahmood 2006). Catherine Bell responds to Geertz’s already strong formulation of ritual as a component of the “Theater State” by emphasizing ritual performance as a fundamental component of power itself: Ritual does not disguise the exercise of power, nor does it refer, express, or symbolize anything outside of ritual itself. In other words, political rituals do not refer to politics, as Geertz has strained to express, they are politics. Ritual is the thing itself. It is power; it acts and it actuates. (Bell 1992, 195)

This performative approach to ritual accords extremely well with the theory of the imagination pro ered by Castoriadis, understanding the performance of ritual as the active creation and reproduction of core social values and norms.4 In this context, ritual does not re ect the imagination of the world but actively creates it, associating it with morality, pastoral care, and the social obligations of the living to the dead. Certainly, most Cambodians would agree. Few see the Buddhist funeral rituals as merely commemorative. When asked what would happen if the funeral ritual was not performed or not done properly, nearly all respondents o ered possibilities such as bad future rebirths for the deceased, the production of malevolent ghosts, etc. For most Cambodians, like Bell, ritual is the exercise of power itself—at least, power as they imagine it.

BOOK ORGANIZATION In this book, I have alternated chapters that focus on its arguments and shorter ethnographic vignettes that exemplify and connect them. Chapter 1, “Getting Sited in Cambodia,” is a straightforward introduction to the monastic setting of most Buddhist funerals and introduces the di erent types of gures who participate. Chapter 2, “The Funeral,”

20 Introduction

examines the contemporary Cambodian funeral, demonstrating the di erences that occur as results of status, wealth, and circumstances of death, and then attending to the core symbolism repeated over and over again—that of Buddhist monks binding spirits into a discrete location. This is done by physically binding the corpse, through physical location and gestures prior to cremation, and nally after cremation, when the remains are bound into urns with the same sacred string, examined in the following chapter. In chapter 3, “Rice, Water, Hierarchy: The Wild and the Civil,” I examine the practices and histories that compose the social imaginations created in funeral ritual, speci cally the “binding” of spirits of the dead, and the connection of that binding to agriculture and its need to control water, slavery and its need to control people, and the self and its need to control the multiple spirits that compose it. Agriculture and slavery together constitute a physical and social geography, while the multiple spirits of the self constitute a personal geography of control and discipline. In all cases, control is exerted through binding. Castoriadis scholars keeping track at home should see applications of teukhein— practices of technical meaning—and his concept of anlehnung—the reinforcement of one imaginary stratum, such as the Buddhist monastic code of interpretation, through its “leaning on” (also anaclisis, étayage) other strata—in this chapter (Klooger 2014, 2014). In order to examine this set of intersections, I describe the way Khmer agriculture centers on several metaphors and actual techniques that bind water into place and bind the spirits of rice souls into harvested rice. I then examine a story of moral edi cation from the nineteenth century, a tale of a young ethnic highlander boy whose family is killed by other highlanders fearful of witchcraft, and who is adopted by a Khmer merchant and raised to become a Buddhist monk (Hansen 2003). In contrast to previous interpretations, I demonstrate how the story centers on a cluster of di erences in language, agricultural style, and religion; reproduces the relationship of Khmer and Buddhist dominance over the wild beings of the forests, including other humans; and explicitly presents Buddhism as an avenue of moral and cultural assimilation for those highland minority groups subject to enslavement. The binding ritual at the heart of the Cambodian funeral is based on other widespread practices. I examine the healing ritual “calling

Introduction 21 the spirits,” in which the multiple spirits of the self are recalled into the body and bound there with a particular type of string also found in funerals and boundary-establishing ceremonies called s m ceremonies (see below), and discuss how the rituals used to heal the living are connected to those that mediate their death. I also show how the binding ritual at the heart of the Cambodian funeral is based upon other widespread practices (anlehnung). Finally, I demonstrate how the widespread Cambodian practice of binding spirits into place demonstrates dominance vis- -vis the wild spirits of the self, which can be collected and bound into place by similar Buddhist authority. Chapter 4, “Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty,” turns to a di erent key ritual in order to understand the importance of the string with which corpses and funerary urns are bound by Buddhist monks: the Pa cu S m , the inauguration of a central Buddhist temple sanctuary, and the similar ritual practices that empower such spaces. This ritual, which many claim can be used to bind malevolent spirits into Buddhist temples as protective guardians, is the origin of the ritual thread used to bind corpses and urns. I argue for a sovereignty that has been ritually divided into the domains of life and death, where life is controlled by the king and death by the Buddhist monks. The monks appear as sovereigns of the wild domains of the forests and the Buddhist temples in the domains of the king, autonomous in both as conquerors of death. This chapter establishes a clear relationship between royalty and violence in the Buddhist imagination, and the dependence of Buddhism on this royal violence, in spite of its own refusal of violence. In chapter 5, “Binding Mighty Death,” I discuss how the conquest of death is at the root of the Buddhist monk’s institution and ritual authority, from the actions he takes to the clothes he wears. I examine the dual aspect of the pa suk la—simultaneously a gift of monastic robes made out of a corpse’s shroud, the name of the funerary chant intoned by the monks, and its associated actions. The gift of the pa suk la shroud as a monastic robe materializes the core component of monastic authority: the conquest of death and the fear of death. At the same time, the other pa suk la—the chant and its associated physical action of binding— enact the corollary: that the monks have the ability to manage spirits through the symbolic act of binding. Having completed my description

22 Introduction

of how deathpower is accomplished in funerary ritual, I proceed to examine how the rami cations of this ritualized power over death shape Cambodian religion in larger ways. Chapter 6, “Gifts and Hungry Ghosts,” examines the annual holiday of Bhju Pi a (a.w. Pchum Ben), during which time the dead return to the world of the living to receive o erings from their descendants. The relevance of deathpower and the world of spirits to everyday interactions and moral classi cation is examined by studying the holiday as a form of obligatory reciprocity with the dead, mediated by Buddhist monks, who deploy the pa suk la chant from the funeral in this nonfunerary context. This logic of reciprocity enables rural people to characterize the urban wage workers, who return to the villagers during this celebration, as parasites out of a widespread resentment of cities’ relationship to rural villages. Chapter 7, “Eating Leftovers, Rumors, and Witchcraft,” presents the moral Khmer world according to the logics of death, food, and reciprocity by examining how that set of intersections informs the imagined world of Cambodian witchcraft. Like Buddhist monks, spirit mediums and witches attempt to mediate between humans and spirits. Cambodian witches in particular often seem to pursue a reversal of the logic of the Buddhist monk: instead of publicly receiving gifts of food from the laity, the witch secretly and magically inserts nonfood items into the stomachs of her victims, in a gruesome approximation of “feeding.” In a connected example, locals accused the crematorium chiefs at one of the temples where I worked of secretly harvesting the human fat from bodies to sell as cooking fat for people to consume, a form of witchcraft. In this chapter, I distinguish between the forms of power in terms of their public and moral legitimacy, arguing that “Monks eat in public; witches feed in private.” Chapter 8, “Buddhism Makes Brahmanism With Deathpower,” addresses long-discussed questions of syncretism and diverse Buddhisms, and argues that Buddhism—especially Buddhist ritual practice— creates the “non-Buddhist” category of spirits through its domination of them. Against portrayals of Southeast Asian Buddhism as syncretic (or “hybrid”), I o er a perspective that integrates them into a common cultural imagination. In the Cambodian imagination, Buddhism is a moral and ritual o ense against a world essentially composed of wild, amoral spirits, including those that constitute us as human beings.5 Through this

Introduction 23 stance and its mapping onto the real world, much historic enslavement, not only that of highland peoples, was culturally legitimized. These rituals and the beliefs they institute and reproduce help to con rm core components of Khmer life: the crucial importance of social hierarchies and the ritual binding of spirits into place, on the same basis as water and the spirits of rice are bound into place by farmers. In concluding Deathpower, I o er both a new perspective on Cambodian Buddhism and a contribution to discussions on the nature of spirit engagement by Southeast Asian Buddhists. I suggest ways this view of Buddhism may lead to better understanding of such supposedly peculiar phenomena as Buddhist violence, critical and supporting relationships with states, and the particular relationship that Theravada Buddhism seems to enjoy with incipient nationalisms, an issue of growing relevance throughout South and Southeast Asia. We don’t need to abandon the idea of “Buddhism” in order to take account of local diversities. In Southeast Asia at least, one of the characteristic aspects of local Buddhism is its attitude toward spirits of all sorts. Buddhism requires local spirits to manage, discipline, and conquer; I have gone to lengths to demonstrate some continuity between contemporary Cambodia and what we understand of the ancient Indian contexts in which Buddhism developed. I believe that Buddhism’s power to control spirits is a sort of universal gearbox that allows monks to assert primary rights of management over nearly all types of spirits, and it is through asserting this right of publicly legitimated deathpower that Buddhism maintains its place at the apex of the local religious ecology. Buddhism creates Brahmanism through the exercise of deathpower, in order to manage and conquer it, and put it to work in the world.

IMAGINING LOTUSES During the hot season in 2005, I rode in a bus down Cambodia’s secondlargest highway, with my own family and that of my research assistant and friend Oeurn. Cambodia’s hot season results in a type of physical

24 Introduction

awareness that I had, prior to living there, not really appreciated: a somatic awareness of water. Stereotypes of Southeast Asia, especially from the very seasonally di erent world of North America, practically reek of humidity, sweat, rain, and the deep green rainforests. Countless lms on the Vietnamese-American war emphasize the wetness of the land. But after the rainy season ends in Cambodia, around late September, no rain falls until the next rainy season begins, in late May or early June. As the heat grows more intense, the countryside and everything in it begin to shrink: skin lies taut and dry over young bones, loose and dry over older. The land itself begins to disintegrate, and the winds carry dust from one eld to another, through the country. The new rains cause joy, along with concerns for the onset of the malarial season. The rains signify an end to the incessant dust, the respiratory irritation that occasionally replicates the sounds of a tuberculosis ward, and the return of the color green. They mean the coolness of night, the end of constant thirst, and perhaps most importantly though least immediately, the transformation of empty elds into areas of common activity. We passed one of the many Cambodian ponds full of blooming lotuses. The rst ten years of my engagement with Buddhism came primarily from the world of Buddhist texts in P li and Sanskrit; hence, the lotus possessed a particular signi cance for me—as a symbol for the possibility of purity in an impure world. When it appears in Buddhist scripture or art, the image of the lotus symbolizes the state of purity and deathlessness achieved by separation. The purity of the lotus is highlighted by the fact that it grows in slime, mud, and excrement at the bottom of ponds—an undi erentiated, chaotic, and fertile ground for its roots. The lotus rises out of the murk, and its di erentiated petals have a waxy skin that repels muck. The mud from which the lotus rises cannot attach itself to the ower. The lotus thus serves as a metaphor for purity emerging from an impure situation. But like all signi cations, its meaning depends on the social imagination one brings to it. During that bus ride, the sight of a pond full of multicolored lotuses led my thoughts down well-worn paths of Buddhist re ections on purity and enlightenment. I mentioned the owers’ beauty to my assistant’s husband, my friend Th n. He

Introduction 25 listened patiently to my talk of lotuses and purity. But his response was characteristic of many I received to such comments during my time in Cambodia. He supplied another side to the equation I was making: “Lotus ponds have lots of sh; lotus ponds have fragrant water.” I may have detected a slight smacking of the lips—it was almost lunchtime. I didn’t understand exactly what he was communicating right away, though it was clear he was focused on the practical aspect of the lotus pond as a place to nd food and water, instead of seeing it solely as an image of a religious escape from an impure world. But this aspect was not a disconnected fact he happened to know about lotus ponds. Rather, it emerged from a corresponding image that helps explain why lotus ponds provide positive practical bene ts. Just as my response was shaped by my immersion in the waters of the P li textual imagination, so his response came out of a nuanced and cultural imagination about the natural world, its growth and reproduction, based on everyday knowledge and practice, including shing. First and foremost, Th n explained, a pond full of lotuses retains its water by providing green cover that absorbs the sun’s rays and reduces evaporation. Control and preservation of hoards of water have in Khmer culture been the most basic techniques and symbols of social power, not to mention survival. Evaporation from tanks and ponds constitutes a real threat to water supplies. The photosynthesis by which the lotus harnesses the power of the sun to convert air into solid matter means that the carbon dioxide in the air is transformed into the carbon of the plant’s body and the oxygen the plant o ers as a return gift. Lotus ponds are also important water- ltration devices, repeatedly cycling water through ecological subsystems, oxygenating and cleaning it of debris and pollution, such that the water can become potable. A lotus extends its roots into the world underneath the pond’s surface, attracting sh, who nd the relatively calmer waters good places to breed. They are attracted by both the relatively high oxygen content of the water that shelters and the microbial and insect life that populate these little worlds. Of course, few Cambodians express these things this way. The world of imagined connections is so basic to daily life that it amounts to a form of embodied knowledge, in a manner similar to the knowledge of

26 Introduction

how to ride a bicycle: it’s much harder to explain than to do. The fact that the knowledge is at least partly embodied in no way detracts from its subtlety or nuance. The image of a di erentiated, waxy, beautiful lotus, growing up and out of an undi erentiated mass of slime, emerging from under the water and blossoming in plain view into a highly particularized ower, is primarily a metaphor of ascetic glory achieved through a process of separation. A di erent signi cation of this symbol emerges by rooting it, by experiencing it, one might say, from below the waterline— from the perspective of a di erent social imaginary, which in contrast emphasizes the process of growth and reproduction: the erotic life of lotuses in their relationship to other components of the world.

1. Getting Sited in Cambodia

My eldwork initially focused closely on two quite di erent urban temples, both located in Phnom Penh. Later, however, I began to spread out, to other urban temples and also to several rural temples, and to sites much farther a eld. I will here describe primarily two urban temples— Wat Ko Yakkha and Wat Tr Loka—in contrast to much less intensively studied rural eld sites.

WAT KOH. YAKKHA

Wat Ko Yakkha, whose name means Temple of the Island of Demons, is one of the earliest temples to be established in Phnom Penh. As such, it occupies a certain pride and prestige of place, and its location near the center of town certainly helps. It is also one of ve temples in the city with an active crematorium, my most important early criterion for selecting a eld site. Ko Yakkha is a well-known temple with a liberal reputation. During an earlier visit I stumbled directly onto the funeral rites for the previous abbot, whose corpse was on display for a number

28 Getting Sited in Cambodia

of months prior to his cremation. At the time I was nervous about intruding, despite the fact that I was hustled in to witness the corpse by several monks who had just met me. I understood later that this was an honor, that I had been given something. A year later, the new abbot had been installed, and a number of other things had changed. The temple had previously a liated strongly with the Sam Rainsy Party (the main opposition party outside of the thenruling coalition), and to a lesser extent with the FUNCINPEC party (the royalist party, which then occupied a junior position in the coalition). Now, however, the Sam Rainsy Party supporters were largely silenced by the abbot, who was actively courting patronage and support from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. This had led to a turnover in certain leadership positions, especially in less public places, such as the head of the nj (a.w. donchee, female lay ascetics, often in white robes, who take up to ten Buddhist precepts, and may either regularly or occasionally sleep at the temple) group and a number of the c rya who worked in the crematorium area (Davis 2008). The structure of Cambodian temples is typically as follows. The abbot is the main decision maker, though major decisions must also be made through the agency of the wat committee. The abbot has an immediate sta , which at Wat Ko Yakkha consisted of seven monks. Two of these rank highest and have the titles of “Right-Hand Monk” and “LeftHand Monk.” The right-hand monk is commonly elected as abbot when the current abbot passes away or leaves the temple for another reason, in which case the left-hand monk will be elevated to the right-hand position. At Wat Ko Yakkha, there were ve additional monk ministers who served in advisory and secretarial functions. Each kuti (monastic dormitory) had a dormitory master (mekuti, literally “mother of the dormitory,” but always male) and a vice master (anukuti). These two had primary responsibility for maintaining discipline in the dormitories, a demanding role. Wat Ko Yakkha had over 200 ordained monks, more than 30 nj in full-time residence, around 10 c rya (depending on the season), and most pressingly, over 400 unordained students. The temple was frequented by foreign tourists and catered to the sizeable expatriate community by o ering basic meditation (vipassan ) practice twice a week. It was catholic in its acceptance and performance of rites considered by modernist

Getting Sited in Cambodia 29 or reformist monks as Brahmanist and had a largely middle- and upper-class congregation on its normal morality day (thngai s la) celebrations. Morality day celebrations are the most frequent of regularly scheduled public ritual performances involving monks; they take place every seven or eight days on a lunar cycle, and provide an opportunity for laity to renew their devotion to the Five Moral Precepts (pañcas la). I attended these regularly for over six months before moving on to the other temple. The Wat Ko Yakkha temple committee was primarily made up of c rya, under the strong leadership of a well-known Buddhist scholar who also taught at the Buddhist University managed by the Ministry of Cults and Religion. Powerful donors often o ered advice to the committee, but were not considered formally part of it. This Buddhist scholar and c rya, who lived on the temple grounds, was a strong representative of the Buddhist modernist tradition exempli ed by the Ven. Chuon Nath (Hansen 2007; Edwards 2007). As such, he had little tolerance of what he considered “superstition,” and when asked direct questions about the propriety of various rituals or beliefs that he considered superstitious, he was direct in condemning them. In spite of his disapproval, however, such rituals were accommodated throughout the temple. Overall, the temple seemed to be a largely modernist institution that was comfortable and tolerant of Cambodia’s so-called “syncretism,” to the extent that monks would only make such distinctions in relatively intense specialist discussions, and not worry about such niceties in everyday sermons. The grounds were relatively clean and well tended, and there was a temple high school (attended also by people from outside) that o ered basic instruction in the Pali language in addition to secular, public school subjects.

RITUAL PERSONNEL—MONKS, TEACHERS, AND FIRESTARTERS Monks are crucial to the successful completion of any funeral ritual; indeed, these are the only rituals at which a monk must be present. However, the monks’ role is directed almost entirely to the dead person, and their interaction with the family is largely limited to accepting the

F

1.1 An abbot assists in lighting the cremation re.

Getting Sited in Cambodia 31

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1.2

c rya at the funeral of a rural Kandal abbot.

invitation to chant and accepting gifts made on behalf of the transmigrating consciousness, or viññ a, of the deceased. The person whose engagement with the family is most intense and directive is the funerary c rya, a layperson who is supposed to have ordained as a monk previously and remembers important chants and ritual practices as a result. Small rural temples may have only one c rya, who must therefore o ciate at all events requiring one, despite the tendency of c rya to specialize in one of three major areas: marriages, funerals, and the regular Buddhist rituals of homage (namassak ra), precept-taking, etc. Large temples with crematoria, such as the two urban temples where I spent most of my time, typically employ several c rya whose work focuses on the crematorium and its activities. The funerary c rya manages the entire ritual process. Relationships with the c rya normally exist on the basis of the family’s relationship with a particular temple, though it is not uncommon for a family to

32 Getting Sited in Cambodia

invite an c rya with whom they are familiar to o ciate at a temple where he does not normally work. Funerary c rya are often referred to in texts as the c rya yog , though this title embarrassed many of the funerary c rya I spoke with, when I asked them about it. They would laugh a little, and then allow that since they dealt with the dead, people could apply this title to them. However, the title c rya yog implies an almost magical level of control over death, especially of the sort of pseudo-tantric practices examined in the writings of François Bizot, which are not part of the normal professional skills of the average funerary c rya (Bizot 1976, 1981, 1988). Those who do willingly accept the title of c rya yog tend to have closer ties to pur a-style (traditional or ancient practice) temples, often live and work in the countryside, and claim to engage in special meditative techniques and less-common rituals. One c rya yog I interviewed in Siem Reap province claimed to have discovered the site of a large Khmer Rouge-era mass grave through the practice of meditation, and was involved in the planning and construction of a st pa-shaped memorial to hold the remains. Besides monks and the c rya, proper funeral ritual requires four anak bhluk, or “burning men”—the corpse burners themselves, whose job is to handle the corpse and, most importantly from a symbolic point of view, to light the cremation re. The anak bhluk are the least respected among the funerary professionals, commonly portrayed in artistic representations as half-naked, hairy, and dark-skinned. In practice, there is often only one, and others join to make up the complement of four. Finally, large crematoria usually employ a carpenter to create the co ns purchased by the families. The temple’s capacity to employ a full-time co n-maker depends largely on the wealth of its clients, since co ns are only cremated with the body by the wealthy. More often, owing to the cost, co ns are used only for display, in which case the family rents one from the temple. Such co ns occasionally have false bottoms, and the body is lowered into the cremation chamber out of the bottom of the co n at the end of the preparatory ceremonies. The poorest of families who engage the services of a crematorium will be o ered the opportunity to buy a co n “case” (lat). This is a rude

Getting Sited in Cambodia 33

F 1.3 Buddhist manuscript describing a funeral. The bottom third of the image portrays two anak bhluk, or “burning men.”

construction of a few planks of bare, untreated wood. Just enough wood is used to keep the body in place. In rented co ns, the body is rst placed in a lat and then inside the co n. If a co n cannot be rented, the body is simply placed in a lat and then cremated directly. The crematorium at Wat Ko Yakkha was a middle-class a air, sta ed by three full-time c rya who lived in the temple, two part-time c rya who lived outside the temple, two anak bhluk (who also provided general low-status labor) who lived elsewhere, and a contracted carpenter. The eldest c rya, Sin, became a special friend to me. All were hired on the strength of their connections with the new abbot and had not worked at the temple for long. All the c rya were hired and brought to the temple from the country, because “rural c rya know how to do funerals properly, and the c rya in the city don’t usually do things right.” Working at a crematorium, even as an c rya, provides only a very small amount of money that may be sent back to the countryside. Wat Ko Yakkha averaged one to two cremations a day, and there were days

34 Getting Sited in Cambodia

when there were no funerals at all. When there was no ongoing ritual to attend to, these c rya were often di cult to nd, as they worked other “small” jobs nearby, as a parking lot attendant at a nearby NGO o ce, for example, or o ciating at a ritual elsewhere. When they were present, they were often consulting with families. After a few weeks, I was frequently invited by both c rya and families to sit with the group during the consultation. Each c rya had a di erent personality. One was a joker whose full head of black hair the others said came out of a bottle, though I suspect that it was natural and they were jealous. c rya Sin was a frail, kind, and very grave man whose demeanor seemed most successful in putting families at ease. He was compassionate but informal with them, and funny with the other c rya and myself. The courtyard around the crematorium at Wat Ko Yakkha is large enough to contain two separate, ongoing funeral rituals, though rarely was more than one funeral held at a time. The tower holding the oven was newly whitewashed when I arrived, and an attractive tree shaded one corner of the yard. Surrounding the courtyard on three sides were roofed areas under which monks, c rya, and mourners gathered during most of the proceedings that took place prior to the actual cremation. The walls of these areas are covered with murals depicting typical subjects, though one set of murals is of particular note: in two registers, it identi es positive and negative lives. In the positive lives, middleclass Khmer live in the city, feed their babies milk from bottles, work in o ces, and are cremated at Wat Ko Yakkha. In the negative register, Khmer of various class backgrounds live in the countryside, drink in clubs with apparently sexually solicitous partners of the opposite sex, breastfeed, and die diseased and unritualized. Typically, during funeral ceremonies at Wat Ko Yakkha, families of the deceased will hire cooks to prepare meals just outside the crematorium walls and a meal for attendees will be served, often just outside in the main courtyard of the temple itself.

WAT TRI¯ LOKA Like Wat Ko Yakkha, Wat Tr Loka is urban and modernist; it has an identical leadership structure and a busy crematorium on its western

Getting Sited in Cambodia 35 side. Despite these general similarities, it appears extremely di erent from Wat Ko Yakkha. Wat Tr Loka was led by an abbot who, at the time I rst met him in 2003, was already eighty-two and had a reputation for strictness and a rather unpleasant manner. In discussions with me, he was often impatient and dismissive of elements of typical Cambodian practice that he felt weren’t properly Buddhist, but he was also far funnier than I had been led to believe, and much less formal. His opinions on the role of the temple in society were signi cantly di erent from those of the abbot at Wat Ko Yakkha. While the latter felt that the temple played an important educational and cultural role in addition to its core religious one, the abbot at Wat Tr Loka was adamantly opposed to the “customary practices” (da niem da l p) of Khmer Buddhism that he felt were not truly Buddhist, but instead part of Brahmanism or animism, such as the nighttime ceremony of po p ya pi a (discussed in chapter 6). He also forbade the instruction of secular subjects to novice monks, including especially English, on the assumption that “those students who ordain just to learn English at other temples are damaging our Buddhism.” While Wat Ko Yakkha was wealthy and populous, Wat Tr Loka appeared poor and empty. Other than the few novices who could not a ord activities outside the temple walls, people rarely occupied the temple courtyard—unlike Ko Yakkha, where the courtyard was always full of a few monks and laypeople chatting—and the temple grounds were relatively dingy. The population that frequented Tr Loka was also obviously more impoverished than that of Ko Yakkha. This was undoubtedly due primarily to the location of the temples, as Tr Loka is near a cheap local market and away from wealthy neighborhoods. As a result of a mixture of conditions, including but not limited to the reduced scope of educational opportunities at the temple and the expense of ordaining a young man, Wat Tr Loka has considerably fewer monks as well, fewer than 300, inclusive of bhikkhu (those twenty years and older, fully ordained) and sama era (novices, those younger than twenty, holding only ten novitiate rules). But the di erences are also mirrored in the crematoria. In contrast to the attractive, well-maintained, and generally middleclass crematorium at Wat Ko Yakkha, the crematorium area at Wat Tr Loka appears dingy and poorly maintained. The ground is packed

36 Getting Sited in Cambodia

earth, and in the dry season the area is dusty; during the rainy season it becomes very muddy. Little attempt was made to keep the area clean. Two of the three employees of the Wat Tr Loka crematorium were c rya; only one of them had widely recognized quali cations. They spent most of their time engaged in other employments. Phan was the head of the crematorium and chief c rya, though he had never ordained as a monk. He operated a small refreshment stand on the premises of the temple, in addition to a small shop in which he sold urns to the families of the deceased. He was also in charge of the paperwork for the crematorium, which in the case of this temple included o cial correspondence with police and hospitals. He had earned a reputation for arrogant and insulting behavior toward mourning families, though I also saw him act with touching care on occasion. As I discuss in chapter 7, he was even accused of witchcraft. Along with the anak bhluk, he spent much of his time drunk. The other c rya had previously ordained as a monk. However, his wife passed away shortly before I arrived at the temple for the rst time, and he spent his time at the crematorium in a visible state of deep depression, reclining in a hammock, staring at the ceiling, and endlessly smoking cigarettes. The third employee was an anak bhluk, and the only one of the group who lived on the temple premises. He was a skilled carpenter and made money by running a furniture workshop on the site. Despite being as intoxicated as the head of the crematorium, the anak bhluk often consoled and assisted the families. Drawing on skills in traditional medicine that he claimed came from years of military service, he occasionally prescribed traditional remedies to visitors, including myself. I became quite fond of him, and remember him perpetually wearing nothing more than a kram (all-purpose cloth) wrapped around his ample waist, smoking harsh tobacco rolled into large green leaves. The crematorium employees at Wat Ko Yakkha were all in the client network of the new abbot, but the employees at Wat Tr Loka were often at odds with their abbot, and very little mutual respect or even interaction existed. The abbot at Tr Loka originally attempted quite strenuously to prevent me from talking with the crematorium sta , though this only made them more eager to talk with me. The sta at Tr Loka were all there on the basis of their participation in the client networks (khsae, string) emanating out of factions of the

Getting Sited in Cambodia 37 armed forces and police. All had been soldiers in Lon Nol’s Republican Army during the rst half of the 1970s. Although none ever give me straightforward details on how they acquired their positions, it became increasingly clear over time that while the crematorium at Wat Ko Yakkha was administratively under the control of the temple’s abbot, the crematorium at Wat Tr Loka was administratively controlled by the city police. This had caused ugly con icts with the abbot and temple committee in the past. By the time I arrived the separation was nearly complete, though some of the crematorium fees continued to go into the temple budgets. Police forces acted as the crematorium’s patrons. They o ered the crematorium a monopoly on the cremation of all unclaimed bodies from the streets or hospitals; it was the only crematorium to which the police brought bodies. Local hospitals sent all unclaimed bodies to Tr Loka’s crematorium, and also directed impoverished families of deceased patients to Tr Loka if asked for advice. This relationship was lucrative in several ways: while the individual fee received for a cremation, or even a full funeral, at Tr Loka was considerably less than for one performed at Ko Yakkha, Tr Loka did a considerably greater volume, often with three or even more separate families awaiting their turn in the mornings. Even in the afternoons, a period in which funerals are rarely held, the crematorium was busy, burning the bodies of unclaimed people with no ritual. This included hospital patients who had died of AIDS-related illnesses, which remains a great source of stigma. While there was no clear or universally enforced policy against holding funerals for AIDS patients at other crematoria in the city, Wat Tr Loka was the only temple to accept the bodies of such patients without dissembling or apparent embarrassment. NGOs like the Cambodian Association Helping the Miserable Corpses raised funds to pay reduced crematorium fees for these bodies. Finally, Sino-Khmer families from other parts of the country whose relatives had died in a city hospital would frequently stop at the crematorium to hold initial parts of the funeral, prior to transporting the body back to their birth village for burial. A doctor’s sign outside the crematorium advertised injections of formaldehyde to preserve the corpse for the long journey, and these families frequently provided the greatest income for the employees, even without paying for actual cremation.

38 Getting Sited in Cambodia

My earliest and most numerous interviews were with these funerary professionals, both in the city of Phnom Penh and in three geographically distant areas of the rural countryside, and my observations include over 150 funeral and memorial ceremonies over the course of three years.

OUTSIDE OF PHNOM PENH Although the rural eld sites I studied were crucial to my ability to place the urban temples in an appropriate context, space does not allow me to detail these sites fully. The bulk of my work and familiarity rests with the urban temples, though I visited each rural site on multiple occasions and developed relationships with people in each location. To mention them brie y along with their characteristics, one was in Anlong Veng, the last large redoubt of the Khmer Rouge, held nally under the control of Ta Mok, still a feared and generally popular gure among the residents of the area, who remember him as a terrifyingly erce leader who nevertheless managed to make society work smoothly. My original interest at Anlong Veng was primarily in funeral practices during the period of Khmer Rouge control (speci cally after 1979) and in the continued ritualization of the spirit of Pol Pot, whose cremated remains are buried just out of town on the escarpment overlooking the border with Thailand and are propitiated by ethnic Khmer on both sides of the border, who nd his spirit particularly skilled in identifying lucky lottery numbers. I also worked in two di erent locations in Kampong Cham, both famed for their pur a (“traditional,” an appellation which overlaps considerably with characteristics often termed heterodox or syncretistic) practice (Kobayashi 2005; Marston 2008). Both districts were highly diverse ethnically, with many more than average residents of selfidenti ed Sino-Khmer heritage, and in one case, also a nearly dominant ethnic Cham population. Finally, I did funeral-related research at temples in Siem Reap, Battambang, and Kampong Speu provinces. But it was in Phnom Penh that I became familiar with the conventions, ways of thinking, and imaginary institutions that composed the world of funeral specialists and those confronted with death.

Getting Sited in Cambodia 39

WHAT HE WANTS—NEAR DEATH AT THE CREMATORIUM The skinny fty-four-year-old man was weeping over his wife’s body in the yard of the crematorium. He had become convinced, when already at the crematorium, that his wife of decades was not truly dead but experiencing bhlyk (a.w. pleuk), which is what Khmer call the experience of coming back from the dead with a near-death experience report. This was not a temple at which I normally spent much time; on that cool early morning in December, I was riding my small motorcycle—a Korean Daelim with very little horsepower—over the narrow, cratered road that cut between the crematorium and a morning vegetable and sh market. The rich and contradictory smells of the market, sheltered by the shade of a tall tree, contrasted impressively with the stately shabbiness of the famous temple’s crematorium. As I passed by on my way to run an errand, I saw unusual activity in the yard and a crowd of onlookers drawn from the market clustered around the gates, observing. I stopped and asked nearby onlookers what was happening. A young woman in her street pajamas—pajamas are often worn in public by adult women in Cambodia these days, as Cambodian garment factories produce the vast majority of pajamas sold in stores to North American women—asked me if I knew what bhlyk was. “Yes,” I replied. “Well, his wife’s dead. But he thinks she’s bhlyk—that she’s going to come back.” “Oh. That’s sad.” A nearby moto taxi driver (a man with a moped who will take a passenger on the back for pay) casually inserted himself into our space and was listening to the conversation started in, speaking to the young woman: “No. You don’t know. She might really be bhlyk. He should make them wait.” The husband, a shoemaker on a tourist-dominated street in the neighborhood near the riverside, had found his wife dead in bed after a few weeks of illness. She’d had hypertension, the head of the

40 Getting Sited in Cambodia

crematorium told me later, and been unable to leave her bed for many weeks already. She then suddenly developed a fever and passed away. Her husband had prepared her funeral, but just before her cremation, had suddenly developed the impression that she was not truly dead and was going to return to life. The experience of bhlyk is not uncommon in Cambodia; but of course, neither are near-death experiences in North America, a supposedly modern nation in which nearly eight out of ten people believe that angels intercede in their personal lives. Most reporters of bhlyk are women. Cambodians identify three symptoms that di erentiate bhlyk from normal death. First, the limbs do not show sti ness or rigor mortis. Second, the blood continues to ow, though so quietly and slowly that even the most experienced doctors can miss it. Third, perhaps as a result of the continued blood ow, the body is not as cold as a true corpse. I’ve interviewed several people who reported bhlyk, and they describe a standard set of details: they were seized by large, darkskinned demons in the service of Lord Yama, king of the hells. These demons, called Yamap la, bring the person to stand in front of Yama, where he looks her name up in the book of the dead. He discovers that she has not yet reached her proper time and sends the person back to the surface, sometimes with the knowledge of her true and future time of death. But the pathetic scene that was unfolding in front of the randomly assorted crowd in the street between the temple and the early morning market was not going to be a story of bhlyk. His wife was, in fact, dead. After an additional twenty-six-hour stando , during which he never rose from his prone position on top of his wife’s body, the shoemaker was nally convinced that she would not return and left. The crowd and I had been rooting for him—no one wanted his wife to die, or for him to be humiliated—but few had con dence that she would return. What hopes he’d held that she was really experiencing this life-in-death were eventually run down by the action of time, which con rmed what all those around him could not: his wife was dead. His eldest son, a young man in his late teenage years, had come to retrieve his father and bring him back to the apartment they lived in, above his shop. In the end, nobody rejected that bhlyk was a reality, only that this had been bhlyk, an opinion eventually shared by the widower himself. The

Getting Sited in Cambodia 41 business manager of the crematorium—a stately Sino-Khmer woman of relative means—agreed with the crowd’s assessment, that the shoemaker had confused himself because he wanted her to be alive. The desires underlying his delusion are not hard to imagine. He wanted to know that the more than twenty years he spent with her would not be lost, burned with her body. He wanted to hear from her that it was not all in vain, to hear some inane sweet nothing or wellworn joke, or even a habitual irritating sound. He wanted her to stay with him. As a Buddhist, he supposedly believed that she would be reborn, and as people karmically related in this life, they would likely encounter each other again in the future. But most people are reasonably skeptical about the afterlife: “I don’t know myself ” they say, laughing. “I only know what they say, but I think they are maybe right.” This skepticism activates the imagination, provoking multiple possibilities, which gain or lose legitimacy and likelihood to the degree that they can lean upon other widespread and deeply accepted cultural tropes. It is not unreasonable to imagine that the shoemaker’s hope that his wife was not dead but experiencing bhlyk was replaced by the hope in her rebirth. Two imaginary options were in contest, and one gained legitimacy at the expense of the other, precisely through vanquishing it. The choice of reasonable explanation—that the woman was, in fact, genuinely dead, and that she would be therefore be reborn—was not individual but a matter of collective interpretation in a ritualized context, and combined deeply emotional motivations, long-settled Buddhist cosmologies, and localized “supernatural” beliefs that seem to have unsettled relationships to Buddhism. Perhaps as signi cantly, the Buddhist explanation of rebirth triumphs because the death over which Buddhism retains ultimate moral and technical authority is the real death that results in rebirth. But it can accomplish this triumph without denying the reality of bhlyk.

2. The Funeral

In this chapter, I describe the contemporary Cambodian funeral, paying attention to the notions of the self considered at death and to how the funeral transforms the dangerous and ambiguous corpse into a revered ancestor, who serves as an ongoing source of value deriving from the ongoing relationship with the dead.1 The funeral itself is dense with associations, including materials and subrituals that originate in or draw their dominant meanings from other ritual contexts.

IMAGINING THE SELF Death is the decomposition of the self. The rituals of death therefore provide an excellent location through which to examine the things of which society imagines the self to be composed. The di erent components of the self receive di erent types of attention, such as the cremation of the corpse, and merit making on behalf of the spirits of the dead. Death highlights the moral and physical ambiguity of the self. A corpse is both a continuing object of love and respect and a potential

The Funeral 43 source of harm and mischief. The most common term for a corpse, khmoc, covers both inanimate corpses and those animated by a malicious spirit. The corpse is a source of physical pollution, but also a social danger: the spirit of the deceased is imagined to be confused and potentially malevolent until the seventh day after death, at which point they realize they are no longer alive. People say that the spirit undergoes a sort of distortion at death, described to me like that of a person with senile dementia who acts inappropriately or may wish to cause harm to those around them. As a result, the rst week after death is a time of mourning, grief, and fear. Folktales tell of animate corpses chasing and attempting to kill the living. In some of these, the living person evades capture by eeing into the grounds of an empowered Buddhist temple; upon attempting to follow, the corpse is literally dispirited by the power of the temple. By the end of the funeral process, the corpse has been transformed into a hidh tu, relics, which removes the moral and physical ambiguity so that the relics can be retained as a source of ongoing interaction and ancestral blessings. In Cambodia, the self incorporates multiple spirits. One of them is the viññ , the Buddhist moral consciousness that takes rebirth in a new body. It is one of the ve Buddhist processes (pañcakkhanda) that together compose a person’s experience of reality. In interviews, Buddhist monks emphasized the vi a as that which receives the merit made on its behalf, and that which takes rebirth. The Cambodian conception of vi a is the same as in the rest of the region. When referring to a part of a living person, it means their moral consciousness. But when referring to a postmortem entity, it is sometimes interpreted strictly as the transmigratory consciousness called patisandhiviññ , and sometimes as a term for a vaguely conceived postmortem spirit. The singular vi a spirit coexists with nineteen animating spirits called braling (a.w. pralung). In her excellent study of the healing ritual called hov braling (a.w. hau pralung), Ashley Thompson notes that both the vi a and the braling depart in death: The departure or absence of both the vi a and the braling from the body is associated with loss of consciousness and death. However, in

44 The Funeral contrast to the generally stable vi a found in the Buddhist canon, the braling are adventurous and apt at any moment and in any number to voluntarily or involuntarily abandon the body. (Thompson 2005, 1)

But the distinction is both extremely marked and underdiscussed, resulting in a great deal of terminological indeterminacy. Like Thompson, I found that Buddhist monks and c rya would refuse to accept braling as a reality, and instead would straightforwardly “collapse braling into vi a” (Thompson 2005, 2). Also like her, I found that while denying the separate existence of braling, Buddhist leaders participated in rituals like the funeral that involved multiple steps that seemed precisely oriented to these spirits. Moreover, the same leaders denying the existence of braling often warned quite seriously against the real and immoral magic one could practice by working with them. One ex-monk warns of ritual associated with the braling: [Capturing another person’s braling] is very dangerous. . . . Buddhist Law does not allow it . . . [such practices are carried out only by] those people who make their living with spirits—they use the spirits to search out the braling. (Thompson 2005, 2, bracketed text original)

Cambodians describe the braling as the spirits of vitality and health: people greet a plump baby with happy cries that “She’s got braling ” Saying “I’ve lost braling” means that I feel weak or sick, while saying that someone has gained braling is a way of saying they have gained weight. At death the vi a takes rebirth, while the braling dissipate. Ang Choulean has convincingly derived the word braling from aivite cults of the lingga (a.w. linga), such that the word itself derives from two words meaning “sacred lingga.” The word “cover[s] connotations of strength and vigor which open onto the idea of dynamism and fecundity” (Ang Choulean 2004, 173). Its existence as a model for imagining the self probably predates the Therav dan vi a while accommodating and transforming the meaning of braling in the process. Thompson places the genesis of the contemporary understanding of braling in the Khmer Middle Period (roughly the fteenth through eighteenth centuries), after the decline of the Angkorean period and the rise of Therav da Buddhism (Thompson 2005, 2–3).

The Funeral 45 Braling are not only more numerous than vi a in the human person but also present in more types of places, and implicate a more general and amorphous understanding of vitality. Only six types of beings have vi a, or consciousness: devas (gods), asuras (antigods, or “titans”), humans, pretas (hungry ghosts); animals, and hell beings. In contrast, braling inhere not only in human and animal life but also plants, some rocks, images, termite mounds, and more. For this reason the belief in braling has been considered an animist one by Bizot and others, although Porée-Maspero suggests a more complicated history (Bizot 1981, 99; Porée-Maspero 1958, 22). Like little children, braling are easily controlled by their desires. In discussing the very similar Tai-language category of spirits called khwan, Nancy Eberhardt writes that what “children, capricious spirits, and reluctant souls have in common, then, is that they are all desiredriven creatures, that is, beings whose behavior is almost completely governed by their immediate wants” (Eberhardt 2006, 85). An association between braling as desirous and desired extends into sweet talk: children and lovers alike are often called by euphemisms that include the word braling. Braling underwrite health and desire, but are not content to remain in the places where they are of most use to human beings. A fright, a fall, or other upsetting or injurious events may sicken a person by allowing their braling to ee to the forests, deep waters, or high, inaccessible mountains, their preferred refuges (Porée-Maspero 1951; Thompson 1996, 2005; Ang Choulean 2004). One can prevent the ight of braling by leading an upright life, and cultivating a strong vi a can help to stabilize one’s energies and desires. Parents help stabilize their children’s braling by educating them in the correct use of moral reason and the control of their desires, until they are able to do so themselves. But children don’t always cooperate, and they are often called by terms that describe “active and troublesome spirits” (Eberhardt 2006, 79). Eberhardt notes that the “spirits, souls, and children together constitute a class of beings that functions as a kind of unacknowledged Other for the construction of an ideal self ” (Eberhardt 2006, 72). I see braling as playing precisely the same role in Khmer thought, and stress the relationship between the vi a and the braling.

46 The Funeral

Braling and vi are usually thought of not as opposed forces but as complementary ones. At the same time, vi possess a clear moral priority. It is through the exercise of moral consciousness that one’s energies can be made moral. The accomplishment of morality through such control over long periods of time leads to the increase of p ram , a sort of morally based e cacious power that accrues to particularly good people and increases over time. People can possess p ram (kings and monks especially), and so can locations such as temples.

CALLING THE SOULS If someone has lost braling or is in danger of losing it, the spirits may be recalled and bound into the patient’s body in the healing ritual of hov braling, or the “calling of the souls” (Thompson 1996, 2005; Ang Choulean 2004). This resembles the sukhwan rituals of Thailand and Laos, and involves the recitation of a poem that attempts to soothe the braling and attract them back from their hiding places, comparing their existence there negatively to their existence in the body. The hov braling ritual appears in most life-cycle ceremonies, including novitiate ordination, childbirth, and adoption. In Buddhist novitiate ordination, the child is transitioned from being a child of the spirits to being a child of the Buddha. The family informs local spirits that the child will ordain and is now o limits (Ketya, Sokhom, and Thirith 2005). The ordination of a novice is called the “ordination of a n ga,” furthering the understanding that the ceremony of ordination tames and moralizes the amoral spiritual power of the Brahmanical world of forests, deities, and powerful beings like n ga (magical, intelligent serpents associated with water and its control), which I will discuss in the next chapter. The adoption examples are particularly revealing in a culture like Cambodia, which has exible kinship arrangements and a high frequency of fosterage (Ledgerwood 1995; Parkin 1990; Ebihara 1968). In the Khmer version of the important Vessantara J taka, the evil brahmin Jujaka takes possession of the hero’s two children in the dangerous forests through this ritual (Thompson 2005, 7). The hov braling can be used for positive ends, but it is in essence a technique of managing spirits that can be employed in other contexts, including funerals.

The Funeral 47 The hov braling requires ve material objects. First are p y s , Brahmanist ritual objects made from banana tree trunks and leaves. In the funeral process, these appear during the initial preparation of the corpse and in the immediate postcremation ritualization of the remains. Second, there should be a stalk of black sugar cane, which Thompson suggests may be a symbolic remnant of a aivite ritual lingga, and a weaving shuttle, another phallic image—but along with references to valuable silks and cushions in the poem, it could associate woven cloth with civilization, or perhaps the ability to weave the spirits into the fabric itself (2005, 6). Third, there must be a “new rice pot” with fresh-cooked rice, called the p y braling, as a central attraction to recall the adventurous spirits. P y braling is made of sticky rice, usually cooked with coconut milk. It is an important component of other rituals for deceased spirits, such as the Bhju Pi a (a.w. Pchum Ben) ritual examined in chapter 6. Sometimes it is composed of nineteen individual balls of sticky rice cooked in coconut milk, and sometimes it is a big mass (Thompson 2005, 5; Knipe 1977). The p y braling are of course edible, and during the course of some ceremonies they are consumed by participants. As food, and cooked food in particular (as the name explicitly indicates), the p y braling suggest that the braling gure not only the possibility of a certain passage from the “wild” to the “civilized” state but also the possibilities of incorporating into oneself elements of the outside world (Thompson 2005, 5). The cooked p y braling is placed on the p y s . The third object is the babil (a.w. popil). A babil is a metal ovate shape said to resemble a leaf of a bodhi tree, used in Brahmanist rituals, including the hov braling. The babil is often decorated with an incised or raised picture of me dhara , or Mother Earth. An odd number of candles, often braided together, are attached to the narrow end of the babil and lit. Observers and participants alike often notice sexual symbolism, in which the babil resembles a womb or vulva and the candle and incense a penis. During the chanting, the babil is passed from hand to hand among those who surround the patient (Thompson 2005, 6). Fourth, during di erent parts of the ritual, one of the participants uses a full-size or miniature shing basket to capture the braling from around the periphery of the ritual area. Finally, there must be a raw

48 The Funeral

cotton string, a po , to tie around the patient’s wrists at the end of the ritual. A brief invocation to the Buddha opens the text, followed by many verses invoking multiple deities and categories of spirits, ranging from iva to forest spirits.2 After that, the text enumerates the dangers confronting the braling: wild bulls gore, owls hoot, oil ows from elephants’ temples, some ghosts stick out their tongues, show their fangs and roll their eyes, while others attempt with sweet words to lure the braling towards trees, under rocks or into frog or crab holes. The paths of the forest are thick with thorns or covered with burning sand: caves, oceans and bays harbor all sorts of ferocious creatures ready to attack the braling. Just as objects of beings from the “forest” are introduced into the domestic space in a controlled process that serves to reactualize the border between the wild and the civilized, space is made, in the text, for a minute description of the wild forest. In this manner, the savage world is literally incorporated into and by the text. (Thompson 2005, 24)

The text describes this “savage world” in solely negative and anxiety-producing images; there are no positive depictions of the forests, waters, or mountains. Instead, these are places where ghosts, large animals, and various other malevolent spirits rule supreme. These places are opposed by the civil world of rice agriculture, comforts such as “silk mattresses and wool carpets, . . . cushions and cloth pillows” (Thompson 2005, 99). The spirits that the braling encounter in the forest lure them away from civilization with words that are always seductive—sweet as the river bank. But they are the opposite of truth. “O precious braling, don’t wander o . O my dears, the distant forests and deep oceans are dangerous. O precious braling, my dears, come back Who are you listening to?—Whoever it is, you will follow them.” (Thompson 2005, 100)

After the braling have returned, they are bound into the patient’s body through the ritual of tying the wrist,

The Funeral 49 which consists in binding the wrist of the patient with unbleached cotton string soaked in holy water. . . . By tying the cotton string, it is also possible to form a kind of mystical bond: thus in the inauguration of a house, cotton bracelets are tied to the owners, and strings are attached to the column inhabited by the house’s guardian deity. (Porée-Maspero 1958, 23)

Tying string around someone’s wrist is also common before departing on a trip. In this case, it is thought to help bring the traveler back safely. The string, called a po , plays a crucial role in funerals, where it is used to bind and create boundaries around the corpse (Chuon Nath 1966, s.v.). As Porée-Maspero noted in the quotation above, the ritual tying of string creates a mystical bond, and spirits can be bound into bodies using strings, as well as into nonbeings, such as the central column or ridgepole of a house. A minor deity called the n ng pda , or the “mistress of the house,” is bound into the central post of a building during rituals inaugurating it as a home (Luco 2006, 102). A small shrine is placed at the base of this pillar facing the front door, and daily o erings are made there. Similarly, specially empowered Buddhist temples are thought to have used similar rites to forcibly generate a protective spirit called a br y, bound into the pedestal of the temple’s central Buddha image, discussed in chapter 4. The funeral, the calling of the souls, and the inauguration of a house, as well as the installation of a br y into an important building or Buddhist temple, all draw on the imagery of Buddhist monks binding and controlling non-Buddhist spirits. This is what Buddhist funerals must also accomplish.

TYPES OF FUNERALS Upon discovering my interest in funerals, Cambodians normally informed me that the Buddha permitted four types of funerals “since ancient times”: abandonment in the forest, abandonment in the water, cremation, and burial. Nineteenth-century King Ang Duong gures here. He presided over a sort of “Golden Age” of cultural revival and political

50 The Funeral

independence from the competing Vietnamese and Siamese regimes, prior to the French colonial era, and many of his reforms emphasized Indian-Cambodian cultural connections as a bulwark against Vietnamese in uence, after the still-remembered period of dominance in the early nineteenth century (Chandler 1973). It seems likely that much of “traditional” Cambodian culture today had its most recent signi cant institutionalization in this period. This certainly seems true of the celebration of Bhju Pi a. Ang Duong is supposed to have had his body dismembered and abandoned in the forest as a nal Buddhist act of generosity to animals, and the idea of the forest cemetery retains a great deal more power in the imagination than in practice, such that all cemeteries and ossuaries have an association with the wild forests, even if they are located in an urban setting. The “forest cemetery” appears to be similarly understood by Khmer and highlanders. Keating writes that for the highlander Kuy today, the “loss of their lands [from enclosure and logging] does not just limit access to resources, but also destroys spirit forests, burial forests and distinctive ways of living, speaking and being human, along with their children’s futures” (Keating 2013, 310). Note the centrality of the spirit cemetery in this list of irreducible components of shared identity. Cambodians today normally practice either cremation or burial, and ethnic preference strongly in uences the choice (Bizot 1981, 15). The majority of Khmer prefer cremation, while Chinese and Sino-Khmer prefer burial. I focus on cremations since my observation and study of Chinese funerals is comparatively limited and the texts to which I refer largely ignore burial as an option.3 There are two basic cremation options. The rst is the permanent crematorium located at a Buddhist temple, called a jh pana h na, “site for cremations,” or in a usage that collapses graveyards and crematoria, p” ch . Both Wat Ko Yakkha and Wat Tr Loka have one of these. These permanent crematoria have one or sometimes two ovens, traps to collect cremains and ash, and chimneys that require tall towers. Another option is to rent a temporary cremation pavilion called a “Meru,” after the name of the mountain at the center of Indic cosmology. The c ama cetiya, a funerary monument containing the historical Buddha’s rst two relics—his topknot and diadem, which he cut o on

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2.1 Rural crematorium in Kampong Cham.

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2.2 Open crematorium door at Wat Tr Loka.

52 The Funeral

renouncing his kingdom and becoming an ascetic—is on the peak of this mountain. This placement of a Buddhist funerary monument on a pre-Buddhist cosmological center is paradigmatic of the way Buddhism celebrates and deploys its power over death. Meru cremation pavilions are temporary constructions of odd numbers of levels, with seven and nine the most frequent. The co n is laid at the top of the dais of the pavilion and the body moved into the oven, usually hidden beneath the pavilion itself. A temporary chimney is connected to the oven for the cremation. Funeral services companies rent these to families, and often also provide reworks and food services to large funerals.4 One challenge with a Meru pavilion is moving the corpse from the top of the dais into the oven. Di erent approaches are taken. Sometimes the body is completely ritualized on the ground in the co n, after which the body is discreetly removed and placed in the oven and the empty co n is raised to the top of the dais. On other occasions, the body is ritualized in the co n on top of the dais, and a false bottom allows the body to be lowered out of the co n itself into the oven. Least frequently, the entire co n is lowered into the oven. Co ns themselves are often rented by the family solely for display until cremation, then returned to the temple for reuse. The poorest of families who engage the service of a crematorium may be o ered the opportunity to buy a co n “case” (lat), a rude construction of a few planks of bare, untreated wood, just enough to keep the body in place. In rented co ns, the body is rst placed in a lat and then inside the cofn. If the family cannot a ord to rent a co n, the body is simply placed in a lat and then cremated directly.

RITUAL PERSONNEL The same ritual personnel described earlier are involved, regardless of the type of cremation. I have relied primarily on my own interviews, questionnaires, and observations to describe the contemporary Cambodian funeral, and supplemented them with two widely available textual sources. I was unwilling to haunt hospital hallways in order to witness the rst stages of ritual mourning and grief at the moment of death; as a consequence, I was unable to personally observe the very early stages of

The Funeral 53 corpse preparation and have referred to interviews and written sources for details about this part of the process. Funerary c rya regularly recommended two books, which they used themselves in preparing funerals. The rst, most complete, and most widely read and used was written by L Sovira, retired c rya, high school teacher, and o cial at the Ministry of Education. This small book, titled Funeral Ceremonies in the 19th and 20th Centuries (L Sovira 2002), was prepared in 1994 and typed and printed in 2002 by the Ministry of Education. The second source, which includes the text of chants used by c rya (L Sovira’s book does not), is a handbook printed by the Buddhist Institute, titled Ancient Khmer Customs, written by Bhuen and Mam Chai. It does not focus on funerary ceremonies but has several relevant sections ( Bhuen and Mam Chai 2002; L Sovira 2002). Family and friends also attend as mourners, and one male family member—preferentially the youngest or oldest son of the deceased—is intended to temporarily ordain as a monk in order to make merit for the deceased. Sometimes this person will be the same as the chief mourner. In ethnic Chinese funerals in Cambodia, distinct components of the mourning wardrobe indicate the precise relationship to the deceased, but in Khmer funerals all mourners wear basically identical uniforms of black lower clothes with white upper ones.

THE FUNERAL Many of the traditional practices in a funeral, especially those dealing with the corpse, treat the corpse as a threat. I highlight two themes: real and gestural corpse bindings, and practices to confuse the corpse and prevent it from returning home. When a person dies, the family invites an c rya to the home. The c rya will visit with the family for a bit, then light a lamp, preferably an oil lamp, which is supposed to symbolize the vi a. If the person dies in a hospital or elsewhere, the body is usually returned to the household if the family can a ord it. The hospital may also prepare the body for the family, though this was not then a widespread service. Otherwise, an abbreviated version of the following process may take place, and the family may skip the funeral cortège altogether. This was the case, for instance, with the shoemaker who refused

54 The Funeral

F 2.3 A Sino-Khmer family from Kampong Cham ritualize and prepare the body at a Phnom Penh temple, for transport back to the province.

to believe his wife had passed, though he had already brought her body to the crematorium. The c rya and family wash the body and stop all the ori ces, called “doors of unskillfulness” in this context. They then dress the body, putting the shirt on backward, with the buttons facing the rear; this widespread but reportedly “Chinese” practice is intended to confuse the corpse and prevent it from returning home. The family may place a coin in the mouth, a ring on one of the ngers, and a cluster of owers, candles, incense sticks, betel shoots, and a betel knife in the corpse’s clasped hands. The metal objects survive cremation, and family members collect them afterward as objects of good fortune. Not all these items are always present, though the hands are always bound into a prayer position. Now the family, led by the c rya, must bind and wrap the body. They do this with the same powerful ritual string, called a po , used in healing ceremonies such as the calling of the braling.

The Funeral 55

Strings, Shrouds, and Flags The a po is a cotton string soaked in water that is tied around a person or space so as to contain spirits within that boundary (Terwiel 2012, 249). It can be used in healing rituals such as the calling of the souls, or in the consecration of a vih ra sanctuary, the central building in most contemporary temples.5 This consecration is imagined as the capture of a malicious spirit, bound into a temple building in order to protect it. This binding of spirits with string is part of the ritual repertoire of the Cambodian imagination. In the funeral, it binds the spirit into the corpse until cremation, at which point the remains are bound into an urn. The c rya binds the corpse with a po at the neck, the chest, and near the ankles, winding the string around the corpse three times at each spot before tying a knot. Usually the c rya then uses additional a po to connect these three bindings and to tie the corpse’s hands so that they grasp the incense, owers, and betel knife. During the winding itself, a short chant on the characteristics of impermanence may be recited. In some cases, the winding sheet is wrapped around the corpse prior to binding the body in these three places. According to L , the three knots symbolize the “three bonds that bind people to life— children, wife [sic], and treasure.” The c rya must also bring the babil, a key instrument in the hov braling ritual. Once lit, the babil is passed around the body clockwise while the c rya chants a short Buddhist chant called the “Jayanto” (“Victory”) instead of the text of the hov braling itself. Largely because of this substitution, it is not correct to call this ritual a hov braling, but neither should we deny the strong resemblance to that ritual. Once the body is wrapped up, bound, and placed in the co n, a set of objects is placed at the foot of the co n: an oil lamp (representing the presence of the deceased’s spirit, usually identi ed to me by monks as the vi a), a bunch of ripe bananas, a pair of betel nuts, one ripe coconut, materials for betel chewing, sesame, and raked grass (or rice stalks). The body may now be displayed until the cremation. Finally, a ve-cubit-long length of cloth is laid on top of the body or co n, where it will remain until just prior to cremation. This cloth, the pa suk la (a.w. bangsokol), is sometimes white, and occasionally dyed sa ron in anticipation of a monk using it as a robe.

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2.4 A monk’s corpse waits in the co n behind the framed photo.

Before this central aspect of the funeral, the c rya, or a member of the family, will usually post a white d ng kraboe, or “crocodile ag,” at the entrance to the deceased’s property, signifying that there has been a death. The origin story of the crocodile ag concerns the tragic death of a princess eaten by a crocodile. Her father captured the crocodile and cut it open in an attempt to save her, but was too late.

The Funeral 57 The king posted the crocodile’s skin near her funerary monument, and this was taken as a model for the cloth and paper crocodile ags. Two large crocodile ags are own outside of the vih ra on tall agpoles as a necessary part of a proper temple; smaller paper versions are associated with all other sorts of rituals, from Bhju Pi a to New Year’s. Laypeople place a great deal of importance on the d ng braling (a.w. tung pralung) or “spirit ag.” This is a white cloth about ve cubits long, like the pa suk la, and is often folded into a diamond shape and placed atop a short stick. The c rya inscribes the following on it in Pali: I pay homage to C l ma cetiya in the Tavati sa heaven Name and body [embodied existence] are impermanent Name and body are painful Name and body are without tman. At the bottom of the ag the c rya writes the name of the deceased and the date of death. Once thus inscribed, the ag should be placed at the head of the corpse until the parade begins. The c rya with whom I spoke about the function and importance of the dáng braling gave similar answers: most frequently, they described it as a “passport” for the dead person. Without a properly inscribed spirit ag, the spirit of the deceased would be doomed to wander as a ghost, or even end up in hell. Precisely who is supposed to keep the ag after the cremation is a matter of little agreement and much anxiety. After the funeral, the dáng braling is taken by either the o ciating c rya or the family. c rya usually claim they don’t care where the cloth goes after the ritual; for them, the important part is that the cloth was inscribed properly. Still, the ag remains associated with the spirit of the dead, and families that believe strongly in the power of magic will often take sometimes unusual or even unseemly pains to make certain that the ag comes into their possession after the ritual is completed. “If the c rya yog kept the ag, he could use it for black magic,” I was told on numerous occasions. Several told me that the speci c magic involved was a type of necromantic control, in which a magician who possessed their spirit ag could control the spirits of the dead and make them work on his behalf.

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2.5

c rya yog holding dang braling at a Meru pavilion cremation.

The Funeral 59 Pa suk la, the shroud placed on top of the co n, is also the name of the chant that requires the monks’ presence throughout the funeral. Monks perform this ritual chant in many settings that involve the spirits of the dead. The word also refers to the shroud, which the monk receivesto wear as a robe, the central gift to the sangha in the funeral. The pa suk la chant is the most important and repeated subritual in the funeral process, and deserves its own explication. I will discuss it in more detail in chapter 5, but introduce it brie y here. The word pa suk la in Khmer has two meanings. The rst is a physical object, a “dust-heap robe.” This is the meaning it possesses most frequently in Pali scripture. This robe is thought to be a shroud accepted by Buddhist monks as a monastic robe, a rare but signi cant practice in the Buddhist imagination (Schopen 2006, 2007; Davis 2012). Today, this is done as part of the funeral ritual, though the recipient monk rarely wears the robe in the pa suk la style. In the Pali canon, it is implied that all Buddhist monks were originally pa suk la wearers, until the Buddha suggested an alternative design to his attendant nanda, based on the layout of rice elds. As the rst of the thirteen rules of dhutangga asceticism, pa suk la wearing is associated with ascetic power, especially that of monks who dwell in the forests. The practice of wearing a pa suk la robe identi es the Buddhist monks as in some way already dead. The second and more dominant meaning of pa suk la for Cambodians refers to the actions and chanting performed by the funeral monks at numerous points. The exact text of the pa suk la chant is quite diverse, but is always understood to refer to the sattapakara a m tika, the mnemonic verses of contents of the seven books of the Abhidhamma, the last third of the Tipitaka, the canonical collection of Pali texts (Bizot 1981). The chant is not performed in a pedagogical or analytical way, but instead stands in for the Abhidhamma when the ritual e cacy of its perspective, which accounts for the construction and decomposition of phenomenal experience, is required. In one of my most widely used questionnaires, I asked people to tell me which part of the funeral they thought was most important. While one-third of respondents selected idiosyncratic answers, none of which was seconded by any other answer, two-thirds identi ed the

60 The Funeral

pa suk la—both the chanting and the gift of the shroud—as the single most important part of any funeral. In an ideal death, when an elderly person can tell they are soon going to die and some preparation is possible, performances of the pa suk la ceremony take place even before death. The family invites monks to chant the pa suk lam tika with the express intention to “help concentrate the mind of the dying person, to help with their rebirth,” a reference to the widespread belief that one’s state of mind at death greatly in uences the situation of rebirth. Monks prefer this educational justi cation; the performance of the chant thus stresses that we should remember that all life is impermanent, and is intended to help the mourners compose their minds so as not to go mad from grief and loss. This explanation predominates among modernist reformers. But the importance of the pa suk la m tika chant continues beyond these instructive and demonstrative applications. Laypeople and pur a-style Buddhists argue that the pa suk la ritual is also e ective in controlling and managing spirits. It is a ritual technique. Monks perform the pamsuk la chant at moments of physical change, transfer, and transformation. During the funeral process itself, monks chant the pa suk la immediately before, during, or after the moment of death; immediately prior to moving the corpse out of the house; during the funeral cortège; prior to and during the beginning of the cremation itself; and during the interment of the remains in a grave or urn. Before the chant, a length of a po string is passed out to members of the family, with each holding a section. One end of the string is placed in a bowl of blessed water. The pa suk la m tika is also chanted during life-extending or healing rituals and some initiation rituals, which deploy the images of death and rebirth in the service of renewed life (Bizot 1981). Taken together, performances of the pa suk la chant engage in the recuperation and organization of power in the service of the moral institutions of Buddhism and the social well-being of the patient, even when, as is usually the case, the patient is already dead. The pa suk la is a chant of death that promises new life. Most important, the pa suk la is a monastic ritual performance that controls potentially negative and impure aspects of the deceased during moments when the corpse itself experiences transition.

The Funeral 61 The dáng braling and the pa suk la cloths index death and power in di erent moral registers. The pa suk la emphasizes the moral fearlessness of the Buddhist monk in the face of the shroud of the dead, while the spirit ag emphasizes an ongoing spiritual existence of the dead, capable of instrumentalization. Once the body has been bound, wrapped, and placed in the co n, the family invites monks to the home to chant the rst instance of the pa suk la after death. Most families cannot a ord to invite a great number of monks, since each must be given a gift. The number must be odd—three, ve, seven, or nine (the preferred number). Even numbers are associated with death and bad luck, and even in a situation explicitly focused on death, this would be a serious error. After the monks have arrived, they and the c rya lead the family in a short series of chants.6 The c rya then leads the family in begging forgiveness of the deceased’s spirit, a particularly emotional moment for many, which can elicit dramatic outbursts that are usually handled quite compassionately. The family then makes an o ering of a gift to each monk present. The c rya extends a length of a po string so that everyone present holds part of it, with one length resting in a bowl of water blessed by the monks. Then the assembled monks chant the pa suk la and depart shortly after, leaving the family to wait with the corpse until cremation day.

Funeral Gifts, and the Gift of Accompaniment In your lifetime everything is kept; after your death, everything is squandered [Khmer proverb]. (Fressanges 2009, 107)

The time between death and cremation is marked by other traditional gifts given to the sangha. The rst is rarely practiced today, and often replaced simply by standard merit-making o erings to monks during the rst chanting of the pa suk la, as described above. However, the traditional distinction between these two gifts is worth discussing brie y. The rst gift announces the death and the need for a funeral to the sangha. According to L , this should traditionally be a set of gifts called variously phlung, plung, or panlung (I prefer panlung in the following), all

62 The Funeral

of which retain the basic meaning of abandonment, with an emphasis on abandonment performed in secret. L lists among the items gathered to constitute the panlung primarily utensils for the preparation of a meal: “plates, pots, spoons, knives, a hatchet [for splitting rewood], uncooked rice, dried sh, prahuk [a fermented sh paste], sh sauce, and soup lids . . . to o er to the dead person for them to take with them and use later” (L Sovira 2002, 12–13). The family would gather these into a single package and bring them to the temple during the night. No announcement would be made, and no contact with any monk would be required. Instead, the panlung bundle would be placed in front of either the vih ra (eating hall), or the kuti (monastic dwelling) of the abbot, along with two groups of incense sticks, placed on either side. The abbot is supposed to notice the panlung’s abandonment, perhaps by virtue, L says, of the burning sticks of incense. He puts on his full robe and stands solemnly over the panlung in brief meditation. He then should pick up the panlung and return to his kuti. Instead of this practice, most Khmer families today substitute a standard gift of food or store-bought gift baskets for monks, and visit the temples during the day to arrange the details of the funeral. Most seem to arrange the date in coordination with the abbot or temple committee of the temple at which the cremation will take place, but others insist that the date must be determined by a Vedic astrologer (hor ), according to the Triple Veda.7 Regardless, the preference is to cremate as quickly as possible, allowing time for relatives to gather and assemble the requisite materials. The body must be cremated before the end of a week, and it is preferable to have the cremation and the seven-day ceremony on di erent days. In contrast to this normal state of a airs, with high-status monks or members of the royal family, the body will be displayed for much longer periods of time, and occasionally no endpoint will be determined in advance. It is as if there is a sort of “positive contagion” that makes the retention of the corpse preferable to its destruction and transformation into relics. For example, the body of ex-King Norodom Sihanouk, who died in October 2012, was cremated the following February. The body of Ven. Sam Bunthoeun, the head monk of the large meditation temple just north of Phnom Oudong, assassinated in early 2003, was preserved

The Funeral 63 in a converted commercial refrigerator to allow disciples and tourists to visit. In interviews I conducted at the temple, laypeople and monks concerned with the upkeep and maintenance of the building housing the body told me they suspected it would be cremated after the temple nished construction and the rst abbot was chosen. There is a broad correlation between the length of time the corpse is displayed and the prestige of the deceased. Between death and the day of the cremation—two to three nights is average—friends and relatives will ka ar, or accompany, the family of the deceased. They bring food to the house and sit with the family, making small talk and supporting the bereaved however they can. Some stay overnight. When asked why supporters need to ka ar the bereaved, the response was always to “make it easier,” and especially “so that they aren’t afraid.” Men often play cards through the night. Although gambling is a constant in such games, as is drinking, I rarely saw the sort of constructed connections to the funeral that Alan Klima discusses in his work (Klima 2002). Instead, the gaming was explained to me as merely a technique to keep people awake. It also preserves gender segregation during the late nights, an important component of keeping up appearances in village life. Khmer houses are usually built on stilts, and such card games happen below or just outside the house proper. The men are therefore largely visible and accounted for to any outside observer. During this week, the family may also hire a specialist in the tremulous funerary chanting known as sm tra (a.w. smout) to chant over a loudspeaker. Cassette tapes of sm tra performances are also often employed (Walker 2010). The panlung, the rst gift of abandoned food-preparation materials, was formerly deposited in a temple. In contrast, the second gift is given directly to the participating monks on the cremation day. This is most commonly called after one part of the package—spang, a monk’s lower robe. While the panlung consists of kitchen and food supplies, intended for the deceased in the next world (and in spite of most monks’ insistence that the dead cannot use these), the spang o ered to the monks on the day of cremation are typical of gifts given to monks generally. Most identify this as a gift of the pacc ya-puen, or the “four requisites for monks,” identi ed as robes, alms-food, dwelling,

64 The Funeral

and medicine—though the actual gift package obviously cannot include a dwelling. When asked about the di erences between these two gifts, monks and c rya often attributed the panlung gift to a pre-Buddhist belief that the dead could take things with them into the next world, and a concomitant desire on the part of survivors to ensure that the deceased is provided for in that world. Often, they then dismissed this belief as mere superstition, insisting that the only thing that travels into the next world is kamma (karma) and its e ects. They also deemphasized the di erence between the spang gift and the panlung gift, pointing out that both are o ered to monks, and that act is what assists the dead, through making merit that can then be o ered to the spirit. It may also be signi cant that the rst gift focuses on the production of food and the second gift focuses on the production of monks, possibly implying a transformation accomplished through the ritual itself.

Cremation Day On cremation day the family usually leaves the home with the corpse bound up in a po string and returns with an urn bound up in the same, full of cremated remains. Ambivalent dispositions and practices directed toward the corpse are supposed to be fully transformed into reverent attitudes and practices after cremation. Most cremations take place in the morning, though many claim that it used to be far more usual to cremate in the late afternoon; the cremations I’ve attended in the afternoon or evening were of very highstatus monks or royalty. The general correlation between high status and delayed cremation date extends to that of high status and delayed cremation time. Although some rural cremations may take place quite near the home, in the majority of cases the rst task of the day is to get the corpse to the cremation site. Fear of the corpse is especially prominent in the normative ritual practices of the funeral cortège.

The Funeral Cortege The preparations for the funeral parade involve collecting various items: the sp v bhl ng, l jha, and white mourning clothes for the

The Funeral 65 closest family members. Sp v bhl ng is a low-quality roof-thatching plant woven into a lengthy rope. This rope is tied into a circle around the head of the chief mourner, who walks ahead of the cart on which the co n is placed. L jha is a mixture of pu ed rice, cotton, and, in previous times, coins of small denominations. These are now usually replaced with 100-riel notes (worth approximately USD 0.02 in 2014), rolled up and bound with rubber bands. People I asked about this always immediately told me that the pu ed rice was a metaphor for bone, and had no explanation for the cotton or money. Female family members, who precede the corpse, and almost all other mourners throw this mixture along the parade route. Subsequent mourners, of course, do not collect the money as they process down the route, but others do. Thus, mourners perform a sort of ascetic attention to the funeral ritual. The chief mourner, typically a male relative of the deceased, will have his head shaved prior to the parade. According to L , the heads of all the descendant mourners should be shaved, inclusive of the women, but I have never seen this. Instead it is far more common for only the chief male mourner to shave his head, primarily in preparation for his “ordination facing the re” (puas mukh bhloeng), to be discussed later. All the mourners should be dressed in white clothing, often with small black patches of cloth pinned to their shirts as a symbol of their mourning status. The French-in uenced middle class occasionally substitute black armbands for the smaller black patches of cloth. Once everyone has assembled, the body must be removed from the home. Today this is usually done through the main entrance, though in houses with back entrances, those are sometimes used. According to L and others, the corpse should be removed through a hole made in the south wall rather than through the main entrance, south being the direction of Yama, lord of the hells and administrator of the dead. Two reasons are commonly given for this practice, which was undoubtedly easier to perform when most house walls were thatch. First, the head of the staircase in the front is an especially sacred part of the house, and carrying a corpse over this threshold could o end the spirit of the stair (Tainturier 2006). Second, and more often in my interviews, is the consistently expressed need to confuse the corpse and prevent its wandering return to its home. In both the movement out of the house and the

66 The Funeral

F

2.6

c rya demonstrating how to tie the sp v bhl ng around the head.

parade itself, the corpse is to be carried feet rst, under a similar logic: if the corpse went head rst, it would be able to recognize the roads taken and nd its way back home. Before beginning the parade, the c rya should do two things. First, he must draw a line in the dirt across the road. Some c rya use chalk on paved streets. This serves as a starting line of sorts, but a close look at the variants con rms a point made by L : it is often not merely a single line but an x shape, referred to in Khmer as khvaing joeung k’aik— “crossed crows’ legs,” a sign against malevolent spirits and disease often drawn on doors, and part of the logic of attempting to prevent the return of the deceased. People also mark their doors or windows with it to ward o malign in uences. Second, the c rya should boil water in a new rice pot, then break the pot in the street. The pot here resembles the p tra of Hindu practices, in which the bowl serves as the vessel of the newly dead spirit until the funeral itself begins. The practice of hanging these bowls in trees on temple grounds continues in Cambodia, but these bowls seem never to

The Funeral 67 be broken, only hung instead. Nevertheless, the observable logic seems parallel: once the pot is broken, the spirit is free to be moved along with the corpse and the parade has begun. In fact, however, this moment is frequently skipped. The logic seems con rmed by the presence of a new rice pot hanging from the post used for the dáng braling ag. Although it is rare in urban funerals, some people still cook new rice in this pot in the cremation re itself (Thompson 2005, 10). The parade proceeds in the following order. The c rya yog leads the way, carrying the dáng braling on a stick, or occasionally wearing it folded over his left shoulder. The Abhidhamma cart follows immediately after the c rya. In rural areas it may be an ox or horse-cart, or a litter carried by young men on hoist poles. The Abhidhamma cart carries the lamp lit at the time of death, along with ve sticks of incense. This cart is often excluded in the funerals of less-wealthy individuals. If the family has su cient means, they may also invite a monk to sit on the cart and perform meditation on behalf of the spirit of the deceased. In such a case, the meditating monk is referred to by the title of Loka Bra Abhidharma, “Sacred Abhidhamma Monk,” reinforcing the connection between the Abhidhamma texts, meditation on the constituent elements of regular existence (the specialty of Abhidhamma), and death. After the Abhidharma cart, the chief mourner walks with one end of the sp v bhl ng rope tied around his head and the other tied to the co n containing the corpse. During the funeral parade the chief mourner should only look straight ahead, never backward. L remarks that he may also be surrounded by eight men with bows drawn and pointed in all eight directions. I have never seen this, and spoke to no one who claimed to have seen this. However, the import of these two aspects of the chief mourner during the parade can be interpreted with relative ease: he is more deeply connected to the state of the deceased and vulnerable to its malevolent in uence. Not turning the head replicates many of the other aspects of funeral practice intended to confuse the ghost of the deceased and prevent it from being able to return to its home, while the bowmen cluster around the mourner for his protection. Behind the chief mourner but before the cart carrying the corpse itself, young women scatter the l jha mixture of pu ed rice, pu s of

68 The Funeral

cotton, and rolled bills of small-value currency. The young women are normally dressed in white and also wear white head coverings, which are sometimes peaked hoods and other times merely white scarves. People following after the main set of mourners will collect the money, leaving the pu ed rice and cotton on the roadside. These are followed by the co n itself. In previous eras, and occasionally among poor families in rural areas, mourners may carry the co n on hoist poles. I never witnessed this myself, and surmise that with increasing use and prestige of motor vehicles, this practice lost popularity some time ago. In the countryside, mourners may still use carts drawn by horses or water bu alo, but automobiles are far and away the most widely used form of conveyance for the corpse. The rapid switch to motor vehicles undoubtedly has a great deal to do with the increasing weight not only of the co n but also of the monks who are supposed to sit on the same cart, surrounding the co n. Eight monks are occasionally seen, especially in funerals of the wealthy and prestigious, but four is much more common, and in either case, these monks are referred to as the m tika puan—four m tik , a reference to the pa suk la m tik discussed earlier. Close relatives not involved in the previously described parts of the funeral may walk alongside the co n cart, and the rest, especially the elderly and children, will follow immediately behind. On arriving at the cremation site, the co n is unloaded and readied for cremation. Anak bhluk usually remove the co n lid to allow the mourners to view the body and ask forgiveness from the deceased one last time. The c rya, carrying the dáng braling, then leads the family around the crematorium three times in a counterclockwise direction. After the third revolution, the c rya concludes his pre-cremation duties and takes the dáng braling from its place on the stick where it was mounted. He folds it and, as previously discussed, usually gives it to the family. At this point, the monks accept the pa suk la shroud as the nal gift of the deceased. The monks will chant pa suk la again at this point, a performance is called ch k pa suk la. According to Venerable Chuon Nath, any recitation of the pa suk la chant while a monk holds either a pa suk la shroud or an a po string bound around bone relics is called ch k (Chuon Nath 1966, s.v.).

F

2.7 Family members pay nal respects.

Lighting the Corpse After the ch k pa suk la has been chanted and the pa suk la shroud received, the cremation res will be lit. The person who lights the cremation res is a matter of some debate and diversity in actual practice. In L , the four burning men, or anak bhluk, are supposed to stand around the corpse and cry prior to the cremation; I never saw this in practice, and in fact found that in most cases, the anak bhluk were largely restricted to very practical, nonmourning functions. The title anak bhluk means a person who starts a re, speci cally the re of cremation (Chuon Nath 1966, s.v.; Headley 1977, s.v.). The initial ame is often produced by the chief mourner, or the highest-ranking monk present (the loka abhidhamma, the abbot of the monastery if he is present, or a visiting dignitary), and the anak bhluk then carry the ame to the oven, carefully shielding it from the wind, in order to begin the cremation.

70 The Funeral

Especially for high-status funerals, and in funerals for people identied as ethnically Chinese or Sino-Khmer, a complex reworks display may be rigged around the cremation site and connected to the oven. When lit, the reworks explode all around the crematorium itself, and especially notable are the works that moan loudly, making a noise that is supposed to both imitate the sound of malevolent ghosts and drive them away. Fireworks displays are often volatile, and Cambodian funerals are no exception: sparks can drive family members and attendees away from the immediate cremation site, and occasionally start small res. None of this seems to be considered a fault, however, and the excitement is clearly part of the enjoyment for many in attendance. Regardless, in both cases, part of the e ect is to insulate the main funeral celebrants from the act of actually setting the corpse on re, either by obscuring the source of the spark or by ensuring that a lowstatus person performs the act. In high-status funerals at sunset, hot-air balloons constructed of strong paper may be set aloft. They y away, occasionally catching re and disintegrating, a dramatic image of a spirit departing to the next world. In these cases, the anak bhluk have no practical role in lighting the cremation re, and the wick of the reworks display is lit directly by the chief mourner, a monk, the abbot, or an invited dignitary. L Sovira writes that Nowadays, people often like to have “big” people light the cremation re. In ancient times there was a prohibition against monks lighting the re, because the vin ya prohibits monks from starting res for cooking. But nowadays they “dare” to start the re, on the pretext that the Buddha himself started his own father’s funeral pyre. (L Sovira 2002, 44–45)

Older monks and c rya often argue over this claim that the Buddha lit his own father’s funeral re; many self-identi ed modernists claim that monks should not light res at all. This seems to contradict the actual Vinaya rule, which makes exceptions for illumination and cooking, though it does not directly mention cremation res.8 Recently this rule has been used as a justi cation to discourage monks from

The Funeral 71 smoking cigarettes. Connections between cooking food and cremating a corpse may be interesting, but note the apparent dilemma: monks should not light cooking or cremation res, but sons should light their fathers’ cremation res. Some therefore emphasize the Buddha’s role as son in this narrative moment, to justify the apparent lapse in monkish morality, while others disclaim the veracity of the account entirely. The corpse takes hours to burn su ciently. During this period, the family gathers in a nearby s l , or underneath the awnings that surround the crematorium, and listens to a sermon from an invited monk, inevitably on the topic of impermanence. After the sermon, the mourners converse quietly. In wealthy funerals, soft drinks and snacks are sometimes served during this period. If the new rice pot is to actually cook the rice in the cremation re, one of the ritual personnel will add it after the re has reduced to a smolder. The bulk of the attendees keep each other company while the remains of their family member and friend burns, but one young man— usually the eldest son, but occasionally the youngest son, or in cases when there are no sons, another young male relative—takes temporary monastic ordination as the anak puas mukh bhloeng, the “person ordaining facing the re.”

Ordination Facing the Fire Ordination facing the re is a temporary monastic ordination. Sometimes it is performed by the chief mourner; other times, a younger male relative will accept this duty. The purpose is to generate additional merit that may be transferred to the deceased. While most ordinations in Cambodia are temporary, and are reported to be of decreasing length (one rainy season seems most common), ordinations facing the re tend to be especially short, often lasting from only a single night to a week. Ordination facing the re (puas mukh bhloeng) is so called in reference to the cremation re. After it is lit, monks lead the ordinand through the ordination ceremony as a novice (sama era). Although this occasionally takes place immediately in front of the cremation re, or in front of the co n just before the cremation, these locations are criticized by modernist monks, who insist that any ordination that takes place outside the con nes of a vih ra sancti ed by the ritual of pa cu s ma

72 The Funeral

F 2.8 Young Anak Buos Mukh Bhloeng (ordinand facing the re), assisted by an c rya.

is no ordination at all, and that consequently no merit could be produced. Unreformed (pur a)-style monks seem less concerned about this, though they are no less insistent that normal ordinations must be within the con nes of a properly consecrated vih ra. After being led through the Pali chants by the ordaining monk, the novice exchanges his mourning clothes for a Buddhist monk’s robes, and emerges an ordained monk. At this point, he sits alone in front of the crematorium, or Mount Meru, and meditates on the death of his relative.

Prai R pa: Changing the Body Reformist monks occasionally exclude the Prai R pa (a.w. pre rup) ceremony, though many have no problem with it. It takes place after the corpse has been reduced to bones and ash, with no esh remaining. The bones have undergone signi cant disintegration; in all the cremations I witnessed, I never saw a bone fragment too large to be entirely enclosed

The Funeral 73 by a normal adult hand. The cremated remains are taken out of the site of cremation on a grate and carried o to the side of the crematorium. Sculpting the remains into a human shape is at the heart of the Prai R pa ceremony. The c rya does this three times, and questions the family each time as to the appropriateness of the shape. This vague description encompasses a wide range of basic distinctions, but the overall point remains the same: the ceremony assists the deceased in achieving rebirth as a person of health, wealth, status, and happiness, with an emphasis on health and wealth. There are variations on this: in some versions, the head of the sculpted shape must be to the west the rst two times and the east the last time, because west indicates the direction of death and east the direction of birth; in other versions, the direction doesn’t change. In all cases the c rya is supposed to ask the family if the gure resembles the deceased. In some versions, the answer all three times is yes. In others, the gure gradually begins to resemble the deceased more and more until the third version, which is acceptably similar. Most often, the rst two versions do not resemble the deceased, but the nal one does. The c rya usually places several objects in the cremated remains as guideposts to identify the various parts of the person so shaped. Two large seedpods called anggañ are used to represent the kneecaps of the deceased. The word anggañ means kneecap, and the pods are also used in a New Year’s game called “kneecapping” (lpaing anggañ), in which the loser is hit in the kneecaps with the pods. Three golden rings supplied by the family indicate the eyes and the heart. The c rya places Brahmanist ritual objects made from small banana tree parts and occasionally bamboo, called p y s , at the four corners of the remains along with sticks of incense. Ampo string is tied to the ring representing the heart. As before, with one end in a small bowl of water, this string is passed by the c rya to assembled family members so that each person holds a section of the string in a tight circle around the remains. The c rya himself will chant the pa suk la, or occasionally a monk will be invited to do this. If the c rya does not know the entire pa suk la chant, another chant may be substituted. At the end of the chanting, the string is wound up again by the c rya. The c rya concludes by chanting three times in a combination of Pali and Khmer, “ehi yanta aha yanto añ hau catubh ta,” to prevent

74 The Funeral

the catubh ta—the four base elements of material existence—from haunting the c rya or the deceased’s descendants. According to L , the c rya and the anak bhluk then scatter rice, corn, and beans among the remains, in order to help the vi a take rebirth in a place where there is plenty of this food. Although the agricultural resonances support my general argument regarding the connection between funeral ritual and agriculturally metaphorized fertility and human life, I never saw this performed. The “corpse” (sapa, khmoc) has been at this point transformed into a hidh tu, or “bone relics,” and descendants no longer merely make merit for their deceased relative but also pray to (puang suang) them for gifts of health, wealth, and happiness. The act of cremation completes the transformation of the potentially malevolent and needy spirit of the deceased into a bene cial ancestor gure who can serve as an ongoing source of blessings.

Packing up the Remains After the Prai R pa ritual concludes, descendants are invited to search through the remains for the solid parts that are left after cremation—bone fragments, the ring, coins, the betel knife, etc. In practice, children are encouraged to search the remains rst, engaging in a bit of competition to see who can nd the ring or bone fragments, especially the teeth, which are then often made into amulets hung around the child’s neck for protection. Once these items are located, the c rya and older relatives will nish picking out the rest of the larger bone fragments, separating them from the bulk of the ashes. These selected remains are then washed, rst with coconut water, which is conceived of as pure by de nition, as the shell preserves the purity of the water. More often these days, canned soda water is used, since its e ervescence cleans the bones more quickly and dramatically. The larger fragments of bone, once fully cleaned of ash and dried, may then be covered with gold leaf. L writes that Those who have a lot of faith (saddh ) and a lot of wealth buy gold leaf and then cover each and every bone with it. Those who have only a

The Funeral 75 little wealth buy just enough to cover a few bones symbolically. This is done to show respect to the departed vi a and to have them take birth in a wealthy situation. (L Sovira 2002, 52–53)

I rarely saw families apply gold leaf on the date of cremation, and on the rare occasions when this happened, only a few bones were covered. If the family ever applies gold to the bones, it is more common to do so in later years, on an anniversary of the death. When the bone fragments have been prepared appropriately and placed in the base of the urn, the c rya leads the family in o ering praise and respect to the relics (thv y pangga a hidh tu). The urns, called ko ha, are vase-shaped, with a lid that often has a single central peak, resembling a traditional crown. Urns may be made from a variety of materials, including marble, silver, gold, tin, and wood, though the latter is apparently used as rarely these days as gold. Often a share of the ashes is added to the urn as well, but most of these are gathered up separately, with instructions to the family to dispose of them in a body of moving water. Family members may nd it hard to dispense with these humble remains, however. Despite receiving this instruction, a reporter for a local newspaper whom I met early in my eldwork carried a small pouch of his father’s ashes in his hip pack. He wasn’t ready to toss them in the water just yet, he said, despite it having been more than three years since his father’s death. The c rya chants the Jayanto chant again, then ties the urn shut with the same a po string that has played such a constant role in the process thus far. The urn is not merely tied shut symbolically; it would almost be more appropriate to say that the c rya weaves the urn shut with the string, so it ends up looking almost like it was captured in a shing net. In some cases this will be followed by wrapping an additional layer of cloth around the urn, sometimes using the dáng braling itself; the cloth is wrapped around the urn and twisted so that a lengthy peak appears at the top. Additionally, paper on which the name of the deceased is written may be wrapped around the urn, and occasionally a photograph is included.

76 The Funeral

F 2.9 Wrapped ko ha (urns) with pictures of the deceased, at a temple in rural Kampong Thom.

When the mourners leave the grounds with the urn, they sometimes perfunctorily wash their hands, faces, and hair with perfumed water placed in buckets near the gates to the crematorium. Until the sevenday ceremony, the family will usually keep the urn with the deceased’s remains in the house, and others will continue to accompany them, though less urgently than before. After the seven-day ceremony, the family will usually relinquish the urn into the care of a local temple, or if they have the means, install it in a cetiya. Cetiya are funerary monuments with the same shape as a st pa that holds relics of the Buddha. Cambodian cetiya resemble small towers or stylized mountains, with a central spire and a space for a Buddha image about two-thirds of the way to the top. Multiple urns may be placed inside the cetiya underneath the Buddha image, and most temples have a “forest” of cetiya as a sort of border, just inside the exterior walls.

The Funeral 77

SEVEN-DAY, ONE-HUNDRED-DAY, AND YEARLY CEREMONIES The seven- and one-hundred-day ceremonies, as well as the one- and three-year ceremonies, are basically identical, though the seven-day is performed with near universality. Performance of the other ceremonies depends on the wealth of the family and is not thought to have a direct connection with the state of the deceased, beyond the quite common and normal fact of merit-making on their behalf. This emphasis on the seven-day ceremony correlates with the notion that the spirit of the deceased realizes it has died only on the seventh day after death. These ceremonies are relatively private and often take place in the home of the family of the deceased. The c rya usually arranges the seven-day ceremony as the end of his intensive engagement with this funeral. Communal visiting takes up most of the time, but the ritual focuses attention on the remains, and on food o erings to monks invited for the occasion. The monks chant pa suk a again, most frequently employing the collectively held a po string with one end held in water. The gifts make merit in a standard manner and transfer it to the deceased. Especially on later anniversary dates, an c rya may rebind the urn with a po . The subsequent ceremonies are often quite similar, though one- and three-year ceremonies may take place on temple grounds, since the urn is usually moved there for more permanent storage after the seven-day ceremony. The ceremonies are named after a speci c amount of time following death, and while the seven-day and yearly anniversaries tend to be strictly on those dates, the performance of the one-hundred-day ceremony is often foreshortened. This has the e ect of lifting mourning taboos early, but the practice is seasonal, and quite frequently an attempt to hold the ceremony prior to either Chinese New Year (late January/early February) or Khmer New Year (mid-April), and thus to enter the new year with the funeral completed. Many people associate the practice of foreshortening the ceremony for a new year celebration with the Chinese. In his book on the funeral ritual, L Sovira argues against such exibility, saying, “Truly, the one hundred-day ceremony has been in all places and villages for a very long time. But the one

78 The Funeral

hundred-day ceremony of the Khmer is not less nor more than one hundred days, but performed precisely on the one hundredth day” (L Sovira 2002, 55). The one-hundred-day ceremony and subsequent anniversary ceremonies may take place in the home or on the temple grounds, if the family has a cetiya there. In urban areas, the family frequently erects a tent in the street in front of a home or storefront. If the urn is in a cetiya, the cetiya should be swept clean and washed. Many families also festoon the cetiya with small paper or cloth ags hung from strings, which are left up after the date. This attention to cetiya sites seems to be even more frequent during the Bjhu Pi a celebration.

FAR FROM FINAL THOUGHTS Every funeral is di erent, and I have had to present an abstracted reality in the above, though I have attempted to outline the ways family wealth, especially, di erentiates the performance of funerals. Gendered aspects of the funeral could be unpacked: novitiate ordinations, including those done at cremations, are widely understood to make merit primarily for one’s mother, for instance. But in general, the funeral is largely unmarked for gender. In funerals, mourners, monks, and other ritual personnel transform corpses into ancestral relics and convert ambiguous and fearful spirits into benevolent ancestors. They thus transform a real but di cult ambiguity into a site of positive morality. Cambodian models of the self include two classes of spirits, Brahmanist braling and Buddhist vi a. The braling’s natural homes are in the wild places such as forests, mountains, and deep waters. They are desirous, often immature, and prone to running back to the wild places of the world. These models of the self are performed in rituals that have a pervasive model of managing these spirits: collecting them, binding them into place, and then engaging in an ongoing relationship with them in that location. This model is found in a wide array of rituals, including the calling of the souls (hov braling). The funeral uses woven cloths and the cotton string a po to engage with the corpse or its remains. Winding sheets wrap the body, the pa suk la shroud seems to function as a nal gift both from and

The Funeral 79 of the deceased to the sangha, the spirit ag serves as the passport of the deceased or a means of necromantic control, and a po binds and rebinds the body at moments when the pa suk la chant is performed, from just after death to the nal binding of cremated remains into an urn. Finally, food plays an important role in the funeral. The signi cance of commensality achieved in eating with the mourners or accompanying the family while the corpse remains at home should not be overlooked, especially since these humble acts involve the voluntary acceptance of potential danger from the spirits. In addition, the funeral ritual demonstrates a possible move from concerns with food for the deceased in the panlung gift to providing for the needs of the sangha in the spang gift, with the transformative pa suk a shroud gift in the middle position. In the next chapter, I will examine further contexts that lend nuance and meaning to the elements of the Cambodian funeral, focusing on three speci c themes: agricultural technique, social organization, and historical and mythical relationships with wildness.

THE CAMBODIAN JUNGLE GIRL: THE POWER OF A CULTURAL NARRATIVE In 2007, shortly after I left Cambodia, a woman in northeastern Cambodia brie y became a screen on which diverse types of Cambodians and foreigners projected their fantasies of human nature and their terror of the wilderness. She was captured by local hunters of an ethnic minority group in the highlands while scavenging their work area for food (Associated Press 2007). The hunters who captured her tied her up and brought her to the village, and claimed that when they found her, she walked on all fours, was completely naked, and “looked like a jungle person.” The local police chief identi ed her as his daughter, who had gone missing nineteen years earlier while tending the family’s bu alo. People quickly accepted this story and began calling her by the girl’s name, two decades out of use: Rochom P’ngieng. But some of the details

80 The Funeral

caused others concern. P’ngieng had large scars on her arms, indications of long periods bound in captivity. Some questioned why, if she’d been living in the forest, her hair was cut and her nails trimmed. True, she kept tearing o the clothes forced on her by her “parents,” and insisted on walking around on all fours instead of walking upright. She either could not or refused to speak a single intelligible word to her family captors. She made repeated attempts to run away to the forest; her family caged and bound her anew in their home to prevent this. Pictures published in the media show villagers crowding around, staring and pointing. The sheer number of photos available on the Internet indicates that she was under the lens for far too long in her brief period of return. Audiences of this potent modern fairy tale quickly mobilized additional details, lling in narrative gaps with elements drawn from genre and stereotype. The Western media, alert for yet another “feral child survives in wilderness” story, emphasized that she had spent nineteen years alone and isolated in the Cambodian wilderness—a very unlikely story—and described her not as “captured” by hunters, but as “emerging into the village.” Local villagers, on the other hand, quickly found new details: a naked male captor was involved in the story now and approached to retrieve the captive girl, but ed after shouts from the villagers. This naked male was reported as either a “jungle person,” according to the villagers, or a “jungle spirit.” Meanwhile, NGOs in Phnom Penh were interpreting the “jungle girl’s” limited number of details in their own way, asserting that her behavior resulted from severe trauma and that she was most likely suffering the results of captivity. I’ll confess that of the pro ered options, this seems the most likely to me. A Spanish psychotherapist was permitted to engage with “P’ngieng” but made no progress, though he also endorsed the interpretation of severe trauma. I’m reminded of a point made by David Abram, a sleight-of-hand magician and philosopher: he notes that when he performs a close-in illusion, he often encounters skeptics. The example he uses is when he “disappears” a coin in his right hand by palming it, and then makes it appear in his left hand by producing a di erent coin that was hidden there already. When the illusion works “correctly,” the brains of the spectators participate, creating a “narrative” of the coin, which

The Funeral 81 magically moves from one hand to the other. When the illusion works “incorrectly,” skeptics will often claim to have seen him pass the coin from one hand to the other or claim to have seen the wires, even when no coin has been passed and no wires exist (Abram 1996). In both cases, the witness is a participant and imagines something that is empirically not real. The story of the Ratanakiri “jungle woman,” as opposed to the reality that remains obscure to us, seems deeply embedded in Cambodian narratives of wildness and civilization; events are made to illuminate the culture, and individuals made to t.

3. Rice, Water, Hierarchy THE WILD AND THE CIVIL

The binary discrimination between savage and civilised is not exclusive to Western coloniser culture, but also present in Asia where it has an equally long, if not longer, history. (Keating 2013)

CIVILIZATION AGAINST THE WILD In life and in death, non-Buddhist braling spirits ee to the wilderness and must be recalled, soothed and tamed, and bound into place. It’s not just braling that must be treated this way. Throughout Cambodian history, upland peoples were imagined as the sources of powerful exotica and as a savage reserve of labor power, to be brought out of the wildernesses, domesticated, and put to work in the service of civilization.1 Rice agriculture provides the missing middle term in this relationship between spirits of people and people themselves; it is part of the violent rupture dividing forest from eld in the creation of the world. The civilized world of rice elds and villages, social hierarchies, personal dependence, and Buddhist morality is opposed in the Khmer imagination

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 83 by the wild power of the forests, where powerful spirits, animals, and savage peoples live. Rice provides a preferential model of the self, and the forest provides the psychic other of lowland civilization.2 The Khmer imagine the world into distinct and opposed geographic and moral spheres—the eld and the forest, sruk and brai (a.w. srok and prei). The violence of historical relationships between upland and lowland and the dialectical relationship that lowlanders have with the forests marks them as places of death and rebirth, dangerous places of spiritual transformation and seemingly limitless but uncertain moral potency. In this chapter, I discuss the forest as the dialectical other of the Khmer identity, and the sociohistorical and imaginary institutions that have resulted from and supported this characterization. This discussion links forest spirits, Khmer social hierarchies, slavery and patronclientism, Buddhist expansion, rice as a metaphor for self and society, and the technique of binding that ties these seemingly disparate elements together. Bourdieu understood such a binary social representation as a core component of the institution of a particular social world, and tied that institution to the inevitable transgressions of such binaries, including those transgressions that physically transform life into death or seem to reclaim life from death. Bourdieu points out that these representations are often based on analogies, speci cally on analogies grounded in widespread practice: It can be seen how the denial of murder by cyclicalization tends to extend to “natural” death itself. It follows that, contrary to scholarly illusion, the expectation of the “resurrection” of the dead might be simply the product of a transfer of schemes constituted in the area of practice most directly turned towards the satisfaction of temporal needs. (Bourdieu 1990, 261)

Although I prefer language of performance and imagination to that of logics of practice and fundamental schemes, I adopt the insight that social groups frequently perform the violation of socially instituted oppositions and use ritual to reproduce or even alter these relations, as well as the equally valuable notion of the “irresistible analogy,” the application of imaginary schemes of understanding the world from one

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domain to another. I point out further that the most frequently applied schemes are likely to be drawn from the common repertoire of everyday practices imagined as central to the performance and production of social life. In the following, I use the fundamental Cambodian division of the world into the categories of wild and civil to investigate three central Cambodian imaginations: the application of the agricultural imagination to imaginations of the self, the imagination of particular techniques of control that make use of this application, and the institution of hierarchy among human beings. The apparently mutually exclusive binary opposition between the wild and the civil in Khmer language and imagination is often belied by the frequency of acts and stories that violate the division of the world into those categories, and the importance attributed to the violations. PoréeMaspero noted the apparently clear-cut division between forest and culture, but also the interpenetration of power: “All that is not culture is wild [brai].” The dense mountain forests are not only highly feared because of the dangerous animals and spirits that reside there but also because they are places of “an overload of vital energies,” and hence the natural redoubt of sorcerers and hermits (Porée-Maspero 1962, 18). As Craig Reynolds notes, the “saints of Buddhism acquire their reputations in part by withdrawing to the most inaccessible regions, as if to make civilization itself an other” (Reynolds 2005, 213). The forest is a place of immense potency, but only for those who can tame it through the sovereign violence of the king or the extreme ascetic morality of the Buddhist monk. Ang Choulean has stated that “over the centuries a complex system of exchange has developed between the ‘sruk’ and the ‘brai,’ regulated by ritual o erings of food that . . . all contrast with ‘the wild, rough . . . sphere of the forest’” (Edwards 2008, 152). I argue in this chapter that the division of the world into morally and geographically opposed spheres of wild and civilized is better understood as a dialectical process of growth and transformation in the Khmer imagination, which ranks the civil above the wild; the wild is assimilated to death, and its potency is conquered and assimilated into morality and rebirth (Bell 1992, 102). To begin, however, we must acknowledge that the depiction of the wild and the civil as dichotomously opposed realms is ubiquitous in Khmer language and classi cation, and part of a fundamental pillar of the Khmer imagination in general.

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 85 Sruk marks civilized, village-based, rice-producing, domesticated life, politically oriented to a king, no matter how distant or even mythicalseeming he may be. Khmer dictionaries identify the sruk with administrative political units such as the district or the village, or with varieties of plants or animals that have been domesticated and are raised in agricultural production (Headley 1977, s.v.; Chuon Nath 1966, s.v.). Hence, domesticated animals are sattva sruk. As Zucker has recently put it, these associated meanings combine to form a notion of “civility.” In contrast, [brai] represents wildness—all that is chaotic, barbarian, untamed, and lawless. This dichotomization is so ubiquitous to mainstream Khmer thought that it is found in many Khmer classi catory systems, linguistics, and social ordering. The dichotomy itself is not a rigidly de ned moral boundary; in some contexts, for example, the forest becomes a site for moral re-creation (Ponchaud 1989, 161), enchantment (Chandler 1998d), or spiritual enlightenment (Marston 2008). Thus in the regional literature, as in my own ndings, nature as [brai] is a potent force that not only constitutes a site of destruction, chaos, and violence, but is also capable of producing and reproducing society and individuals. (Zucker 2013, 114–115)

Penny Edwards has similarly written that the forest—brai—“acted as a symbol of all that was wild, lawless, and beyond the boundaries of human control” (Edwards 2008, 142). Full of demons and the dead, along with enormous savage beasts or bandits (both can be called tiracch na), the wild is where the civilized should fear to go. To be civilized—to be Khmer— was to live in the sruk, under the authority of the king and according to Buddhist morality. Chandler has gone as far as to de ne civilization in Khmer society as “the art of remaining outside the forest,” a trope taken “seriously by poets and audiences alike” (Chandler 2008, 125). The strong imaginary opposition between the wild and the civil, like most such oppositions, is more ideological and psychic than historical or practiced. Edwards identi es the forest as “a psychic reservoir for all that was inexplicable and inhumane in the daily life of a country contorted by protracted and repeated violence and foreign occupations” (Edwards 2008, 142–143).

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The relationship with the forest is one not solely of exclusion, but rather of negative desire. The forest has often been a place for Khmer peasants taking refuge from violence and oppression that makes little moral sense in the supposedly civilized sruk, and remains a place of daily interaction for many peasants—especially women at the margins collecting rewood, for example, or hunters. In the seventeenth century, deerskins from Cambodian forests were, along with forestharvested tree resins and rice, the three top exports from Cambodia (van der Kraan 2009, 9). The forest is a place one will always necessarily return to, but one civilized people should prefer to avoid. The association with death—and hence rebirth and moral transformation—in this imaginary depends on the ability to confront the savagery of the wilderness and to wrench morality, civilization, and value from it. If civilization is primarily the art of remaining outside of the forest, certain classes of ideally civilized people—kings and monks especially—are routinely expected to be able to confront the powers of the wilderness in ways that redound to the bene t of civilized morality. This bene t is accomplished in the imagination through varieties of human technical agency—the techniques of domestication, which are quite explicitly imagined (Castoriadis’ teukhein).

RICE The realm of the civil can be de ned by its basis in agricultural production. Agriculture is a type of food getting, or form of subsistence, which has several predictable results, including the creation of societally sanctioned hierarchies, urbanization, the creation of luxuries, and the expansion and domestication of new lands (Friedman 2000). Agriculture is also deeply and explicitly entwined with the rise of Buddhism, both in historical fact and in Buddhism’s own selfrepresentations. The rise of Buddhism in northern India happened shortly after the so-called “second urbanization,” as merchants began to travel with the commodity goods made possible by intensive agriculture. Archaeologist Kathleen Morrison points out, “The earliest monastic sites were located in the areas of most secure agricultural production, pointing to the need for surplus produce and their close relationship with cultivated produce.” 3

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 87 The strong links among urbanization, the rise of a merchant class, and Buddhism could demote the importance of agriculture to the symbolism of Buddhism, which arose and was most popular in urban Indian contexts (Bailey and Mabbett 2006). In spite of this, and except for the imagery of re, agriculture is the most persistent Buddhist metaphor for life and moral development. Collins notes the equation in the Buddhist imaginary between agriculture, and sa s ra, the cycle of death and rebirth that encapsulates the entire cosmos and from which only nirvana (Pali: nibb na) promises escape: “Sa s ra is a life of constant agriculture, planting seeds and reaping their fruit, while nirvana is the abandonment of such a life” (Collins 1982, 220). Although probably intended as a humorous parody of Brahmanical pretension, the Agga a Sutta (Sutta on Beginnings) also describes the rise of kingship and monks as intimately connected with food production and distribution.4 In the Agga a Sutta, human beings rst appeared as angels, oating above the earth in a state of disembodied perfection. When the ground came into being, the angels found it delicious. But because they ate the ground, their bodies became coarser and heavier, which in turn led to immoral actions, such as sex and theft. Each act of immorality resulted in the transformation of their food source: into di erent forms of edible earth, enormous grains of huskless rice, and eventually the minuscule, husk-hardened rice that must now be grown with such care and hard work. Theft, in turn, required some form of protection, and the people decided to remove one of their number from the work of agriculture and give him a share of their food in return for the administration of justice. This man became the rst king. This situation merely begins the story with which we are concerned here. Out of this situation of hard agricultural labor, the beginnings of sex and sexual relations, and the obvious di culties attending a situation of royal power emerged a group of people determined to withdraw from this world, to seek good things and avoid evil things. Like the king, they refused the productive work of agriculture and received their food from those who did work in the elds. Unlike the king, they begged for their food, rather than taking it in tribute or triumph. And so, from the edible earth came the triple marks of Buddhist civilization: rice, kings, and monks.5

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Ebihara quotes Jean Delvert’s masterwork ethnography, showing that agriculture is “not only the principal activity, but equally, the most ancient, traditional activity” (Delvert 1961, 323; Ebihara 1968, 217). Tranet also notes the connection between agriculture and death, placing it in the Neolithic period prior to any “indianization” (Tranet 1981, 89). Not only was “agriculture at the center of social life,” but also it was the basis of Khmer religion (Tranet 1981, 167). In Cambodia, peasant agriculture has long been the dominant occupation: its practices and techniques are more familiar to a broader range of the population than any other single occupation or daily endeavor. To this day, the agricultural sector employs more people and generates more economic value than does any other, though its failure to modernize has been the constant frustration of many a developer. As Slocomb points out, however, “after each catastrophe that befell the nation, it was traditional agriculture that revived the national economy and salvaged the people’s livelihood” (Slocomb 2010, 29). Cambodian Buddhism relies upon agricultural imagery not only as a narrative metaphor, but also, as I argue in this chapter, in its rituals and practices. Richard O’Connor has done a great deal to analyze and describe the connections between religion and agriculture as both adaptation and history. The following short quote admirably summarizes the ways peasant agricultural practice can help institute particular relations among ethnicity, geography, and morality: Agriculture is a locus of meaning, not just a means to subsist. As these societies arise performatively (O’Connor 1995; Sahlins 1985, 26–31) farming’s technical practice easily become ritual acts (Condominas 1986) that constitute a moral stance (Hanks 1964) and de ne ethnic identity (Leach 1965, 29–41; O’Connor 1995; Mus 1975). (O’Connor 1995, 969)

O’Connor calls these connected complexes of agricultural technique and culture “agro-cultural complexes,” part of the “paddy state,” and identi es the link between culture and the political control of labor power through the concentration of that power in the rice elds as central to the relative closure of culture, which Condominas refers to as embo tement, or “emboxment” (O’Connor 1995, 969; Condominas 1990; Scott 2009, 65). The box’s borders are completely imaginary and

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 89 historical transactions continually erode and challenge the solidity of the cultural boundaries, but it remains e ective in shaping attitudes and practices. This imaginary emboxment takes place both within and without the borders of culture and institutes an imagined relationship between the world and the self. In the previous chapter, I discussed the notion of braling, the multiple vivifying spirits that invest all life, including many plant and “inanimate” objects, such as termite mounds and special stones. Rice too has braling, which are not thought of as di erent: just like human braling, the braling of rice tend to ee to the forests and wild space. Khmer culture reproduces itself in part through the ritualization and imagination of rice and its reproduction. I stress two types of stories about rice here. The rst is that of rice as an ensouled being like humans, whose cultivation and eventual instrumentalization is imagined as both care and sacri ce. The second is a narrative of rice decline, in which rice responds to human misbehavior by running away to the forests and becoming smaller and harder to prepare. Bra Me, or “Holy Mother,” is the only Khmer term that refers to rice in all its stages of cultivation and consumption. This metaphor imagines the Khmer as the children of rice as mother, dependent upon her and obligated to care for her as well (Davis 2008). It also marks a di erence from the nonagricultural societies of the forest, as in the Khmer proverb, “At home everyone has his own mother; in the jungle, we have only one mother” (Fressanges 2009, 99). Other words for rice refer speci cally to moments of cultivation, growth, processing, or cooking. The Khmer farmers I interviewed about the braling of rice described it not as an amorphous quality that pervades the entire seed, but something that can be physically located. An unhusked kernel of rice is “alive, because it has braling,” whereas husked rice is “dead, without braling.” Husking the rice “kills” it, deprives it of its braling and simultaneously renders it useful for human consumption. Binding the rice before threshing it conserves its vitality past its “murder” and its usefulness for living humans’ consumption. The story of rice’s growth is the story of Holy Mother Rice’s maturation. She begins as a seedling child in the nursery, sheltered and cared for, before being transplanted into the paddy proper. She enters into puberty when she “adorns herself ” with owers, and becomes pregnant

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when she begins to bear rice seed, heavy with child when the weight of her seeds forces her to bend over (Ang Choulean 2004). The gendered identity of rice appears in broader, regional stories as well. Terwiel notes similarities in the Thai imagination of rice; its maternal nature is marked in both Thai and Khmer agricultural rituals. When the ears are setting, rice is considered “pregnant,” and food o erings include the tart fruit that pregnant women so often crave.6 This charming metaphor ends somewhat abruptly, however, just prior to harvest. The Khmer do not usually extend the story to include the activities of harvest, threshing, and polishing. If they did so, harvesting would appear as a horrifying act of violence: the murder of a beloved, pregnant young mother. Depending on whether you see the rice seeds as Holy Mother Rice’s head or fetus, or both simultaneously, during harvest and threshing she either is beheaded or has her embryo ripped from her body, in order to secure the bene ts of agricultural fertility to the farmers. Both forms of empowering violence are imagined in other rituals of the Khmer imagination, as will be explored in chapters 4 and 7. The violence in icted on rice is heavily gendered. In most regional stories, a single seed of rice was originally enormous and far more delicious and satisfying than it is today. Because of female violence toward rice—sometimes explicitly identi ed as the female-dominated work of threshing—or other immoral behavior, the rice spirit became “most irritated and urged the tiniest bits [of rice] to ee to the forests and caves. It went to live in the original lake and did not return to the humans” (Terwiel 1994, 7). All these hiding places are beyond the limits of those who live in the agricultural lowlands. They “are far away, in wild natural surroundings, beyond the reach of humankind” (Terwiel 1994, 28–29). Pre-decline rice was mobile and accessible—it had a tendency to y to the eaters, for instance (Terwiel 1994, 14–16). After rice is insulted or attacked—usually by women—it ees humanity and returns to the wild places of the world. The calling of the souls ritual described in chapter 2 is also used to call the spirits of the rice into the rst fruits of unthreshed rice. Terwiel paraphrases one of the stories that began our discussion of the management of rice souls: rice braling. After Holy Mother Rice

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 91 ed, “The city-dwellers had no rice. Therefore, they held a ceremony of invitation to the rice-soul and caused the rice to return” (Terwiel 1994, 26). This is the ritual of calling the braling of Holy Mother Rice. As Ang Choulean writes: A representative of each household brings this bunch of stalks to the house of the anak t [neak ta] . . . where all the villagers organise the ceremony of calling the braling of the rice. . . . When the ceremony ends, they go to the shed in which the rice will be stored and fasten the bunch of stalks to a chram, or tube-like container used for putting o erings, which is then tied to the central column of the shed. (Ang Choulean 2004, 166–168)

Before the stalks are fastened to the shed in premonition of a successful harvest, they must rst be o ered to the regional spirits called anak t (a.w. neak t ) in a rst fruits ceremony where the potential surpluses are o ered to the lord of the land. The raw cotton a po string is used to bind the stalks, and as in other hov braling rituals, is soaked in blessed water rst. In the stories, once rice’s soul has been retrieved from the wild through the ritual of calling the souls and been bound into the rice plants, the rice is cared for and cultivated. Similarly, care is shown to the spirits of rice in the origin stories. Old people gave water to rice, they say, “and it proliferated” (Terwiel 1994, 7). The connection between human beings and their staple food is not unique to Cambodia, or to Cambodian Buddhism. Staple foods are often imagined to be substantially similar to those who produce and consume it, and this relationship serves as a strong ethnic boundary (Meigs 1997; Smith 1990; Carsten 1995; Bloch 2005). In her excellent short book on Japanese “rice ideology,” Ohnuki-Tierney makes this point explicit: “A symbolic complex involving foods, agriculture, and nature serves as a metaphor of self in many other cultures” (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993, 114). Such metaphors need not be thoroughly explicit to have substantial power, as Lako and Johnson have demonstrated (Lako and Johnson 1999, 2003 [1980]). While many anthropologists have focused on issues of commensality or cooking in discussions of food, I focus on the techniques involved in

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its production, and later in this book, in its distribution. As in Japan, as described by Ohnuki-Tierney, rice ideology is about rice’s prestige rather than its ubiquity in consumption. Historically, many of those who produced rice in both Japan and Cambodia could not a ord to eat it often, and today few Japanese do eat much rice, deferring to a globalized regime that prefers wheat. Rice as a staple was class-bound to elites and central to ritual occasions (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993, 6, 35, 42). As in Cambodia, In ancient Japan, human reproduction and agricultural production were co-terminous; the same term was used for sexual intercourse and growth under the sun. In addition, ritual and polity were synonymous. Harvest rituals both among the folk and at the imperial court have been a major cultural institution, an important agent in constituting and reconstituting the importance of rice. (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993, 9)

Additionally, Japanese rice ideology also imagines that rice has souls that must be called into the rice stalks, then encapsulated into a bound knot, the word for which, musubi, also means “production and reproduction” (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993, 49). As in Cambodia, threshing is imagined as the separation of rice from its soul (Ohnuki-Tierney 1993, 55). The stories that exist about braling employ a consistent set of revealing tropes: tropes of violence mediated by gendered relationships, ight, capture, and care. The techniques used in the production of rice— especially the ritual techniques—perform binding. There is another element in the production of rice that must be bound into place: water.

WATER Southeast Asia’s civilizations are based upon wet rice agriculture, which requires the technical and ritual management of water for the intensive production of rice. This management in turn institutes indigenous notions of power. In Cambodia, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia, power and value appear as di use ows permeating existence. Water resembles these ows. Like braling, it is a sort of power invested in objects and occasionally people, is morally neutral, and is accessible to human manipulation (Walker 2012, 20; Tannenbaum 1995, 79). In agriculture with water, as in healing with braling, proper manip-

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 93 ulation gathers power and binds it into a determinate form, whence it can be used—either in personal consumption or in social acts of giving and taking.7 The creation of the world necessarily entails the identi cation of the subjects and objects proper to it. The created world has its own masters and its own conceptions of space, time, and power. Cambodia is a land created and maintained by water and its management. The Mekong River deposits sediment from as far north as the Tibetan plateau at the place where the delta meets the South China Sea, and expands the domain of land over sea. N gas, chthonic and hyperintelligent snakelike beings of ambiguous morality who live in and control the waters of the world, both brought the Khmer world into existence and then immediately accepted a subordinate place within it. Their fundamental element, water, is the symbol and instrument of their power, and the Khmer have inherited this. Water is perhaps the perfect symbol of Southeast Asian power, for it is, as Benedict Anderson described it, homogenous, ubiquitous, and amoral (Anderson 1972). It permeates existence, but it is valueless and dangerous unless it can be controlled. Associated with both fabulous treasure and the control of water, n gas are particularly well suited to symbolize the value of agriculture. Their tendentious relationship with Buddhism appears as yet another symbolic demonstration of the complementary but contestatory relationship between sovereigns and monks. In stories of the beginning of the Cambodian world and the Khmer people, n gas appear as original benefactors. The withdrawal of the water from the previously drowned land made it possible for Khmer to stand in Cambodia—and to farm. One Khmer tale tells that in the beginning, water covered the region we now call Cambodia. An Indian Brahman named Kaundinya sailed to the edge of this ooded land ruled by n ga. He married the daughter of the king, who drank up all the water for his son-in-law, making space for his grandchildren—the Khmer—to stand and work. The n ga king removed some water, the essence of power and fertility, from the land and placed it in reserve inside himself for more targeted and judicious use. Another story o ers a di erent account of the beginnings of Cambodia. The world originally rested on the waters, and the n ga king Krung

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V l ruled it all. Seeking a space to teach his dhamma, the Buddha requested some territory from the king, who o ered him as much as he could cover in three steps. The Buddha magically grew to an immense size, and in three steps covered the entire world. Magnanimously, the winner promised that, henceforth, with any ceremony . . . one would sacri ce to Krung V l . . . . This n ga . . . played in water before the creation of our world: the beats of its tail produced a scum which, when it hardened, became the ground. Cambodians commonly believe that the earth rests on water, water on the vacuum, and that the n ga remains under the ground.8

The association among n gas, water, healing, and creation is widespread. Furthermore, n gas appear to deploy their power over water and healing precisely through acts of containment and binding. During Angkorean times, the West Mebon had a fountain representing the Hindu god Vi u dreaming the cosmos into being while resting on his n ga e a (whose name means “remainder”) on a vast sea of water, the foundation of the universe. N gas were used to decorate balustrades and fencing elements throughout Angkorean building, emphasizing their boundary-making power. Even more explicitly, Jayavarman VII constructed a famous hospital, the primary architectural component of which involved a tank of water with fountains composed of n gas whose tails were bound together in the center. Its name is N ga Bandha (a.w. Neak Poan), meaning “Bound N gas.” In the actual production of rice, there are many moments, such as transplanting, when dispersed and nonuseful vitality is gathered and bound. Unlike relatively nonintensive forms of rice production such as ood retreat or shifting cultivation, intensive rice production in Cambodia requires methods to control water (Fox and Ledgerwood 1999). Necessary for life, water in the form of oods can bring disaster. Cambodian peasants typically rely on rain-fed bunded elds, raising walls of earth (called bhloe, a.w. phleu) around each eld to create a pool or tank of water. This practice is widespread enough that in connection with other forms of water preservation, O’Connor has characterized the Khmer as people who hoard water, as opposed to others (like the Thai, Lao, and Vietnamese) who manage ows (O’Connor 1995). As the rice

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 95 matures in the elds, the water is transformed into mature rice, which at harvest time is ritually bound. Binding rituals in Cambodia preserve fertility and wealth past death. Rice would be useless to humanity (or at least, much harder to harvest) if Holy Mother Rice was allowed to “give birth” to her seeds, shedding them on the ground where only gleaners could retrieve them. Instead, she must be murdered: have her head (the tops of the plants, which also contain the grain) cut o , be bound into place, and then be harvested and turned into the most important commodity in Khmer life. Binding preserves vital power—fertility itself—in a determinate location (rice seeds), which is then useful to humanity.

HIERARCHY The agriculturally centered Khmer imagination also naturally contains institutions that relate to the organization of culture itself. The Khmer were born from the cultivation of rice and all that entails. Holy Mother Rice also disciplined their relations, nurturing social hierarchy, intensive labor, expansion, and mandatory violence on the part of the king (Gellner 1988; 1995, 35). Rice gave birth to the Khmer, but she has not always been a kind mother. The connection between the cultivation of rice and the organized violence of state-ordered war is clear within the extensive Khmer proverb corpus, where for instance it is argued that one should “Grow rice with water; wage war with rice,” noting the reliance of the state on the rice of the peasants and con rming the ancient military wisdom that armies march on their bellies (Fressanges 2009, 86). To work in the service of Mother Rice meant to work as most Khmer still do today: in the elds of lowland Cambodia. The moralization of this new lifestyle and the association of life in the uplands with immorality and danger is a key factor in the production of their geographical imagination. Fixed- eld wet rice agriculture has served as the foundation of Khmer peasant life through the centuries, but not only peasant life. Hierarchy is a necessary complement of this agriculture in the service of the state, and Cambodia is no exception. Most scholars of premodern Southeast Asian states emphasize the relative importance for them of controlling labor, rather than land ownership. As a result,

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throughout “Southeast Asian history, overlordship and power were so often thought of and pursued in terms of controlling people rather than land” (Chandler 2008, 24). Similarly, government “was the privilege enjoyed by people freed in some way from the obligation of growing their own food. The governed grew food for them in exchange for their protection” (2008, 3). In relationship to agriculture, hierarchy is most dramatically depicted through relative degrees of participation in production and consumption. Kings and monks have roles made possible by the labor of others. At the most basic level, they are fed by others. This is also the way both roles are signi ed. The actions of kings signi ed in the West by words like “rule” are signi ed instead in Cambodia (as elsewhere in Southeast Asia) by words for eating. The phrase “the king rules” in Khmer translates as “the king eats the kingdom.” The word for monk, bhikkhu, is a nominalized desiderative derived from the word for “share,” and can be literally translated as “one who would like a share of food.” The king and the monk are those who eat the food produced by others. The Khmer ttingly, therefore, call themselves the anak srae: the “rice people,” or “those who grow rice.” Both monks and kings eat food that others produce. The critical difference is the way they receive it: kings demand and receive tribute; when it is not forthcoming, they attempt to take it. Monks beg for food and have strict rules regarding their acceptance of o erings. Another way of expressing this di erence is that kings depend on their powers of death, the violence that they insist is their prerogative, in order to receive “gifts” of food. Monks are o ered gifts of food by virtue of their mastery over death, which assimilates them to or sees them as mediums for the dead. The violence inherent in the defense of hierarchical social organization is hardly limited to Cambodia. About ancient India and the emergence of Buddhism, Collins writes that “Violence, exploitation, and inequality entered into the very constitution of the agrarian states in which Buddhist felicities were produced as objects of human aspiration, including the utopian discourse that wished such things away” (Collins 1998, 9). Its utopian discourse wishing away violence and inequality would render Buddhism as we know it impossible. The moralization of hier-

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 97 archy resolves this dilemma (Moore 1978, 81–116). In Cambodia, this is evident in the ritual celebration of agricultural work by the king and in the hierarchical pastoral moral care o ered to children by monks. There are few kingly practices intended to convince those in the elds of much; violence and the threat of violence have long been enough. Still, they alone are not su cient to maintain a stable rule (Lincoln 1989, 3–5). Rituals celebrating particular forms of power, such as the drinking of “oath water” by the clients and soldiers of the king, appear more often in situations of potential violence or competition between near-equals than across the enormous di erences between kings and peasants. Still, once a year the king or his representative engages in a ritual plowing ceremony, an elaborate event in which the king ceremonially plows a eld and then releases the harnessed bu alo to eat from bowls containing various crops and liquids. The bowls they eat from, and how much they eat, are supposed to predict agricultural yields for the year. A version of this ceremony relates to the historical Buddha’s rst meditative attainment. According to this story, told in the Mah saccaka Sutta in the Majjhima Nik ya, the future Buddha and young prince Sakkamuni was settled under a nearby tree while his father the king plowed a nearby eld. During this period, the prince spontaneously entered into the rst stage of meditative attainment (jh na) and began to formulate aspirations to conquer the cycle of death. The fact that kings do not spend much of their time sweating behind plows is an important part of their position and status. The historical and ritual actions of royalty are not themselves productive, but are intended to convince the “feet” of the nation that intensive agriculture is honorable, important, and non-negotiable. In contrast, it is precisely because of the plow that agricultural pursuits are forbidden to monks, for fear of destroying subsoil life. All societies have hierarchies; how they are imagined and reproduced is the interesting part. In Cambodia, hierarchy is ubiquitous in personal relationships and is rendered in kinship terms. Khmer culture, especially during the Angkorean era, was quite complex, and many grades of society were named and social markers assigned.9 Yet aside from some very restricted forms of administrative hierarchies often appropriated from colonial usages, modern Cambodia lacks depersonalized

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vocabularies to refer to patron-client networks.10 If these networks were absent, this would not be a problem. However, patron-client relations are often understood to form the basis of social life. The disconnect is resolved by the understanding that most nonfamilial, hierarchical Cambodian relationships are nevertheless framed in familial terms. Khmer proverbs discuss the connected fortunes of those related through ties of employment or patronage: “When the boss gets promoted, his subordinates get dignity; when the boss falls, they are pushed down into the well” (Fressanges 2009, 75). Khmer language requires the use of pronouns that explicitly institute hierarchical distance between people and link these hierarchies to intimacy. There is a clear association between marked hierarchical di erences and positive emotions such as intimacy, trust, and mutual obligation. Consequently, the most hierarchical relationships are considered the most intimate. The intimate term me, or “mother,” is used to indicate a person with ultimate authority over something, and is not gender-restricted. Hence, me vatta means “mother of the temple,” or abbot.11 Obligations apply to both members of the relationship: the superior party should protect, guide, and care for the inferior party, who should follow, obey, and serve the superior, as in the proverb “The rich must protect the poor just as clothing protects the body” (Ebihara 1968, 177–180; Zucker 2013, 117). Of course, Khmer know that this ideal reciprocity is more commonly broken than supported, and have plenty of proverbs that mischievously undermine this understanding. One current proverb takes on the presumed association between morality and the rewards of this world: “If you do good, you’ll get good, / If you do bad, you’ll get bad, / If you engage in corruption, you’ll get rich.” The presumption of maternal care o ered by the superior to the inferior member of a relationship extends from parenting practices, including fosterage and adoption, to the patron-client relations that underwrite much of Cambodian life (Eberhardt 2006, 95). As Eve Zucker summarizes: Khmer society is hierarchically oriented through patron-client relationships that revolve around power, protection, and status (Hinton 2005; Marston 1999), and the relationships are based on real forms of

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 99 dependence and dominance that social etiquette attempts to mask (Marston 1999). (Zucker 2013, 101)

Once translated into the world of Khmer hierarchy, familial terms used to represent hierarchical relationships strengthened those relationships and encouraged patrons and clients or masters and servants to act in ways intended to reinforce the moral bond. The mutual need and attraction was that “The wealth of the rich, and the power of the strong, lay in the dependent labor power they could gather around them. For the poor and the weak, on the other hand, security and opportunity depended upon being bonded to somebody strong enough to look after them” (Reid 1999, 188). In Khmer history, parents, especially mothers, have long been a symbol for patrons on whom one is forced to depend too much, as well as for total parental care and safety (Davis 2008). Hierarchical and dependent relations seem necessary in Cambodia to get almost anything accomplished. Social life is largely found in the ux and negotiation of status relationships. The closer and more intimate a relationship, such as that of mother and child, the more absolute the authority. This is true in relationships that are metaphorically represented as involving a “mother and child,” as well as with many real mothers and children. Patrons and mothers alike may be unquestionable and disobeyed only with risk. Clients and children are often signi cantly dependent on their mothers.12 Such intense connections of dominance and dependence can be di cult to endure even in normally nurturing Cambodian households. In situations where dependency is unmatched by real intimacy or moral reciprocity, such hierarchical relations can be simply dangerous.

SLAVERY The particular moralization of hierarchy in Khmer society has two relevant components: rst, those outside Khmer hierarchical systems are identi ed as uncivilized and without reasonable boundaries or intermediaries between the mundane and the supernatural; second, Khmer hierarchy is represented as a type of moralized dependency, usually framed in parental or familial terms. Whether one is a client, an

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employee, a foster child, or a slave depends on one’s location in a network of social hierarchies, and the social distance between the partners. I remain haunted by the image of the young girl who worked in the house of well-o neighbors in Phnom Penh. She was a countryside niece, who presumably accepted work and fosterage to obtain the bene ts of schooling in the city. Whatever her parents in the countryside may have been told, the only times she ever saw the outside of her gated compound were in the early mornings, when she opened the corrugated metal gate and swept the sidewalk, and during lunch, when she brought a stool and ate with her face pressed against the small, hand-sized hole in the gate, watching the world go by. While the growing phenomenon of global slavery has begun to transform and interact with traditional practices in Cambodia, the tradition of slavery there is central to understanding the sorts of moral geographies that pervade everyday Cambodian social life. These hierarchies innervate the Khmer social world, but the imaginations that supply them go beyond, into the wild places, conforming to the notion that moralized hierarchies are necessary to tame humans’ inborn wildness and savagery. Khmer agricultural civilization and the wilds beyond royal control have historically been connected by two complementary ows of people: those eeing the lowlands for the wilds and those captured from the wilds and brought to the lowlands as slaves. Agriculturally based societies rely in part on the ability of a kinglike gure or group of gures to exert violence in defense of their nonproductive role, similar to the story of the rise of kings in the Agga a Sutta. The surpluses of agricultural production provide for the sort of complex social arrangements, hierarchies, and institutional development that are not present in nonagricultural societies (Stark 2001, 2006; Tainter 1988). The social organization of Khmer agricultural production has historically meant that agriculturalists work harder and longer, are hungrier and less healthy, and have more children than others. The surpluses of agricultural societies lead directly to increased population, in two ways: rst, farmers produce many more children than do nonfarmers, and thus within agricultural society the birth rate rises precipitously (Sahlins 1972; Lee 1968, 1969, 1969; Hopfenberg 2003; Hopfenberg and

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 101 Pimentel 2001; Boserup 1975). Second, agricultural sovereigns often employ violence against neighboring societies to acquire new workers for the elds, as well as high-status artisans. Rice gave birth not only to the Khmer people but also to many of the relationships and practices that characterize them. Since intensive agriculture (as opposed to shifting cultivation) increases population and depletes soil, agrarian cultures must always expand territory, domesticating new land to farm and new people to farm it for them (de Koninck and Déry 1997). As James Scott puts it in his recent and in uential book on Southeast Asian history, which takes upland/lowland relations as a core problematic of civilizational history, The permanent association of the state and sedentary agriculture is at the center of this story. Fixed- eld grain agriculture has been promoted by the state and has been, historically, the foundation of its power. In turn, sedentary agriculture leads to property rights in land, the patriarchal family enterprise, and an emphasis, also encouraged by the state, on large families. Grain farming is, in this respect, inherently expansionary, generating, when not checked by disease or famine, a surplus population. (Scott 2009, 9)

The process of clearing and domesticating wild land is widely understood in the age of clear-cuts and global deforestation. The process of domesticating people is less so. But the uctuating boundaries of agricultural civilizations have existed since the beginning of recorded history, as rising states expanded and declining states gave way to the forest. In spite of a dominant narrative—apparently constructed in Cambodia during the French colonial and independence periods—that highland people are “Neolithic survivals” among modern Khmer, it is now clear that people have consistently crossed these boundaries in each direction (Edwards 2008, 150; 2006). Thus the dominant narrative is often precisely the inverse of historical reality, and demonstrates its ideological nature as a result. It mistakes the exception for the rule; it fails utterly to explain the frequent collapse of precolonial kingdoms; it ignores, above all, the essential role that war, slavery, and coercion played in the creation and maintenance of these states (Scott 2009, 66). It also rei es a notion of indigeneity

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that displaces it from a discursive and practical category to a static, Rousseauian notion of the “noble savage” (Keating 2013; Jonsson 2004, 2010). For those within the lowland agro-imperial civilizations of Southeast Asia, resistance to elites historically took the form of retreat, withdrawal, or escape, and only exceptionally led to revolt. With plenty of land and low population, it was relatively easy to disappear into the highlands. Scott and others see this as a process often leading to ethnogenesis, and a source of cultural and religious creativity that may have, in turn, eventually returned to lowland Khmers, as in the practices of protective tattooing (Scott 2009, 7, 93; Walker 2012, 57). The ubiquity of slavery throughout premodern Southeast Asia as a structuring force in society has been understood for some time, though new studies focus increasingly on the cultural e ects of such practices, seeing slavery as producing not only concentrated forces of dominated labor power but also cultural e ects and responses (Means 2000; Reid 1999; Beemer 2009). Traditional slaving practices in Cambodia that took highland peoples from their groups shaded directly into the practices we think of as universally Khmer. Thirteenth-century Chinese ambassador Zhou Da Guan’s account of the Angkorean kingdom makes clear that not only was slavery considered a universal norm but also the hierarchical niceties of contemporary Khmer culture were part of the daily subordination. This ranged from the slaves’ living quarters underneath stilted Khmer houses and their forms of greeting (kneeling, with hands pressed together in añjali) to what they were forced to call their masters—mother and father (Chandler 2008, 84–85). Although there is legitimate debate over whether Cambodian slavery should be compared to the horror of the American enslavement of Africans, there can be little doubt of its persistence, and its horror for those captured and enslaved. Nineteenth-century observers of northern Thailand described the hill tribes as “systematically hunted like wild cattle” to supply the slave markets: The slaves who are captured become slaves in the fullest sense of the word; they are carried o with no hope of deliverance save death and escape. Trapped by ambush, and driven o after capture, like fallow-

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 103 deer, by the man-hunters, they are torn from their forests, chained, and taken to the chief places on the Shan country [Chiang Mai], Siam, and Cambodia for disposal. (Scott 2009, 87)

Upland slave raiding remained an important component of the constitution of the Cambodian laboring classes until quite recently. Scholars of upland groups have begun to reintroduce the concept of primitive accumulation, or accumulation through dispossession, to describe the current ways upland slaving, formally forbidden, has changed into the production of a waged work force (Bourdier 2006; Hasselskog and Krong Chantou 2000; Ironside 1999; White 1995; Bottomley 2002; Baird 2011; Baird and Shoemaker 2008; Davis 2013). The transformation of indigenous highlanders into proletarians on rubber and cashew plantations, for example, intersects with the historical Khmer imagination of these groups as natural slaves. Ethnonyms used for them, including some autonyms, simply mean “slave” or “tribute.” Zucker writes of the indigenous highland Suoy group that “Suoy,” simply meaning “tribute” (Martin 1997, 61–62) is a name applied by both Thai (Chuengsatiansup 2001) and Cambodians (Martin 1997) to people considered uncivilized and morally associated with the “wild” forests and mountains, thus people who could justi ably be captured as slaves whose labor provided “tribute” to the kingdom. (Zucker 2013, 29)

The othering and violence that brings people and things out of the forest and puts them in new roles in the elds is crucial to understanding the Khmer relationship to wildness, both real and imagined. Modern Khmer do not profess ignorance of their relationship to highlander groups, but the moral and emotional relationship they feel is largely one of repulsion. As Serge Thion put it, the imagined relationship between highlanders and lowlanders, despite obvious and complex historical interactions, “is perceived as an insurmountable gulf. Those who have received ‘civilization,’ when they are not mistrustful, set themselves up as protectors and project onto the Other ‘savage’ the kind of relations that they themselves have with their masters, the owners of the States” (Thion 1988, 242).

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Thion points out a necessary insight for any analysis of the Khmer: Khmer identity is predicated in part on this alteric relationship. Highland groups exist in reality, of course, but the Khmers as a group seem far less interested in highland reality than in their imagination of it, which creates highlanders as the essential foil for Khmer selfvalorization and reconciliation to the problems inherent to the royaume. Once highlanders, forests, and mountains are identi ed as civilization’s other, the boundaries of culture and civilization are set and become powerful means of circumscribing thought and action (Douglas 1966; Condominas 1990). Buddhism’s relationship to slavery, hierarchy, and agriculture helps to moralize and frame this entire complex, which I think of as agroimperial, in moral terms. This is not a new situation for Buddhism, but one that stretches back to the earliest days in India. Andre Béteille writes that “Tribes have existed at the margins of Hindu civilization from time immemorial, and these margins have always been vague, uncertain, and uctuating.”13 The need to expand the reach of agricultural kingdoms was accompanied by various strategies to legitimate and moralize the hierarchies into which new conscripts were placed. In their sociology of early Buddhism, Bailey and Mabbet see Buddhism playing precisely this role, evincing a clear disdain for tribal people and a recognition of their widespread degraded and often enslaved status (Bailey and Mabbett 2006, 42–43): If alien cultures are to be absorbed within an expanding state, some quite di erent type of ideological scheme must come into play. . . . This is where Buddhism had a particular role, while brahmanism served the needs of integration within the exploiting culture. (2006, 98)

The expansion of Buddhism and agricultural intensi cation in the wild areas at the margins of growing civilizations is a history shared across regions. New Buddhist temples were often placed either at prime locations on trade routes, at the border between agricultural lands and lands about to be conquered by agro-imperial culture (Morrison 1995, 1996, 1997; DeCaroli 2004).

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 105 The presence of agriculturally unproductive Buddhist monks required new food surpluses, regularly possible only on the basis of agricultural production, part of this agro-imperial complex of which Buddhism is also a part. Bailey and Mabbet point out that one of the appeals to the converted would have been the “possibility for demonstration of sumptuary acts, the purpose of which may have had more to do with social status than acquisition of merit” (Bailey and Mabbett 2006, 71). Although the material basis for such Buddhist expansion was agricultural, the ideological basis seems to have been the control of Buddhist monks over the powerful dead. DeCaroli notes the “great regularity” with which early Buddhist monasteries and institutions were placed on top of previously established non-Buddhist funereal centers. This was both a demonstration of their strength, insofar as the monks were not destroyed by the powerful dead, and a claim to be able to mediate the demands of the dead and the o erings they receive (DeCaroli 2004, 44, 56–57). DeCaroli’s work focuses on Buddhist-spirit interactions, and like mine, refuses theories of “accommodation” or “syncretism” (2004, 10). I agree strongly that spirit-deities were identi ed as the spirits of the dead, and highlight the crucial role Buddhist monks perform: tending to the dead on behalf of the living. Conversion of imperial peripheries has never been as peaceful as representations from within the empire depict. Slaving raids on nonagricultural groups seem to have been the norm, most often murdering the men and kidnapping the women and children to work the elds.14 Those not attacked became important sources of valuable forest products. In both cases, value was created for the kings by taking something out of the forest—wild people and wild animals. While wild plants and animals still carry an aura of superpotency in Khmer culture, the most useful humans (though not necessarily the most valuable) are precisely those that have been domesticated and have become Khmer. As David Chandler writes, “It seems likely, in fact, that this is the way Cambodian society built itself up, over time, gradually absorbing and socializing ‘barbarians,’ who gure in such large numbers in the inscriptions in Angkorean times” (Chandler 2008, 84–85). The well-known story of Bhikkhu Sukh (a.w. Sokh) o ers a useful example of the historical inversions of imperial expansion into the

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ethnic margins. It is found in the Gatiloka, a compendium of tales intended for moral edi cation, written by an intellectual with a long history of monastic ordination and published during the French Protectorate. This story has been expertly analyzed for its ethics by Anne Hansen; my take on it emphasizes the ideological dimension in which the violence routinely perpetrated upon indigenous groups by lowland agriculturalists was portrayed as the product of the indigenous groups themselves, and in which the surviving victim of the attack is saved by the civilizational morality of Buddhism (Hansen 2003; Hansen 2007; Davis 2008). The author warns readers not to discriminate against minority groups because some of them can possess wisdom equal to that of Sukh. The story follows a child from the “savage” world of highlander tribes to the civilized world where he became a learned monk, “content to perform the kind of sacri ce natural to Buddhist lands.” This appears to be a way of distinguishing between the types of moral sacri ce in Buddhism and the (from the Buddhist perspective) immoral animal sacri ces by highlander groups. Sukh’s story is one of a ight to the safety and morality of civilization. Sukh is introduced as a young Bnang (a.w. Phnong) child, living “in the upper country, who got his food in the manner of the forest dwellers.” Sukh has been sent to a forest rice eld, where the grain is speci cally identi ed as a strain of “wild rice.” He is there alone guarding the rice when tragedy strikes. His family is accused of practicing black magic, a crime punished by Bnang chieftains through the slaughter of seven lines of the criminal’s family. The sentence is carried out in the village, after which the gang heads to the forest to nd the boy, the family’s last survivor. He successfully hides in the tangled forest overstory while they search the area, bound in the tree’s embrace until the still of the night, when he drops down to depart. Thinking over his situation, he ees the garden and runs straight through the forest to the village situated lower on the mountain. He begs shelter in a house owned by some Bnang residing there. They take pity on him, give him some rice and water, and hide him in their house. He “dropped down to depart,” in a phrase that alludes to a common synonym for dying. His rst journey leads him to an ethnically similar people who speak his language but have assimilated Khmer forms

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 107 of agriculture. Perhaps it is also only coincidental that they are more generous and more willing to help a strange boy. But the violence of the Bnang reaches down to this lower village, and the villagers warn him, “We won’t be able to protect you further, if you stay here. . . . If you want to save your life, you will have to run down to the lands of the Khmer.” Sukh nally tells his entire story, in the Bnang language, to a traveling Khmer merchant whose moral nature and childlessness lead him to adopt Sukh as his “Dharma child,” so that he protects him and teaches him Khmer. In return, Sukh works hard every day “to serve the merchant so that he would never be irritated.” The merchant sends the child to the local Buddhist temple, where he learns to read and write. Eventually Sukh ordains as a full monk, and “he remained in robes, content in the service of Buddhism until the end of his days.” Read from a perspective that assumes civilization—in this case, Khmer civilization—is superior to “savagery,” the story shows savages acting savagely to a person who later lives up to the universal ideal of Buddhist civilization. As important as Sukh’s attainment of Buddhist morality is his acquisition of the Khmer language, noted throughout the story. A master who “can speak to him or her in his or her own language” saves a savage child. In a society where the learned monk represents the pinnacle of culture, Sukh is the ideal accultural success. He becomes literate in Khmer at the Buddhist temple and takes higher ordination for the rest of his life. Considered in this light, the di erence between Sukh’s origin and his destination is the di erence between the Bnang’s savage, undependable strength and wealth and the civilized, durable, celibate poverty of the Khmer Buddhist monk. Sukh’s problems in the beginning of the story emerge from the ignorance and violence of his own people, the Bnang. For the narrator, the tragedy that ensues is the consequence: violence is natural to the forests and habitual to those who speak other languages and serve other religions. The story portrays the Bnang as the epitome of a violent, immoral people and identi es Khmer Buddhists as those struggling to conquer violence and immorality. The relationship between the two is characterized, in the Khmer view, by pity and charity, and in the best cases, by complete assimilation of the former to the latter.

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However, the representation of the Bnang as savages and of the Khmer as admirably civilized grossly distorts the historical relations between lowland Khmer and highlanders. It seems important that Sukh’s birth parents were murdered and he was adopted into a Khmer family. His story is one of transformation, involving the transfer of familial dependency. Born a lowly Bnang, someone whose very birth made him a “natural slave” in Khmer, he rose to be a learned monk. His transformation took place under threat of death and involved being adopted into a new family, eating new foods, and practicing a new religion. This may have been a viable path for some children seized from highlander villages. Most, however, would not have ended up as respected monastic teachers, though they were frequently given to temples. They would have been much more likely to end up working in the elds.15 Few gures are weaker or more vulnerable than an orphan like Sukh; stripped of parents, relatives, and patrons, they can become completely dependent on those who feed and clothe them. Encouraged to call their masters “father” and “mother” even as their biological mothers toiled in the elds, these children absorbed the culture and values of civilization (Zhou Daguan 1993, 21, 25). The comparison with the regionally typical form of slavery in lowland societies should be clear at this point, especially comparing the stories and rituals of the rice souls with the story of Bhikkhu Sukh. In both cases, a necessary component of agricultural fertility—rice spirits, human labor—is prone to ight into the wild, inaccessible places of the world. In each case, they must be retrieved and bound into place. Finally, they must be cared for and incorporated into a caring structure. In the calling of rice souls, care for the rice braling is presented primarily in the image of o ering water to the rice; in the calling and capture of human slave labor, care is presented as the incorporation of the slaves into a hierarchical network represented in familial—usually parental—terms, and as the provision of Buddhist teachings to the savage. Fieldworkers could not be kept on the farms through violence alone. People were kept through the closure created by religion, which identi ed forests as places of terrifying power manageable only through Buddhist morality, royal violence, and particular techniques of domestication, which include gathering and binding as core components of the imagination.

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THE FANTASTIC FOREST I have argued that Khmer civilization roots itself in and promotes the sruk against the wild, in a relationship not of binary exclusivity, but of dialectical relationship. The forest is often a place of rebirth, chaotic possibility, and moral transformation, though positive results emerge only through struggle. In the Khmer imagination, the forest is a place of wild, magical powers a liated with death, both attractive and repellent. The image of the forest as a place of both fear and potential—of wild power capable of domestication—remains potent in Khmer culture today, even if its physical realization recedes as quickly as deforestation can manage. To enter the forest and transform morally within it requires that we “be less, or more, than human” (Edwards 2008, 146). What it means to be more than human is clari ed by the types of people who are routinely—in folktales at least—capable of such transformations in the wild. Chandler tells the story of three girls who ee their abusive mother into the forest and transform into wild birds, kon loka, a word meaning “children of the world” or possibly “children of monks,” depending on how you translate the word loka in this context (Chandler 1996; Davis 2008). In the same article, Chandler tells the history of a nineteenth-century Cambodian family celebrating its survival in and reemergence from the forest, an experience widely shared throughout Cambodia in any period of con ict (Zucker 2013, 83). Zucker reports the story of a Khmer family that was allowed to see an enchanted spirit wedding in the forest because of their moral quality—they were honest, unlike people in contemporary times (2013, 67–68). A contemporary Buddhist cult leader I work with, who claims to be the reincarnation of the great Buddhist patriarch Venerable Chuon Nath, centers his own story around a period of deep training and maturation in the heart of a mountain in the middle of the forest, learning at the feet of an incredibly aged forest sage (Davis 2014). One can appropriate power from the wilderness through raw violence and sovereign power or through the fearless morality of the Buddhist monk. In the Khmer imagination these are separate, but linked in a moral hierarchy that nds its domesticated expression in the rule of a moral king who submits to Buddhist instruction. The power of the

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civilized and civilizing monk is demonstrated precisely by his capacity to tame and domesticate the wild and dangerous spirits of the dead that inhabit—or even compose—the wilderness outside, as well as the spirits of our “internal wildernesses” (Bailey and Mabbett 2006, 150). Where he cannot subdue the wild spirit and assign it some moral and pro-social duty, the monk may have to pangkr p (a.w. bangkrap) the spirit, completely vanquishing or defeating it. Societies institute themselves through the action of closures, boundaries that identify the inside and necessarily distinguish the outside as that area, activity, or identity which exists outside of the societyfor-itself. These imaginations are commonly as revealing as they are wildly incorrect (Castoriadis 2008, 2005). For Cambodians the inside is the world of settled agricultural life. Outside this enclosed world is the forest, the highlanders, the “savages,” and the nonagricultural. The closure is e ected through associating these latter entities with death, the event mediated by Buddhist monks, whose rituals transform death into a force that promotes further fertility and the labor needed to actualize it. In an article on Southeast Asian founder’s cults, such as the Khmer anak t , Richard O’Connor writes that Attributing a spirit to a place creates a locality, as do the ubiquitous rites of household and village closure that cut up the countryside. . . . Closure charters each piece as a ritually sovereign commonwealth of humans and spirits, a community of the living and the dead, that seeks to prosper and protect itself through rites and customs. (O’Connor 2003, 274–275)

The e cacy of the ideological closure depends on its embeddedness in the practices of everyday life, and on its the clear and limited nature. Too restrictive or encompassing a closure destroys the ability of cultures to creatively reproduce themselves, but genuine contestation of the closure weakens society’s ability to contain people within its orbit (Macdonald 1957). In the Cambodian case, this closure is reinforced by imaginations that may seem initially disparate—of slaves, wildernesses, agriculture, water, spirits of the dead, etc.—but are all amenable to domestication through particular practices of gathering and binding into place. This appears to be true of the agricultural control of water,

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 111 of the braling of both rice and humans, and of the historical practices of Khmer slavery. Such closures may be traditional and deeply rooted, but they also have histories. The French colonial and independence periods gave rise to a variation on the fantastic forest’s associations that highlights the desirability of the forest life while still retaining the amoral and repulsive components. Dictionaries composed during the period de ne brai as “liberty,” or “freedom” (Edwards 2008, 152). Similarly, Matthieu Guérin has argued that brai is the only Khmer word meaning “free” in the Western political sense (Guérin 2000, 1). In the next chapter, I discuss how the rituals that institute Buddhist places allow for the ordination and reproduction of Buddhist monks and morality. The interpenetration of royal violence and monastic morality, and their di erent attitudes toward the spirits of the living and the dead, are key to understanding how these complementary forces of cultural power are imagined and relate to each other.

BEGGARS AT THE FUNERAL I arrived at Wat Ko Yakkha early that morning, anticipating the highstatus funeral that was planned. I’d seen the Meru, or temporary cremation pavilion, erected the previous afternoon in the front courtyard. Despite having a well-respected permanent crematorium, the temple occasionally permitted the construction of a pavilion. The cost of such a ceremony was considerably higher, owing to the prestige and the involvement of the abbot himself, but a few families could a ord it for eminent and elderly members. Since such ceremonies were always undertaken by those with great saddh , a word that means “con dence,” or “faith” but in discussions of ritual or giving almost always simply refers to wealth, they were a good chance to examine the contemporary “state of the art” in ideal cremations. In this case, the deceased was the elderly matriarch of a large and wealthy family. Occasionally fractious and competitive relationships

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between her two eldest male children were resolved and kept in check during her lifetime, to the bene t of the family, according to the elder brother. Now that she was gone, it was time for them to “continue to help each other.” In his late fties, balding and gregarious, he clearly thought that his family would now look to him for leadership. Perhaps he was correct, as his centrality in the ritual was overwhelming. His younger brother was merely a quiet presence and did not want to be interviewed, in stark contrast to his brother, who was pleased to take me on a tour of the ritual grounds, show me the spirit ag, and show o the beautiful urn in which the cremated remains would eventually be bound. Later on, it would be the youngest brother, not one of those who had contested for informal leadership of the family, according to the eldest, who would take temporary ordination “facing the re.” Being a wealthy family of “great faith,” the funeral parade arrived in multiple large vehicles, including a parade of SUVs and a hired tour bus. The o ciating c rya walked in front of the parade, holding up the diamond-shaped spirit ag (d ng braling) and followed by the rst of the ritual vehicles, a large “Abhidhamma car,” an open-air truck with a seating area for a single meditating monk, surrounded by a border of artistically entwined n gas. The subsequent co n car was even more ornate, with Chinese-style roof and pillars. The family was in fact SinoKhmer, but largely thought of itself as Khmer; the Chinese ornamentation of the car was largely a function of the Chinese ownership of the funeral service they had hired. A beautiful and solid wooden co n sat in that car, surrounded by eight monks. The sp v bhl ng, the rough rope woven out of a roof-thatching plant, was tied to the co n, its other end a nooselike loop bound around the forehead of the eldest son, who walked in front of the car, giving the impression of dragging it forward as a beast of burden would pull a cart. After the co n car came the young female mourners in their white peaked hoods, a sight I always found peculiarly hair-raising. With their faces lowered to the ground and the peaks of their white hoods pointing almost directly upward as a result, they held bowls full of l jha, pu ed rice and cotton representing bone, and tightly rolled 100 riel notes (worth about USD 0.02 each). Every few steps they would reach into their bowls and grab a handful of the mixture of pu ed rice and currency, then strew it on the ground beneath them. Following these

Rice, Water, Hierarchy 113 young women came the other family members and attending friends, dressed in appropriate funeral clothes, each wearing a small black patch of cloth pinned to their shirt, indicating their mourning status. However, and to the obvious and growing frustration of some of the older men in the mourning party, a few young street kids, most clutching a plastic bag full of glue in one hand; every so often they’d take a deep inhalation from the bag. These street kids began entering the parade area to grab for the small currency notes the young female mourners were throwing to the ground. Had they waited until after the mourners had passed, they would not have angered the family, but the moment one kid went into the parade itself, the others followed, seeing their opportunity disappear. For the most part, they managed to avoid jostling the mourners themselves, but their presence was embarrassing to some of the party, especially some of the older men, who took it upon themselves to begin chasing the kids away. The parade entered the courtyard of the temple after the co n had been unloaded from the co n car and carried to a position in front of the Meru. A small square fenced area surrounded the pavilion, including the area in front of it for the co n, at the head of which the mourners placed a wreath with a framed photo of the deceased woman. The parade processed around the fence three times, the street kids continuing to dart in and out, picking up as many of the small bills as they could grab with their single free hands. Eventually this became too much for one older man to bear, and he picked up a stick and began beating the tallest of the kids with it. Other middle-aged men joined in, though the beating was not as brutal as I had feared it would be; once the kids managed to run to the gates, the anger subsided and the family returned to their mourning duties. After the circumambulations of the Meru were completed and the hubbub of older men beating street kids subsided, the family viewed the corpse one last time. As the four primary monks stood around the cofn, the lid was removed. While most took seats under a tent structure set a ways back from the cremation pavilion, c rya and male relatives lifted the co n to the top level of the Meru. At the same time, the anak bhluk, the “ restarters,” began to arrange the large metal oven that sat beneath the pavilion, hidden from view. The four monks surrounded the body on top and chanted the pa suk la, after which the body was

114 Rice, Water, Hierarchy

moved into the oven in a lat (the ovens used in Meru cremations can be too small to admit full co ns, even were the family interested in burning the co n as well). The chimney was attached to the oven, and the fuse for the recrackers that would touch o the cremation was connected. One nod to the family’s Sino-Khmer heritage was the way the cremation re was lit. While the Khmer funerary tradition stresses the identity of the person who lights the re (a relative, or alternately, a highstatus person), the Chinese funerary tradition in Cambodia stresses the reworks over the identity of the restarter. In many cases, these two tendencies are mixed, as they were here: the abbot of the temple himself agreed to do it. He lit a lengthy fuse far from the Meru itself, which set o an astonishingly display of reworks. Ear-blasting moans erupted from one type of recracker very common at funerals. These moans evoke the sound of the piteous, howling dead. In addition to the more usual recrackers, the smoke and noise were enormous. In a different Meru cremation at the same temple, the reworks resulted in a medium-sized re in a nearby tree and rented tent. The reworks mark the beginning of the cremation itself and are part of the fuse that lights the oven. The eldest daughter of the matriarch began howling loudly in her chair when the re began, and other women rushed to her. Meanwhile, the youngest son was taken by the head funerary c rya and two monks into the main sanctuary of the temple, the vih ra. His head already shaved in mourning, he knelt in front of the ordaining monk and repeated the Pali and Khmer formulae that resulted in his novitiate ordination, undertaken to make merit for his mother. He remained a monk only for that afternoon, but like the rest of the ceremony, it was meticulously videotaped and photographed by hired professionals. As he sat, presumably concentrating on his mother’s demise and the universality of death, the tone of the gathering relaxed; it would be hours, now, before the cremation was completed. Soft drinks and snacks were handed out. It was during this period that the eldest son spoke with me and took out the urn for his mother’s remains, to show o to me. I left before the cremation was over and didn’t witness the brai r pa ceremony, which they planned to perform.

4. Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty Who shall bind the in nite with an eternal band? —William Blake

Buddhism binds death, ritually transforming it into ongoing agency, and domesticates the wildness with which death is so often associated in the Buddhist imagination. This chapter examines the consecration of a Buddhist temple in a ritual called Pa cu S m , or the “dropping of the boundary stones,” which is the origin of the ampo string used in funerals to bind the corpse and cremated remains, and in ects its meaning. As discussed in the last chapter, the Cambodian funeral involves many acts of binding, both actual and symbolic, most of them involving this raw cotton string. Through an examination of the various rituals required in order to properly sanctify a Buddhist sanctuary, I demonstrate how the monks’ ritual ability to conquer spirits and bind them into place is at the root of the ritual imagination and the basis of Buddhism’s deathpower. The sovereignty of Buddhism’s deathpower is based in a relationship to death and life that must be carefully distinguished from the similar sovereignty possessed by kings and the state. In chapters 2 and 3, I demonstrated that Cambodian culture imagines a stark contrast between the settled world of kings, Buddhism, rice, and hierarchy on the one

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hand, and the wild world of the forests and highlands, wild animals, savage spirits, and exotic peoples and treasures on the other. Monks and kings share the ability to enter these wild and dangerous realms without fear. Kings receive their royal legitimacy from the amoral spirits of nature, while the Buddha is able to conquer and tame all spirits; thus, they form complementary parts of a perfect sovereignty, that of the cakkavatt , who, like the Bodhisattva, may either rule the world or save it from death (Tambiah 1976). In this chapter, I examine the ways that this sovereignty takes form in ritual and how the institutional conquest of death by the Buddhasangha—the order of monks—is the foundation of their ritual legitimacy. Similarly, at the foundation of newly consecrated Buddhist temples, there is a metaphorical corpse. Pu ya Pa cu S m is the installation of s m stones around the Uposatha Hall, which ritually enacts the transfer of the space from the king to the sangha and identi es the sangha as the institution in control of the temple. The Uposatha Hall is the sanctuary where ordination and fortnightly recitations of the Vinaya rules take place. In contemporary Cambodian temples, it is almost always combined with the vih ra into a single building. The pa cu s m ceremony is the most popular of all the occasional Buddhist rituals in Cambodian Buddhism and is attended in great numbers by people in search of blessings, luck, entertainment, and especially ampo , which is used to tie the s m stones to the poles from which they are suspended and is also collected and used ubiquitously in Cambodia for blessings and other ritual occasions. Without the installation of a proper s m , or boundary, formal acts of the sangha are considered invalid. This is especially and most famously true of ordinations. The Siamese King Mongkut (1804–1868) considered his own initial ordination illegitimate after discovering what he considered misplaced s m stones. His reordination in the reform Dhammayuttika sect of Therav da Buddhism is famously connected to this question of s m legitimacy, as is a split in the Sri Lankan Siyam Nik ya. S m ceremonies are conducted with representatives of the state present, and are the ritualization of an elaborate gift from the king to the sangha—land free from kingly interference, a crucial component in the production of new members of the sangha. In his book The Domestication of the Human Species, Peter Wilson writes that

Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty 117 Architecture, especially funerary architecture, is ritual materialized and perfected. Tombs are as near as mortals can get to incarnating absolute real power. Their building and existence testify to and legitimize the right of some people to be empowered by others so that they may assume all power, divine power. (Wilson 1991, 130)

If architecture is ritual materialized and perfected, then what better place to establish and examine the divided sovereignty of the king and the sangha than in the ritual in this central piece of Buddhist architecture? In this chapter on the logic of s m rituals, I will make the following points. First, s m rituals are the origin of the ampo string used in funerals. Second, s m rituals use the metaphor of human sacri ce in order to empower and spiritually protect a sanctuary by binding a malevolent spirit into place, as well as to empower and make sovereign the Buddha sangha. This raises the issue of the opposed values— violence versus giving—that are performed in the ceremony. Finally, the seemingly problematic existence of violence in a Buddhist sanctuary is part of the performance of the divided sovereignty shared by the king and the sangha together, in the Buddhist imagination.

¯ CEREMONY THE SI¯MA When a new sanctuary is built, ampo is tied around it in a boundary, which then hangs in the air, suspended in a sort of cotton halo around the building. This boundary is further connected to eight buildings around the perimeter of the temple and to nine large round stones, called s m stones, that will be buried in eight pits dug either around or inside the sanctuary, along with a central stone—the most important of them—which will be buried into a central pit. Until the conclusion of the ceremony, however, the strings continue to bind the stones, which are suspended over the pits from large wooden planks or branches. Lay attendees also make sacri ces, prior to the ritual itself, through which they expect a return: blood from pricked ngers, money, and makeup are commonly deposited in the s m stone pits. These will return as health, happiness, wealth, and beauty, and the e cacy of these sacri ces is based on the power gathered and bound into the building itself.

F

4.1 A s m stone, cudgel, and blade.

Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty 119 After an c rya or abbot ritually asks for permission from the nonBuddhist spirit of the land, the n ga Krung V l , described in chapter 3, the ceremony begins. At its conclusion, a representative of the king— nowadays most often a minor political o cial or businessman—takes a large machete and a cudgel to the central s m stone, suspended over the central pit. Placing the blade on the ampo holding the stone, he hammers the cudgel against the blade, severing the ampo and freeing the stone. At the same time, lower-status o cials sever the strings on the other eight stones. Some power impregnates the ampo upon the severing of the strings. The above description is based on my own eldwork, during which time I attended many Pa cu S m ceremonies. However, it is con rmed by and may be compared to the following articles, which deal with the ritual in a more central manner: Kent 2007; Harris 2010; Giteau 1969; Huot That 1953; L s’ L y 2003. Immediately after the stones drop, the temple’s inauguration is complete, and a melee often breaks out as throngs compete for as much of the ampo as they can lay their hands on. Monks engage in the grabbing as well, though they tend to comport themselves somewhat more respectfully than do their lay counterparts.

PRODUCING AND DOMESTICATING GHOSTS Michael Wright believes that, unlike in the s m ceremony of Sri Lanka, the imagery of human sacri ce is central to the Southeast Asian variant. He argues that the cutting of the ampo to release the s m stones mimics and replaces the historical decapitation of a human head, a performance of a royal fertility rite to ensure abundant harvests (Wright 1990, 45). Perhaps. The symbolism is widely understood, and many participants in di erent s m performances o ered the same interpretation, though rarely in the presence of monks. Participants often describe the s m stones themselves, which are usually roughly spherical and wrapped in cloth, as “the size of a human head,” though they are usually somewhat larger. Human sacri ce does have a real history in Cambodia, as elsewhere, but the extent to which s m ceremonies enact metaphorical versions of widespread historical reality is unclear, and to my knowledge, no clear examples of building sacri ce have been identi ed.1

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But although the monarch is the sacri cial agent whose action renders the s m rite e ective, it is the sangha whose sovereignty symbolically rules the area henceforth (Hubert and Mauss 1981). The binding of a s m around the central sanctuary of a Buddhist temple “e ectively exorcises the immediate in uence of the king’s power but paradoxically retains the presence of the monarchy as a symbol of protection. As such it very e ectively demonstrates an enduring and antagonistic symbiosis between secular and sacred power” (Harris 2010, 223). This opinion, although it has been the subject of learned dispute among historians of Burma, is nevertheless clear and consistent at least at the level of symbol, regionally: the binding of a s m alienates land from the king’s control and power, including the power to tax or to use the land.2 As Harris notes, there is a bit of a paradox: the king’s sacri cial violence and authority appear secreted at the very center of a building whose use opposes such values. Part of the key to understanding this ritual is that while it may “exorcise” the immediate in uence of the king, it does so through a sort of “reverse exorcism”—the capture and binding of a malevolent spirit at the heart of the temple. Chapter 2 introduced braling, the vital spirits that enliven not just conscious beings but also nonconscious living things like rice. As noted by Éveline Porée-Maspero, there is a connection between binding vital spirits into a body and binding them into a structure, such as a house. In other words, just as rice is symbolically murdered in harvest and threshing in order to produce a controlled, durable, valuable, lifesustaining substance, spirits of other beings may be instrumentalized and manipulated. As already suggested, the procedures for manipulating human spirits resonate strongly with those for manipulating rice spirits—they must be gathered and bound. Cambodian ritual practice frequently binds spirits into inanimate objects, which then become ongoing sites of value and activity. This is imagined to be true of every Khmer house, for example. During the rituals that inaugurate a home, a minor spirit called the n ng pda , or the young lady of the house, is bound into the central post of the building and treated with respect and care as a guardian of the home. Specially empowered Buddhist temples, especially those referred to as having p ram (“perfection”) or being from the premodern period (pur a), are thought to have used similar rites to forcibly endow temples with a pro-

Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty 121 tective spirit, which was bound into the pedestal of the temple’s central Buddha image. This spirit is typically imagined as a br y, a powerful malign female spirit created when a woman dies pregnant or in childbirth. The superpotency of a pregnant woman as sacri cial object is clearly connected to her fertile status, and such a sacri ce may carry a “two-for-the-priceof-one” sort of logic. Br y are the most dangerous spirits of all, which is perhaps why Cambodians widely imagine pregnant women sacri ced in the foundations of important and empowered royal buildings and temples.3 When such spirits are “liberated” from a body and bound into a building’s columns, the “br y changes from an eminently malevolent spirit into a guardian of the correct Buddhist cult. . . . One of her names means the ‘br y residing in the pedestal’” (Ang Choulean 1988, 38). I suggest that in building sacri ces, either real or metaphorical, the logic is that the sacri ce releases the spirit, which is then bound and domesticated by the Buddhist monks, who put it to use in the protection and defense of the sangha. The ghost installed by the s m ceremony is a gift to the sangha from the king, one that only the sangha could possibly put to use: the gift of death itself. In the s m ritual, which establishes the very legitimacy of the ordination procedures by which the sangha reproduces itself, a metaphorical human sacri ce is performed. This sacri ce releases a spirit, which is then domesticated and put into the service of Buddhism (Kapferer 1983). In some ways, the spirit is not only a gift of the king but also a substitute for him as the local defender of the faith, capable of using violence even though those the spirit protects may not. As with rice, human bodies, and private homes, Buddhist monks may ritually bind spirits into speci c locations, where they improve, enliven, or add to the general value of the thing into which they are bound. Thus the installation of a br y through human sacri ce is at the center of the creation of powerful Buddhist temples. Why is a Buddhist ritual bound up with such murderous imagery? Sacri ce is not a Buddhist virtue: the Buddha is recorded as frequently criticizing animal sacri ces of all kinds. Instead, the core Buddhist principle, elicited from an examination of both texts and rituals, is that of giving (Egge 2002; Heim 2004). Most of the j taka tales of the future Buddha’s past lives

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involve acts of generosity, sometimes quite heroic, and it is through the generosity of the laity to the sangha that merit can be made. Giving is the core Buddhist value. Giving also appears as the moral theme in the enormously popular j taka tale of King Vessantara, who is reborn as the child who becomes the Buddha himself. In this story, the future Buddha is born as a prince who spends his entire life making gifts, as a perfection of the ultimate moral value prior to enlightenment. However, as a result of his vow to give away anything asked of him, he becomes a truly terrible king: he gives away his magical, rain-producing elephant, the royal treasury, and eventually, all the members of his family. Good kings nd it di cult to be good people; there’s a contradiction between moral virtue and the actions that Buddhism imagines are required of a monarch in order to support society. Kings execute justice precisely through violence, including executions themselves (Collins 1998, 500–501). Whose value, then, is the human sacri ce in the s m ceremony? We don’t need to look further than the ritual executor of this act for con rmation that it is in fact the king, or today, the political representatives of the state. In the ambiguous synthesis of the two cakkavatt , the kings’ association with death-dealing as a form of sovereign power opposes the monks and their institutional and ritual conquest—and management—of death. To sum up: sacri ce is a political value; giving is a Buddhist one. They are combined in the s m ceremony in a way that transfers authority of the ritual space of the sanctuary to the sangha. But it does so by binding the ghosts of sacri cial victims within the heart of temple space. The act of sacri ce—or execution—communicates something like the following: I am murdering a person in cold blood, and no one stops me. I do not know this person and bear no personal animus. This is to ful ll the demands of something greater even than my own person, who is its agent. My power over life and the expression of violence is complete, for you do not raise your hands against me or complain, but instead applaud and prostrate yourselves before me, and even the guarantors of moral behavior have sancti ed this act by preparing the victim.4

F 4.2 Government o cial Sok An preparing to use a cudgel and a blade to cut the a po string holding a s m stone in place.

In the s m ceremony, these values are performed nearly simultaneously. This is because the ceremony enacts the primary gift of the support of the sangha, from the king as well as the sovereign spirits of the soil. Since kingly sovereignty and monastic authority espouse distinct and competing values, in the ritual transfer from one domain of control to another, these opposed values are seen as two mutually supporting sides of a single complete sovereignty over both life and death. In a complementary fashion, this ritual legitimizes the association between sovereignty and violence in the Cambodian imagination. As Bourdieu perceived, The ritualization which o cializes the transgression, making it a regulated and public act, performed before all, collectively shouldered and approved, albeit performed by one individual, is, in itself, a denial, the most powerful one of all, because it has the backing of the whole group. Belief, which is always collective, is consolidated and legitimated by

124 Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty becoming public and o cial, asserting and aunting itself instead of remaining hidden, as illegitimate ritual (in other words, dominated ritual, such as female magic) does, thereby recognizing legitimacy, and its own illegitimacy (like the thief, according to Weber). In the case in question, where the aim is to sanction a transgression, the group authorizes itself to do what it does through the work of o cialization, which consists in collectivizing the practice by making it public, delegated and synchronized. (Bourdieu 1990, 238)

DUELING SOVEREIGNTIES OF WILD DEATH Both monks and kings gain a foundational part of their sovereignty from their di ering relationships to death: kings can deal it out in the execution of justice, and monks embody the potential conquest of death and can ritually enact its mastery. One of the most common associations with death is the wilderness, the wild and empty places, signi cant in both the texts of ancient Buddhism and historical and contemporary Cambodia. Although the philological derivation of the word “nirvana” points to a meaning of “blowing out,” as referring to a ame (Collins 1998), a standard part of the P li commentarial literature has presented the word as derived from the word v na, meaning “jungle” or “wood,” and meaning something like “getting out of the jungle” (195). The idea of nirvana as an escape from or o ense against the wildness and death of the jungle is frequently attested, as in the metaphor of nirvana as an ancient city, abandoned and lost in the jungle, found in the Buddhist sutta titled simply “The City.” Here, the Buddha describes his enlightenment as the discovery of precisely such an ancient city (224 ). Monks and kings alike have the bravery to face the wilderness and death, thought their interactions are of di erent types and have di erent results. The powerful and well-studied distinction in Cambodian culture between settled agricultural civilization (sruk, a.w. srok) and wild forested areas (brai, a.w. prei) was described in chapter 2 (Chandler 1996; Davis 2008), but this distinction is hardly novel to Cambodia and can be found both persistent and well-developed in ancient Indian texts as

Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty 125 well (Bailey and Mabbett 2006, 78). In their book The Sociology of Early Buddhism, Bailey and Mabbett state: The realm of settled order is established by the clear demarcation of unambiguously inanimate things or forces and unambiguously conscious beings; the latter are able con dently to manipulate the former. Boundaries are drawn, ritually and juridically. (Bailey and Mabbett 2006, 150)

A s m ritual draws precisely such boundaries, both ritually and juridically, on the basis of a demarcation of the lines between settled agricultural life—the world of the king—and the wild forests of death. But in the ritual, the authority of the monk, unlike the authority of the king, encompasses both domains. That monastic authority is predicated precisely on the ability of Buddhist monks to treat forces and spirits— what are to most of us ambiguously conscious beings, at least—as if they were manipulable objects. Bailey and Mabbett point out that the Buddhist monk as simultaneously a wanderer in the wilderness and a resident of the great cosmopolises of the day was key to the symbolism of both as conquerors of death. Buddhist temples where the village versus forest distinction was especially powerful were routinely located on the “outskirts of villages . . . allow[ing] the monk to be both within and without” (Bailey and Mabbett 2006, 86). Bailey and Mabbett argue in favor of seeing the vih ra as a compromise between the various worlds in which the Buddhist monk walks with equanimity and equal authority. Indeed, the more the Buddhist monk traverses these wild places, the stronger this image of the monk as a traveler who faces wildness and death unafraid, and the more power he accumulates. Nancy Falk noted that “In general, only ascetics took on the wilderness directly, and when they did so they broke with the common structures of the community” (Falk 1973, 1). Bailey and Mabbett state this precisely: “By braving the dangers and exposing himself to the powerful half-animate forces that haunt the lonely places, he absorbs power” (Bailey and Mabbett 2006, 152). Moreover, Buddhist monks were not merely unafraid of these half-animate, half dead forces in the wild but even capable of conquering them, taming and domesticating them. In their political role

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as mediators between the city and the village, Bailey and Mabbett argue, their connection to the wilderness was key: “Buddhism came out of the wilderness, and was domesticated. It also domesticated the forces of the wilderness.”5 The king had a di erent engagement with the wilderness: a relationship of dependency. As Nancy Falk writes, “Kings won certain aspects of their authority from the wilderness, and a representative of the wilderness in turn might symbolize a divine king” (Falk 1973, 13). This pattern appears in various Buddhist j taka tales, such as in the sutanoj taka, when the bodhisattva converts a cannibal ogre (yaksha, a.w. yeak) threatening the king, and then “leads the tamed yaksha to the city gate, where the king establishes a cult for it” (3). These shrines—which often featured not only the forest beings, Yakshas, but also the water beings, n gas—seem to have connected the king with the forces of the wilderness, conceived of, perhaps, as the wild energies that had to be tamed in order for settled life, including agriculture, to exist. As Lowell Bloss put it, “The n ga is most accurately described as a folk deity possessing those powers of nature, particularly rain, which so totally determine the character of the agriculturalist’s existence” (Bloss 1973, 37). Moreover, these shrines are usually associated with a caitya in the texts (Falk 1973, 4–5; Bloss 1973, 39). The ancient caitya appears to have been a small bit of the wilderness brought into the city to authorize the king through its wild power, an authorization that continually threatens to escape its bounds and threaten the king and the kingdom alike (Bloss 1973, 38). But of course today the caitya, or cetiya, is the standard funerary monument. The association of wildness, death, and sources of wild death bound into discrete locations of power is nearly complete, and we can begin to see that some component of the sovereignty of the king over life is dependent on the sovereignty of the Buddha over death. But rst, let us examine the role of the n gas: superintelligent, hyperpotent, and often ambiguously moral beings of enormous importance in the imaginary considerations of the relationship of village to forest, life to death, and cultivation versus the wild generative forces of entropy. The n ga is often central to Cambodian imagery, including in the Angkor period, where its ubiquity also associates it with boundaries, and especially with the binding of water into place.6 It is also

Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty 127 imagined to play a role in the s m ritual, as the ultimate master of land and water.

¯ LI¯ AND THE SI¯MA ¯: KRUNG VA ORDERING THE COSMOS Before the s m ceremony it above begins, a minor ritual is performed that highlights the distinction between Buddhism and the non-Buddhist spirits. This subritual is called the Krung V l , the name of the king of the n gas introduced in chapter 3. It is he who ceded territory to the mythical Indian prince ancestor of the Khmer people (in one myth), who underlies the entire territory of Cambodia (in another), and who was bested by the Buddha, tricked into ceding his territory (in yet a third).7 Before the Pa cu S m ceremony can begin, ritualists must rst beg for permission to use the site from this explicitly non-Buddhist being, imagined as underlying the land and waters, enlivening both via his own energies. N gas pre-exist the Buddha’s teachings in the Cambodian imagination and help constitute both the Khmer people and the land in which they live and work. Krung V l is de ned in Chuon Nath’s dictionary as an underground serpent, or n ga, who “supports the earth and . . . is invoked at the beginning of the construction of a building” (Chuon Nath 1966, s.v.). In a Khmer book titled Customary Khmer Practices, the Krung V l ceremony is described as having two types. The rst “comes to us from the ancient Khmer, which is worship of the gods who have placed themselves under the Buddha”; the second type includes ve versions that are themselves Buddhist: “All the Petas” (Hungry Ghosts; see chapter 6); “Establishing” V l ; the “Relatives” V l ; “King V l ”; and the “God” Val ( Bhuen and Mam Chai 2002). The Establishing and Relatives versions are done in preparation for a more important Buddhist ritual. This is normal in Cambodian Buddhism: the ritualization of spirits and gods comes rst, followed by the central Buddhist rituals themselves. It seems that the Krung V l ceremony is a preparatory, propitiatory ritual that acknowledges a cosmology of spirits, all of which have engaged in relationships of subordination to the Buddha but must be dealt with

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F

4.3 A Krung V l ritual prior to the Pa cu S m ceremony.

prior to the central work of Buddhism. Most accounts of building rituals emphasize an imagined aspect that I never personally saw performed: properly identifying the position of the powerful subterranean n ga underneath the building site and organizing the site and the placement of the s m stones relative to it, seeming to pin the serpent in position beneath the structure (Giteau 1969; Terwiel 2012, 161–164). In the context of the Pa cu S m ceremony necessary to establish an e ective ritual space for a Buddhist temple’s vih ra, the performance of the Krung V l ceremony sets up a dynamic that shifts authority and control over the temple space from non-Buddhist spirits associated with kingship and social power toward the sangha associated with religion and morality. Note that the Buddha sangha, pre-eminent as it appears in Cambodian culture, presents itself nevertheless as requiring permission from the spiritual “master” of the land and water. Krung V l agrees, after receiving many ritual gifts that are obviously out of place in a Buddhist

Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty 129 ritual, such as liquor and raw and cooked pigs’ heads, and makes room for the temple, which is no longer under Krung V l ’s direct control and authority. The Pa cu S m ceremony itself continues this shift by inaugurating and enlivening the temple through an act of symbolic, sacri cial violence committed by a representative of the king (ideally) or gures of social authority and power outside of the central Buddhist fold (politicians, wealthy businessmen, etc.).

EXCHANGES WITH DEATH The early authorization of the king through the agency of the wilderness, harnessed and domesticated by Buddhism, appears to have a great deal in common with the active ritualization and imagination of royal and monastic sovereignty in the s m ritual. The authorization of the king appears very early in Indian Buddhist literature, where it seems to compare the forces of the wild with the forces of fertility in agriculture. The connection of s m rituals to agriculture also appears early in reports of Buddhist ritual. This is true even where the sacri cial component is absent, as in the Sinhalese Buddhist rites. The Mah va sa, the great chronicle of Sinhalese kings, records that “in the second century b.c. King Devanampiya Tissa ploughed a furrow around the Mah Vih ra and that furrow became its s m ” (Harris 2010, 223). In all these texts, the action monks take in order to create a boundary is to bind what lies inside. Thus, temple s m are referred to as “bound” or unbound. The word used, baddha, is a P li past passive participle meaning “bound,” but in Khmer usage it is an active verb as well, or translated directly by its Khmer equivalent, cang. Thus, to baddha s m in Khmer means “to bind a s m .” Monks are not permitted by the Vinaya to engage in plow agriculture, since it may cause the death of soil-dwelling animals. Responsible for agricultural fertility, the king cedes control and power over monastic land symbolically in the rite of burying the s m . The s m ritual thus assists in demarcating and ordering the world along lines of symbolic supernatural powers—the world of the king (the cakra) and the world of the dhamma (the dhammacakra), of the kingdom and of the monastery, of the king and of the monk. While these realms are theoretically separated, from the Buddhist point of view, there is a critical

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and unquestionable superiority of the Buddhist monk to the spirits of the non-Buddhist world. Far from merely a traditional stance overcome by contemporary Buddhist modernism, it is precisely the ability to vanquish spirits, attributed to many who can be considered “patron saints” of Buddhist modernism, such as Somdet To in Siam (McDaniel 2011). The binding of a temple and the installation of its boundary stones is necessary to constitute it as a place for the creation of merit, which at the same time alienates its creative and productive capacity from the appropriation of the king. The braling of the body must be recalled and bound into the body for a person to recover from ills and accidents. The braling of the rice is called into a sheaf, bound, and installed in the home at the same time that the major portion of the rice crop is cut from the elds that nourish it, tied into sheaves, and threshed to make it edible. Because rice is called “Holy Mother” and compared to a pregnant young women, the process of making rice edible also entails her metaphoric murder. In the example of the s m ceremony, the ritual imagination of a sacri ced pregnant woman empowers and vitalizes a new temple and removes the land from consumption by the king. Similarly, the murder of a living rice kernel makes the braling of the rice available to those who would consume it. I have used “binding” to denote all these activities that make clear the boundaries of energy that are otherwise conceived to be in ux and movement, following local usage. Once energy has been bound into place—a temple, milled rice, or a person—care must be taken to ensure that the energy does not succumb to its natural proclivities: bound vitality obeys the law of entropy, constantly slipping its bounds and disappearing beyond human use. Unbound vitality does not similarly degrade simply because it is not manifested anywhere in particular. Only that which is bound into place decays. This observation again accords very well with established notions in the eld of anthropology about the links between fertility, food, and death: “Whether gifts, knowledge or food, that which is retained rots, festers and corrupts the body; and here it is clearly the digestion of food which provides the root metaphor” (Bloch and Parry 1982, 213–214). Binding is necessary not only to preserve a thing’s amorphous vitality but also to make it alienable. After the vital spirits have been gath-

Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty 131 ered and bound into place, the nal step is the alienation of what has been bound. A temple with planted s m stones is alienated from agricultural production and hence from royal consumption. As the c rya in Kampong Cham noted in the introduction, such alienation has real consequences. Kings, black magicians, and the malevolent dead are prevented from entering a spiritually endowed temple, either by magical protections (the p ram ) or from fear of losing their own, di erently sourced magical power. At a more mundane but vitally important level, rice can be alienated in the form of gifts, tribute, barter, or sale. The calling of a living person’s braling overcomes a period of alienation, and I believe we can see this at work in the funerary rituals that close a person’s life story. There is, it appears, a widely cognized local binary between Buddhist and non-Buddhist forms of supernatural power. It is, however, a binary that Buddhism is somehow capable of encompassing. Where the king releases vital and potentially dangerous spirits through his acts of violence, the Buddhist monk should have the ability to face them without fear, and to control them. This power is most clearly pro ered in all of the rituals surveyed above, and it relies on an apparent imagination of a technique in which spirits are gathered into a body or some other object and bound there. This power may in social fact not exist in particular members of the sangha, and certainly some monks are recognized as more skilled than others in their dealings with the spirit world. Nonetheless, their power does not reside in their person, but in their robes; that is to say, their power is socially associated with the sangha as an institution and monks as members of it. Thus, any reasonably knowledgeable monk should be able to manage death in this way, though powerful individuals may be deemed more appropriate in extreme situations. The power of the fully ordained Buddhist monk to stand against the might of violence and death is indicated by the prohibition against novice monks entering the sanctuary until after the sacri ce; until that time, only fully ordained monks are permitted in the sanctuary, though laypeople have no restrictions. The novices must stay beyond the string wound in a boundary outside of the vih ra. At the conclusion of the minor melee of participants collecting as much of the now-powerful ampo string as possible, a fully ordained

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monk steps on each of the stones that compose the new sanctuary’s oor. This act, called J n (a.w. Joan, “to step”), seems to ritually complete the mastery of the Buddhist monk over the subterranean power of the n ga and the spirit, who are now pinned into place, or bound into the pedestal of the main Buddha image. Monks and laity take their customary positions inside the newly consecrated vih ra, facing each other across the center of the main space, during which the laity are allowed to make merit for the rst time in this newly Buddhist space in a ceremony of d na, giving.8 The laity make merit and the monks receive the materials they need to support themselves; following the enactment of sacri cial violence and alienation, the gift-giving enacts Buddhist values. My argument here has been quite simple, and is well supported by the existing evidence regarding the role of the king in alienating temple land to the sangha, the presence of violent sacri cial imagery in that ritual, and the apparently paradoxical implantation of the king’s violence at the very heart of the temple. The s m ceremony is at least partly about the transformation of one type of space—royal land, where the values of violence and kingly authority prevail—into another type of space—monastic land, where the values of giving and monastic authority prevail. We can present this imagistically as a series of concentric circles, in which the sangha occupies the central space, inside an encompassing circle occupied by the king. The king, in turn, is enclosed by a circle occupied by the powers of nature, embodied by the n ga, which is nally enclosed within the outermost circle, that of the Buddha. Sovereignty appears intercalated and inseparable, such that monastic authority and possession of the land are ritually represented as dependent upon the violence exercised by the king, but are actually dependent on the powers of nature, which must o er nal obeisance to the power and authority of the Buddha himself, incarnated by the sangha. Agricultural resonance in the s m ceremony presents a solution to the initially confusing practices of binding that pervade these rituals. Why should monks contain the spirits with binding actions? Indeed, since these spirits are not are not usually thought amenable to the moral discipline and practices of Buddhism and its karmic perspective, why are monks engaging with them at all? The practice of gathering

Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty 133 indeterminate vitality and binding it into a useful form is found in stillexisting agricultural fertility rites, which may be the earliest version of this practice, prior even to its appearance in funerals. Agriculture, forbidden to monks by their Vinaya, is the special domain of kings. We can hardly imagine a great king toiling behind a plow, but every year, about one month after Khmer New Year (in mid-May), the king or one of his representatives does precisely that—ritually plowing the eld just north of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. This ceremony is supposed to forecast the upcoming year’s agricultural fortunes, as well as its social and political ones. What better way to ritualize the importance and dignity of agricultural labor than to have a king—who nearly by de nition is one of those “saved from the mud”—engage in an imitation of that same labor? The distinction of agriculture sets up a very particular relationship between the king and the sangha: the king creates his wealth and power through the extraction of agricultural fertility produced by the peasants, and o ers some portion of this wealth to support the sangha, who are forbidden the plow in order to preserve subsoil life that could be destroyed through its action. The violence of the king makes possible the peace and virtue of the monks, and the ritual installation of the s m boundary, which alienates control of the temple land from the king to the monks, ritualizes this paradox and distinction through the now common images of binding. I suggest that what we see in the Pa cu S m ceremony is a form of intercalated sovereignty: the Krung V l ceremony takes place prior to the Pa cu S m ceremony and invokes an explicitly non-Buddhist, nonhuman, original sovereign power. The Pa cu S m only takes place with the symbolic sacri cial violence of the royal sovereign or his modern state equivalents, and even when the territory is thus alienated from the king’s control, his sacri cial power remains hidden in the very center of the vih ra’s foundations, in the place of the Indakhila, or Indra, or king s m stone. Violence, sovereignty, the king, Brahmanism, and all the non-Buddhist spirits in the world, along with those thought of as savages, are aligned in the imagination through opposition to Buddhism. Krung V l is similarly allied as an exemplar of Brahmanism. In these cases, “Brahmanism” is de ned in multiple ways, cutting through the multiple worlds that constitute the Khmer imagination, as that which opposes but

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ultimately bends to Buddhism and Buddhist civilization, de ned as lowland rice-growing monarchies. In a discussion of Bataille’s notion of sovereignty, Achille Mbembe characterizes it as “the refusal to accept the limits that the fear of death would have the subject respect. The sovereign world, Bataille argues, ‘is the world in which the limit of death is done away with’” (Mbembe 2003, 16). Sovereignty without the risk of death, as if death were “there only to be negated, never for anything but that” (15), is not sovereignty at all. The king’s sovereignty is the power over life, in that it can turn life into death. The monk’s sovereignty exceeds the king’s, since through their ability to negate death, monks can control the creation of sites of ongoing value—deathpower. “One could summarize in the above terms what Michel Foucault meant by biopower: that domain of life over which power has taken control” (Mbembe 2003, 11). Conversely, what I intend by “deathpower” is that domain of death over which human power has taken control. The king can create death but has no power over the dead. The Buddhist monk respects no such limits and thus embodies perfect sovereignty. The king must seek his sovereignty through gifts given him by the real sovereigns of the wild world and must ritualize their supremacy, as in the Krung V l ritual. But the Buddhist sangha, which incarnates the supreme authority over the spirits of the world possessed by the Buddha himself, has authority even over the spirits to which the king is subordinate. In this vision of Cambodian Buddhist sovereignty, royal sovereignty appears as a moment in an intercalated set of sovereignties. The king rules over Buddhist monks as real human subjects and institutions to whom he can give gifts, such as real territory and temples. But he is potentially ruled by the n gas that he holds, as it were, by the tail, and that poses a constant danger to his authority. Luckily for him, the same Buddhist monks to whom he gives gifts—thus incarnating the preeminent Buddhist virtue of giving, d na—are also sovereign over the world of spirits. It’s a sort of Mobius strip of sovereignty. In the next chapter, we return to the funeral itself and proceed to an investigation of the pa suk la: simultaneously a ritual funeral shroud, monastic robe, and ritual event involved in binding spirits into a corpse or its cremated remains.

Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty 135

STRATA OF DEATH AND THE NIGHT FESTIVAL I was in Kampong Thom province in early February 2004 to witness a s m installation ceremony. The temple was still un nished—the walls were unpainted and the roof wasn’t even fully covered—but the community felt that the only way they could get the funds to complete the building was to hold the s m ceremony ahead of time and use the collected money for construction expenses. The temple was in a small village, and I was staying at the house of my friend Phirun’s widowed mother and his extended family. After the morning ceremonies were over, Phirun took me on a tour of the funerary monuments on the temple grounds. First we looked at all the ko ha (urns), many with photos of the deceased stationed next to them, which were housed behind the main altar in the old wooden vih ra. These, Phirun told me, were the relics of people who couldn’t a ord cetiya—the iconic, bell-shaped funerary monuments that are often considered “standard” although many families obviously cannot a ord them. Then we looked at many of these cetiya. The most common location for them is just inside the temple compound walls, forming a sort of wall of the memorialized dead within the temple boundary. In the countryside especially, cetiya locations can make people—especially younger people—nervous. They are not only the location of the relics of the dead, and hence still the site of ongoing power, but also locations for various forms of misbehavior and misdeeds, such as taking drugs and sexual activity. I was often told stories of young women who had been raped in such areas, though never by anyone who claimed to know any of the victims, so I cannot speak to whether this imagination of cetiya areas as dangerous is rooted in fact or in the imaginary connection with other death-associated locales, like the forest. Over in one corner of the temple compound, between the vih ra and the sra —the arti cial pond or tank that serves as a ongoing source of water during the dry season—were a few Chinese-style, above-ground graves. These monuments di ered from the more traditional Chinese

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graves, planted near rice elds. Co n-shaped and cast mostly out of concrete, they included both Khmer and Chinese identi ers. Finally, as we were leaving the temple compound and passing the sra , Phirun stopped and pointed at a spot near one corner of the pond. “That’s my father,” he told me. His father was dead, so I wasn’t immediately certain what he meant. Then he crouched down and scratched in the dirt a bit. It did seem that some of the dirt was darker than the surrounding area—almost black. He explained that when his father had died several years before, they hadn’t had the money to cremate and inter him properly. Instead, they arranged a hasty cremation with just a few monks, after which they collected as much of the ashes and remaining charred wood as they could and deposited it on the bank of the temple pond. Phirun watched my face without expression; I wasn’t certain how to respond. That evening, we returned to the eld just outside the temple walls, which had been transformed into an enormous fair. A stage with loudspeakers had been set up at one side for the traditional theater performances of scenes from the R makirti (a.w. R makert ), the Khmer version of the R m ya a. Food stalls congregated along two sides of the eld, with winding paths between them, and the population of the village seemed to have suddenly increased vefold, because the fair—far more than the morning’s ritual, the excuse for the fair—attracted families and especially young people from far away. We wandered around for a short while, chewing on grilled meat and enjoying the festive atmosphere. As I passed two young ethnic Cham women, one grabbed the arm of the other and hissed, “P r ng!” (“French ”) and quickly hustled away. Small groups of boys and young men walked a few steps behind similarly sized groups of girls and young women, only occasionally acknowledging each other’s presence, as they irted and tracked each other through the crowds. We left as the loudspeakers blared to life and the dancers took their places to enact a scene from the story of King R ma. The play went through the night, and I listened to much of it as I lay on a woven mat in my friend’s house, trying to sleep. Early the next morning, we encountered the actors walking away from the stage footsore and hoarse of voice, their costumes and makeup in various stages of disarray.

Building Deathpower and Rituals of Sovereignty 137 I was fascinated by how much more populous the fairgrounds— immediately outside the temple walls—were that evening than the ritual within had been that morning. The festival only took place because of the ritual, but was full of activities quite un-Buddhist, if not positively anti-Buddhist: drinking, the performance of the stories of the Hindu god R ma, irting, etc. Far more people came to this part of the event than came to the ritual. These worlds live side by side, implying and generating each other, in a relationship something like night and day, or inside and outside.

5. Binding Mighty Death

THE CRAFT AND AUTHORITY

OF THE RAG ROBE IN CAMBODIAN RITUAL TECHNOLOGY

At every stage there is tying and unbinding; without it, it seems, the imagined universe will slip away. (Shulman 2012)

A monk’s robe made of a shroud rests at the heart of the Therav dan Buddhist funeral in Southeast Asia. That shroud, called the pa suk la (a.w.: bangsukol), is given in the funeral ritual to the sangha, a woven piece of fabric as the nal gift of the self. The word pa suk la has another, everyday meaning in the ceremony: the verbal and physical performances of the monks. I introduced this in chapter 2, noting that ritual specialists and laypeople alike identi ed the pa suk la as the single most important part of the funeral, though there were di erent interpretations of the reason. The pa suk la ritual includes the recitation of a chant that metonymically represents the entire Abhidhamma, one of the three “baskets” of the Pali canon, as well as physical performance and material creation of boundaries. This second pa suk la takes place at moments of corporeal transition in the funeral ceremony, and is accompanied by either by gestures of binding or the physical

Binding Mighty Death 139 binding of the remains. Both robe and rite connect to the funerary imagination in a way that emphasizes not only textual knowledge of ritually deployed images but also the material and physical performances of the rituals themselves (Terwiel 2012, 256). I will connect these two pa suk la, then proceed to concentrate on the centrality of the pa suk la in Southeast Asian Buddhism and its basis in the Cambodian ritual imagination. Chapter 4 examined the authority of the Buddhist sangha in the face of death, as realized in s m installation ceremonies in a Buddhist sanctuary. The institutional conquest of death is associated with the technical ability of monks to ritually manage spirits and bind them into place. In this chapter I examine rst how the craft of the pa suk la shroud and the ability of monks to sew it into a robe roots the imagined ability of Buddhist monks to weave death and life together in early Indian Buddhist practices. I then look at the practice in contemporary Cambodian funeral rituals, which also represents the monks as having technical control over spirits. This aspect complements the metaphor of the pa suk la shroud-as-gift, making it truly a “gift of the self.” The referents in the previous chapter were royal sovereignty, opposed moral frameworks, and the echoes of sacri cial violence. In this chapter, the ritual actions are based on and receive their social force from the agricultural work, including agricultural rituals, involved in farming rice in Khmer Southeast Asia. The Buddhist monk still binds spirits into place, but we will see more explicitly that this is a form of pastoral care that locates the monks as the privileged moral intermediaries between the living and the dead.

¯ LA: THE DUST-HEAP ROBE PAM.SUKU

In Pali texts, the pa suk la means a “rag robe” or “dust-heap robe.”1 According to these texts, the pa suk la robe may be obtained from various sources, ranging from trash heaps to charnel grounds. However, as Gregory Schopen notes, the notion of pa suk la as “rubbish heap cloth” is a “perfectly legitimate, if almost entirely rhetorical, Buddhist monastic ideal” (Schopen 2006, 336). The pa suk la was in almost every case a robe made from cloth associated with a corpse—a shroud or a pall (337). The pa suk lika—a Buddhist monk wearing a pa suk la—wears a shroud as his robe. This is consistent with the sa ny si ideology of

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renunciants accepting a ritual and social “death” for their ordination and the shaved-headed, orange-clad ascetic as socially dead, and thus prepared as a corpse. In the Pali texts that serve as the major source of information about supposedly early pa suk la practices, the pa suk la were collected from the charnel grounds where families abandoned corpses wrapped in cloth. Taking cloth from an abandoned corpse rendered monks vulnerable to accusations of grave robbing. Given the fear of death contagion in nonmonastic society, the pa suk lika “would seem, in short, not to be decreasing but increasing in its social o ensiveness” (Schopen 2006, 319). The message here may be not that radical ascetic, socially dangerous practices must be covered up, but rather than even beneath the appearance of a conventionally “proper” monk there is a body wrapped in a shroud, and that in fact the latter is the foundation of the former, that in spite of appearances, radical ascetic and socially dangerous practices still underlie Buddhist monasticism. (321–322)

The source of the monk’s power to negotiate and control death and the spirits is founded in his triumphant conquest of death and his fearlessness in its face. This conquest, in turn, comes as the result of Buddhist monastic training, and is potently represented by the pa suk la. When mourning families give a pa suk la shroud to Buddhist monks during a funeral, attendees are invited to imagine that the monk will sew the shroud into a robe and wear it. This fearlessness in the face of death is at the root of the Buddhist monk’s authority. When death takes one of the living, most of us feel concern and anxiety. We continue to care for the deceased, but most also feel a certain fear of the dead— their physical or remnant spiritual energies. The fear of death strongly resembles the fear of contagion (Hertz 1960). Khmer are not exceptional in this regard, and have a well-developed anxiety about the spirits of the dead, who inhabit a surprising amount of the world of the living, especially in the forests and waters. To live a civilized life—in villages, growing rice, and participating in Buddhist ritual—requires a means of mediating and controlling these spirits, who may take o ense at the insults civilization commits against the natural

Binding Mighty Death 141 world. Spirits have more power than the living over the energies of the world, and their disapproval and wrath must be either appeased or contained. New elds, homes, and buildings must therefore be made with permission from the spirits of the land and water. Such buildings also commonly have a dangerous spirit bound within them for protection, as we saw in chapter 4. In accepting the gift of the pa suk la, Buddhist monks engage in precisely the morbid activities that engender fear and avoidance in most people. The Buddhist monk ritually confronts the fear of death by receiving the shroud and transforming it into a marker of the sangha itself—a monastic robe. The monk wears the robes of the dead, and thus clearly unafraid of the contagion of death, o ers mediation and control of death and its powers to the laity. I have argued for the importance of agricultural imagery in the ritual performances of Cambodian Buddhists. This imagery appears in both Pali texts and ritual practice and the local Cambodian imagination. It is impossible to determine whether one set of agricultural images generated the other or their similarity created the basis of an approximation between previously existing imaginary systems. Nevertheless, the Pali texts do make a series of clear connections between the power of the Buddhist monk and agricultural imagery, down to the origin and history of monks’ robes. In one Vinaya story, the Buddha and his cousin and personal attendant nanda are walking in Magadha’s rice elds when the Buddha, inspired by the sight, asks nanda to make robes in the same way: Then the Lord, having stayed in R jagaha for as long as he found suitable, set out on tour for Dakkhi agiri. The Lord saw the elds of Magadha, laid out in strips, laid out in lines, laid out in embankments, laid out in squares, and seeing this, he addressed the venerable nanda, saying: “Now, do you, nanda, see the eld of Magadha laid out in strips . . . laid out in squares?” “Yes, Lord.” “Are you able, nanda, to provide robes like this for the monks?” “I am able, Lord.” (Horner 1951, 407–408)

142 Binding Mighty Death

The modern form of the monastic robe is based on this auspicious inspiration. The descriptors used for these elds identify the technique used to order them: bunding, just as in contemporary rainfed Cambodian rice agriculture. In the above quotation, in each place where the translator used the phrase “laid out in,” the word translated is some form of the Pali word for “bound”: baddha. The seams sewn to hold the robes together form the bunds of the robe, just as dredged dirt pressed into place forms the bunds of the rice eld. The monk truly is a eld of merit, in Buddhism’s consistent metaphor (Horner 1951, 408n1). But his action in taking a shroud—a pa suk la—and turning it into a patchwork robe indicates that he is not only the eld in this metaphor, he is the farmer. It would take us too far astray to consider the historical Indian context of this innovation in the Pali texts, but prior to this construction of robes based on agricultural elds, all monastic robes in the Pali texts are presumed to have been, precisely, pa suk la—shrouds of the dead taken and used as robes. They were heavy, and a shaven-headed ascetic in a shroud must have presented a discom ting image. The technical transformation is that these pa suk la were now taken apart and sewn together in patches, producing a transformed robe, undoubtedly both lighter and less terrifying. Perhaps the symbolism of the transformed style of robe was intended to distinguish between di erent types of monks or to moderate the image of the sangha in the eyes of the laity. Regardless, the pa suk la robe became an optional practice of Buddhist monks (Langer 2007, 86–88). In the Pali commentaries, a “folk” etymology for nirv a is given that explicitly compares the achievement of enlightenment with ceasing to sew. If v na, as these commentaries claim, means “to sew,” or perhaps to weave, then nirv a “can be elucidated as abandoning the desire which weaves together life to life” (Collins 1998, 196). To achieve enlightenment is to gain the power to cease weaving oneself back into the cycle of sa s ra. The pa suk la represents death woven into improved life through its o ering to the monks; the transformation of that death into the standard monastic patchwork robe seems to represent a technical transformation of that death that is explicitly associated with agriculture. Anthropologically speaking, the impure robe received by a presumably pure Buddhist monk strongly resembles Douglas’ description of dirt as “matter out of place” (Douglas 1966, 44). It appears as a confu-

Binding Mighty Death 143 sion of antithetical categories. This seeming problem is in fact the key to Buddhist monastic authority. Just as the waxy lotus ower repels the muck in which it grows, the Buddhist monk’s authority is grounded in his vocationally unique and special immunity to the impurity of death, which is his primary concern and obstacle. As Bond writes: “Death has a paradoxical status in Therav da Buddhism for it stands both at the heart of the human predicament and at the heart of the solution to that predicament” (Bond 1980, 237). Buddhist monks represent a social—and socially approved—power immune to the dangers of death. They prove their fearlessness and real power by publicly accepting funeral shrouds to wear as robes. This conquest and management of death is at the core of Buddhist monastic authority. In some ways the pa suk la is metaphorically like most woven clothes, in that one side looks di erent than the other: one side for the monks’ fearlessness and consequent authority over death; the other for their ability to control it. Whereas the pa suk la cloth serves as evidence of the monk’s vocational conquest of death, the pa suk la ritual appears as the practical means by which the monks deploy their powers over the world’s spirits. It is one of a wide range of rituals—Buddhist and non-Buddhist— that order the Khmer world through the containment of spirits; this practice is based on the everyday experiences of rice farmers, who have composed the vast majority of the Khmer population since the adoption of agriculture.

¯ LA: THE DANGEROUS GIFT OF THE SELF PAM.SUKU

In an article applying anthropological concepts of reciprocity to the gift-giving practices of Buddhist ritual, Ivan Strenski makes the observation that “ritual giving sits squarely in the centre of the relation between the sangha and lay society. Giving de nes the very relationship between the sangha and lay society: the monks are always receivers, the laity always givers” (Strenski 1983, 470). This is no less true of the funeral ceremony, in which multiple gifts are o ered to the sangha. One gift in particular stands out, however— the gift of death itself, or perhaps, the gift of the dead. This appears as the pa suk la cloth given near the climax of the funeral. The sacri cial

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imagery of the Pa cu S m ceremony represents a ritual murder, where the released spirit is bound and put to work in the service of Buddhism. This transfer of spiritual energy is a common part of the Cambodian religious imagination; woven cloth seems to have a special capacity to absorb such spirits. It seems that the robe itself is intended to elaborately represent the new, embryonic, life of the deceased.2 This can be interpreted in two ways, not necessarily contradictory: one based on a manuscriptsupported imagination, the other based on the idea that woven cloth may be enlivened. The explanation relying on manuscripts demonstrates a clear analogical imagination through which the robe is simultaneously the deceased and the matrix of their rebirth. This is part of the insight at the basis of François Bizot’s study of the funeral rites, largely executed through a translation of funerary texts.3 Bizot’s overall argument is that the rite of pa suk la makes this cloth both a shroud and a matrix for a better rebirth. The pa suk la’s various parts are compared to di erent parts of a pregnant womb, which is then given to the sangha as a substitute for the self. The pa suk la is a gift of the self, returned as new life. In this, his analysis of the funeral accords with mine: through a nal gift of the deceased to the sangha, the deceased’s next rebirth is improved. And we agree that this central logic of monastic mediation of the rebirth status of the deceased is extended to other situations, including healing and rejuvenation. The funerary specialists I worked with were not aware of the detailed embryological symbolism studied by Bizot, and instead routinely said either that the pa suk la cloth was a metaphor for the dead or had absorbed something of the dead. The ability of woven cloth to contain spirits has echoes in other aspects of the religious imagination. Certainly there are several “living” cloths in the funeral ceremony, including the pa suk la and the d ng braling, but this logic exceeds the funerary context. Ang Choulean and Mao Sengyan, for instance, have argued that ritual cloths are frequently imagined as enlivened: Some ags are alive. That is, an c rya must “open the eye” of the ag rst. Except when these ags are being sewn, they must be ordained

Binding Mighty Death 145 prior to being used in any important religious ceremony, and have their ordination removed after the ceremony is completed. (Mao Sengyan and Ang Choulean 2007–2008, 31)

With this example, we can see that the pa suk la cloth o ered to the sangha during the funeral ceremony may be understood not merely to represent the gift of the self to the sangha, but to be that gift, where the vital spirits of the person impregnate the cloth. Regardless of the precise relationship between the shroud and the self, the monastic recipient of a pa suk la embodies an ability to hold death and to control its outcome. Rita Langer argues that the practice of the pa suk la combines the Vedic funeral rite with a gift o ering.4 If true, this resembles the relationship between Buddhism and Brahmanism discussed in chapter 4— the transformation of a sacri ce into a gift. In an analysis of the early Indian pa suk la, Gregory Schopen makes the point that the ceremony transforms Buddhist monks from cemetery scavengers to honored recipients of gifts (Schopen 2006, 337–339). Thus, although the scriptural representation of the pa suk la portrays wearing it as a form of isolated ascetic autonomy, the transfer of the gift at funerals transforms it into a symbol of the relationship between the sangha and the laity at the moment of death. Insofar as this transfer is a gift, it is one that only Buddhist monks are capable of receiving. There is no general denial of death’s contagion or impurity, merely a denial that the monks are subject to its laws and its in uence. Only a monk could be so brazen as to wear a shroud without fear.5 Just as the ritual establishing a s m boundary around a Buddhist sanctuary creates the grounds of the legitimate, institutional sangha through a sacri cial gift, so too the pa suk la o ering is a gift that establishes the authority of the sangha over death. The pa suk la as object makes a very clear, symbolic point about the ability of monks to remain untouched by death. In contrast, the ritual performance termed “pa suk la” makes no semantic point at all, but accomplishes a task: to in uence the death and rebirth of others. The monks have a magicotechnical power, based on their relationship with death. The presumption that Buddhist monks ought to be able to subdue spirits is the basis for Buddhism’s self-representation in its relationship to other domains,

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such as what I, following the bulk of my informants, have been calling “Brahmanism”: essentially, all religious practices and beliefs that modernist reformist Buddhist monks and their followers don’t claim as part of Buddhism proper. The pa suk la robe, o ered as a funerary gift to the sangha, seems to represent perfectly the type of ritual symbol that some scholars have used to represent Southeast Asian Buddhism as unusually “syncretic”: “symbols to which special powers are ascribed within ritual contexts— which may or may not be overtly Buddhist—as animistic or Brahmanistic” (Swearer 2010, 18). Perhaps. As discussed above, in uence can be traced in all sorts of directions. Dr. Langer sees potential in uence from the Vedic funeral rituals, whereas Schopen sees the pa suk la as a socially powerful and disturbing innovation by early Buddhists. Ang Choulean’s and my own observations indicate that the pa suk la also relies on the ability of objects—especially woven cloth—to absorb or be installed with spirits. However, all of these in uences can be thoroughly subordinated to Buddhism in the imagination. They need be neither denied nor puri ed for the ritual to be genuinely Buddhist. Castoriadis points out that this is normal in the work of the cultural imagination: Every symbolism is built on the ruins of earlier symbolic edi ces and uses their materials—even if it is only to ll the foundations of new temples, as the Athenians did after the Persian wars. By its virtually unlimited natural and historical connections, the signi er always goes beyond a strict attachment to a precise signi ed and can lead to completely unexpected realms. The constitution of symbolism in real social and historical life has no relation to the “closed” and “transparent” de nitions of symbols found in a work of mathematics (which, moreover, can never be closed up within itself). (Castoriadis 1975, 121)

It would be truly curious if we did not nd evidence of such disparate in uences in the creations of human beings. As Peter van der Veer has said, this situation is so much the norm that the word “syncretic” must apply to nearly all human social phenomena, and thus the word has little analytical value (van der Veer 1994). Instead, I emphasize that whatever the in uences or their sources, the ritual is performed in a

Binding Mighty Death 147 way that completely subordinates them and invests them with meanings that need not be understood as syncretic. Turning from a consideration of the pa suk la as object to the ritual in which it plays a central, but by no means the only role, I will stress that the pa suk la is consistently associated with monastic actions that transform an item of no—or even negative—value, such as a funeral pall or dust-heap rags, into an item of great value. This is accomplished through practices that evoke other cultural representations central to the ordering of the moral and practical world. The most fundamental of these are the rituals and everyday techniques underlying agricultural practices, which in many ways resemble those of the funeral pa suk la ritual.

¯ LA: RITUAL PERFORMANCE PAM.SUKU

While the primary textual referent of the word pa suk la is to a cloth object o ered to or appropriated by Buddhist monks in the context of funeral rituals, pa suk la in colloquial usage refers to a ritual chant, called alternately merely pa suk la, pa suk la m tik , or sattappakara a m tik .6 M tik is a word, cognate with “matrix” and “mother,” that denotes the mnemonic verses of s tra contents. The sattappakara a m tik is the collection of these mnemonic verses from the seven books (sattappakara a) of the Abhidhamma. The chant is performed by an even number of Buddhist monks (four is the most common), who are collectively referred to as the m tik puon, “the four-part m tik .”7 This reference sees them as embodying, or performing, the Abhidhamma through their actions. However, it also over-represents the extent to which the actual content of the chant has anything to do with the Abhidhamma.8 The pa suk la m tik is not chanted in a pedagogical or analytical manner; instead, it is chanted and stands metonymically for the Abhidhamma in moments when the ritual e cacy of the Abhidhammic perspective is required. How is this ritual e cacy imagined, and why should it, merely by allusion, have the sort of power in funerals ascribed to it? Part of the answer has to do with a conception of the Abhidhamma “throughout the region as a life-giving mother” (McDaniel 2008, 241), and as a “mother that bears new children” (244). The Abhidhamma’s

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power is embryological, naturally of the mother, but is here in the possession of celibate male monks, who employ this power of new life to positively a ect the rebirth of the deceased (Jay 1992). The Abhidhamma enumerates and investigates the basic “elements” of life and explains how they combine into the conditioned entities we experience as the phenomenal world; the pa suk la m tik seems to have some concrete e ect on the disintegration and recombination of these elements into new bodies of life. The allusions to the Abhidhammic perspective in this context invoke the presumed conquest of death by the Buddha, who sees all the constituent elements of existence as they are and possesses the skill to in uence their reweaving together.9 His presumed conquest and resulting technical control over death allows for the elaboration of the pa suk la ritual into initiatory and healing rituals (Ladwig 2012; Strenski 1983; Bizot 1981). More speci cally, the pa suk la ritual is most required during moments of change, transfer, and transformation of the human being. As such, it is easily interpreted as instrumental. The chant is typically intoned during moments in the funeral process when the corpse or postcremation remains are moved.10 The Khmer express considerable concern about these moments, for disrupting the corpse—especially during the rst seven days after death, when the deceased is supposed to be unaware that he or she has died—can result in the freeing of the spirit, which may then return to molest the living. The chanting of pa suk la takes place primarily at the moments when the danger of freeing the malevolent spirits is greatest, and we may thus interpret it as partly addressing this concern. Bizot makes this point consistently, noting the constant binding and boundary making—explicitly termed s m —associated with these moments (Bizot 1981). The notion that the pa suk la ritual addresses fears of the dead, and speci cally fears of freeing malevolent spirits, is strengthened by the associated ritual actions that take place during the chanting. When Cambodians discuss the pa suk la ritual, most of the time a necessary part of that discussion explicitly involves creating a boundary, or s m , around the corpse or its remains. This vocabulary of binding pervades the engagement of Buddhist monks with death, as we have repeatedly seen. At all moments when the pa suk la m tik is chanted, there is an accompanying ritual gesture of binding. Most

Binding Mighty Death 149 commonly, this involves the use of raw cotton a po to literally bind the corpse and to create a border around the body or its remains. This prevents malevolent spirits from forming, or from returning home from the place of cremation or burial. Similarly, at various parts of the funeral ritual when the pa suk la is chanted, the chanting monks may hold the a po , creating a s m boundary around the corpse. In cases where the monks do not hold the a po , equivalent binding is accomplished by at least four monks who stand around the corpse, so that they themselves function as the boundary when they chant pa suk la m tik .11

Bizot and the “Tantric Pamsu ku¯la”: Healing and Initiatory Ritual Pam.suku¯la Performances The only lengthy study of the Cambodian pa suk la ritual of which I am aware is François Bizot’s volume, Le don de soi-même (Bizot 1981). Possibly more famous for his capture by and survival of the Khmer Rouge, and his memoir of that experience in The Gate, Bizot has made his life’s work an investigation of what he thinks of as “tantric” Buddhist strains in Cambodia. I disagree with this hypothesis and characterization, but the value of Bizot’s research would be di cult to overestimate, and the in uence of his program remains very strong. I have emphasized the everyday “funerary” pa suk la over such healing or initiatory pa suk la because I consider it socially prior and fundamental to them. Bizot, in contrast, focuses upon the relatively rare pa suk la that is a type of revivi cation ritual for the still living. In my opinion, this is clearly an elaboration of the imagination of the monks’ everyday ability to manage the spirits of the dead in funeral contexts, translated to the context of the living. In some ways, this pa suk la is a sort of Buddhist hov braling. Bizot’s attention to the practices is careful. His research took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in a rather idiosyncratic region. It has been di cult for subsequent researchers, such as myself, to nd replications of many of the “tantric” initiatory practices he discusses in this and other works, though that is not necessarily a reason to doubt their veracity; such practices were not of great concern to me and my e orts to locate them were limited. He also undertakes a careful examination

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of a Khmer text related to some of these practices, and includes images of the original along with his skillful translation and wonderful photos. Bizot describes this “tantric” pa suk la ritual as the creation of a maze on a site, usually out of easily located material, involving long winding sheets as walls strung between upright posts, for instance. The “patient” (or initiand) is led into the heart of the maze and covered with a shroud. The pa suk la chant is intoned and the shroud removed. The patient is then reborn, initiated, and revivi ed. The basic logic is not at all di cult to understand, and is found often enough in diverse contexts that parts of it may plausibly be considered universal. The ritual performance of death and rebirth is a constant in initiation ceremonies around the world, and the use of local funeral ritual components to enact this drama is hardly surprising. However, Bizot does argue for a deeper consistency in the pa suk la symbolism, in support of a institutionally or regionally coherent set of ideas about Khmer Buddhist ritual. Bizot expends a considerable amount of space, often with justication from Khmer ritual texts, detailing the identi cation of the pa suk la ritual as an explicitly “rebirth”-symbolism-centered drama, with the pa suk la shroud explicitly serving as a symbolic womb of the rebirthing “mother.” To this end, he describes the di erent components of the monastic robe/pa suk la shroud’s physical parts and their minute and speci c identi cation with di erent physical parts of the human female reproductive system. Clearly some erudite Khmer monks have developed such extensive and intricate symbolic relationships (which I would characterize as ensidic representations) to explain the narrative drama they ritualize. But none of the Cambodian monks I’ve interviewed, or the c rya, who occasionally have knowledge similar to or even deeper than the monks’, have admitted to knowing about such a precise set of identi cations. This explanation has no current institutional life and is apparently not being reproduced as important knowledge within the sangha. That said, and although I did not witness it myself, I was told about an initiatory pa suk la ritual that took place in a suburban Phnom Penh Buddhist temple famed for both its political connections and its pur astyle worship, both centered around its charismatic and connected young abbot. A monk friend of mine who had spent a rainy-season

Binding Mighty Death 151 retreat there witnessed the same ritual described by Bizot, though with fewer observed details. But the explicitly death-focused revivi cation aspects of the initiatory pa suk la can be found in other Buddhist countries. Neighboring Thailand, for instance, has seen a surge in the popularity of “co n rituals,” in which the patient lies in a co n while the Thai pa suk la is intoned. I am informed that these are most commonly called “Sleeping in a Co n, Expelling Bad Luck,” and “Pa suk la Death/Life.” These were so popular that mass initiation ceremonies were constructed and held, each of the patients seeking resolution to a di erent challenge, though some experts blamed the 2008 economic crisis for the surge in participation (Bell 2008). Similarly—and yet distant enough to encourage doubt as to direct transmission, and facilitate suspicions of a core and transregional Buddhist logic—South Korea has recently seen such a ritual fad, called in English “Co n Rejuvenation Ceremonies” (Chao 2010). Returning to Cambodia, other rituals also use the covering of a patient with a cloth as a form of healing. Miech Ponn, director of the Buddhist Institute of Cambodia’s Cultures and Customs research department, reports that those who have been struck by lightning are traditionally treated by being covered with a white cloth and jumped over three times. There is no conclusive evidence supporting the idea that the initiatory pa suk la ritual comes from a tantric lineage out of Sri Lanka, or anywhere else. But neither has it been disproven (Crosby 1999). What the above examples indicate, however, are the following points: First, the ritual drama of initiatory death and rebirth is common enough to be considered nearly universal; no claims of historical transmission can be argued on the basis of similar such dramas. Second, Buddhist monks, whose primary ritual authority is manifested in funeral rituals, in which death is converted into literal rebirth, necessarily ritualize the drama of death and rebirth in Buddhist-in uenced cultures; no claims of historical transmission can be argued on the basis of thematically similar but ritually distinct Buddhist practices alone. Finally, in contemporary Cambodian practice, the funerary pa suk la is central and dominant, and other similar rituals—whether related by name, intended outcome, symbolic practice, or some combination of these—appear to be devised on the basis of this central ritual.

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RITUAL TECHNOLOGIES AND THE AUTHORITY OF CONQUERING DEATH The pa suk la ritual with which I am concerned here is separate from both the pa suk la as a gift of the self and the pa suk la as the chant of the m tik of the Abhidhamma. Instead, I concentrate on the physical gestures of boundary making and the a po string materially used during the same moments as the chanting of the pa suk la m tik . In the everyday imagination of the Cambodian layperson, this is often the primary meaning of the word pa suk la; it is something monks do, physically and instrumentally, to contain and control the spirit of the corpse. And it is done through binding. This binding is performed with material implements and with the human bodies of the monks, which have normally received less research attention than have texts about funerals.12 Diana Taylor has noted the archival focus of much scholarship, and suggests the notion of “the repertoire” as that which “enacts embodied memory: performances, gestures, morality, movement, dance, singing—in short, all those acts usually thought of as ephemeral, nonreproducible knowledge” (Taylor 2003, 19–20). The performative approach to ritual has begun to rectify the tendency to dismiss evidence such as physical performance and gesture. Writers as diverse as Bourdieu, Lako , and Hollywood have begun to focus on the ways the body and its performances mediate society to the individual and the individual to society, with the body serving as a privileged site of indoctrination, agency, and political action (Hollywood 2002; Lako and Johnson 1999; Bourdieu 1990). Catherine Bell cites Lako on “‘the indispensable forms of imagination’ that emerge from ‘bodily experience’ and profoundly a ect human reasoning” in her in uential study of ritual theory (Bell 1992, 95). This connection between embodied performance and cultural imagination is made clearer by Bourdieu’s in uential formulation of habitus, which states that “every group entrusts to bodily automatisms those principles most basic to it and most indispensable to its conservation.”13 His examples have become famous, bolstering his argument that the “principles embodied in this way are . . . capable of instilling a whole cosmology, an ethic, a metaphysic, a political philosophy through

Binding Mighty Death 153 injunctions as insigni cant as ‘stand up straight’ or ‘don’t hold your knife in your left hand’” (Bourdieu 1977, 94). As indicated in the introduction, collecting and containing water in rain-fed paddy elds is a distinctive form of regional agriculture and has been dominant for most of the last two millennia. The binding of water into elds is a consistent metaphor for the appropriation of power and fertility in the Cambodian imagination. The binding of n gas who represent the supernatural powers of water and fertility is a straightforward metaphor for the appropriation of fertility in the Cambodian imagination, and the binding of the braling of rice into the plant just prior to harvest represents a slight metaphorical extension. From there, the binding of braling into the body of a patient in the hov braling healing seems natural, as does the Buddhist technical control of spirits in general, rooted in a metaphor of binding. This insistent embodied and materialized symbolism is based not merely in some abstract symbolism but in the performed practices themselves, which use this metaphor. The sense that these actions make is ampli ed precisely because of its ubiquity in everyday practices, helping to ground con dence in their general e cacy. The appearance of agricultural resonance in the s m ceremony presents an explanation for the initially confusing practices of binding that pervade these rituals. Why should monks contain these spirits with binding actions? Indeed, since these spirits are not amenable to the moral discipline and practices of Buddhism and its karmic perspective, why are monks engaging with them at all? Fearlessness in the face of death is an institutional, not individual component of the monastic identity, and a component of the sangha’s authority everywhere Buddhism is found. As we have seen in the last two chapters, the control of spirits by the Buddha or the sangha is also a consistent part of the portrayal of Buddhism, even in Pali texts. The only component of the pa suk la ritual that appears problematic or potentially “syncretic” is the connection between this control over spirits and the speci c embodied metaphor of binding. It is beyond the scope of my study to determine the extent of this metaphor outside of Cambodia, but given Cambodian peasants’ regionally distinct agricultural style, it seems possible that this is the local metaphor through which control is executed. It is Buddhist ritual’s engagement with the ritual technology of the Cambodian imaginary, which is, after all, hardly limited to Buddhism.14

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Georges Condominas developed the notion of ritual technology while examining the shifting cultivation culture of highland Vietnam, and argues that the division between agricultural and religious activity with which outsiders are concerned is largely irrelevant to the Mnong Gar he studied. For them, both are experienced as “work.” For the Mnong Gar mind, . . . work whose end is both to reproduce the individual and his society comprises the two technologies not just as two complementary elements but two continuous procedures whose accomplishments are both essential to the achievements of man’s ultimate ends, however these ends are de ned.15

Inspired by the approach of Condominas and the work of fellow Southeast Asian anthropologists, Richard O’Connor wrote of the vital importance of agriculture and imitative technique to the reproduction of both crops and society: “Agriculture is a locus of meaning, not just a means to subsist. As these societies arise performatively, . . . farming’s technical practices easily become ritual acts . . . that constitute a moral stance . . . and de ne ethnic identity” (O’Connor 1995, 969). This agricultural style produces more than rice, undoubtedly Southeast Asia’s most valuable and important commodity; it also produces people, and aspects of culture. In Cambodia, binding power into valuable things or places seems to have emerged in agricultural practices and to underwrite much of nonagricultural practice, including the ritualization of death by Buddhist monks. I suggest that the pa suk la ritual action of binding has social force because it treats the world of non-Buddhist spirits in the same way that farmers treat water. Buddhist monks are endowed with the potency to accomplish such technical management by their own conquest of death, symbolized by the association of their robes with shrouds. Both farming and spirit management are work, and both contain elements of ritual. Seeming to agree with Bourdieu’s notion of the reproduction of entire cosmologies through embodied behavior, Mabbett and Bailey have followed Gombrich in asserting that ritual is less about the search for speci c e ects than about the assertion of an entire cosmology through performance (Bailey and Mabbett 2006, 141–142). The funeral ritual, along with the other rituals I have examined thus far, represents

Binding Mighty Death 155 a core imagination of power and its control in Cambodian society. This imagination conceives power as spirits, which can be gathered and bound into place. That image is instituted and reproduced in funerals, s m installations, healing, and agricultural rituals, to name just a few examples. Value is expressed by the careful binding into place of spirits, pastoral care by the monks and their technical power, which also creates a site for ongoing interaction between the living and the deceased, mediated by the monks. This imagination connects morality to technical power. The Buddhist monks are the institutional exemplars of proper morality, and they use their powers compassionately, in ritual forms of pastoral care (Holt 1981; Holt 2012). As an example of what Condominas and O’Connor term “ritual technology,” the rite of pa suk la connects with the pa suk la robe in the same way that Buddhism and the Buddhist monk connect to Brahmanism and the layperson. The connection among agricultural ordering, geographical ordering, religious ordering, and spirit ordering, all of which take the form of “binding” activities, and the pa suk la robe is made possible by the sangha’s relationship to the rest of the world. As Schopen noted of another Buddhist school’s Vinaya, the primary audience for which Buddhist monastic rules of comportment and conduct were constructed was not Buddhist, but Brahmanist. One of the persistent themes in this book—that Buddhism seems to require a Brahmanist spirit world to conquer—is con rmed in part by the sort of religious behavior normal Cambodians engage in every day, such as prayers to non-Buddhist spirits; sacri ces, including animal sacri ces, at annual ceremonies or for particular spirit mediums; and many other practices, all of which take up more time in a normal Cambodian’s life than does participation in explicitly Buddhist rituals. However, through the submission of laypeople to Buddhism’s moral discipline and demands, and especially in their nal gift of themselves in death, the morally ambiguous and undisciplined spirits of everyday people are domesticated and put to good use. There is a redemptive morality in this ritual, in which the Buddhist monks who ritualize death assist the deceased toward a greater perfection and discipline. Buddhist monks are the exceptional actors whose authority and power may be useful in controlling and appeasing the non-Buddhist

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spirits of the dead. This control, through the agricultural metaphor of binding, is possible for Buddhist monks because of the robes they wear. These robes—whether they are genuinely former shrouds or not— identify them as socially dead men, renunciants of the household life, those who, like the spirits of the dead, must survive on gifts from the living. In the next chapter, we turn to those gifts directly by focusing on the annual ritual of Bhju Pi a (a.w. Pchum Ben), fteen days in which ancestors reborn as hungry ghosts return to the land of the living, looking for gifts from their descendants.

POWERFUL PLANTS I was waiting on the second- oor balcony of a fancy foreign café near Independence Monument to meet Oeurn, my research assistant, for the rst time. I was admiring the bougainvillea and other plants lining the railings and thinking about how to make a decision like working with a research assistant. When I asked her over the phone how I would recognize her, she told me she was very pregnant. This was during my own wife’s rst pregnancy—our children were born just days apart, Oeurn’s child the elder—and Oeurn had a hard time imagining anyone wanting to hire a pregnant woman. While I drank co ee and she sipped at the tea I insisted she order, we chatted about all sorts of topics. Oeurn commented that although the café was a foreign-owned place, the owner had done something very Khmer by placing plants around the front balcony and doorway. I commented that it seemed a natural way of beautifying the entrance, but she explained that she was not referring to pretty plants, but to particularly powerful and e cacious plants called prad la (a.w. bratheal). I had never heard of these, and it took her a while to explain what she meant. I have struggled to recall the name of the rst prad la plant she pointed out, whose name in English meant something like “Hanuman Holding Weapons,” but there were also prad la nagara ju , or “Gathered Cities Prad la,” a plant that helps merchants achieve success in business; and

Binding Mighty Death 157 prad la kraboe, or “Crocodile Prad la,” an aloe plant obviously named for its spiky leaves and used in medicine. The existence of a native classi cation for specially e ective plants was not particularly surprising, though I was grati ed for the knowledge. She explained that some of these prad la had spirits that lived in them, while others were simply powerful. What they all had in common, however, was the means by which one had to acquire them in order to retain their potency. On hearing that the “Gathered Cities Prad la” helped one make money, I joked that I should go to the plant store and buy one. Oeurn explained that such a plant would be useless. In order for it to work, it had to be either gathered in person from the forest or stolen. “Stolen? ” “Yes, stolen. You cannot buy a real prad la and have it work; nor can you receive one as a gift.” The e cacy of the plant depended in part, or at least potentially in part, on the relative immorality of its acquisition. One had to steal it from another human possessor, or from the original possessor, the forest. Later on, I became a regular presence at Wat Koh Yakkha’s ascetic laywomen’s ( nj , a.w. don-chee) dormitories. I got to know these older women quite well, and in many ways they served as my primary “interpretive community” for a few months. This group was in the process of a rather radical institutional transformation in patronage, which would eventually force a friend of mine out of the temple. After the Khmer Rouge period ended with the Vietnamese-supported invasion in 1979, one of these nj was among a group of survivors who rst settled in the temple. This woman, who was then only middle-aged, received permission from a high-ranking Khmer o cial in the invading army to live on site and for the rst few years, a starvation-level allotment of food barely more than during the rule of Democratic Kampuchea. Nevertheless, with her four male companions, she cremated the corpses left after the ghting with the invading forces and began over ten years of laborious work reclaiming the temple from the jungle that had begun to grow up inside it and repairing the damage done by the Khmer Rouge, who had been using the site to manufacture traditional medicines. After a few years, the temple began to receive more attention, and the repairs went faster. This nun, whom I call Cheata, continued to live on site with permission from her political patron, now a high-ranking

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member of the government of the People’s Republic of Kampuchea. With the transformation of Cambodia into a doubly postsocialist country after the fall of the Soviet bloc and the UNTAC operation, the temple began to approach something like its former beauty and populousness. Cheata had a daughter, but the father was out of the picture, so they lived there together. Cheata supplemented their meager subsidy by making p y s (a.w. bay sei), ritual objects made almost entirely out of banana tree parts. These are found at most rituals (including funerals, especially the Prai R pa subritual) and are sometimes made into upthrusting and rather clearly phallic shapes then “crowned” by a m l , or garland of owers, or turned into a small set of incense holders. The creation of these p y s leans on the ritual economies, but they are rarely if ever given speci c attention by monks, c rya, or most of the learned interpreters and representatives of Buddhism. I particularly noted one ritual that used p y s as a central component of its practice and was connected to death: the ra o gro ceremony, which means to save from or ward o danger. In this ceremony, which does not require a monk—though monks are occasionally involved as gr (Skt. guru), teachers or guides—a p y s is created using the normal banana trunk and leaf components, but instead of the more common circular and vertically oriented formation, it is a small, crude replica of a co n and a corpse within it. During this ritual the “bad luck” of the patient is transferred into their duplicate corpse, which is then abandoned on a roadway or waterway, freeing the patient from impending disaster. Cheata’s daughter, Peou, left brie y to live with her husband as a young woman, had her own daughter, divorced, and returned to live at the temple: three generations of women, living on temple grounds without shaving their heads or wearing white clothes, the signi ers of nj status. Their political patron and the small money they made by p y s creation protected them, but their patron was weakening. With the installation of an ambitiously and politically connected abbot at the temple, patronage began to ood in, the economies of Cambodia dramatically transformed by patronage change as the weather is by the change in the monsoon. Cheata was forced to ordain as a nj and eventually forced out entirely. Her daughter and granddaughter were forced to leave rst.16

6. Gifts and Hungry Ghosts

Toward the end of Cambodia’s rainy season, around October, rain clouds shade the land, and a fresh wind shakes the rising stalks of rice. Farmers transplant monsoon rice at this time, and it then begins its period of most rapid growth. Shortly thereafter, some will sow ood-retreat rice in the mud of receding waters. While water recedes and rice shoots skyward, ghosts called preta (P li: peta) ood the country. These pathetic and disgusting beings are former humans reborn in a hell as a consequence of usually quite venial sins, such as pride, momentary stinginess, or inadvertently killing an insect. Seasonal migrations during this period also bring the “Bhju Pi a birds,” a type of shrike, through Cambodia, and some people identify these and other animals with their returning ancestors, whom they explicitly consider an important source of their health and wealth. Giving gifts to these ancestral ghosts during the fortnight of Bhju Pi a satis es the ancestors, who provide blessings to their descendants during the following year. Failing to give them gifts will result in an ancestral curse.

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Bhju Pi a (a.w. Pchum Ben) is the “dark fortnight” performed annually during this time of year. Centered on dead ancestors imagined as preta, “hungry ghosts,” it is the second most signi cant and popular ritual in the Cambodian calendar, after the New Year, and the most important ritual within the Buddhist calendar. It is uncommon in the Theravada Buddhist world: Chinese Buddhists perform a similar ritual on behalf of hungry ghost ancestors, but it possesses a divergent textual warrant and history.1 The only other country that I know of with a related ceremony is Laos, where the ritual is called Boun Ho Khao Padap Din. 2 Bhju Pi a means “gathering of rice balls,” and the ritual exemplies the statement by Bloch and Parry that what is “revitalised in funerary practices is that resource which is culturally conceived to be most essential to the reproduction of the social order” (Bloch and Parry 1982, 7). In this case, moralized hierarchical relationships with ancestors are mediated by the presentation of rice to monks. I have stressed that two values reproduced in Cambodian funerary rituals are rice agriculture and the social structures it necessitates and creates (Terwiel 1994; Piper 1994; Hanks 1964, 2011). Éveline Porée-Maspero’s assessment of Bhju Pi a’s agricultural signi cance is straightforward; discussing the cakes particular to the ceremony (ansa and kom), she says, “Their sexual symbolism is not doubtful . . . and they say that ansam represents the male body, and kom the female body. Everything combines to prove that the feast of the dead is a celebration of fertility” (Porée-Maspero 1962, v.2, 335, emphasis mine). In this chapter I focus on Bhju Pi a as a celebration and series of rituals that focus on food, fertility, ancestors, and reciprocity. Bhju Pi a is a major, collective, gift-giving a air that relies on notions of reciprocal giving between the dead and the living. The living help transform the dead from pitiable states into powerful and bene cent ancestors, through gifts of food mediated by Buddhist monks, and receive fertility and blessings in return. This gift ritual reinforces normative moral hierarchies of age and monastic status. Treating it as an example of exchange in a ritualized gift economy that includes the spirits of the dead, I show how the images and expectations of Bhju Pi a are deployed in creative ways that apply to new situations in the Cambodian economy.

Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 161 My treatment of Bhju Pi a focuses on its central feature: gifts are given for the bene t of the dead, and relationships with the dead are maintained through the morally sanctioned media of Buddhist monks. It is therefore a ceremony that establishes and maintains reciprocity, which I understand as a general value exceptionally denied by Buddhist monks as guarantors of morality. To show how Bhju Pi a appears in the Khmer imagination, I describe contemporary attempts that establish or deny reciprocity during the festival, actions with distinct moral and hierarchical results.

ORIGINS AND HUNGRY GHOSTS The earliest reference to Bhju Pi a in Cambodia is an inscription on the East Baray, built around 900 c.e., the enormous and now dry reservoir east of the ancient city now called Angkor Thom (Barth and Bergaigne 1885, 413–429). That ritual di ers from the contemporary celebration in that it was directed to dead soldiers rather than familial ancestors, which is perhaps unsurprising given the slave-based regime on which the Angkorean empire was predicated: family ties of the anak sre (rice people) were likely of remote interest to the Khmer emperor who celebrated this early Bhju Pi a. There is no evidence one way or the other of the ceremony’s existence in villages at that time. The word pi a (a.w. ben) itself means “a rice ball,” and recalls the Hindu sapi kara a rite for the dead, performed on behalf of a recently deceased person by their male inheritor. The disembodied spirit of the deceased is given a new body by his descendants, and thereby transformed from a preta (the same hungry ghost gure) into a pit —a bene cent ancestor.3 This is accomplished by fashioning a body out of rice balls, called pi a. Immediately after death, the ancestor possesses merely the body of the preta, which I have already described as less than ideal.4 In their collection of Sanskrit inscriptions from the Angkor period, Barth and Bergaigne discuss the di erences between Bhju Pi a and the sapi kara a. Whereas the latter is performed by a single male descendent on behalf of a single male ancestor, the former rite as described in the inscription is communal (Barth and Bergaigne 1885, 413). This di erentiates Bhju Pi a from the sapi kara a, which it

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most closely resembles in its material performance, but connects it to a di erent Hindu holiday, the Pit Pak a, the “Ancestor’s Half (-Month),” a celebration for the ancestors (pit ) that takes place in the “dark fortnight of the month Ashura in late September/early October” (Parry 1994, 180). Regardless of the particular intersection of these various in uences, Bhju Pi a is a celebration in which living descendants feed—and through feeding transform—dead ancestors. The P li text Petavatthu is one of the oldest strata of the Buddhist canon and classi es many di erent types of preta with di erent characteristics.5 One can nd illustrated versions of this text in Khmer, but in actual practice there is only one standard representation of the preta in Khmer society: a humanlike being with a swollen stomach, an impossibly skinny neck, enormous eyes, and a mouth too small and puckered to allow the entry of food or water. Not only is the body of a preta foul, their perception is also restricted to foul things. This means that if they are to nd food to eat, they must nd it in dirty and disgusting places, like mud or piles of fecal matter. In their hell, should they manage to get a bite of food to their mouth, it will explode into ame or transform into a mass of maggots. The life of a preta is a sisyphean nightmare of hunger and unsatis ed need. Preta are by de nition ancestors. Ancestor spirits supply the blessings of fertility; they contribute the abstract forces that make food possible and de ect the danger of hunger. In his discussion of the spirits of the dead in Hindu India, Jonathan Parry notes that the authority of funerary ritual stems precisely from what I consider a type of deathpower, the ritual’s purported ability to turn preta into ancestors—pit : “Death results in a polluting corpse on the one hand, and a marginal and malevolent ghost on the other. The rst must be disposed of, and the second must be transformed into a benevolent ancestor” (1994, 2). Accomplishing these linked tasks requires triumph over death and its pollution on the part of the ritualist, who must either su er the consequences of the impurity as part of the ritual or overcome the impurity through moral excellence. Heesterman and Parry both make this point, which resembles the issues concerning pa suk la shrouds accepted by Buddhist monks as monastic robes (Heesterman 1962, 25; Parry 1994, 132–133).

Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 163 Throughout Cambodia, a wide variety of formerly human spirits are responsible for the prosperity of the living. But preta are distinct from other potentially helpful spirits, such as founder spirits (anak t ), angels (devat ), and even some forest spirits ( rakkha) by their own lack of access to the goods of fertility: they are de ned by their lack of food. The living descendants of these hungry ancestors must take responsibility for feeding them, providing a new body, a new being, to their forbears so that in turn they can o er the blessings of fertility and vitality to the living. According to both the P li texts and the contemporary Khmer imagination, a person is reborn as a preta after death as the result of some usually minor sin. The living then o er food to a Buddhist monk, whose receipt of the food creates merit, which is received by the preta immediately. In these stories there is no need to wait for a subsequent birth in order to enjoy the fruits of meritorious activity, contrary to most other Buddhist writings. On receiving this merit, the preta instantly transforms from its hideous state and receives a new, splendid body, such as that of a devat . Perhaps the most important scripture on the topic of preta is the Tiroku asutta of the Petavatthu. Along with the Parabh vasutta, which describes the errors that lead to becoming a preta, this sutta is chanted daily during the fteen days of Bhju Pi a. The Tirokuddasutta, the “Sutta on those who stand outside the walls,” does an excellent job of describing the condition of the pretas and the means of their transformation: They stand at crossroads and outside the walls. Returning to their old homes, they wait at thresholds. Because of their karma, no one remembers them when an abundant feast of food and water is served. Therefore, those who feel pity give truly pure food and drink to their relatives at the right time, rejoicing: “This is for you; may our relatives be happy.” Spectral relations gather and assemble. Thoroughly pleased with the food and water, they reply: “May our relatives who provide for us have long lives. We are honored; giving is not without bene ts.”

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There is no plowing in that place, and cow-herding is unknown; no trading, no buying, no selling with gold; dead preta survive there on what is given from here. Just as water poured on a hill ows down and around it, sustaining the land all around, so a gift from here bene ts ghosts in precisely the same way. Just as the rain from a full cloud nally meanders to the sea, swelling the tides, so a gift from here bene ts ghosts in precisely the same way. “He gave to me, he worked for me, he was my friend, relative, and companion.” Give properly to the ghosts, remembering past deeds. The weeping, mourning, and laments of relatives are useless to those who remain in such a way. But proper gifts dedicated to the sangha become useful to them immediately, and for a long time. The duties toward relatives have thus been shown: Veneration for the ghosts, strength for the monks, and no small merit for you.6 This concise text identi es a number of characteristics of the preta, and of those who are obliged to give to them. First, preta hover outside the walls and doors of temples and homes. Like the beggars crowding temple entrances during the Bhju Pi a season, they do not enter or participate in the rituals of giving, since they have nothing to give. Second, as transformed dead relatives, they are capable of returning meaningful blessings to the donors. The scripture also identi es the source of their poverty: preta have no access to the sources of human wealth. They cannot farm the realm they inhabit, have no cattle to herd, and cannot engage in commerce or barter. They live in a world where all they consume must be given to them as a gift. They cannot return the gift directly in the form of goods or money, and in spite of the insistence that “the donors are not without reward,” the return to them comes over the following year, as fertility, wealth, and health. The intersection of the living world and the world of the spirits is a conjunction of the world of barter and commerce, which create the wealth that can be given generously, and the world of the hungry ghosts, where all that is received must be given.

Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 165 These gifts, furthermore, must be given via a speci c ritual of transfer. Merely mourning their loss—mere remembrance—will not help the dead. Nor will giving gifts directly to the dead assist them properly, though as we will see, this continues in practice. Instead, gifts must be o ered to Buddhist monks “at the right time.” According to the sutta, these gifts have the explicit result—the fruit—of bene ting every member of the three-way transaction that creates this gift economy: the monks receive strength from the food they receive and eat, the ghosts receive new bodies and an alleviation of their su ering, and the donors receive blessings from their pleased ancestors and merit from their gifts to the monks. 7 The Khmer imagination holds origin stories for Bhju Pi a, though no clearly adduced textual history. King Ang Duong (1796–1860) is supposed to have refounded the festival by shortening the period of its celebration from the entire rainy season (Vass ) to two weeks, resurrecting the celebration from an unspeci ed period of decline of similarly unspeci ed cause. The presence of the festival in Cambodia is assumed to be co-originary with the arrival of Buddhism from India, though I suspect substantial recoding of its signi cance and origins during Ang Duong’s reign. The story told by most Cambodians resembles a tale found in P li commentaries on the Petavatthu regarding King Bimbis ra, the king of Magadha during the lifetime of the Buddha. Here is the story as told by one monk at Wat Ko Yakkha: When the Buddha was alive, King Bimbis ra, who ruled a city where the Buddha lived, heard preta crying and screaming in a forest near his palace. He looked and saw that the ghosts were his dead ancestors, crying from hunger. King Bimbis ra took pity on the ghosts, and gave food to them by leaving it in the forest at night. But the next night the ghosts were still there, accusing him. He didn’t understand, and asked the Buddha. The Buddha explained that the king should not give food directly to the pretas—they could not receive it. Instead, the king should make merit by giving food to the sangha. In this way, the preta would be able to eat and would bless him. This is why during Bhju Pi a people come and give food to

166 Gifts and Hungry Ghosts monks—so that their ancestors will bless them and they can receive good things.

This tale expresses the technical and moral roles played by the sangha in their mediation of relations with the dead: Bimbis ra’s initial attempts to satisfy his dead relations’ pathetic hunger is characterized as little more than well-intentioned waste, while gifts given to the monks are contrasted as e cacious. In these stories, gifts given to the sangha on behalf of the preta immediately result in beautiful new bodies for the pretas, who are transformed into bene cent satis ed ancestors rather than desperate spectral relatives. Cambodians claim Buddhist monks are e ective in this mediation of gifts to the dead because they are “higher” or “better.” Other literature has discussed this issue in terms of “ elds of merit” (v la pu ya), beings to whom a gift given results in immense amounts of merit.8 The logic appears identical, though in Cambodia the phrase “ eld of merit” is rarely used, and monks are instead characterized in ways that highlight their hierarchical or moral status more than their ontological status. Secondarily, the Buddhist monk appears an appropriate medium for such exchanges by virtue of their lokutt ra (nonworldly) status, grounded in their lack of a home life and symbolic approximation to death. In a work primarily concerned with the South Asian religious literature on giving, Maria Heim sees these arguments as an anthropological and structural counterpoint to the indigenous literature (Heim 2004, 59–61). She points out that for theorists within the traditions, it is the excellence of the recipient that matters, not the excellence of the donor, for two reasons: First, merit is calculated on the basis of the moral worth of the eld of merit. Moral and religious activity is fruitful to the extent that it is directed toward rich soil that can nourish and expand the bene ts of the gift. This principle seems to have little or nothing to do with the giver’s intentions. But the second reason that the moral status of the recipient is critical is because it can produce the ideal responses in the donor, and then, the intentions of the donor are important. That is, in a face-toface encounter the nature of the recipient generates the appropriate

Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 167 feelings in the donor. When the recipient is someone whom one can esteem, the feelings of raddh , respect, and joy naturally arise. These are among the most noble feelings one can have, and thus it is perfectly appropriate to value these gifts above others. In contrast, gifts to dubious characters are given out of pity, a response that can sometimes approach contempt, which is not endorsed as the ideal moral state from which to act (Heim 2004, 81–82).

These ethical and hierarchical ritual considerations at work within the logic of d na appear consistent with the functions of d na within Khmer culture. While it appears true generally that Khmer society ascribes a higher hierarchical and ethical status to donors, this logic is explicitly reversed in the case of donations made to Buddhist monks, in which the bene ts of the gift depend precisely on the superiority of the recipient. This exceptional reversal itself appears consistent with the mutually contesting and constituting logic outlined in the introduction. Monks and preta are like beggars, politely called anak su d na (those who ask for gifts). However, unlike beggars and preta, monks do not ask for d na but are o ered it without solicitation (a lively debate goes on among both monks and laity over the propriety of alms-round practices). The very title of Buddhist monk—bhikkhu—means “one who is desirous of a share.” Like the preta in the Tiroku asutta, beggars hang around the thresholds and outer gates of Buddhist temples, and their poverty comes from their lack of access to the activities of farming, herding, trading, or power in the monetized economy. As a result, like preta, they must rely on others who do have such access, and who, by entering the ritual space created during Bhju Pi a, are obliged to give to them. Like the preta, beggars may receive gifts, but these are religiously ine ective, producing no merit. The gift con rms the distance in social status, but without reference to any religious or cosmological justi cation such as the concept of karma or merit. In addition to the religio-theoretical discussions of merit-making and d na, the anthropological approach assists us in understanding the way these practices appear in society. The di erence between gifts given

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to monks and those given to beggars may also be understood in terms of the moral imperative of reciprocity, something that appears to be explicitly violated by the bhikkhu recipient. In his treatment of similar issues in a South Asian context, Jonathan Parry emphasizes that the Hindu Brahmans who receive gifts for the preta feel they are made impure as a consequence, since some part of the donor becomes part of the exchange along with the gift (Parry 1994; Trautmann 1981). In contrast, the Buddhist monk is untouched by the practice of mediating such exchanges. The bhikkhu cannot return the gift directly, nor reciprocate, having supposedly limited his worldly possessions to a bare minimum. Moreover, the monk does not himself give merit to the person who donates requisites to him; merit is made in the act, but not given by the monk. Finally, the monk is forbidden from even saying “thank you” to the donor; it was repeatedly explained that if a monk thanks the donor, no merit will be made. This role of the monk in the merit economy, the role of merit factory, or “ eld of merit,” is well known, but does not clearly connect him to a gift exchange network. Others have tackled this problem previously (Tambiah 1970, 213; Spiro 1970, 107; Strenski 1983, 475). It seems to me that it can be easily resolved by rst adopting Sahlins’ insight on gift exchange, that a gift network must contain at least three points of exchange, one of which explicitly returns to the notion of fertility (Sahlins 1972, 149–183). Second, we recognize the dead as the third point in that network, and the monks as the second point, the mediators. The monk serves as a conduit to the dead ancestors, whose blessings are the prerequisite for wealth, health, and happiness for their descendants. As is made clear in Buddhist texts and by Buddhist monks, gifts made directly to the dead do nothing for them—the dead cannot reach these o erings without the presence of a monk who receives the physical gift. In this sense, the monk serves as the rst recipient in the gift network, accepting food that, as the Tiroku asutta explains, strengthens the monk, and passing along merit, which acts as food for the dead, transforming them from impotent hungry spirits to powerful and satised ancestors. The ancestor spirits then bless their descendants, completing the three-point gift exchange, so that all points have both given and received, but not to and from the same entity. Value is created and

Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 169 generalized to society as a whole—the “seventh generation”—by indirect reciprocation. In spite of claims to the contrary, the bhikkhu appears as part of an exchange network in practice, where monks “give” to preta, who then give to their descendants, just as they receive from the laity. This is explicitly disavowed in the language of merit making, where gifts of d na are given to monks and the resulting merit then dedicated by the donors themselves to the dead. However, lay Buddhists routinely explained the process to me as one in which they gave (pragena) to the monks, who then gave merit to the dead. The dual practices of giving during Bhju Pi a that I examine later also directly contradict each other.

BHJUM. PIN.D.A

Once a year, during the fteen-day festival of Bhju Pi a, the king of hell, Yamar ja, allows the preta to travel back to the villages where they had previously lived as humans. During this “dark fortnight” of the waning moon, the preta search for gifts of food that their living relatives and descendants are supposed to leave them at Buddhist temples. They are supposed to search in at least seven temples during this period; if they nd food, they will give their blessings. If, on the other hand, they nd nothing and return to hell as hungry as when they left, they may choose to curse their descendants, so that they will share in the ghost’s hunger and desperation. If they cannot eat together, the ghosts will ensure that they at least starve together. Preta are manifestations of deep need and obligate giving. Bhju Pi a is the one holiday a year in which gifts may be given to them. Unlike the rituals of d na, which take place throughout the year and are often given by small family groups, Bhju Pi da points to collectivities larger than the family. People rarely attend Bhju Pi a as individuals; more commonly they are with a family or other group. Families make merit together during both the night and morning ceremonies, and also gather at home on the nal day of Bhju Pi a for a familial celebration. The village or commune level appears as a somewhat di erent matter. Di erent villages take turns (ven) attending di erent temples. If

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there were a single temple sited in a circle of multiple villages, each village would take a turn, on a di erent day of the initial fourteen days of Bhju Pi a, to attend as a group.9 These turns are arranged in discussions between the temple committee and the village or commune headman. Since most villages, especially in the relatively urban areas, are within easy traveling distance of multiple temples, a single village will normally have turns at di erent temples. In many of the temples I attended during the holiday season, a dry-erase board would be displayed in an area of the main ceremonial hall with the di erent turns listed on it, along with the total donations received on the di erent days. A certain amount of competition and corporate pride goes into the giving ceremonies arranged by turn, such that no village wants to be seen as the least generous attending any given temple. This aspect of the organization of Bhju Pi a emphasizes both the collective and segmentary parts of practice and intimates the possibility of gift giving as a sort of competitive enterprise for communal prestige. On the last day, Bhju , everyone attends their primary temple—chosen by individual families, usually on the basis of a history of ordinations or cremations—at the same time. During Bhju Pi a there are two di erent forms of giving that entail di erent and opposed imaginary con gurations of exchange. First is the daytime ceremony of chanting pa suk la, the chant for the dead much used in the funeral ritual as well. Gifts of food are given to Buddhist monks. Names of speci c dead relatives are usually attached to these o erings, and the monk will chant pa suk la for them, transforming the gift into merit that will help the deceased achieve a better rebirth in the future. The ceremony is solemn, and the monks’ participation is required—otherwise the merit will not be received by the preta. This ceremony is usually performed in family groups. The second type of giving is the Po P y Pi a ceremony (a.w. bawh bay ben). This is a nighttime ceremony, usually beginning around threethirty or four in the morning. In stark contrast to the pa suk la, the tone is festive, even gleeful. All participants gather at one time, usually at the eastern door of the main sanctuary, and parade around the sanctuary three times, throwing balls of rice and splashing water into the ground and mud surrounding the vih ra. Monks have little to no role in this ceremony, and the names of the dead are not necessarily speci ed.

Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 171

F

6.1 Bhjum Pi

a attendees at a Po P y Pi

a celebration.

The major di erences between the two practices may be summarized as follows: the pa suk la performances emphasize the position of the monk as intermediary, and gifts given to the monks result in merit given to the spirits. Pa suk la is respectful of the preta, treating them largely in their ancestral aspect. It is the celebration of a general reciprocity in which relationships are conceived of through kinship, and in practice are speci c and hierarchically imagined. Gifts given in such relationships compel return and are celebrated in con dence of the mutual respect involved in the relations. Po P y Pi a emphasizes interaction with the spirits unmediated by the monks. It alleviates the hunger that de nes the preta and can be described as disrespectful of the spirits, since the activities emphasize their disgusting position, and throws the o erings into the mud and lth where the preta search for their sustenance. It expresses the resentment of the living for the greedy dead, who cannot reliably be counted on to return the gift of fertility on which today’s givers must

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depend. There is also a similar resentment of some of the living, who cannot or will not reciprocate. Like pa suk la, Po P y Pi a gives to all, but it does so without the mediation of the monks, characterizes the recipients as detestable, and deemphasizes the ritualization of smaller solidarity-based groups of participants, such as villages or families, in contrast to the daytime ceremonies, in favor of mass o erings. Po P y Pi a emphasizes the dead’s position as desperate hungry ghosts, while the pa suk la emphasizes their transformation—via merit-making with Buddhist monks—into bene cent ancestors. Perhaps precisely because of the lack of a mediating role for the Buddhist sangha in Po P y Pi a, many modernist temples forbid its practice.10 A proper gift should be public, acknowledged, and capable of reciprocation. To receive a gift in a manner other than this is to be clearly identi ed with a low status in the hierarchy of consumption and precedence. Po P y Pi a, unlike the pa suk la, makes the di erence between living descendants and deceased ancestors partly a matter of contempt of the living for the dead on whom they depend, unlike the monk-mediated pa suk la, which accords full respect to the dead. Gendered characteristics of Bhju Pi a celebrations help to conrm that role of Buddhist monks as transformers of gifts, whose power produces morality out of violations of every norm of reciprocity. The morality and the violation are both represented as exceptional. Aside from the monks who live at the temples, those who visit Buddhist temples are overwhelmingly female. Men tend to become regular attendees only in their older age, as o cials— c rya, high-status donors, or devout laymen. In the majority of cases, men who attend “regular” practices such as morality day (tngai s la) rituals are hustled toward the front of the assembled laypeople, as if to contain some embarrassment at their presence or to sequester them in a place of silent honor. I myself was constantly encouraged to go to the front, though this was as likely a result of my foreign appearance and people’s local familiarity with my presence as a result of my gender. Over a four-month period I kept track of the gender of temple participants in both of the primary temples I attended. On morality days, women composed on average approximately 89 percent of the lay attendees.11 This number rose to 94 percent if prepubescent male children accompanying older female relatives were excluded from the count.

Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 173 During Bhju Pi a, gender balance is much stronger. During 2004, the only Bhju Pi a season during which I counted gender balance, I estimated roughly 60–70 percent female dominance among adults. In interactions with ancestors, male participation is signi cantly higher than during normal, everyday performances of Buddhist ritual. Separate from the example of Bhju Pi a, I will brie y examine two other cases in which giving and gender combine in Buddhist practice, a reading of which may improve our understanding of the role of gender within Bhju Pi a practices. The rst case is also the most common: the daily feeding of monks on their pi dap tra rounds (begging rounds), or when they bring food to the temple. In these cases, the donor is overwhelmingly female.12 When gifts are given to the monks in the course of their rounds, it is placed in the monk’s bowl or bag, and even when the gift is not edible, it is very clearly represented as food, that which sustains the body of the monk and hence the body of institutional Buddhism. When gifts are given between relative equals in Khmer society, a polite response requires the recipient to say “thank you” (argu a), a phrase that acknowledges the debt the recipient now owes the giver and functions as a sort of promise of reciprocity. As mentioned previously, this is explicitly avoided when one gives to a monk.13 Instead of occupying the superior position of donor in this exchange, the normally female donor instead crouches down below the level of the monk, who chants a brief passage that acknowledges or, in the opinion of some of the laity, creates the merit made by the donation. Giving is accompanied by the occupation of a subordinate role and the expectation of future reward, after the passage of at least one more death in that individual’s cycle of rebirths. In the second case, women give their sons to the sangha so that they will become monks. It no longer appears to be true, as reported of Cambodia in the past, that in order for a man to be considered eligible for marriage he must have spent some time as an ordained Buddhist monk, but the role of temporary ordination as a masculine rite of passage remains embedded in the cultural imagination of ordination and was routinely recounted to me. I say that women give their sons to the sangha, not that men give their sons. Men are often present at novitiate ordination ceremonies,

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but mothers play an explicitly greater role than do fathers. A great deal of merit is said to be created by the act of ordination, and in the case of novitiate ordination, this merit is assigned directly to the mother and is supposed to greatly improve the situation in which she is next reborn. That is to say, the bene t of the gift of a novice to the sangha returns explicitly to the mother. In the ordination of a novice, a young man leaves the world of the householder, life with women, and begins to transform into an adult male. At the end of his period of usually temporary ordination and education, he will disrobe and leave the monastery with the education and moral instruction necessary to occupy a position of authority and leadership in the community. Ordination is a gift from women that reproduces moral male authority in society via the institution of the sangha. Whereas the general outline of gift-giving indicates an at least temporary occupation of a superior role by the giver over the recipient, giving to the sangha can never take this form, for who can be superior to the sangha, superior even to kings? This may account in part for the discomfort I witnessed when men attended temple too frequently, and the tendency for these men’s virility to be jokingly, and often quite slanderously, questioned if they were not aged or clearly unwell. For women to occupy a subordinate role in the giving of gifts, and of people as gifts, to the sangha would seem to be somehow more acceptable. Without the Buddha sangha, there is, according to Buddhist doctrine, no way for gifts to be given to the ancestral hungry ghosts. Cambodians tell that unsatis ed preta curse their descendants and withhold the blessings of fertility, health, and wealth that are theirs to give. I have identi ed women as the primary givers in relation to the sangha; women create the sangha through their gifts of novitiates and sustain the sangha through their gifts of food. It is the subordinated gifts of women that make interaction with the dead, via the masculine medium of the Buddhist monk, possible. In the last part of this chapter, I will discuss a situation where the disruption of reciprocity is not considered acceptable (at least, not by all), and in which the cultural imagination of the preta is invoked in order to make moral judgments of those whose reciprocity is questioned.

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RECIPROCITY AND REFUSAL In Marcel Mauss’s exposition, societies organized by the gift impose three positive obligations: to give, to receive, and to return.14 Mauss’s primary examples are of societies in which gift economies are most explicit in rituals articulating the relationship between two social groups, such as clans. During Bhju Pi a, the rst fourteen days can be seen to represent a segmentary solidarity of the “clan” type— larger than the household, but smaller than the largest solidarity group. Within each clan, smaller, less formalized forms of giving may also take place. In Cambodia, these are found in the household and its extension via familial networks: the radical idiom of reciprocity is imagined as kinship, “kin of the same esh” (s c ñiet). Ly Daravuth also recognizes the holiday as an act of communal identity transcending the separation of death, among other things (Ly Daravuth 2005). In the Cambodian imaginary, this nds expression in the dependence of the living on the blessings from the dead—ancestral satisfaction and gifts are the prerequisite for the agricultural fertility on which wealth is based, for over 80 percent of modern-day Khmers. But Bhju Pi a here encounters a di culty. The ancestral spirits with which it deals are not satis ed, but hungry ghosts. In the Buddhist texts, the gift of merit to a preta is made at feasts through the intervention of a Buddhist monk, as explained above. The spirit is in turn immediately transformed into a heavenly or worldly spirit, capable of giving the blessings of fertility to living descendants (White 1986). Although this bond of reciprocity through relationship is both practically and symbolically strong, there are a number of ambiguities in the formulation, which result in a particular vision of general reciprocity. Most Cambodians express a certain agnosticism regarding their relatives’ status after death—they often have no reason to suppose that deceased relatives have been reborn as preta, but make gifts in case they have been. This is a clear case of general reciprocity: Bhju Pi a compels giving to relatives, even if they are dead, and even if there is no way to know if they really are in need, a symptom of the obligation to give in generalized solidarity.

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This general reciprocity is expressed in other ways. In addition to feeding and making merit on behalf of speci c, and often named, deceased relatives, participants are expected to o er something for all of their deceased relatives, “up to the seventh generation.” Since relatives of the seventh generation are almost by de nition complete strangers, this formula is in fact a way of expressing kinship with potentially anyone and everyone. During the days and weeks leading up to Bhju Pi a, people from the cities crowd buses, cars, and small motorcycles to travel along the muddy dirt roads back to the villages of their birth. Most are young women returning at the last minute from their factory jobs in the cities. In 2005, I was crammed into a minibus with fteen others, mostly elderly women and men, traveling from the city to the countryside for the festival. Villagers lined the roads to watch the buses and cars rush by, and shouted comments like: “The preta are coming The preta are coming This bus is full of really old preta Hey youngster, make sure that those old ghosts don’t grab you ” Like hungry ghosts, we were relatives rendered distant by time and space and had returned to our natal villages for sustenance. They laughed at us without smiling at us. At rst I laughed too, but none of my fellow pilgrims found it funny. Their faces fell. Some were angry, but most seemed hurt and dejected. A friend with whom I was traveling kept saying, “They’re so angry at us. They really want us to go back home.” The folks standing on the side of the road more than made up for our lack of delight. The holiday gathers relatives far and near to celebrate trust, solidarity, and love, during the slow agricultural period when the rice grows fastest. Family members may see each other rarely, when city relatives arrive in their own cars or on buses and taxis, which remain out of easy reach of rural relatives. Both sides of the family make e orts to be hospitable and generous to each other. Families and young workers from the city give to the limits of their ability—they do not come empty-handed to the countryside. They bring food, treats, bread, and rice. They bring candles and cooking pots, toys for children, and packets of bills for distribution at the temple. They bring household labor and ongoing validation of their natal village’s importance. Country relatives, meanwhile, do a lot of work preparing, housing, and cooking for

Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 177 them, working to overcome sudden changes in attitude and daily life among family members already separated by physical distance. Families from the city see their own e orts as acts of generosity for which they should be appreciated. And they are: their food, gifts, money, and toys all go a long way to help create the sense of solidarity and familial love and trust that might otherwise be strained by the tyranny of distance, the length of absence, and the gulf in respective experiences of daily life. When country folk greet their city relatives—who spend all but the most important religious festivals of the year far away from their birth country—as preta, what are they doing? Why is this joke funny to rural Cambodians, and why insult the very people who are bringing the food, money, and gifts that make their village festivals so enjoyable? I believe the answer lies in the economic relationships between these two groups, and the di erent ways they imagine social exchange. We need rst to understand the symbols that are being deployed, and their context. The key to understanding this joke lies in the social imagination of Bhju Pi a as a celebration of family by giving moral gifts in strict hierarchies, which bene t the whole community. This general economy is su used with uctuating power-based relationships: proper giving is represented as the return of a previously received gift, and emphasizes ongoing reciprocity. Sahlins noted that proper gift economies seem to possess at least three nodes, such that the giver never returns directly to the person from whom she receives (Sahlins 1972, 149–183). In such a system, aggression and inequality are tamed by the existence of a generalized reciprocity made strong by another set of ideas that determine which party is currently in which other party’s debt. This is why successful giving is represented as the return of a previously received gift, and emphasizes ongoing reciprocity. In modern Cambodia the city is often seen by rural dwellers as refusing to reciprocate or acknowledge the source of its wealth. The receiver can be humiliated unless acknowledged as the source of a prior gift, or if she or he is incapable of reciprocating. Rural Cambodians quite often both envy and resent the city, where all the wealth they create in the countryside comes to rest, and which they often feel despises the people of the countryside. In such a situation, denigrating gifts

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or givers can help control the status that emerges from gifts given without reciprocation. Preta embark on epic journeys during the festival period, from hell to the villages of their relatives. But they are not the only ones going on pilgrimages. Khmer assert that they too should return to the villages of their birth for Bhju Pi a, or at least for the nal day of Bhju , the day of gathering. Negotiations over holidays for and payment to garment workers around this period are annual a airs. Although the vast majority of Cambodia’s wealth is concentrated in the cities, over 80 percent of the population remains in the agricultural areas of the country. Families from the city make great e orts to give to the limits of their ability when they journey back to the villages. In return, wealthy city families are given the major roles in communally performed rituals in the countryside, sit in the best places, receive more attention from high-ranking monks, and eat delicious meals in catered tents, around which children and hungry adults wait for leftovers. These human pilgrimages back and forth between city and village are undertaken in a spirit of generosity, in order to serve one’s poor dead relatives and one’s home village, but the economic and social distinctions between the city and the village are also points of contention. The generous gifts to the countryside’s dead from the city are highly symbolic. They return the countryside’s wealth without acknowledging its origins. Cambodia is a “Least Developed Country,” and although much has been made of the fact that poverty is decreasing nationally, inequality is rising at a faster rate. This is seen clearly in the relative calorie intake levels in the city and the country, and in the ows of newly free labor from the un-developing rural areas to the cities.15 Cambodia’s wealth leaves the countryside and forests for the city in timber, rice, soybeans, corn, and young workers. As opportunities for subsistence agricultural work disappear, migration to the cities accelerates.16 The highest pro le workers are young women who enter into Cambodia’s most pro table sector, the garment industry. The material wealth of the city is possible only through its extraction from the countryside. Cambodia still has no heavy productive industry. There has been little e ort to create a domestic market for Cambodianproduced goods, which means garment factories function similarly to export-processing zones: the labor-added value of Cambodian women

Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 179 enriches the managers and owners of the factories, who live either in the cities or frequently outside of Cambodia entirely. Few factory owners are Cambodian nationals, which means most of the pro ts are expatriated, not reinvested. What wealth returns to the countryside does so in small familial ows, as women in the garment factories remit half their pay to their families, often going hungry themselves. The cities of Cambodia are not a “rising tide lifting all boats,” but a tidal wave of wealth that depopulates the countryside while swelling with wealth, workers, and beggars. All year long, wealth ows from the country to the city, along with young women and men looking for better ways to support their families back home and willing to make enormous sacri ces to do it. These ows of labor and wealth go unritualized but not unnoticed. When the folks in the city return to the country for festivals, the happiness of the reunion can often be complicated by a certain amount of resentment. From the point of view of the countryside, it appears that the bonds of mutual reciprocity have been undone, and that the cities exist only to receive from the country. At no other time of the year, except for the New Year, is the reversal of the normal ow of wealth from country to city so strongly marked and reversed as during the fteen days of Bhju Pi a. And at no other point is the changed connotation of that returning wealth—as “gifts” rather than market exchange—so obvious, for Bhju Pi a is a celebration involving travel of people and spirits, the creation of new wealth in the form of merit and blessings, and gift giving. I argue that the speci c conditions of rural poverty, corruption, and inequality underwrite acts of imagination that attempt to set moral relationships in proper balance. That is, the gure of the hungry ghost—the preta of Bhju Pi a— is invoked as a mirror of the parasitic relatives who come back to the villages during the festival period. At the end of the holiday, wealth and power ows away again. Economically, this is re ected in the reverse pilgrimages of vans and land cruisers to the city. Religiously, Cambodians say farewell to their deceased relatives, who now return to the world whence they came. But as the joke around which this section is organized suggests, the ritualization of the city’s gifts does not mean that villagers have forgotten what makes that generosity possible, and they appear intent on making sure that the ultimate sources of wealth are remembered by all.

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The obligations of Bhju Pi a are fairly clear: gifts of food and merit must be given to all seven generations of relatives, and these gifts must be accepted. In return, the recipients must bless the givers. The wealth given by the city is rooted in the unritualized ows of goods and labor from the countryside to the cities, where commerce, wage labor, and monetized exchange create the wealth that is only partly returned in gifts. In Bhju Pi a a gift economy temporarily replaces the free-market economy that drives the inequities of modern-day Cambodia. This gift economy encompasses all one’s relatives, even those one doesn’t know are relatives—the seven generations. Part of Bhju Pi a’s communal labor, then, is the imagination of all participants as relatives, kin to whom mutual obligations are owed. A large part of the activity of creating this ritual solidarity is the creation and maintenance of kinship relations through giving, and the creation of ctive kinship. Fictive kinship may or may not lead to real solidarity, but it expresses and attempts to create a moral and social relationship between people in the image of family relations. There are at least two forms of imagined kinship during Bhju Pi a. First, people imagine their dead relatives coming to beg for food. Second, in our joke, rural Cambodians imagine their city-dwelling relatives as these same hungry ghosts. The history of thought on the gift within anthropology is foundational, radical, and often romantic. It is foundational in a number of respects, not least owing to its pre-eminence in the work of Marcel Mauss, whose essay inaugurated the topic as one of core importance and remains one of the most important texts in the discipline. Mauss identied gift economies as systems for managing human aggression via the exchange of gifts between individuals, rather than via the political and economic mechanisms of state and market exchange (Mauss 2000). Mauss’s book challenged the image of the human being as essentially “economic” and gured within the realm of the triumphal state. He argues from a premise similar to that of Hobbes: humanity is composed of individuals, each one potentially at war with every other. But while the state was the answer to this dilemma found in Leviathan, according to Mauss, gift economies functioned by allowing for agonistic expressions to be publicly coded as generosity, both when they truly were and when they were used to shame the recipient. This

Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 181 basic expression of solidarity—the gift—allowed for normal con ict management and also, in extreme cases, clear examples of resentment of one’s partners in exchange. This antagonism between givers and receivers is a result of the obligations that the gift exchange imposes on the receiver. In the case of potlatch, the obligation to return at least as valuable a gift can result in extravagant o erings, bankruptcy, or a loss of social face and standing. Leland writes of the anthropological gift, “Masked as generosity, this extravagant giving is really a display of power, since the recipients of the gifts are obliged to gift a potlatch in return” (Leland 1988, 39). In this case one would rather receive fewer presents. But one of the obligations of the gift is to receive it; to refuse is impolite. As the businessman father of a friend told me, “Love Buddhism, but don’t live too close to the temple. Too many invitations to join ceremonies ” The idea that gift economies and exchange economies are necessarily opposed (in the same way that communism and capitalism are opposed) has led to much insightful and productive work. The romanticism of work on the gift has done little to obviate the importance of the contributions to anthropology, and some of this has recently begun to be interrogated in ways that do not eliminate the primary opposition, found already in Mauss, of the gift to market exchange and the state (Piot 1996, 1999). While many anthropologists have followed the line of that primary opposition, perhaps even more have unconsciously accepted the evolutionary notions in Mauss’s concept—that the gift economy pre-existed market exchange. In his work on the Kabre, Charles Piot has argued instead that while gift and commodity are separate and antagonistic forms of exchange, they exist simultaneously for most subjects, who choose to use one or the other depending on the desired relationship with the partner. Piot’s work demonstrates a gift economy in Kabre society that coexists with and distinguishes itself from market exchange, and one of his most lucid examples focuses on the historical sale of some Kabre people by their relatives, to slave traders. According to Piot, the sale of relatives indicated a refusal to engage in “gift relations” with the slave merchants by replacing these relations with market exchange in the vernacular of money for human beings (Piot 1996).

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Whereas market exchange can be anonymous and require no ongoing relationship between actors, gift relationships function in part precisely because a gift transfers some essential aspect of the giver—the characteristic of gifts that Mauss referred to as prestational. Additionally, gifts require the recipient to later give a gift, or else be considered cheap, poor, or indi erent. Piot therefore concludes that gift economies are rituals ideally limited to insiders, and market exchanges are preferred when one wishes to escape the obligations and results of a gift exchange. The consequences of gift exchange that some may prefer to escape include being in a state of “debt” after receiving gifts, until such time as you return the gift or pass the gift along. Piot is insightful and speci c on this point: in order for a gift economy to remain harmonious, the status hierarchies moderated by gifts must alternate between giver and recipient. The gift exchange exists to “produce varying relationships, all of which are in part determined by the relative ‘debt’ of one partner to the other.”17 Piot’s work demonstrates that in situations where people have access to both gift and commodity as mediums of exchange, the two economies may complement rather than contradict each other. Societies may prefer market exchange in order to mark boundaries with those they consider outsiders, and with whom they do not want to exchange personal (prestational) stu —which is, according to Mauss, a requirement of the gift. The gift versus commodity distinction then exists largely on a moral plane. In the gift economy, moral insiders are also mutually policing and evaluating partners. The refusal of monks to acknowledge their role in the gift economy of Bhju Pi a—based on their moral and hierarchical superiority—transforms bivalent exchanges such as those between rural and urban family members into collective moralization. Judy Ledgerwood has written of the tendency by some to attempt reconciliations during Bhju Pi a, including between former Khmer Rouge leaders and their victims; as she indicates in another part of the same essay, such established hierarchies may be part of the reason for the resilience of the village system through history, as well as a driver of further inequities (Ledgerwood 2012, 187, 179). These are the reasons some rural Cambodians may resent city dwellers when they rst meet up after months of separation. Those coming

Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 183 from the city are not identical, but range from wealthy families, to poor women living and working in factories and remitting enormous portions of their salaries to their rural families, to students.18 All who return are nevertheless associated in di ering degrees with the city and its wealth, and simultaneously with the countryside’s poverty, on which the rural poor understand that wealth to be based. Moreover, the city comes to the countryside most conspicuously in the guise of people bearing gifts, remittances, sponsorship of rituals, or other forms of giving, and each conspicuous gift indebts someone in the countryside (Hughes 2006). This brings us to the nal point that, while fora for critiquing elite interpretations of relationships or their institutions may indeed be rare, Cambodian culture itself contains the resources to criticize both, and to contest those meanings in public, even through semianonymous shouts along rural roads. The joke about city dwellers returning to the country as pretas relies on an explicit reversal of the ritual imagination: those who receive in ritual context are the ones who should be, and normally are, metaphorized as preta. When city families visit their birth villages laden with gifts and o erings, they should be seen as the givers, and the recipients, their country families, as the preta. And for the most part, the resemblances are more than metaphorical: the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations routinely notes the disparity in food consumption between the cities and the countryside, where malnutrition results in the swollen bellies, thin stringy hair, and tattered clothing that describe the preta of myth. At least a part of the joke relies on the reversal of categories. Imagining one’s city relatives as preta implies that they are themselves instead the recipients of generosity. Perhaps this refers to the wealth the cities receive all year long from the countryside. There is in this joke an application of the religious imagination to solve a problem that the ritual cannot. The ritual may redistribute some wealth, and destroy more, but families from the city remain signi cantly wealthier than their relatives in the country. Since violence is not acknowledged as an acceptable means of redistributing wealth in Cambodian culture, the gifts given by wealthy relatives can at the very least be denigrated. Indeed, it is the violent hunger and endless greed of corrupt o cials

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and businesspeople that earns them, in other situations, metaphorization as preta. Recipients in such a situation may choose not to celebrate the gift, instead accepting with one hand what they deride with the other (Lee 1969). In a chapter titled “What Makes Indians Laugh,” Pierre Clastres notes that jokes deriding socially powerful people are funny precisely because of the derision, and the resolution of social contradictions that such transgressions attempt to accomplish: The contradiction between the imaginary world of the myth and the real world of everyday life is resolved when one recognizes in the myths a derisive intent: the [Indians] do in mythical life what is forbidden them in real life. . . . For the Indians, it is a matter of challenging, of demystifying in their own eyes the fear and the respect [that they are supposed to display]. (Clastres 1987 [1974], 145)

If Clastres’ subjects do in mythical life what is forbidden them in real life, rural Khmers appear to be doing in real life what is forbidden them in ritual life: denigrating the charity of the city. They insist instead that they are the real givers; they have already returned the gift; and that the status that is conferred on the ritual givers during Bhju should be reversed in this case. This amounts to an attempt to contain the e ects of the ritual’s imagining of the social world by inverting the roles. Judging by the reaction of my fellow passengers on the bus, the message was received.19 In this chapter, I have focused on the ceremony of Bhju Pi da as a ritual of gift giving, an annual moment of exchange with the dead in what must be considered an ongoing network of reciprocity that includes the living laity, the Buddhist sangha, and the dead. I have also attempted to explore the ways this ritual practice challenges common modernist Buddhist teachings about how karma is supposed to work, and described the use of the image of reciprocity embedded in the ceremony to critique real-world failures of reciprocity. In the next chapter, I discuss the ideology of the leftover, which is both distasteful and generative, and which remains after the primary gift has been consumed. Food and gender again gure heavily in the symbolism and practices discussed, with similar results.

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MAGIC ON THE RIVERFRONT: DRINKING AND DRUGGING WITH THE DEAD “Careful; you shouldn’t leave your drink alone like that,” said the young waiter in Khmer, as he grabbed things out of my way that weren’t in my way, to indicate his deference to myself-as-customer. He was the only waiter working at the moment at this restaurant on the riverside in the late afternoon, before the happy hour and dinner rush. The riverfront area is mostly frequented by tourists and expatriates with business in the area. We’d already interacted, he knew I preferred to speak in Khmer, and he was adjusting graciously, despite his obvious desire to practice his English. “I’m not worried about it being stolen,” I said. “No, not that—someone might put something in it.” “Oh,” I said, as my wife and I sat down, “are you worried that somebody’s going to put something—like their blood—in it?” His eyes widened a little. “You know about that stu ? I also have tattoos to protect me from magic like that, and from a boe. You know a boe?” A boe is a word that means, simply, “action,” but also has the strongly associated meaning of black magic in Khmer. The typical e ects of being victimized by a magician of this sort—often called a dhm p—are the sudden appearance of nails, knives, bu alo hide, or strange animals like snakes in the stomach, followed of course by a painful death. But this wasn’t what he was talking about, clearly, because these magics work precisely at a distance; there would have been no need to secretly make me ingest anything. Instead, he was hinting at “love magic,” in which a young woman ensnares a man to her will. This type of magic is indeed supposed to require the ingestion by the victim of a special substance—often either menstrual blood or magical oil. Sak yantra is the term we were using for “tattoo.” Sak r pa might refer to the mere “images” from modern-day tattoo crazes, but sak yantra refers explicitly to magical tattoos. Yantra is a Sanskrit word meaning device, and in Khmer it refers to objects endowed with some sort of magical and technical e cacy.

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“Just a little bit. Just stories I heard,” I said. “Tell me more. What about your tattoos?” “Well, you have to be especially careful in restaurants and on the riverfront; there are always lots of young women here searching for a man. Some use love magic.” “Why here?” I asked. “Because they want men who have lots of money, who can go to restaurants, drive cars, things like that.” “So aren’t you scared, working here?” He laughed. “They don’t want workers (anak pa roe) But I have tattoos anyway, to protect me.” “So, tell me about your tattoos. Who did them, where did you get them done, and what do they do?” “Oh, I got them from a kr [one of many types of ‘masters’ of traditional, medical, musical, magical, or religious arts, including empowered tattoos] in Battambang three years ago. It’s my home. They protect me against magic like love magic, and against thieves.” “Oh I hear mostly about tattoos that make you invulnerable to bullets, for soldiers or policemen or gangsters, you know?” This is perhaps the dominant reason for receiving a sak yantra, and exempli es a region-wide understanding of the e cacious role of magical tattoos (Tannenbaum 1987; Tannenbaum 1995). “Yes, I know,” he said, quickly clarifying his position. “These are not like that; I’m not a soldier and don’t have guns. They make the thieves uninterested in me. Anyway, he used clear ink, so my tattoos are ‘invisible’” (he said “invisible” in English). “Invisible How do they work?” “I don’t know; you could go ask the kr . You don’t have to see them for them to work. But I have to keep morality, or the tattoos lose their power.” He was referring to the Buddhist morality of the precepts: to refrain from stealing, killing, improper sexual relations, improper speech, and drunkenness. Magical powers have costs,which are often, seemingly paradoxically, engaging in Buddhist moral asceticism. This is true for bandits and soldiers as well as for those whose amulets improve speaking ability, sexual potency, and business prospects. The cost of engaging in Brahmanist magic to obtain worldly goals is the obligation to simultaneously hold

Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 187 fast to aspects of Buddhist morality. This can lead to obviously “black” magicians holding certain Buddhist precepts without this action being “moral” in itself. In such situations, it is perhaps best to consider the precept as a technical prerequisite to magical power. This is hardly unusual: in the R may na, a story that provides another great and overlapping narrative to Cambodian life, the great villain R vana obtains his overwhelming demonic power through the most severe forms of moral and physical asceticism. “So,” my waiter continued, “I can’t kill people, or thieves or bad women could get me.” I laughed, but couldn’t read his face to see if he was joking or simply explaining the way his tattoos worked. I suspected the latter, which startled me, and made me wonder if perhaps there were individuals he would otherwise kill. I held my tongue. Enlivened by rumors guided by both cultural logics and accident, such noninstitutionally reproduced practices are simultaneously more creative and innovative than their institutional counterparts, and more likely to constantly re-create the same forms, endlessly, under the dominant moral regime of Buddhism. The power of consuming death has blossomed into everyday conversation in Thailand, where a “new drug” began to scare many middleclass Thai parents concerned about their ability to control their children. Drug scares are like other types of social panic—they need little real-world reality backing them up to impose a new reality in the wake of their widespread acceptance. The notion of the “immediate addict”producing drug, like crack cocaine or methamphetamine, is less a scienti c claim than a social one expressing deep concern about the drug’s disruption of an autonomous will, usually of the sort required by successful neoliberal subjects. This new drug, which appeared in Phuket, Thailand—a major foreign tourist destination—in 2010, was called alternately “Avatar,” after the Hollywood movie, or “Tai Hong,” a Thai phrase (shared by the Khmer) meaning “Violent Death” and often referring speci cally to the violent and disruptive ghosts created by violent deaths. In the latest drug craze to hit the south, youths in Nakhon Sri Thammarat’s Muang District are reportedly drinking a concoction that includes

188 Gifts and Hungry Ghosts the ashes of recently cremated corpses and extract from leaves of the krathom tree. “Phon,” a 17-year-old from Muang District, said he and his gang of about 10 friends had tried every known concoction of krathom leaf available until they stumbled upon the new formula. The mixture is made by boiling the leaves and then adding ashes taken from beneath funeral pyres following cremation ceremonies. The youths believe the mixture confers physical strength as well as spiritual protection from the ghost of the person whose ashes were drunk, Mr Phon said. The drink has an indescribably amazing taste and anybody who tries it becomes instantly addicted, he added. To satisfy their thirst for the elixir, the youths drive around looking for funerals. When the cremation is over, they sneak in to steal the leftover ashes, he said. The mixture is known as “Avatar” after the hit lm or “tai hong,” which means “violent death.” (Khao Sod 2010)

The consumptive aspect of magic is signi cant. Love magic is launched through surreptitious placement in the victim’s food or drink. Similarly, the dhm p magically places objects that are clearly not food inside the victim’s stomach, causing pain and death. This new “Tai Hong” drug partakes of a similar deathpower logic, expressed in the more contemporary arena of youth drug culture. Facing your mortality can be a deeply empowering experience. Apparently, so can incorporating the remains of other people’s mortality. The former is, of course, one of the core sources of Buddhist monastic authority: monks are on a quest to conquer death itself. This quest, and the power obtained through it, are the sources of the magical power some monks have to tame, capture, or even vanquish ghosts and demons. The extension of such logic to the realm of magic makes perfect sense, and indicates the extent to which Brahmanist magic in Cambodia appears captured within the more foundational logics of Buddhist practice.

7. Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft

Rituals create conventional states of a airs and conventional understandings. Magic is the extension of the process “beyond the domain of the conventional in which it is e ective into the domain of the physical where it is not; A war can be ended by a properly conducted ritual of peace, but a drought cannot.” However, the domains are hard to distinguish: “people occasionally die of witchcraft.” (Rappaport 1979, 191)

The previous chapter focused on gift-giving as the circulation of social value and the encoding of social morality. Gifts can produce hierarchies by being given, but also through the ways they are given and consumed. The imagination underlying the normative hierarchizing acts of giving in the gift economy of laypeople, monks, and ancestors can also be appropriated for non-normative purposes. In this chapter, I examine another side of gifts: the leftovers, ranging from the physical remains of a human being to the remnants of another’s meal. When we begin to discuss witchcraft, these categories overlap in disturbing imagery of cannibalism and secret feedings.

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I have argued throughout this study that everyday imaginations of food production, distribution, and consumption provide the force behind other expressions of value. Hierarchical relationships are often imagined as metaphorical acts of consumption, a fact often noted in writings on Cambodia through reference to a single example, in which the king’s rule is imagined as the king “eating” the kingdom (soy r ja).1 The metaphor goes far beyond this, however, both in breadth of contemporary scope and in the depth of imaginative resources on which these examples draw. Those resources include the metaphors of power and hierarchy prevalent during the period of the origins of Buddhism. Brian Smith observed that “In the Veda, violence and power, that is, power over another, the power the eater has over food, were celebrated on their own terms” (Smith 1990, 177). More precisely, “Consumption was . . . the ultimate victory of the consumer over the consumed, of the victor over the vanquished, and of the self over the rival. Eating and winning were fully equitable, as were being eaten and losing” (Smith 1990, 186). Eating not only is a key practice and metaphor of relatedness but also produces particular, hierarchical forms of relatedness (Meigs 1997; Carsten 1995; Zucker 2013; Lévi-Strauss 1969). The asymmetrical relationships of gift giving and receiving can also be observed in the acts of consumption, and are most clearly and forcefully seen in the conception of the leftover.

LEFTOVERS The leftover represents the other side of the gift. Although little di erence between the “gift” and the “leftover” may be found objectively, the classi cation of the exchange by participants maps relationships, relative prestige, and identi es those who are more or less powerful and where that power is moralized, more moral. “The ow of social and ritual life is channeled, in a sense, by food scraps” (Malamoud 1996, 15). This channeling and mapping take place especially at the level of exchange, those moments in which relationship is highlighted in action. The leftover—sesa s la—in the social imaginary of Khmer culture is rst a marker of impurity and second, one of generation and renewed life. This seeming paradox of characteristic meanings coheres when we

Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 191 remember that Buddhism, which dominates the symbolic eld, devalues the phenomenal world as the realm of ignorance, greed, and delusion, and thus of su ering. The provision of leftovers is not a proper gift, but the disposal of the remnants of what has already been consumed. As such, the leftover is marked by impurity, a fragmentary and incomplete nature, and low status. In discussing the Indian Brahmanic concept of the leftover, which operates strongly within the Khmer imaginary, Charles Malamoud states that Leftover food is not only the remains of some thing, it is also the remains of some one; and as such, the more vile and impure the person who might have eaten or touched it, the more impure the leftover. . . . Most noteworthy of all, however, is the fact that, independent of any other consideration, anything left over—simply because it is leftover— is polluted. (Malamoud 1996, 8)

The leftover possesses a range wider than the merely negative, however. As Malamoud notes, sacri cial remains are not wholly negative; a reversal of reasoning may take place in which, as appears to have happened in early post-Vedic Indian religion, “such remains came to be placed at the forefront of speculation on ritual, if not of the ritual itself ” (Malamoud 1996, 10–11). The monthly ritual performed in the dark of the new moon for deceased ancestors, similar in many ways to the celebration of Bhju Pi a, “is depicted as a veritable downpour of leftovers” (Malamoud 1996, 11). In line with this Indic-derived imagination, the leftover is not only impure but also a requirement for further life. Malamoud notes “the notion of a residue, of an outstanding balance, plays a foundational role in the ceaseless re- ring of the motor of karman” (Malamoud 1996, 19). Others have argued for a similar dynamic, noting that in many systems, an “even” exchange that leaves nothing “left over” to do or talk about is antithetical to that which motivates ongoing relationship and social life (Candea and da Col 2012, S6). This ambivalent evaluation of oddness or leftovers—the word sesa means both—can be seen in the ubiquitous o ering of incense sticks. One must take care to always o er an odd number of sticks. An even

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number is not permissible, and Khmer consider it bad luck. When explanations I received for this moved beyond habit or tradition, the answers uniformly identi ed odd numbers as the “numbers of life” and even numbers as the “numbers of death.” A nun at Wat Ko Yakkha explained it this way: “When you have two sticks together, they are a pair. When you have three sticks, or ve sticks, or seven sticks, or nine sticks, there is always one left over.” For prayers to be e ective, an “extra” stick of incense must be added to the pairs of sticks intended for the consumption of the spirits to whom the incense o ering is formally being made. It is that extra, the leftover, which is e cacious for the donor. Parry provides an example of similar thinking in the Indian context: “Odd numbers suggest incompletion. They leave, as it were, some ‘remainder’ which is seed of future growth, regeneration, or multiplication—which is why dan [d na] always consist of an ‘incomplete’ amount” (Parry 1994, 176). The leftover thus has a dual aspect. On the one hand, it materializes impurity, inequity, and the “short side of the stick.” On the other, it exists as the surplus required to make the world continue to move, the non-negotiable extra, the ows of which not only generate the world but also constitute its workings. In this it resembles the idea of sumptuary expenditure, or the “accursed share,” in Georges Bataille’s work on surplus (Bataille 1985, 1989). This aspect of the gift has long been noted, from Mauss’s triple obligation to Hyde’s poetic formulation that “the gift must always move” (Hyde 1983, 4; Mauss 2000; Sahlins 1972, chapter 4). The receipt of leftovers is the ipside of the gift, not as object, but as relationship. To receive a leftover happily is to inhabit the role of the subservient member of the relationship, and highlights the dependency of the lower on the higher. As James Red eld commented on the role of extreme female mourning in the context of rural Greek funerals, “they enact their utter dependence on the departed. Mourning is thus submissive self-assertion” (Red eld 1984). The same can be said of the receipt of leftovers from people of high status. Critical theorists of subjectivity, stretching back in a genealogy at least to Nietzsche, have frequently returned to the question of the relation of a subject’s selfmaking activities and the inferior space that they end up inhabiting, describing conscience as a sort of narcissistic self-hatred; Deleuze and Guattari describe a “desire for slavery,” and Foucault and his followers

Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 193 attempt to nd a way forward for practices of freedom within situations of oppression and slavery (Butler 1997, 71–82; Hollywood 2004, 515; 1995). Regardless, the common thread—that certain types of agency are sought most frequently through acts of public self-subordination—is well established. That these acts often involve both gender distinctions and religion is perhaps less understood. There is a di erence between the public acceptance of leftovers and the secret acquisition of leftovers, and it has a great deal of in uence on the morality ascribed to the consumption of leftovers. To receive a leftover publicly enacts a public dependency by accepting the impure as a gift. To acquire leftovers secretly in Cambodia is to seek out the impure for reasons that avoid dependency, and thereby deny the value of socially stabilizing hierarchical relationships. For this reason the secret consumption of leftovers is the domain of witches, who gain immoral and occult power through this practice. The order of consumption in Khmer society is a means of representing and instituting power relations. Leftovers may be impure, but their careful engagement in particular contexts can be a powerful way of creating and a rming a relationship to a social network on which one may depend. The morality of one’s power is often represented via one of two further aspects: rst, the way one receives that which one eats, and second, whether secrecy is involved. Perhaps more to the point, it is by negotiating the line between secret and public that moral status is imputed to people. In what follows, I rst focus on empowered and moral leftovers, those that are the results of properly ritualized death. Next, I discuss the receipt of leftovers as a performance in which the willing subordination of the recipient to the donor asserts the ultimate value of the system as a whole, and the recipient’s particular dependent position within it. In order to progress to the investigation of witchcraft, which I characterize as the secret acquisition and feeding of leftovers (by witches to themselves and to their victims), I explore the primary medium in which witchcraft is discussed—rumor and gossip.2 Among the rumors are those of cannibalism, the rendering of corpses for pro t, and the existence of unmarked cars abducting garment workers for their organs. I have already highlighted what is perhaps the most poignant type of “leftover person” in human culture—the orphan—in the discussion

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of Bhikkhu Sukh. Orphans are left behind too early, and without the capacity to provide for their deceased ancestors. Descendants, contrasted with orphans, are the proper remnants of a person who died a good death: “what remains of a man who passes away” (Malamoud 1996, 17). A person’s death results in a corpse, which must be dealt with, if only through disposal. As described in chapter 2, cremation transforms a corpse into the valued relics of an ancestor. From the earliest days of ancient Indian religion, the cremation of a corpse has been analogized to the cooking of food (Doniger 1982, 47–51). But in spite of this ritual transformation and the imagination of the deceased as a bene cent ancestor, relics remain ambiguous. In my early questionnaires, I asked about the nal placement of the funerary urns. All questionnaire respondents denied having an urn, or ko ha, in the home: there is a de nite preference for placing remains in temples. Even more preferred is interment in a cetiya on family land or land purchased from a temple.3 However, I suspect that some respondents may have given false responses, as I commonly heard stories from people who kept ko ha in the home. Here is one such story that demonstrates a sense of ongoing ambivalence about the relics, told to me by a Khmer language teacher. The teacher in question arrived at our class one day deeply distraught. She had canceled our last class session together, and conded the reason to me. Unmarried in her mid-thirties, she lived in her mother’s home with her adult sister, husband, and their children. Her brother-in-law acted decently enough, except when he drank, which was frequently. Then he returned home late at night and started dramatic and violent scenes. He sent my teacher to the clinic for stitches on at least two occasions, and his wife took more abuse. The night prior to our canceled lesson, this man arrived home late and drunk, and started a ght with my teacher over the continued presence of her father’s ko ha in the living room, where he watched television. When my teacher refused to remove it or talk about the issue any further, he kicked the ko ha o of its small raised shelf, whence it crashed to the oor, shattered, and spilled her father’s ashes and bone fragments. Ashamed, he left and did not return until the next morning, when he apologized and paid for a replacement urn.

Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 195 The destruction of the ko ha was nerve-wracking: without an intact and bound urn containing her father’s ashes, my teacher felt exposed to malevolent spiritual in uences (she would not say that she felt exposed to her father). She felt that her father would be angry with her. When I asked why she kept the ko ha in the house at all, since her father had died more than ve years previously, she said that she wanted to take care of him properly and didn’t trust the monks to do so.4 Her care and concern for her father’s remains, and possible fear of them, were managed in large part by their bound nature. There are, of course, other, more potent types of relics than those of normal people’s ancestors. These take the form, especially, of physical relics of the Buddha himself, one of which was moved in a massive ceremony in 2003 from a small cetiya in Phnom Penh to a newly constructed cetiya on Bhnu U u ga (a.w. Oudong). U u ga is also called Bhnu Bra R ja Dravya, “the royal mountain treasury,” or perhaps, “the holy mountain that is a royal treasure.”5 These two brief examples demonstrate that the relics of the dead, whether ancestral or of the “special dead,” remain ambivalent, and their power is positively evaluated so long as they are contained and set apart in key ways, by being either bound in an urn or placed in a cetiya on a mountain. There is not enough room to discuss the importance and various practices relating to the display and care of such relics here, so I highlight only one point: relics require care from the living and can provide well-being of various sorts to those who respect, honor, and care for them (Strong 2004; Trainor 1997). John Strong writes that “Relics of the Buddha can best be understood as expressions and extensions of his biography” (Strong 2004, 229). Similarly, while parents and deceased relatives may already have taken rebirth, dependency on them may continue through their relics, properly treated, because these embody their person and power as extensions and expressions of their lives. These examples highlight the continuing dependency of the living on the dead, in which the dead are cared for and honored as empowered ancestorlike gures, and in turn o er the blessings of fertility to the living (Barraud et al. 1994). A funeral ritual transforms a corpse into an ancestor without ever totally removing the anxiety associated with it. Through the ritual, the body is “cooked,” and the leftovers are more positively evaluated as a

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result. If compared with a standard meal, this appears as a sancti ed inversion of the normal evaluation of leftovers. The usual Cambodian family meal takes place with the family seated in a circle around the dishes and eating and chatting together, without an ordered eating among participants.6 Leftover rice is often dried in front of the house and then fed to pigs (or in the city, sold to people who then resell the scraps for animal feed). While these impure and unappetizing leftovers are drying in the early morning sun, Buddhist monks on their alms rounds come by, asking for leftover food. Whether these monks are actually o ered leftovers, specially prepared food, or nonfood items such as cash is secondary to the fact that these gifts are imagined as leftovers, and Buddhist monks as exceptional and abnormally worthy beggars. Just as Buddhist monks are capable of receiving the impure shroud of a corpse to wear as a robe without su ering from the normal social e ects of such an action, so they can receive impure o erings without the normal social e ect of subordination to the giver. In a Buddhist temple itself, however, the situation is reversed, and normative. A meal at home begins with delicious dishes and ends with unappetizing food; a meal at the temple begins with delicious dishes o ered to monks, and ends with delicious dishes consumed afterward by the laity. In the ancient Indian (and modern Hindu) conception, this is pras da, leftovers from sacri ce made sacred through being consumed rst by the subject of one’s devotion. Malamoud suggests that sacri cial meals—“may be reduced to that part eaten by the intended eater, and that part left over as a remainder” (Malamoud 1996, 11–12). Eating in a temple is an ordered activity, characterized by gender divisions, the distinction between primary eaters and the eaters of leftovers, and the submissive self-assertion of the latter, who thereby enact the proper form of moral social ordering. The laity cook dishes and bring them to the temple to o er to the monks. When the monks have eaten enough, assistants bring the dishes to the laypeople. The laypeople then eat together, while monks nish their own meals, depart to attend to other business, or return to their dormitories for a mid-day nap.

Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 197 The gendered aspect of these meals con rms that the role of women is to create new men, primarily through gifts of food, and the role of men is to become Buddhist monks. Ledgerwood expresses the situation this way: Khmer Buddhist sex roles are that men become monks, and women feed monks. . . . The primary role of women . . . is that of donor. Women prepare food in monastery kitchens or in their own homes which they o er to monks at the temples. On feast days, it is women who prepare elaborate dishes for monks as well as for crowds of faithful, also comprised primarily of women. (Ledgerwood 1990, 34–36)

However, the formal reason for giving gifts of food to the monks is to make merit, both for one’s own subsequent rebirths and commonly, and more important to the donors, to make merit that can be shared with the familial dead. Making merit for oneself, via the technique of giving to monks, inverts the symbolism of food sharing at home. While sharing at home “makes” men and children through the direct receipt of food from women, making merit in the temple seems a technique by which male monks help “make” the next rebirths of women donors. The meal at the temple exempli es how food sharing—speci cally, the consumption of leftovers—acts to order the moral world, especially in hierarchies that con rm male superiority and the superiority of Buddhist monks. I have thus far concentrated on the ways leftovers—ranging from food to corpses—normally considered impure, have their moral value reversed and become important sources of morality, public selfassertion, and well-being. These ways are highly marked by gender: it is paradigmatically women who submit themselves to the receipt of the blessings indicated by leftovers, and in the words of James Red eld, this can be read as a form of “submissive self-assertion.” The question of a desire for submission has been in uential in continental philosophy and theories of the subject (Butler 1997). Foucault’s position on the subject’s relationship to social power accords well with what I have attempted to describe: “Assujetissement denotes both the becoming of the subject and the process of subjection—one inhabits the

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gure of autonomy only by becoming subjected to a power, a subjection which implies a radical dependency” (Butler 1997, 83). In the rest of this chapter, I focus on the other side of this conceptual coin, which highlights the impurity, immorality, and danger—but also the power—associated with the receipt and consumption of leftovers. An entire range of antinomian and antisocial behavior falls into this category, but the central gure involved in the unmoralized consumption of dangerous leftovers is the witch. The primary di erence between the moralized reception of leftovers from a Buddhist monk and the immoral consumption of leftovers is the identity of the monk itself. The Buddhist monk successfully inverts the expected values of leftovers, demonstrating his resistance to impurity by receiving funeral shrouds and leftover food without fear, and his moral authority and social power through the willing consumption of his own food leftovers by the laity. However, while the Buddhist monk is certainly morally central, the willing consumption of leftovers extends farther. I suggest that a key distinction between morally powerful and authorized acts and immorally powerful and unauthorized acts is the degree of public versus secret performance involved. The public receipt of leftovers emphasizes that it is acceptable, moral, and “normal,” while the secret acquisition and consumption of leftovers highlights precisely the impure, immoral, and dangerous nature of these actions. This is likely the reason many of these practices are imagined and classi ed as various types of sinister magic. To summarize, leftovers are normatively coded as negative and impure, but the willing and public consumption of them is key to the reproduction of social hierarchies. In contrast, the willing but secret consumption (or, as I’ll discuss, feeding) of leftovers appears as immoral and individualistic, associated with witchcraft. Similar techniques, such as the manipulation of food exchange and consumption to create speci c, hierarchical relationships, are deployed with di erent degrees of legitimacy, marked by degree of secrecy. The very secrecy in which such immoral practices are supposedly cloaked raises the possibility that these are already mere specters, phantasms raised by interpellation. In many cases, including some discussed below, rumor and gossip negotiate the encoding of moral/immoral in a collective—but nonpublic—mode. Before I discuss rumor and gossip

Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 199 in general, I will brie y sketch four di erent speci c cases that include elements of consumption of leftovers, predation, and witchcraft.

RUMORS Like witches, rumors are concerned with things that are hidden from plain view, that are not public knowledge but are supposed to reveal the reality behind the public façade. By playing with the line between secrecy and privacy and between reality and fantasy, moral judgments are made and private trust is built.7 The most common types of rumors I catalogued are about the following topics: 1. clandestine sexual liaisons of politicians 2. political or military alliances or vendettas 3. the ingestion of dangerous substances 4. witchcraft, ghosts, and vampires. The seeming heterogeneity of this list disappears when one remembers that in Khmer, all of these are discussed with verbs and metaphors that revolve around eating, portraying connections and power as the consequence of relationships of secret consumption. For Khmer who pay attention to traditional astrology, 2004–2005 was the year of the “angel that drinks blood.” Every year has its own angel, one of seven who take responsibility for the years on a rota system. The following year would be the year of the “angel that holds a gun,” which made many apprehensive about civil unrest in the country. Blood-gorging angels were threatening enough, but angels with rearms appeared even scarier. On a trip into Kampong Cham province in early 2005, I noticed that many people had placed small plastic bags or empty water bottles lled with red liquid at the entrances to their homes or property. After a few inquiries, we discovered that the province was full of vampires this year. The word used was pis ca, a particular type of spirit.8 A pis ca is a ghoulish head that ies through the air, dragging its intestines behind it. It ies through the night in search of blood to drink, especially the blood of unmarried girls and any afterbirth that may be

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lying around.9 This penchant for blood is characteristic of the appetites of many malevolent ghosts in Cambodia. People had been placing these bags of fake blood at the perimeters of their properties for most of the year, replacing them every few days to keep the “blood” fresh. They were both a ward and a bargain struck with the wildness of the forests, where pis ca live—if they stay where they belong, people give them some of what they want. One middle-aged woman claimed in a newspaper story on the bottles that Mixing red dye with water looks like the blood of a virgin girl. . . . Any household that does not hang bottles or plastic bags of red-dyed water in front of their houses risks having evil spirits come into their homes and sucking the blood of their daughters or family members. (Sam Rith 2005)

The fear of pis ca that year had thousands of people o ering fake blood for the consumption of evil, predatory spirits whose power was irresistible and could only be appeased. There was a heavily gendered component to the imaginations of these secret predators, to whom the blood of women who have never menstruated or had sex and post-birth blood (lochia) are particularly attractive. Just before I arrived on my second trip, two men in a province in central Cambodia were arrested. They worked in the local crematorium in precisely the capacity of the men with whom I was to spend so much time, and were arrested for cannibalism. Villagers claimed to have seen them sitting outside the crematorium with chili salt and limes, snacking on a human leg. Stranger still, as reported in a Cambodia Daily article, the two men also confessed to the act, saying that they’d begun to eat human esh during the Khmer Rouge regime and had developed a taste for it (2002). In asking around about this story, I was routinely told that human esh is more delicious than other types of meat, but that most won’t eat it because they are scared of being haunted by ghosts. The explanation is hard to forget, and everyone gives almost precisely the same description: “You don’t need to add salt, and when you fry it, it ‘jumps.’” After being held for a few days, the two men were released. It turned out that Cambodia’s still-maturing legal code (the entirety of which still

Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 201 occupied less than one shelf at the time) had no law banning the consumption of human esh, so the men could not be charged. Although I tried to track them down, the two men had disappeared by the time I arrived in the town, where I had no prior contacts. I went to the local market for a bowl of noodles, hoping to ask questions. The noodle vendor became my guide to this topic. “Why do you think they left? After all, they were released by the court.” The answers I received surprised me: “They knew we thought they were witches.” Although the particular word used by the noodle vendor was dhm p, there are many di erent words for “witch” or “sorcerer” in Khmer, including p, anak memot, and others. Since I’m not concerned here with sorting out the di erences among this variety of magical evildoers and all are involved in various forms of occult eating and feeding, I have chosen to retain the English-language “witch” throughout. It makes perfect sense that the two cannibals would ee. In Cambodia, after an accusationof witchcraft, the “witch” either ees and disappears forever or is murdered. As far as I know, no researcher has ever been able to meet with a person accused by others in Cambodia of being a witch. “But why would people think they were witches?” “Because that’s what witches do: they gain their strength from eating human esh and blood ” This last was said with a deep incredulity, as if she could not believe the sheer stupidity of the question. Witches are immoral because of their grotesque and secret diet. In studies of witchcraft, consumption is almost always a dominant theme, regardless of the cultural setting.10 Candea and da Col have noted how Witchcraft and sorcery embody the negative side of hospitality: witches are bad guests, poisoners are bad hosts, and gossip is the sorcery of everyday hospitality. . . . Witchcraft operates through perverted commensality, orality, devouring the vital ows of their hosts or kin, envying them with “evil eyes” or eating their fortunes with “evil mouths.” (Candea and da Col 2012, S10)

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Munn notes that the “act of sharing food is the primary template of value creation which externalizes the self beyond the physical person” (Munn 1992 [1986], 116–117), and that food giving and sharing is a “key type of act in a polar relationship with acts of consumption and witchcraft” (xiii). Munn appears to emphasize the creation and externalization of personal power into the social sphere via public and legitimated acts of food sharing, and witchcraft as a related action with reversed, antisocial consequences (Candea and da Col 2012, S9). What separates witchcraft from food giving in Cambodia appears to be the modality of secrecy in which witches organize their acts of consumption. Witchcraft in Cambodia is most commonly associated with ingestion, both the witches’ own and that of their victims. Witches prepare special potions that are supposed to be put in a victim’s food or drink, or magically cause knives or the hide of black water bu alo to appear in their victim’s belly. A friend and student told me that his mother had been killed in precisely this way, by the magical placement of knives and bu alo hide in her stomach, and that the perpetrator was a woman who wanted to marry my student’s father. But witches also do the eating, such as of an enemy’s organs or blood. Khmer frequently told me that witches need to drink the decomposing uids of a powerful man’s corpse once a year in order to retain their power. There were rumors surrounding the displayed corpse of a widely revered monk, murdered outside a temple in 2003, that witches attempted to gain access to his corpse in order to drink his uids. In central Thailand, Terwiel also notes the widespread use of bodily e uvia in nefarious magical arts (Terwiel 2012, 138). The comparative literature on witchcraft emphasizes that witches tend to be scapegoats who have refused or been unable to engage in certain types of conventional exchange with their fellows (Harris 1989). Witches are associated with impure or immoral consumption. In Cambodia, both of these observations hold. Witches must steal a special form of sustenance every year, the uids from a powerful man’s corpse. This is both disgusting and therefore impure, and immoral, since it is seen as a type of theft, the taking of that which is not given. Witches also give without announcing their gifts: that is, they can alienate their property into the bodies of their victims or spike food and

Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 203 drink with potions. In this sense their behavior resembles that of poisoners. I eventually comprehended this similarity by noting that all are cases where some form of consumption is combined with secrecy, such that immorality is indicated and a judgment leveled. So witches secretly collect and consume the uids leaking from the bodies of dead Buddhist abbots, or secretly put vile substances into the foods or stomachs of others. While they are imagined to insert these objects or substances into people’s bodies through magic, the same e ects may be achieved through more mundane means of feeding in secret. Just a few months previously, a popular rumor began to spread through Phnom Penh. Suddenly it seemed that everyone was telling everyone else not to buy the normal type of cooking oil in the market. In Cambodia the cheapest cooking oil is rendered pig fat, sold in small clear plastic bags in the markets. The markets also sell brand-name vegetable-based cooking oils, which are much more expensive since they are imported from Vietnam and Thailand. Given the price di erence between the two types of oil and the deep poverty of many Cambodians, it was signi cant that people insisted on avoiding the normal cooking oil. I found out about this rumor from a friend, who called me early in the morning (well after I should have been up, and around the time I should have been heading to the market, were I Khmer) and made clear that I was not, under any circumstances, to buy the pig-fat oil; nor should I eat in restaurants for a while. She promised to explain later in the day, but made me promise right then on the phone to do as she asked. This friend of mine was a modern, highly educated, cosmopolitan woman. She had received the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in archaeology and anthropology at the only accredited university in the country, and had studied with some of the most esteemed scholars in Cambodian studies, both Khmer and foreign. She had traveled to foreign countries like Thailand, Japan, and Singapore, and given papers at academic conferences. She was by profession and vocation a scientist and seeker of knowledge. She was also deeply superstitious about her own country, and perhaps simply suspicious of her fellow Cambodians. She believed that the more secularized, rationalized, European-derived public spaces she’d encountered in the Ra es hotels and urban centers of foreign Asia were the norm.

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But she felt certain that Cambodians were deeply aberrant, and her explanation jibed with that of others, who seemed to believe that Cambodians, as one of mainland Southeast Asia’s rst peoples, had special relationships with ancient and frequently malevolent powers. It seemed to those I interviewed that the loss of Cambodian political prestige had been accompanied by a growing inability of Cambodians to properly serve and manage these ancient powers. This didn’t mean the powers had disappeared; they remained in Cambodia, hidden just out of view and constantly trying out new ways to take their due from the human world of living esh and warm blood. This combination of generalized scienti c rationality with speci c local exceptionalism was normal among the educated Cambodians I knew. When she came over later, my friend’s explanation of her earlier warning was this: the corpse burners, and perhaps even the c rya yog , at one of the city’s big crematoriums had apparently begun to render corpses for cooking fat, which they then sold to merchants in the markets as pig fat. I questioned her thoroughly about why anyone would do such a thing, but it was a few weeks before I got any clear idea what was going on. In the meantime, and for over a year, the market in rendered pig fat dropped out of sight. Only the poorest bought anything other than name-brand cooking oil in the markets, and bagged pork fat was hard to nd for a while. The fear of consuming human esh was too great. It should be impossible to render human bodies into cooking fat in the basic wood- red kilns used in Phnom Penh; the ovens don’t get hot enough. Even if it could be done, it wouldn’t be worth the e ort in terms of pro t. Still, everyone I spoke with believed the rumor was a matter of established fact and wouldn’t consider my supposedly rational arguments, even as they accepted their factuality. Obviously, I was missing the point. Finally, a di erent close friend, in an attitude that indicated genuine fear of even talking about the matter, told me quietly that nobody thought the oil was being sold for pro t, but that it was being sold by witches, so that they could hurt people or even worse, control them. Feeding people impure substances in secret made it possible to control them, reduce their autonomy, and gain an army of clients that must do the witch’s bidding. This appears as a negatively evaluated image of the

Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 205 patron-client relations that pervade and constitute so much of Cambodian social life. This rumor taught me the extent to which I was riding a particular intersection of the insider-outsider divide. I was enough of an insider that people thought I might be vulnerable to Khmer witchcraft (Europeans are not normally considered vulnerable), and they didn’t want this to happen. I was enough of an outsider that people were ashamed and even afraid to discuss witchcraft and its workings with me. With strangers, people would for the most part not discuss witchcraft in any serious way, and certainly no speci cs would be given, so my attempts to get information on the street were fruitless. Only through piecing together tidbits of information from di erent friends and then confronting them with my interpretation was I eventually able to gure out why they were concerned. What drilled this point home was the nal fact I learned. For all of the details and implied belief in the earlier recitations of the rumor, no one would tell me which particular crematorium they suspected of doing this foul act until nearly two full weeks later, when one person said that they suspected it was the crematorium at Wat Tr Loka. Thus armed, I asked others to con rm; almost all of them did. I was faced with the fact that the men I’d been spending so many days with were the supposed culprits, cooking down the corpses I’d been watching them treat into a dark, urine-colored liquid with a fatty froth, stored in small plastic bags. These very men were widely suspected of being witches. I became very nervous. And so did they. Or at least, when I asked them about it, they became very angry. “It’s not true ” the head of the crematorium, the too-jokey ceremonial leader who was not well respected by the community, said. He was always making rude comments about the families or even the deceased, often sexual in nature, and often within earshot of the families. Families tended to despise him and might hold grudges. Sometimes as they left they warned that I should watch out for him. But there were few options for any formal retribution: the families that came to this temple’s crematorium were mostly very poor. As described in chapter 1, the crematorium was connected to the city’s local police and government. In a country with a deeply corrupt o cial bureaucracy, where random violence from the ruling classes is matched

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by their impunity, it was easy to see why rumors might have started about this particular temple. It closely linked to a feared and despised group of institutions, especially the police and the hospitals, and it took a clearly predatory attitude toward “customers,” whom the representative then mocked. The crematorium’s head insisted that he wasn’t worried, but he started coming to work less often, and was more regularly accompanied by some of his old military friends. When I left the country in the summer 2006, he was still on guard, though the rumors had quieted somewhat. On my most recent visit to Phnom Penh in 2009, he told me that he felt he’d been vindicated. “Everyone” now knew that he “hadn’t done anything wrong. I always gave people the bodies back. See, I have the books, and everyone knows it ” Instead, he felt that the temple that had been my other eld site, Wat Ko Yakkha, had instigated the rumors in an attempt to cut into business. Now, he said, they were getting their return: rumors had started a few months back that the crematorium at Wat Ko Yakkha had returned the wrong remains to a family.11 The cooking oil rumor slowly dissipated, leaving me with a new understanding of how witches were imagined to work, their materials, and the kind of power they could wield: in secret, with leftovers, especially of the dead, and the power to control other beings. With the crematorium worker rumor, it became clear that in the Khmer imaginary, the ability to control others through various forms of secret consumption was not limited to those called “witch.” Other people could use similar techniques to accomplish similar ends. But some rumors are even more direct about their imagined forms of secret consumption. In July 2007, thousands of workers in garment factories suddenly began to refuse to come in. According to union o cials, up to 20 percent of the waged workers in the city had stopped reporting to work. The o cials found themselves in the novel position of cooperating with local police and factory owners to convince the workers that the latest rumor was not true. This new rumor was a variation on the notion that the big eat the little: “Stay away from nightshift work, the rumor advised, since powerful men are abducting workers during nightshifts and harvesting their organs (speci cally corneas and kidneys) for sale to international clients” (DPA 2007).

Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 207 The stories told of “big men” driving cars with tinted windows slowly through the factory districts, looking for the vulnerable young women who work all the shifts there, including the night shifts. These big men were abducting workers and selling their kidneys and corneas to wealthy foreigners. Organ harvesting from night workers would seem to be a transposition of one type of real vampirism into another type of specular vampirism. Only a few weeks prior, the rate for night shift work was cut from 200 percent to 120 percent, to the vociferous objections of the independent unions and a few oppositional political parties. No matter the wage, workers produce the wealth that the garment factory bosses largely keep for themselves. There is always a real vampirism involved in capitalism, in which the bosses, seemingly by magic, summon hordes of human beings to their castle factories. Once there, the bosses suck value and wealth out of the workers’ bodies and lives, and return enough to make sure that they’ll survive until the next shift. The unions had nothing to do with this rumor—in this case, they worked directly with employers to reassure workers. Organ harvesters exist, but it seems that this rumor, at least, was a spectacular version of real history. Following Nancy Scheper-Hughes’s work on the rumors and facts surrounding the international criminal tra c in organs, such fears of being consumed by the rich and powerful make explicit the real ways the poor are routinely treated by the institutions that are supposed to protect, treat, and defend them.12

WITCHCRAFT With the possible exception of the crematorium cannibals, the rumors listed above had little relationship to reality. All of them, however, contained consistent elements of predation, consumption, exchange, and secrecy. If public, o cialized rituals—especially those involving Buddhist monks—present an o cial imagination of the regular workings of a proper society, these rumors present an image of how people suspect the world more commonly works. Buddhist morality is not under critique, but rather suspected of exercising too-limited in uence over those who engage in the immoral practices of personal power associated with witchcraft. Just as ritual performance draws on and creates

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a shared and authorized imagination of the world, so too does rumor, though its authorization comes from a very di erent understanding of society. The distinction I have emphasized thus far between Buddhist ritual and the practice of witchcraft is that in the latter, secrecy alters the moral valence of similar techniques of power. The relationship between o cialized and nono cialized ritual appears as the relationship between public religion and private witchcraft, and between public male authority and secret female action, a situation noted by Bourdieu: The degree of freedom [in ritual practice and improvisation] varies with the degree of collectivization of the rite, and the (corresponding) degree of institutionalization, that is, o cialization. But it also varies with the position of the individuals in the o cial hierarchy, which is always a hierarchy with respect to the o cial. Those who are dominant identify with the o cial (the competence conferred by status predisposes agents to recognize and acquire competence). By contrast, those who are dominated, in this case the women, are relegated to the uno cial and the secret, means of struggle against the o cial power which they are denied. As is shown by analysis of female magic, symbolism is simultaneously and without contradiction a common code and a means of struggle, used both in the domestic struggles between women—especially the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law—and in the struggles between men and women. Just as there is an o cial, male, truth of marriage, and a practical truth, manipulated by women, so there is an o cial, public, solemn extra-ordinary use of symbolism, a male use, and a secret, private, guilty, everyday use by women. (Bourdieu 1990, 239–240)

And yet, the act of rumor seems to unveil these “secret, private, guilty” uses of o cial techniques of power. Rumors about witches violate the anonymity of the witch, making certain facts clear about who was responsible for what kind of illicit action. As Stewart and Strathern note in their work on the connection between witchcraft and rumor, in all societies rumor and gossip tend to form networks of communication in which fears and uncertainties emerge and challenges to existing

Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 209 power structures can be covertly made or overtly suppressed. Rumor and gossip form the substratum from which accusations of sorcery or witchcraft may be made, if such notions are culturally present or enter into people’s life-worlds. (Stewart and Strathern 2004, xi)

Given the phantasmatic and perhaps unreal aspect of the rumors, they do not merely “unveil” secrets as much as help constitute the “public secrets” that represent an alternate imagination regarding the world in which we live (Taussig 1999). I follow Luise White, treating rumor in a Foucauldian manner (White 2000). Rumor and gossip are performances—more risky because less authorized than public speech, but potentially with more e ective social consequences as a result— in which people enter the contemporary public sphere, constructing the self and society through particular modes of discourse. Therefore, although rumor-mongering appears to violate the secrecy that makes immoral practices possible and powerful, it creates an image of the immoral and creates us-versus-them relationships with the objects of the rumor (61). Rumor sits alongside confession as a productive discipline of discursive creation. Rumor complements the o cial ritual imagination in its encoding of morals. It contributes to an imagined and morally valent understanding of the world, outside of the formal declarative, institutional and authoritative forms. Rumor is also fun, creating intimacy and a sense of shared concern over shared values (White 2000, 59; Gluckman 1963, 307–316). Participating in rumor creates a buzz and sense of community. More, rumors may serve as entrées to social interaction: in Cambodia, you can to talk to anyone about a rumor, though the speci c level of detail varies depending on how much the participants believe they share in common. But for the most part, Cambodian rumor talk is very similar to talk about sports or celebrities in America, binding the participants into momentary relationships of complicity, such as judging the atrocious parenting skills of pop celebrities or agreeing that the source of the human-derived cooking oil is de nitely temple Wat Tr Loka. These shared judgments, hidden from larger surveillance, unmask other hidden relationships and create their own. Rumors of this sort can bind people into complicit relationships, where they help each other

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out against the nefarious forces that both create this world and control its workings. White has argued in favor of treating rumor and gossip as excellent historical sources for precisely the ways they imagine responsibility and causality: rumor and gossip “occupy the interstices of respectability, exactly following the contours of local and regional concerns. Rumor and gossip allocate responsibility; they contextualize extraction. . . . Rumors explain; they naturalize the unnatural” (White 2000, 62). In order to consider what unnatural situation might be naturalized through the imaginations of witches in Cambodian rumor, I summarize some of the major themes that I associate with witchcraft, and that interest me because of their connection with funerary rituals. First, consumption is a regular metaphor for all sorts of di erent power relations. This is true at the level of language, where consumption can mean ingestion, incorporation, assimilation, conquest, winning, and demonstrating superiority. It is also true in performances that manipulate actual food, such as meals both private and public, lay and monastic, all of which involve di erent expectations and grammars of courtesy. Second, monks eat in public and witches feed in secret. This is to say that both monks and witches engage in similar manipulations of food and consumption, but in distinct modes that mark their relative morality. Third, witches engage in an inversion of commensality, that of the poisoner or parasite. The public or o cialized rituals of feeding conrm existing hierarchies through the order of consumption and the public consumption of another’s leftovers. As I have shown, this is especially true of gendered and religious hierarchies. In contrast, the rituals of eating and feeding in witchcraft are executed in secrecy and involving the consumption of parts of a powerful person’s physical remains, or the secret insertion of nonfood items into a victim’s stomach (da Col 2012; Bloch 2005). Fourth, just as witches invert commensality by avoiding publicly submitting to authorized hierarchies, they subvert these hierarchies in an explicitly immoral way. Witches distinctively contest Buddhist priority while acknowledging its moral superiority. They are not opposed to hierarchies, merely to hierarchies in which they are not at the top,

Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 211 and are willing to engage in immoral behaviors in order to expand their individual in uence. In this chapter, I have focused on the ways the Cambodian imagination of the leftover, as complement to the gift, appears in social thought and practice, especially in rumor. From the number of incense sticks o ered in sacri ce to various forms of meals to rumors of witchcraft and cannibalism, the leftover appears as a powerful surplus, which can be distributed and consumed in legitimate and illegitimate ways. It is the ipside of the gift given in tribute (perhaps unwillingly, but ideally with at least the appearance of autonomous will), “upward” to those deemed more powerful, more in uential, and especially more moral than oneself; such gifts may also be given “downward,” in charity to those who depend on you. A gift may be seen, therefore, as a primary way of establishing and maintaining those necessary relationships of dependency upon which Cambodians rely, which appear to constitute the very social fabric of life. The leftover may also be seen as the secondary product of a gift. After the recipient has taken his primary share, he distributes or “leaves” the remnants of the gift for those within his network. This practice mirrors the description of the place of gifts in the patron-client relationships that analysts commonly understand to constitute the most e ective forms of political and social power in contemporary Cambodia (Godelier 1986; Hughes 2006). The leftover, because it is secondary, necessarily implies a level of impurity and downgrading of status for the one who willingly receives it. But this impurity is not absolute, any more in contemporary Cambodia than in ancient India. The Tiroku asutta, translated in the previous chapter, portrays precisely this same image, where gifts given to hungry ghosts transform them into revered ancestors whose blessings then return to the givers, like water poured on the summit of a hill, rolling downward. Leftovers have the positive, empowering characteristic of linking the subservient member—the consumer of leftovers—to powerful agents in a relationship of dependency. In the case of spirits of all sorts, this relationship may be maintained across the membrane of death. But the

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manner in which it is maintained turns the symbols back on themselves, in a recursive formation that highlights a further moral judgment. Consuming the leftovers of those whose role is precisely to mediate death in a moral and socially productive manner—Buddhist monks—is laudable, as long as it is done in public. Consuming the leftovers of those same individuals, not only food but also physical substance, is deeply immoral when it occurs in secret. The appropriation of the power of remains without engaging in a publicly witnessed relationship of subordination and dependency is immoralfor reasons that closely correlate to the attitude of independence associated with it. It is the very image of the witch. Public self-subordination to Buddhist morality indicates moral legitimacy. This is especially signi cant for the wealthy donors, who use such acts of public self-subordination to legitimize themselves within a moral framework. Kings especially exist in an ambiguous relationship with Buddhism: they simultaneously root themselves in the power of the non-Buddhist world of violence and martial heroism and pay obeisance to the moral superiority of Buddhism. Compare this to the private self-assertion of independence, self-sovereignty, and immoralism inherent in the Cambodian versions of witchcraft and immoral power. Sovereigns—kings, powerful politicians, and in the contemporary sphere, successful businessmen and military o cials—occur somewhere in the middle of this moral map, as they do in Buddhist thought more commonly. Routinely described as nearly inevitable and necessary—in the Aggañña Sutta, kings develop to enforce a just division of food—they are morally suspect due to their use of force and their consumption without subordination, unless they proclaim their loyalty to the Buddha and his sangha. Kings and witches are alike, and draw upon similar sources of Brahmanical power. Both engage in the power of violence and destruction, of coercion and force, and it is no accident that Buddhist texts routinely describe kings as spending their subsequent births in hells. Unlike the witch, however, the king has risen to supremacy. Espousing the values of sovereignty, a king tolerates other aspirants poorly, and his self-subordination to the values of the Buddha sangha acts to legitimate him, placing him and the sangha in a moralized alliance against the witches and untamed spirits.

Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 213 The notion of an “ambiguous synthesis” between “Buddhist kings” (whose power comes from sources thought of as Brahmanist) and “Buddhism” is not new. What I suggest here, and continue to discuss further in the following chapter, is that “synthesis” may fall prey to the same analytical error as “syncretism.” It seems to me that instead, Buddhism requires a “Brahmanism” against which to o end and with which to compromise. But at the same time, it is clear that the “Brahmanism” described by the Khmer world of witches, fortune-tellers, ghosts, cannibals, and sorcerers relies on techniques of power that either are directly shared or overlap signi cantly. In the concluding chapter, I examine this relationship and argue that in fact, Buddhism not only requires “Brahmanism” but also creates it.

MAYBE THE DEAD WERE STARVING In 2009 the Al Jazeera English network released a short video program on the Khmer Rouge war crimes trials (Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia). During that program, Seng Yao, eighty-one-yearold survivor of prison camp M-99, says: At least ten prisoners died each morning and we would take the bodies away. We kept moving the corpses. I was not afraid of ghosts at that time. I would sometimes sleep on graves but ghosts did not haunt me. Maybe the ghosts did not have the energy left to haunt us because they died of starvation. (Dunlop 2009, Al-Jazeera’s translation)

Yao’s suppositions about the state of the dead during the Khmer Rouge were characteristic of the way people have talked to me about ghosts and the dead during the Khmer Rouge period. Such expressions and reasoning were common among many survivors, not just former prisoners. I was frequently told “there were no ghosts during the Pol Pot time,” because “they had nothing to eat.” I had a hard time understanding

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this at rst, because I re exively assumed that whenever there was mass death there would be more ghosts, not fewer. This supposition, widely held among foreigners, perhaps explains the constant haunting motif associated with Cambodia by particular journalists. In the rainy season of 2004 in rural Kampong Cham, I was going from house to house in a small rural neighborhood, interviewing people about their experience with ghosts (most everyone was related, and knew I was coming). The younger children tended to squeal and hide in the corners of the rooms, while the older kids either paid rapt attention or attempted to seem nonchalant. The adults were more matter of fact. An eighty- ve-year-old man explained it to me this way: “When the country is rich, there are lots of ghosts. When there is nothing to eat, what will the ghosts eat? Nowadays, there are lots more ghosts than during the Pol Pot time.” Note that the reciprocity between humans and the dead is assumed to be the basis of the “health” of the dead, and that the basis of this reciprocity is food. The healthier the people of the kingdom of Cambodia, the healthier their dead. And vice versa, as in the blessings propitiated ancestors provide their living descendants during Bhju Pi a. The relationship between the living and the dead in Cambodia is largely conceived of as symbiotic, rather than antagonistic. Moreover, this symbiosis is explicitly understood through the imagined medium of food sharing and the demands of reciprocity. If we the living are without food to eat, the dead necessarily share in our poverty. If we refuse to share what we enjoy, the dead may punish us with their curses. Similarly, the dead reward us for our gifts, and those blessings are prerequisites of the wealth we can enjoy. Wealth, health, and moral rewards are attributed to the disposition of the dead, with whom the living may interact in ways prohibited and moral, via Buddhist monks. They may also interact with—and even, like the Buddhist monks themselves, attempt to control—the dead, through engaging with them in less-sanctioned practices, often considered witchcraft, Brahmanism, or at the very least, pur a-style Buddhism.

8. Buddhism Makes Brahmanism

DEATH AND THE CREATION OF POWER In this concluding chapter, I argue that a potent marker of the relative morality of humanity’s various engagements with power is the way those particular humans negotiate imagined or real fertility. Accompanied by an assertion of a duty or right to care for the dead, this moral classi cation is at the heart of what I mean by deathpower. In the cases I examine, fertile power is created, and the merely deceased are transformed into the “powerful dead” through real or imagined death. I rst return to the question of how to classify the practice of Cambodian and other Southeast Asian forms of Buddhism: in terms of the unity of their parts or through their separateness, as syncretic, hybrid, or compartmentalized? In my investigation of rituals and associated beliefs and practices centered on the dead, the common element in all the diverse engagements Buddhist monks were supposed to have with spirits was actions in which the monk violently conquered, morally domesticated, or assigned a role to the conquered spirit. Other

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spirits coexist peacefully with Buddhist monks, bothering no one, and thus appear more like large predatory animals in the forest whom one rarely encounters. Second, Buddhism and its agents perform both moral and technical superiority over the spirit world, regardless of whether the spirit in question is thought of as “Brahmanist,” Khmer, a nonhuman nature spirit, an angel or god, an ancestor, a Chinese spirit, or a bloodthirsty pis ca. In some cases, hidden—and often beautiful or magical—visions are revealed to speci c individuals because of their moral life; in other cases, Buddhism violently asserts conquest over the spirits, as in the occasional imagined need of forest-dwelling ascetics to engage with violent spirits intending them harm, or in the violent imagery and imagination of Buddhist monks consecrating a Buddhist sanctuary through symbolic human sacri ce and by pinning a giant n ga into place underneath it. I have presented techniques of conquering, domesticating, and instrumentalizing spirits as deathpower, and as central to the Cambodian Buddhist ritual imagination. Early chapters demonstrated that the techniques through which Buddhist monks deploy their power over the dead are generally pastoral. In the Cambodian Buddhist imagination, a skilled monk would only have to destroy a spirit that was unwilling or incapable of being tamed and put to use in a moral, prosocial way. Domestication and instrumentalization of spirits are instead the assumed norm. However, as noted in the previous chapter, non-Buddhist actors also use the techniques of Buddhist monks to control spirits, frequently for immoral and antisocial purposes, such as witchcraft. The key distinctions between the two in terms of their technical performances are negligible, but the presence or absence of Buddhist monks or Buddhist images, the presence of chanting in Pali, and such aspects as the public or secret nature of the performance and the direction in which food is distributed and consumed serve to highlight their moral di erences. This pastoral care, a type of powerful and domesticating care, has at least two modes. The rst and most obvious is the mode in which a monk or other person attempts to control other beings, domesticating them and binding them to their will. This is a type of pastoral care more akin to that of the shepherds whose actions toward their ocks gives us

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 217 the clerical metaphor. The other is a type of pastoral care that comes closer to re ecting the “care of the self ” that Foucault discussed in his later lectures as the precondition for knowledge of the self (Foucault 2005, 1985, 1988). The funeral and the need to domesticate one’s own spirit explicitly intend to communicate the need to exert this care for the self to the living, while performing domestication and control of the spirits of those no longer capable of such self-control: the dead. I have given many examples of the pastoral care of the Buddhist monk, from the adoption and transformation of “savage” orphans such as Sukh into Buddhist monks to the assignation of particular duties to spirits, such as protection of temples, where the Buddhist control of spirits is endowed with an authority that is not up for negotiation. But at the same time, these spirits are often given some small amount of attention and care in order to continue their e cacy. In this chapter, I demonstrate that this logic of pastoral care of the spirits is consistent among the non-Buddhist practitioners of spirit control; indeed, care for the spirits, even those dominated through force, seems a prerequisite for the ability to control their power. Finally, I will return to the question of how to understand the relationship between Buddhism and these non-Buddhist practices, and suggest a new way of looking at it that speci cally takes issue with the presentation of Southeast Asian Buddhism as “syncretic” as a consequence of the involvement of Buddhist monks with spirits.

SYNCRETIC BUDDHISM Buddhism in Southeast Asia is frequently described as “syncretic.” Used to describe religion, “syncretic” identi es and makes claims about a problematic mixture. Seeing the nature of Southeast Asian Buddhism as somehow problematic is not limited to external observers; it also is a part of contemporary reform discussions. My friend Thon, a monk at the Buddhist temple where I began my work in Cambodia, explained this early in my eldwork, one afternoon in the upstairs sanctuary of his temple’s vih ra, or central sanctuary, while we took a break from my chanting lessons. He was telling me why there were so many images of non-Buddhist spirits and deities in Cambodian temples. The enormous and brightly colored central Buddha gure looked down on us, seated

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on the oor. I was curious about the beautiful Garu a (a.w. krut) bird image, holding up a row of candles, currently unlit. Jars full of sand and burned-out incense sticks were on short tables on either side of the candle holder. Garu a is the special vehicle of the Hindu god Vi u, and long a symbol of royal power in Cambodia (Sharrock 2009). I was curious to hear how my friend would explain the presence of Vi u’s vehicle in the Buddhist temple sanctuary, holding up a plank of nowextinguished candles. “But why is Garu a here in a Buddhist temple, and why do people burn incense and candles in Buddhist temples, if that’s not Buddhism?” I asked. “We allow it, because Buddhism and Brahmanism have been mixed up for a long time in Cambodia. But you shouldn’t do it. The incense and candles are for the spirits; it’s Brahmanism. Only the morality and the meditation is Buddhism.” He was using the word Brahman-s san , which I translate here as “Brahmanism,” to oppose it to Buddha-s san , “Buddhism.” They were all mixed up together in Buddhism, not only in the minds of the laypeople, in whom he knew I was mostly interested, but also in their art and ritual. Thon is very much a modernist reformist monk, and stays at one of the temples most strongly associated with that tendency in Cambodian Buddhism. Modernist Buddhism, as a worldwide trend, is very in uential, and emerges from a history that weaves together colonial and indigenous forms of scholarship and reform (McMahan 2008; Hansen 2008). In Cambodia, the two major institutional sects, the Mah Nik ya and the Dhammayuttika Nik ya, are sometimes understood according to these traditional/nontraditional oppositions, with the Dhammayuttika Nik ya as the reformists. This sect was founded in Thailand by the Siamese Prince Mongkut (later King R ma IV) in 1833 as a reform movement and brought to Cambodia two decades later. Reform was not limited to the new order, however. The Mah Nik ya, the name then given to all Buddhists who were not Dhammayuttika Nik ya, also had a powerful reform movement, led by the most famous Cambodian Buddhist patriarch in Cambodia’s history, Chuon Nath (1883–1969). Additionally, Dhammayuttika Nik ya temples frequently engage in the same aesthetic choices and ritual behaviors as unreformed Mah Nik ya tem-

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 219 ples, pressured by the desires of their congregants. If one wishes to distinguish between modernist and “traditional” Cambodian Buddhism, sectarian di erences are insu cient, and rarely used in that way by Cambodian laypeople. When Cambodians distinguish between reform and “traditional” Buddhism, they tend to rely less on sectarian characteristics than on those we might think of as stylistic. Samaya (a.w. samay), a word meaning time, or “modern,” refers to those temples, monks, and practices that are reformed and puri ed of what reformers consider non-Buddhist in uences. Pur a (a.w. boran) refers to those temples, monks, and practices that come down from “ancient times” (Kobayashi 2005). As with the Mah Nik ya and Dhammayuttika Nik ya distinction, the reformers were named rst, and the situation they intended to reform named in response. The category of the new de nes the category of the old against which it acts. The category of “the old” and “traditional” is de ned rst by those who act against it. The reformers create a fantastic image of the other, in ways that resemble Trouillot’s “savage slot” in an Asian setting (Trouillot 1991; Keating 2013). In practice, however, these distinctions are less important to the vast majority of Cambodian Buddhists, and are largely the concern of modernist monks and a small group of dedicated laypeople. The distinction between “Buddhism” and “Brahmanism” does exist for those outside of a relatively small—but growing—reform movement, though its precise history is unclear. But when most people discuss this, their concerns di er from those of the reformists. The reformists see “Brahmanist” in uences in Buddhism as a fault; if they cannot reform it now, they tolerate such practices out of compassion for the practitioners. According to the reformists, including my friend Thon, these laypeople are confused and their Buddhism “all mixed up.” Sometime during the next three years of eldwork, I came to a di erent conclusion: whatever the historical in uences, Cambodian Buddhism was not in fact all mixed up, but instead dominated what is characterized as the impurity of the world in a way that lends increased power and authority to the community of monks, as well as securing them social and political space. In respectful disagreement with my ordained reformist friend, it seems to me that Buddhism often depends on these supposedly syncretic impurities; domination

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of these in uences, rather than exclusion of them, is integral to its appeal and power. The use of the term “syncretism” to describe Southeast Asian Buddhism seems to derive from a key fact: Therav da Buddhism on the ground doesn’t resemble Therav da Buddhism as we encounter it in the Pali canon, in two important ways. First, the dominant concerns of the laity and their ritual performances are rarely discussed in the Pali canon, and a tradition largely rooted in Weberian sociology has attempted to reconcile the “this-worldly” orientation of the laity with the supposedly “otherworldly” concerns of the monk, and especially, the Pali canon. Second, Buddhist monks in Southeast Asia have a regular set of ritual engagements with spirits, also di cult to nd in the Pali canon, though not, it must be emphasized, in other Pali sources such as j taka, or birth stories. Similarly, while 96 percent of Cambodians declare that they are Buddhists, the majority of their ritual actions— though not necessarily the ones they self-identify as most important— are often with “non-Buddhist” spirits. Syncretism as a concept also has at least two, often overlapping, ways of characterizing the “problem.” First, the religion may be a problem because it appears syncretic and therefore inauthentic. In this case, “syncretism” is a value-laden word opposed to original purity (Shaw and Stewart 1994). Second, Therav da Buddhism’s “syncretic” appearance in Southeast Asia may pose genuine historical and social questions. The deployment of the word in these contexts assumes the same mixing of one tradition with others as the rst, but largely attempts to avoid adding value judgments to the investigation. It also has the advantage of allowing for change and diversity, through a process that is not genealogical but eminently social. Scholars of any tradition should, in my opinion, avoid the rst use of syncretism, but the second may also pose problems (King 2003). Most signi cantly, in the study of Therav da Buddhism in Southeast Asia, we have no access to the pure traditions some assume have melded together: there is no “nonsyncretic” Therav da; even the modernist reform institutions are frequently full of elements they themselves, or outsiders, would consider syncretic (McDaniel 2011). Similarly, there are no primordial “animisms” or uncontaminated “Brahmanisms” to study. When we encounter Southeast Asian Buddhism, it’s already all mixed up.

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 221 As Peter van der Veer has pointed out, syncretism is so broad a concept that “indeed, every religion is syncretistic, since [each] constantly draws upon heterogenous elements to the extent that it is impossible for historians to unravel what comes from where. One could therefore argue that it is a useless term” (van der Veer 1994). Most studies of Southeast Asian Buddhism that use such terms are deeply sensitive and illuminating of important aspects of Buddhist practice; however, the framing of Buddhism’s local distinctions as syncretic makes it difcult to examine the ways Buddhism is experienced and practiced by living Buddhists. Gregory Schopen discussed this issue in the context of studies of early Indian Buddhism, noting that the Buddhist textual record and the archaeological record portray distinct images of Buddhism, and that we have tended to judge the evidence of the archaeological record by the standards of the texts, instead of the reverse (Schopen 1991). As he and others have increasingly demonstrated, Buddhism has always been mixed up with di ering motivations and non-Buddhist spirits (DeCaroli 2004). We may extend Schopen’s critique of “Protestant” scholarship of Buddhism, which privileges texts over practice, to Southeast Asia. Spiro wrote of the “Great” and “Little” traditions of Burmese Buddhism, Tambiah wrote of the religious eld where Buddhism and “spirit cults” interact, and Donald Swearer examines lived Buddhism in Southeast Asia, discussing Southeast Asian Buddhism as an “inclusive syncretism” (Spiro 1982; Tambiah 1970; Swearer 2010). More recent scholarship has used the word “hybridity,” but without avoiding the di culties posed by “syncretism” (Kitiarsa 2005, 2012; Skilling et al. 2012). The historical question indicated in some uses of the word “syncretism”—the tracking of in uences—is of de nite interest to those exploring how local versions of Buddhism came to assume their current shapes. As already mentioned, however, we lack most forms of signi cant evidence on which to examine in uences prior to their incorporation into a common religious culture. Discussions of religious syncretism therefore resemble debates on the “Indianization” of Southeast Asia and those on Buddhist modernism, and we may take inspiration from contributions to these discussions. Debates on Indianization and Buddhist modernism have followed trajectories similar to that of syncretism in Southeast Asian Buddhism.

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These debates both originally encountered, and then overcame, ideas of tradition as changeless and focused instead on the dynamics of change. This focus, in turn, has clari ed our understanding of the traditions themselves. The notion of Indianization—either through physical colonization or through cultural expansion—relied heavily on an image of Southeast Asia as a passive receptacle for Indian values. Against this, Paul Mus, perhaps the most incisive observer of mainland Southeast Asia to participate in the early days of these debates, conceived of tradition as something motivated and transformed by an inner con ict, rather than something created pure and subject to inevitable decline (Bell 1992, 118–119). According to Mus, human agents appropriated those aspects of Indian culture that were sensible to them. He not only emphasized local agency in general but also located that agency as formed by already dominant notions about the world, based in local practices and traditions (Mus 1975). Similarly, contemporary work on Buddhist modernism, the reformist movement that agrees with characterizations of contemporary Buddhist practice as “syncretic” and thus may be termed “antisyncretic,” has begun to emphasize the mutually constituted nature of this modernism (Almond 1988; McMahan 2008). In contrast to a stimulus-andresponse model, where local Buddhists respond to a European Victorian image of a secular philosophical Buddhism by creating movements that attempted to reform existing practice in line with canonical texts, new scholarship portrays this modernism emerging from the interaction between local Buddhist monks and laypeople, and as following local interests. If we are unable to truly separate out Buddhism from nonBuddhist in uences that have been incorporated within it, one possible way forward is to concentrate on the processes by which these supposedly non-Buddhist in uences are added and performed in Buddhist rituals. Similarly, if we are inclined to give greater weight to explanations of religious change that emphasize local agency, we can pay attention to the everyday in uences that structure people’s lives and desires (McDaniel 2011; Kitiarsa 2012). Religion must be understood as a privileged point in a much broader range of practices and signi cations, and should be interpreted in this context. As I demonstrated in chapter 3, the everyday forms of social organization, personal relationship and

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 223 interaction, along with a widespread and culturally bound understanding of agricultural technique form the most signi cant contexts for the Buddhist rituals examined here. Although locals seem to have adopted Buddhism, like other aspects of Indian culture, for its intersection with existing networks of meaning, Buddhism is not today merely another element in Southeast Asian societies; it ranks as the single most prestigious social institution in Therav da Buddhist countries, along with the monarchy in Thailand. Its hegemonic position regarding social morality is di cult to dispute. Buddhist rituals—often considered the best examples of “syncretic” Buddhism—do seem to incorporate local in uences and understandings into their performance, but in ways that con rm Buddhism’s hegemony (Swearer 2010, 33). The dominance of Buddhism in lowland Southeast Asian societies is part of an ideological social complex and must be contextualized in that way; its hegemonic status entails that it is rarely recognized as ideology, since few permit themselves to live in worlds that they themselves recognize as ideological. Although my friend Thon was able, as an antisyncretic, modernist Buddhist monk, to classify and distinguish between those components of Buddhist practice and display that he thought were properly Buddhist and those that were Brahmanist, he did not do so as a child, but had to learn this classi cation from another modernist monk. Similarly, most Cambodians do not experience their religious lives as broken pieces assembled into a whole. As May Ebihara, the American ethnographer of village Cambodia in the late 1950s, wrote of Cambodians’ religious lives, they did not segregate various elements of village religious practices as deriving from one religious culture or another. . . . Buddha and ghosts, prayers at temple and invocations of spirits, monks and mediums are all part of the same religious culture and simply di erent aspects of which are called into play at di erent, appropriate times. (Ebihara 1968, 168, quoted in Holt 2012, 16)

Humans are remarkable meaning-making machines, and most of us respond poorly to blatant contradictions in our worldviews. Strategies like secularism enable the coexistence of multiple, contradictory ways

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of imagining and thus engaging the world, though they tend to do so by privileging one of the options (Asad 1999; Turner 1977). Hence, Buddhists rarely have di culty imagining a real signi cance to Mount Meru, the mountain at the center of the ancient Indic cosmology, even while fully understanding that it is not at the center of the cosmos as described by scientists. This distinction between the world as it is and the world as experienced by individuals socialized into particular collective imaginations helps to explain how I view the binary oppositions promoted by Buddhism in Southeast Asia. The Cambodian imagination institutes these oppositions that Cambodians routinely undermine through daily practice, without appearing to weaken their force in the construction of their emotional or moral lives. One example may su ce here. As discussed in chapters 3 and 4, the notion of a strict distinction between the civilized, paddy-rice agricultural, Buddhist lowlands and the savage, non-agricultural, non-Buddhist uplands is well developed in the Cambodian imagination. In this view of the world, the forests are full of dangerous and malevolent spirits; only monks and kings are imagined to have the power to confront them. Yet for thousands of years Cambodians have entered the forests in search of rewood, supplemental food, game to hunt or trap, and safe hiding spaces from violence and warfare. The ideological binary between forest and eld is neither natural nor strictly obeyed; the relationship between daily practice and this imagined world, however, produces emotional responses. Thus, those who regularly search the same general area of nearby forest for rewood simultaneously gain competence and familiarity with the spot, and reproduce the fear of the forest in themselves and others. Although structural-functionalist analyses of such binaries derive from the notion that human thought is naturally structured into oppositional pairs, I argue instead that we should take the existence of such pairs as attempts to shape thought and behavior, not as a re ection of natural patterns of human thought. These binaries create a tension between their own legitimated presentation of the world and the everyday practices that seem to violate this presentation. The violations on the part of regular Cambodians seem to con rm these binaries through the emotions people experience, such as fear in the forest. Other violations con rm these distinctions as well: as described in chapter 3, the

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 225 violation of this binary between forest and eld by kings and monks grounds much of their authority. The di erence between the image of a monarch or monk con dently entering the wild forest and the image of a peasant entering the forest con rms a naturalized distinction between the respective powers. As Bailey and Mabbett write of ancient Indian Buddhism, it would be wrong to identify the Buddhist cosmology with magic and folk culture, and divorce this from spirituality and meditation. . . . It is therefore important to recognize that magic—the manipulation of impersonal forces by one expert in the technology—was not something that Buddhist belief automatically rejected. (Bailey and Mabbett 2006, 156)

Those who have studied such culturally instituted binaries after the decline of structural-functionalist anthropology have focused on their hegemonic and incorporating nature. Durkheimian scholar Robert Hertz was one of the earliest anthropologists to pay attention to the importance of embodied action and its in uence on cultural imagination. For Hertz, followed by Mauss later, embodiedness reproduces social cosmologies, including asymmetrical binaries that are really unitary systems (Mauss 1973 [1934]; Hertz 2008). Mauss’s insights on the signi cance of the body and its practices was adopted and extended by Bourdieu and his notions of habitus and hexis, while the emphasis on the body remains at the forefront of much of the theory on the performance of ritual (Bourdieu 1977). Mauss’s insights have been extended by the work of Terence Turner in particular, who argues that formulations of binary oppositions are an elementary means of expressing unity and totality through an implicit hierarchy (Bell 1992, 102–103). Like the binary between “syncretic Buddhism” and a supposedly nonsyncretic one, the distinctions between forest and eld, and Buddhism and Brahmanism, are ideological and part of an ongoing ideological project; their power is reproduced in society as part of its ongoing self-creation. I will argue that the work of reproducing this cosmological imagination, including the binary distinctions above, is performed in rituals, especially those having to do with death and the dead. Before

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I address the role of ritual, I discuss my method and the role of the social imagination.

POWER AND MORALITY IN CAMBODIA The relationship of the powerful dead to morality is complicated. Some of the powerful dead may be quite moral and linked largely to fertility and good fortune, but the morality of spirits appears individual rather than ontological—that is, they seem moral because of the virtues of their personal history and choices, rather than because they are a particular type of spirit or being. Other spirits, such as ancestors, founders, and many others, have di erent relationships to morality. Some are imagined as local guardians of morality, but the behavior of others may often appear highly immoral, such as their appetites for o erings of liquor or sacri ced animal esh. The spirits themselves are neither typically Buddhist (though some are) nor necessarily under the control of Buddhism. They are simply the spirits of the world. Buddhist monks, however, are thought of as some of the most e ective technicians of the spirit world’s power, and certainly the most moral. Other technicians of spiritual power also ply their trade, in ways sometimes complementary and sometimes competitive with the work of Buddhist monks. Ranging from astrologers (largely complementary to, at least, traditional monks) and spirit mediums, to witches of various sorts (imagined as both competitive with and directly opposed to monks), these people engage in activities that are clearly part of the dominant style of religious practice in the country, but are also often identi ed by both insiders and outsiders as “not Buddhist.” If these practices are not Buddhist, then what are they? Various theories of syncretism and vernacular religion have been proposed to account for the ways Southeast Asian Buddhisms—and perhaps especially Cambodian Buddhism—do not properly resemble either textual canonical Buddhism or Sinhalese Buddhism. I nd “syncretism” unhelpful and concur with Justin McDaniel’s recent work, which argues that many of the terms we have used to describe normal religious practice in Buddhist Southeast Asia are similarly incoherent, including “vernacular,” “popular,” “lived,” and “tantric,” among others (McDaniel 2011). The eld has not achieved any consensus on how to reinterpret

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 227 religious life, which is a failure we at least share with every other group of scholars studying religious phenomena. I deal not only with the moral world of spiritual practices dominated by Buddhist monks but also the immoral world in which witches or nefarious sorts of gr practice. Their behavior provides exemplary contrast and allows us potentially to discern more regionally foundational cultural patterns. I will brie y rehearse the particular view of power in Southeast Asia with which I am engaged, then proceed to two key and contrasting examples. One is the example of the gr k n krak, which translates to “dried fetus g ru,” referring to the creator of an amulet of preternatural power. The other is the ordination of Buddhist novice monks, or samanera, in the ritual called bo buos n ga, or “ordaining the n ga.” Power in Southeast Asian cultures is generally viewed as homogenous, universal (“immanent” might be better), and amoral. Benedict Anderson and Nicola Tannenbaum, among others, have argued aspects of this opinion cogently and persuasively (Tannenbaum 1989; Tannenbaum 1995; Anderson 1990). Further, this homogenous, universal, and amoral power becomes useful or accessible to human beings largely through actions of capture and incorporation, such as physical consumption through ingestion, or through ritual acts of incorporation and binding. Similar logics, di erently expressed, appear in such celebrated and disparate approaches as those of Tambiah’s work on Thai amulets and John Strong’s book on Buddhist relics, where some nondoctrinally de ned vital and personal power remains invested in apparently nonvital objects, such as human remains or amulets (Tambiah 1984; Strong 2004). Part of my interest here begins with this understanding and proceeds to the way indigenous classi cation of moral and immoral practices is performed, and how that classi cation does or does not a ect real behavior. In chapter 7, I argued that at the level of rumor and gossip, as well as at the level of language generally, a major distinction between moral and amoral power is in the relative degree of public performance of the act of consumption, to wit, “monks eat in public; witches eat in private.” The ability to symbolically appropriate power publicly without contest is key to the legitimacy of a power holder. However, the aspect of

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indigenous moral classi cation on which I focus in this concluding chapter is not publicity versus secrecy or the characterization of such acts as consumption, but their characterization as “violently natural” versus “bene cently unnatural” acts. In this distinction, natural fertility and parentage indicate an engagement of questionable morality, as opposed to forms of adoption and fosterage, presented in a more positive light. In the following, I illustrate the moral distinction between otherwise extremely similar phenomena with two examples. One is the k n krak, or “dried fetus amulet,” created from the roasted fetus of a woman whom the amulet creator, or gr , has impregnated, deceived, and murdered. He then treats the dried fetus as his own child to feed, care for, and discipline. Nevertheless, even the possessor makes no claim that this practice bene ts others. The other example is the rather well-known set of procedures and stories surrounding the ordination of young men as Buddhist novitiates, a paradigmatically meritorious gift (d na) of a healthy male child to the celibate, infertile, and death-focused sangha. This gift also redounds to the bene t of the mothers who o er their sons and thereby feel themselves freed from hell, not to mention to the novice monk himself, who traditionally has received his education, vocational training, and adult masculine identity through the period spent in robes. Beginning with the example of the k n krak and moving to novitiate ordination will permit me to segue into my conclusion, where I re ect brie y on the historical and sociological implications of the “civilizational capture” metaphor of adoption and fosterage in Cambodia, which may be of broader regional signi cance.

FETUSES TELL THE FUTURE To produce a k n krak amulet requires a number of acts so obviously abhorrent that it is easy to overlook the consistency with which it conrms the distinctive logic proposed above. The unexpected association of parenting skill and witchcraft can be seen in the Khmer proverb about individuals who lack the talents necessary to their professions: “Vet whose cow is passive; witch doctor [memot] whose child dies; judge who looses [sic] his trial” (Fressanges 2009, 81).

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 229 The aspiring possessor of the amulet must rst impregnate a young woman. At some point, he must then trick her into verbally consenting to give him “his child.” This is supposed to take the form of a deceitful dialogue in which the man, teasing the woman about the parentage of the child, asks her to con rm that it is “his,” and then asks if he can “have” the child, without specifying when. Then, preferably at some point in either the rst or the third trimester, the man rips the fetus out of the woman’s belly, which normally ensures the woman’s death. Death during pregnancy or childbirth is the most frequent cause of the most powerful and malevolent ghost possible, the br y, the same spirit bound into the pedestal of specially empowered Buddhist sanctuary images. He then takes the fetus and dries it out, typically over a re. Then, binding it with special string and chanting powerful mantra, he places it in a small pouch that he keeps on his person. The bene t a gr k n krak receives from the amulet is largely described as that of foreknowledge, and of knowledge of events at a distance. The fetus can warn its possessor of impending threats or opportunities, which is of great use to those rumored to be the most common possessors: bandits, soldiers, and powerful politicians. While stories about k n krak are far more common than the amulets themselves, I did manage to nd a self-professed gr k n krak in suburban Phnom Penh. This man had a moderately bustling profession as a fortune-teller, or rather as intermediary for the fortune-teller, which was of course his own k n krak. When I rst visited with him on a weekday morning, I waited for just over one hour to meet with him, as he consulted with a series of young and middle-aged women in seemingly middle-class dress, and adolescent men and their mothers, clearly there to ask about examination scores and visa applications. While the motivations for these people to seek special knowledge were normal or even stereotypical, the source of their knowledge was obviously not. The gr was a skinny Sino-Khmer man who claimed to have received the amulet from its original maker in the highland province of Mondulkiri, from the Jaraï ethnic group. The Jaraï have a fabled history, as far as the Khmer are concerned, being the originators of a now-lost sacred sword called Bra Kh n, the possession of which supposedly conferred sovereignty on kings. In these contemporary days of

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land grabs and the destruction of forests, the Jaraï are subject to witch hunts and the sort of ricocheting forms of violence associated with accumulation by dispossession. The gr has a brother-in-law who runs a business up there, he told me, and claimed he himself had learned the Jaraï tongue and spoke with the fetus in Jaraï. On the low table in front of him, a needle, a razor blade, and some pu ed rice grains surrounded a threadbare and rather dirty-looking sewn cloth pouch. Behind the gr in the corner was a monstrous accumulation of thousands of candles burned into one enormous agglomeration of wax. When it was my turn to speak with the gr , he proved very eager to demonstrate the authenticity of his amulet to me, though he regretted he was unable to remove it from the pouch. He did encourage me to feel the body inside the pouch, and to reassure the reader, I doubt the enclosed corpse was in reality much more than a dead mouse, or perhaps the fetus of a cat, with which it is sometimes deemed acceptable to make a substitute. He explained the practices I had observed when the women I had befriended in the courtyard allowed me to watch their consultation. These women brought gifts to the amulet of money, candles, incense, and tiger balm; the latter three items could be purchased in the courtyard from the gr ’s sister-in-law. After burning incense, lighting the candle, and intoning a mumbled mantra, the women asked him their questions regarding the status of a missing husband, who was conrmed to be dead. The gr translated these into a murmuring language he claimed was Jaraï. He held fruit near the amulet when he was pleased, or kernels of pu ed rice, but poked the corpse with a needle or menaced it with the razor blade when it apparently proved reluctant to quickly provide adequate answers, which the gr then translated. The rewards and punishments, he told me, were how one must always “educate” (ap ru , a phrase often but not always synonymous with physical discipline) one’s children. Before he ate or drank anything himself, like a good father, he o ered some food and water to the fetus, and if the fetus misbehaved, he punished it. Without further commentary at the moment, I will brie y contrast this with the better known example of Buddhist monastic ordination, called in Khmer bo buos n ga, or “ordaining the n ga.”

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F 8.1 K n Krák amulet in cloth bag, foreground, on white cloth. Box with pu ed rice, a red string bracelet, and razor blade.

ORDAINING SNAKES Like other rites of passage, this ritual is heavily freighted with binary symbolisms and markers of status transformation. The ordinands are called n ga, after the fantastic shape-shifting serpents described in earlier chapters. Near the beginning of the process, the ordinand/n ga’s head is shaved, marking the aspiration to the ascetic life and, since Indian upani adic times, a symbol of social death: shaved like a corpse. The ordinand’s braling, or vital spirits, are called into his body from the forests and deep waters, those hidden places where civilized humans prefer not to go. The ordinand n ga are dressed up in nery and made to look like shaven-headed royalty. They take ritual leave of their parents, especially their mothers, who are imagined as donors, o ering the supreme gift of their sons to the Buddhist community of monks. The n ga wash their parents’ feet, then are paraded around the village or

F

8.2 Two young men preparing to ordain as novices in the Pailin market.

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 233 neighborhood, often in a pickup truck, with an established monk who acts as the ordainer announcing to the local preternatural spirits that the children are about to ordain. The ordination ritual itself consists largely of taking the ve basic precepts, plus the additional ve available to particularly devoted lay members, and requesting a “dependency,” or nissaya, from the ordainer (Davis 2008). Prior to exchanging the young man’s nonmonastic clothes for monk’s robes, the ordainer asks him a series of questions, a central one being whether or not he is a human being. The justi cation for this question is a story in which a n ga wished to be ordained as a Buddhist monk and disguised himself as a human being in order to take on the robes. The Buddha discovered his subterfuge and established a new rule that only humans may ordain as monks. Indigenous textual, conventional, and literary explanations of the reasoning behind the status transformation of ordination agree on the centrality of the transfer of nissaya, or dependency, from mother to ordaining monk. The senior monk, or upajh ya, is now to act as the novice’s father and mother, to feed, clothe, educate, and discipline the young man. Perhaps the young man will remain in robes for a lifetime, but usually this is not the case. Regardless, the period spent in robes acts as a sort of character reference as to the man’s moral quality afterward, somewhat like a young American boy’s participation in scouting organizations or military service is supposed to do. The novice therefore receives the civilizing and edifying bene ts of Buddhist monastic tutelage; meanwhile, ordination produces a massive amount of merit for the mother. The son is conventionally said to save his mother from hell by virtue of his ordination. The ordaining monk receives little bene t from the ritual at the symbolic level, though the social bene ts can be extensive; novitiate monks—and even more so unordained “temple children”—also often serve as an important, if poorly trained, reserve labor force, a fact of considerable historical signi cance.

COMPARISONS The immorality of the acquisition of the powers of the k n krak, contrasted with the morality of the ordination of Buddhist monks, can obscure important similarities and di erences between the rituals. In

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both, a man receives the gift of a child from a woman, who loses that child. The main ritual object of transaction is in fact a child, whether an aspirational or gestational child in the form of a fetus or a social child in the form of an ordinand. Similarly, the main agents of the transition are the woman and the man, who form, in both cases, a paired couple of female and male human beings. The power of the child, who becomes a sort of Maussian total social fact in the moment of ritual, is passed from woman to man (Jay 1992). This commonality between the events exists regardless of the relative morality of the transformations. The immorality of the k n krak can be identi ed, from the Buddhist perspective, in a number of di erent characteristics. The only one of the ve Buddhist precepts not necessarily broken by a would-be gr in the creation of a k n krak is drinking alcohol: he kills the mother, steals her infant, indulges in sexual misconduct (since his intent is to murder the woman and her fetus), and engages in false speech (by deceiving her in his request to “have” his child). In such a context, it is not di cult to imagine a little whiskey thrown into the mix. But I want instead to focus on the metaphors of birth that appear so strongly contrasted in these examples. In the creation of a k n krak, one explicitly takes possession of one’s own biological child. This is done violently, savagely, in the most brutal way possible. Death is an inexorable part of the ritual equation in this case. In the creation of a Buddhist novice, the ordaining monk receives someone else’s child into fosterage. Symbolic death is a necessary part of the ritual equation. The conquest of death is the foundation of Buddhist monastic authority, and it is achieved in part precisely because of the extent to which the Buddhist monk takes on the symbolic markers of the dead. Additionally, in this particular k n krak example, the narrative of civilizational capture and adoption of children from the highlands is replicated by a lowland gr who claims to control the amulet’s power without being its creator, whom he identi es as a highland ethnic minority group. In both cases, the resulting “child” is treated as the child of the man in question. But the biological relationship here is marked as immoral, where fosterage is marked as moral. An additional, related distinction is that the novitiate continues to live and develop, whereas the dried fetus amulet remains a dried fetus, inde nitely. This is the distinction I earlier

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 235 termed “violently natural,” as opposed to “bene cently unnatural.” In such cases, we can see the child exchanged as a Maussian total social fact, or even as a Marxian commodity, in which relations between people take the form of relations among things (Marx 1990, 165).

CONCLUSIONS Although the transfers of children I investigated in this chapter are distinguished by their relative morality, the history of slave- and client-based social organization in Cambodia and Southeast Asia involves massive transfers of human beings in ways that were less clearly moral or immoral. Slavery was for a very long time the non-negotiable basis of the accomplishments of the Khmer elite, and contemporary Khmer nationalists occasionally have a di cult time with the contradiction of a broadly egalitarian nationalist ethos embracing as its icons the temples of Angkor, built by many thousands of slaves. Of course, such nationalism-induced shortsightedness is hardly peculiar to Cambodia: few American nationalists recognize the extent to which America’s current success is owed to the genocidal conquest of Native Americans or the similarly genocidal enslavement of Africans, to name merely two examples. The birth of the Khmer divided the world into the wild and the civilized, and the valuation of the latter over the former (Chandler 1996) includes the valuation of the most widespread and basic set of technologies at the heart of what it means to be Khmer—rice farming. It should not surprise us, then, that the techniques through which the Khmer manage the vitality and fertility of rice are similar to the techniques through which Khmer monks manage the vitality and fertility of human spirits, or that so many of these techniques should incorporate the symbolism of binding: water, bodies, and spirits. Placing the lowlands and Buddhist morality above the highlands and their typically non-Buddhist religions in a moral hierarchy is central to the way the Cambodian imagination puts the Buddhist management of spiritual techniques into interaction with non-Buddhist management, including such practices as various forms of witchcraft. Unlike normal people, Buddhist monks should be able to go without fear into the deep forests, inhabited by untamed, powerful, and wild spirits, and to

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dominate them (pangkr p), destroying or taming them. This idea moves far beyond interactions with spirits; much of the imagination of the “forest monk”—an especially ascetic monk who removes to the deep forest to practice meditation and asceticism in isolation—revolves around their fearlessness and friendliness to the most terrifying of jungle beasts. I have written elsewhere about how Cambodian spirits may transform themselves into di erent, usually superior, types of spirits. This ontological ascent, as I call it, is accomplished by submitting to the domination of morally endowed higher spirits or human mediums in a process that resembles rather precisely the status transformations that can occur among the living in similar patron-client relationships (Davis 2013). Inhabiting and performing the particular hierarchies that animate a social system doesn’t require that the system be thoroughly moralized and legitimized for each performer. Cambodian society is extremely hierarchical in structure, yet Cambodians are often quite critical of hierarchies, and are in no way ignorant of the dangers of such systems. In fact, these dangers are so central to the cultural imagination that criticism is typically phrased in ways that romanticize the world outside the social domain. This can be seen easily in discussions of highland peoples. Many Khmer, especially perhaps older Cambodians, seem to think that modern highland peoples live a premodern, traditional lifestyle, distinguished from that of lowland Khmer rice farmers largely by not being Buddhist, drinking a lot, and being “happy.” A blunt and elderly nun who lived at Watt Ko Yakkha told me of a time in the early 1980s when she had witnessed a highlander group that had come to the city to recover the bodies of some of their people. They were allowed to hold a ceremony within the temple walls, which I doubt would be granted today, given the centrality of drinking and animal sacri ce to the ritual she described. According to her, they killed a water buffalo and had a lot of liquor, and “were very happy that their friend was dead; not like us.” It is clear that she had little internal understanding of the highlanders she saw, but she certainly recognized key di erences in their practices from those that composed the Cambodian world and Cambodian subjects. Opposed to what appeared to her as the chaotic jumble of highland practices is the morally superior but more demanding and hierarchi-

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 237 cal lifestyle of the lowland. It has been a fundamental tenet of Southeast Asian historical analysis that the basis of political power has been the control of people’s labor, rather than the control of territory. In a sparsely populated region where highly labor-intensive agriculture forms the basis of economic and political wealth, the transfer of human beings from one group’s dependency and control to another’s has always been a political and moral act; rituals that enact such transfers and mark some as moral and others as immoral may be seen as key cultural re ections, legitimizing the role of Buddhist monks and institutions in spreading lowland civilization from its centers to its peripheries. Imagining highland peoples rst as a savage reservoir of potential slaves or exotic forest goods, then later as primitive predecessors of the modern lowland Khmer nation, contemporary Cambodian beliefs seem to put ethnic minority groups in the highlands in the “savage slot,” as the constituting other described by Trouillot (Trouillot 1991). Trouillot presents the notion of the “savage slot” as the empty category of a culture waiting to be lled with various forms of fantastic and occasionally horri c content. But he also insists that this cultural process of otherizing must be historicized and speci ed, revealing the seeming binary between “us” and “them” to be the result of particular histories and social arrangements, and thus revealed as ideology. I propose that this process is on full display in the lowland depictions of highland minority groups as a result of a particular history, about which we have much still to learn. The relationships between such seemingly disparate things as food production, control of the spirits of the forest and of death, monastic morality, exchanges of food with the dead, and lowland sovereign violence and power all run through the moral monopoly—though not a technical monopoly, as we have seen—on the mediation and care for the dead, which I call deathpower. This power is imagined as pastoral: it is caring and bene cial as long as the authority of the monk and Buddhism are acknowledged. Khmer were routinely enslaved throughout Cambodian history, but slavery was also one of the major ways people became Khmer, as discussed in chapter 3. Highland products, highland-derived slaves, and highland spirits are things of central value transferred to Khmer

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society, though conceived of as originating outside of the Khmer world itself, and simultaneously describing a particular manner of thinking about this transfer, which moralizes it. Crucially, taking people from the wild and transforming them into Khmer was not an event, but a process with greater and lesser periods of intensity. It is a process that continues today, as indigenous highlanders struggle over land base and subsistence with the lowland Khmer and with others who dominate the contemporary Cambodian economy (Baird 2011; Baird and Shoemaker 2008; Bottomley 2002; Bourdier 2006). In Cambodian culture, many forms of adoption and fosterage exist, including fosterage of people who are then treated in the same ways as slaves, as well as the adoption of children who are then treated as beloved o spring. It is impossible to understand much about a particular relationship by merely describing it as hierarchical, an adjective that applies in vastly di erent ways to almost every relationship in Cambodia. Some of these relationships are hierarchical and full of mutual a ection, with hierarchy expressed primarily in forms of address and small gestures. Others are full of real or implied violence, and operate on a basis of fear. In a di erent way, these forms of exible kin-making make it possible to have multiple parents or patrons and multiple children or clients, far beyond the bounds of biological possibility. In some situations, therefore, forms of kin-making do not require anyone’s actual death. I have been “adopted” by two new mothers in Cambodia, and no one expects that I will confuse them with my biological mother or treat them in the same way I would treat her, or assumes that she has passed away. In other situations, however, such as the creation of the k n krak amulet, a real death is required. It is in the moral management of death, and the maintenance of relationships between the living and the dead, that Buddhism takes center stage. Buddhist monks ritually tame even the spirits of nature and life, binding them and turning them to valuable uses, such as the br y spirit bound into some traditional temples during the s m establishing ceremony. Similarly, they are capable of binding some of the spirit of a dead person,

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 239 transforming a threatening corpse into an ancestor with whom one may maintain moral contact. In contrast, the capture of rice’s vitality in ritual practices of calling the rice’s soul, the technical practices of harvest and processing, or the creation of a k n krak amulet result in useful forms of bound spiritual vitality that are either amoral or positively immoral. Buddhist monks’ imagined logics of power appear to be shared by various Brahmanist gr , and to center around deathpower: the power that emerges from successful ritualization and care for the dead. The similarity of these techniques—gathering, binding, taming, domesticating, and even adopting—militate against any notion that Buddhism and Brahmanism occupy completely distinct imaginations. Instead, both share a singular and technical imagination of power emerging from the proper ritualization of the dead. The distinction is not cosmological but moral and o cialized, underwritten by the supreme morality of the Buddhist monks. The distinction between “religion” and “magic” has long been viewed with suspicion, for all that the religious commonly employ such distinctions themselves. Durkheim famously distinguished between priests and magicians by pointing out that priests had congregations—and patrons—while magicians had clientele (Durkheim 1995). In a recent study of the transformation of the Persian magi from priests serving the Persian elites to a derogate class of “magicians” in the Romandominated classical world, Bruce Lincoln returns to precisely this distinction, arguing that this fall signi es less the transformation of a particular cosmology or worldview than a transformation in the way these particular practitioners were viewed (Lincoln 2012). In outlining the di erence between Buddhist and Brahmanist practices in Cambodia, I similarly emphasize that the di erence is not cosmological, but institutional and moral. The taming and moralization of the wild natural world involves Buddhism not only at the cultural levels of discourse, practice, and symbol but also at the level of historical institutional organization. Buddhist temples have served as refuge, sanctuary, school, residence, and public square for many, especially for children whose parents are elsewhere. But they have also been a primary means by which the civilizational ideals of Khmer culture were imposed on new arrivals from the

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non-Buddhist highlands. This process and its moralization were discussed in chapter 3 with the story of Bhikkhu Sukh, the orphan of a murdered highland family who was adopted by a Khmer merchant, who sent him to become a Buddhist monk. Anne Hansen has written an excellent analysis of that story, interpreted through Ind’s edifying moral intentions (Hansen 2003). In contrast, I have elsewhere argued that the story should also be understood as distorting historical reality (Davis 2008); these two projects cannot properly be separated. The story identi es the highlanders, rather than the lowlanders, as the perpetrators of violence and enslavement, equates morality with safety from violence, and legitimizes the forced acculturation of highlanders through the institutions of the Buddhist monastery. This relationship of domestication and moralization between Buddhist monks and spirits—especially wild spirits—may also indicate something about the constitution of Buddhism itself. The use of terms like “syncretism” or other phrases that indicate the existence of somehow local or unorthodox practices attempts to account for real di erences in Buddhist practices across the world. However, by characterizing these diversities as “syncretic,” we risk reifying a constructed binary that should instead be historicized (Trouillot 1991). What I have discussed in this book is, in this way, a contribution to the cataloguing of di erences among these various Buddhisms. I have also attempted to demonstrate the imaginary logics by which Buddhism is related to these other spirits, and through these relationships—the authority for which is generated and replicated in Buddhist monks’ performance of funeral rituals—Buddhism nds an important part of its local expression. To put it as brie y as possible, it appears that Buddhism treats local spirits as Brahmanical spirits, to be domesticated and incorporated into the work of lowland civilization and morality. My use of the words “Brahmanical” and “Brahmanist” throughout this book have been adopted from a particular and modern Khmer term for non-Buddhist “religion” (brahman-s san ), as well as referring to the early competitive relationship between Brahmins and Buddhists in the canonical texts, where the Buddha or his stand-ins are often seen defeating Brahmins in debate or the performances of miraculous feats. Buddhism seems to require a spiritual position

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 241 against which to o end. That is, it needs non-Buddhist spirits to treat, tame, instrumentalize, or transform into bene cent ancestors. Buddhist monks’ ability to properly and legitimately ritualize the control of and care for spirits is their key ritual power, and at the heart of what I have described as deathpower. In this way, again recalling Trouillot’s notion of the cultural “savage slot,” Buddhism carries around an imaginary space within itself, a space we might call “Brahmanism,” with which it can accommodate local spirits, as long as they are willing to be dominated by Buddhist monks. This constitutive logic of “Brahmanism” in Southeast Asia is created in a way that is analogous to and often runs parallel with the constitution of imaginations of highland minority groups. But even these terms, expressed in this way, run the risk of promoting a still too-entrenched binary between Brahmanism and Buddhism. Certainly, a real thing called Brahmanism did exist in India, but in today’s Cambodia, it includes many spirits and practices de nitely not from India, such as the veneration of anak t . When I say that Buddhism makes Brahmanism, I imply neither that local religious cultures are completely destroyed nor that they were in fact “Brahmanism” prior to their encounter with Buddhism. Instead, these spirits and practices tend to become understood as standing in a relationship to Buddhism that is simultaneously natural and in need of moralization. The great innovation of Buddhism viewed in this way is that it o ends morally against the immoral, everyday world of natural spirits and behavior. We should not label the Cambodian cosmological world, with its divisions between forest and eld, upland and lowland, as particularly “Buddhist,” but as the natural world in which Buddhism exists. In other words, as indicated with the examples that began this chapter, Buddhism presents itself as bene cently unnatural, opposed to a violently natural world. There is no need for theodicy in a worldview that sees no logical di culty in the sel sh and violent tendencies of spirits or people, but proposes a moral and ritual system through which such tendencies can be captured and channeled into moral directions. To reverse the order in which I have made these arguments in this book: I have argued that Buddhism exists as an o ense to a world, which it

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pictures as full of fertility and violence and immorality and death. This is well within Buddhism’s canonical, philosophical, and even narrative selfpresentations. Additionally, I have argued that Buddhism achieves its high social status and authority by attempting to monopolize the moral and legitimate management of spirits, the most normative of which is the management of human spirits in funerals. In fact, Buddhism seems to need spirits to manage, and it imagines itself as engaged in a tense relationship with these spirits. Finally, I have emphasized the importance of agricultural social structures, including rice-growing techniques and rituals, slavery, and patron-client relationships, to an understanding of the physical techniques and cultural imagination of funeral ritual. These arguments help to eliminate some obstacles that seem to bedevil many Western discussions of Buddhism. We generally persist, for instance, in describing religious membership in Cambodia as an exclusive form. Thus, for example, we may read that Cambodians are 90 percent Theravada Buddhists. It’s true, but notice that there are no self-described “Brahmanists” in the rolls. Such descriptions are then coupled with a stereotype of a normative Buddhism, often an imagination of the “authentic Buddhism of the Scriptures” infused with a healthy dose of wishful thinking, or, more realistically but just as improperly, modernist rationalist Buddhist movements. With such a perspective, it can be di cult to understand how rarely so many “Buddhists” go to temple, compared to how often they engage in propitiation of house spirits, ancestors, or other forms of “Brahmanism.” Instead, Buddhism as I have described it tends to embrace as many types of spirits as it can, as long as they are willing to submit to the ultimate moral authority of Buddhism and its power over them.

THE KING’S FUNERAL The world remains a mysterious place, full of powers, entities, and causes that resist full explanation. It is certainly not run according to Buddhist mores and rules. After all, if it were, it would presumably be

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 243 less violent and struggle- lled. Instead, this-worldly Brahmanist power lls the world, investing not only forests and mountains but also particular places, such as termite mounds; objects such as special stones or statues; and particular people, such as kings, witches, and forest sages. Such power is accessible to those who do not wear Buddhist robes, though there is often a price to pay for such access. As expected, the price is related to death. In a fteenth-century battle with the Siamese, Khmer governor and warrior Ghl M ang (a.w. Khleang Moeung) was faced with crushing defeat. According to the myth that underwrites his existence as the local spirit (anak t ) of Pursat province, he dug a pit lled with spears and spikes and threw himself into it. This was not a nal act of despair, but a daring access of deathpower. Ghl m M ang came back shortly after his suicide, leading a powerful army of the dead who pushed the Siamese out of Khmer territory. A suspiciously similar story is told of Anak T T D of Preah Vihear province, who supposedly threw himself o the Preah Vihear escarpment in battle, then also returned to lead a victorious ghost army against the living Siamese. Most of the time, political, kingly sovereignty involves the production of death through the destruction of life. Ghl M ang and T D became exceptional in their use of their own deaths to invoke and draw upon death’s power. In contrast, the sangha’s project to conquer death famously renders monks morally superior even to kings, and in extreme cases, physically impervious to the power of spirits, great animals, or kingly violence. Based on such violence, the person of the king remains ambiguous until the possibility for ambiguity is resolved by his death, which perfects his life by completing it, and which, ritualized by Buddhist monks, is closed with a moral sanction. This is what happened on February 4, 2013, when former Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk was cremated. Norodom Sihanouk was born in 1922 and was elected to the position of king by the Vichy colonial regime in hopes that, like his predecessor, he would be a powerless and pliant royal. Sihanouk was not pliant. Over the course of his reign, he was credited with accomplishing national independence without military con ict, was a charismatic and ruthless leader during the now almost hopelessly romanticized independence period, and kept Cambodia out of the neighboring

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American-Vietnamese war for a very long time. There were political persecutions and even massacres of dissenting villages during his rule, and a failed revolt in Samlaut, Battambang, in 1967 has been seen as early evidence of Communist organization, as well as of Sihanouk’s brutal response to opposition. Once the war in Vietnam spilled into Cambodia, it was not long until Sihanouk was overthrown in a coup in 1970. He joined forces with and threw his moral authority to the Khmer Rouge, and joined guerilla formations through the period of Vietnamese hegemony under the People’s Republic of Kampuchea (1979–1989). He returned to the position of king in 1993, a charismatic but limited political role, which he abdicated in 2004 in favor of his son Norodom Sihamoni. Sihamoni grew up in the Czech Republic and France, was a trained ballet dancer and a bibliophile, and refers to himself as a reluctant king and a “bachelor who will not marry.” Sihanouk spent most of his time after 2004 in Beijing and Pyong Yang, and passed away in Beijing on October 15, 2012. With such a life, Sihanouk was a polarizing gure. Some saw him as the cause of all of Cambodia’s troubles, or as the persistent national hero. Others still saw him as the emblem of Cambodia’s own ambiguous history. I knew people who had nothing good to say of him while alive, but the minute he died, acted as if these opinions had never existed. Suddenly, everyone was mourning in public, and no bad thing could be acknowledged. I did hear a few people talk about Samlaut, but these were older men, later at night, a bit in their cups, and not even they seemed to expect to be listened to. It was a good reminder that one may not speak ill of the dead, or at least, not expect to be heeded if one does. It takes a tremendous break in normal social behavior to be able to speak in a formal way of the negative characteristics of the deceased, especially the recently deceased. Sihanouk’s body was held in state for 110 days, having been injected with formaldehyde and own to the country, where 200,000 people lined the roads from the airport to greet his return. Hundreds of thousands came from the countryside to mourn in front of the palace. Many slept on the streets. Most returned home at some point, but some remained until the cremation, nearly four months later. I was fortunate enough to be able to return to Cambodia for the funeral itself.

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 245 From nearly the moment of his death until well after his funeral, television stations ran endless newsreels from Sihanouk’s life and selections from the many lms he directed. One television station signed o every night with an image of Sihanouk’s co n resting in the palace, with the haunting melodies of a funeral song, in the style called sm tra, produced in a very modern manner. I found the nightly performance, also repeated on an enormous screen in front of the palace itself, thrillingly avant-garde for such an occasion. An enormous Meru cremation pavilion was placed in the Meru Field just to the north of the Royal Palace, the same site where the funerals of other kings have been held, along with those of such Buddhist monastic luminaries as the former national patriarch, the Venerable Sanghar ja Chuon Nath. It is the same eld where the king traditionally sponsored the Royal Plowing Festival in the spring, and is located north of the palace to indicate the cosmological spatial relationship between Mount Meru and the kings of the southern island of Jambudv pa, where we are imagined to live. The Meru was a temporary construction built for an estimated but never apparently received 1.2 million. Several workers died from falls, and at least one from electrocution, during its construction. Their ghosts are rumored to haunt the area at night, or perhaps to be taking care of Sihanouk himself. On day one of the formal funeral festivities, an enormous parade of the corpse took place, with high-ranking politicians, monks, and others on a oat with the co n and his cremation urn. At the end of the parade, the co n was placed inside the cremation pavilion. On days two through four, people were permitted to pay their respects to the body by passing by the central shrine inside the main eld area, and a brief stop to pray was permitted. A few bold older ladies sat down in the full sun to perform samadhi meditation, to make merit for the KingFather. Although this was strictly prohibited, there were left alone for lengthy periods of time. On day ve, cremation day, the streets were cordoned o in a ve-block radius around the site, to many people’s chagrin. I was fortunate enough to be able to talk my way past the fth barricade I approached, but tens of thousands of people who had traveled from the countryside for the event were not, and they were angry about it.

F

A 8.1 Meru cremation pavilion for King-Father Norodom Sihanouk.

Buddhism Makes Brahmanism 247 The ritual itself was hard to follow from a distance, but the program listed it as rather standard, though with a few twists. Brahman priests (p rag , a.w. baku) of all ages, with distinctive white cloth caps with very tall peaks, brought gifts to the king, which ended up in the hands of the monks as gifts for their service. The cremation re itself was created with a lens and the sun, and thus considered especially pure. Finally, with the king’s widow and his son, the reigning king, present to witness the corpse one last day, the co n itself was burned on the pavilion, instead of being moved into a large oven beneath the pavilion. The noise of the reworks and the smoke were overwhelming already, even before the 101 shots from twenty-one 110-mm Howitzers started booming over the riverside. At one point, a light at the top of the structure went out, an enormous crane was moved into the cloud of smoke, and an unfortunate worker scrambled up to the top of the impermanent cremation structure’s roof, under which the king’s corpse was burning, to x the electrical connection. Ninety monks chanted overnight around the burning corpse. The next morning, the remnant bones were picked out by King Sihamoni and placed in an urn with some of the ashes. The rest of the ashes were taken onto a royal barge and lowered into the con uence of the Mekong and Tonle Sap rivers. A royal funeral is an elaboration of a normal funeral, and di ers largely only in matters of scale, spectacle, and expenditure. A signi cant exception is the presence of the Brahman priests. These are explicitly non-Buddhist priests who have special obligations and responsibilities to the royal line. Like the royal line itself, their service is hereditary, and the last chief p rag passed on his role to his son in 2002, two years before Sihanouk abdicated. The need for Brahman priests to ritualize kings returns us to questions of the relationship between the Buddhist sangha and the king, expressed throughout this book as a di erence between the moral conquest of death and the legitimate violence that leads to death. The king is exceptional among lowlanders since he is simultaneously at the heart of the imagination of Cambodian society and placed in opposition to the dominant morality of Buddhism. As king, he is aligned with all those dangerous, uncivilized, violent, and powerful aspects of the world. It’s the king who leads armies, receives tribute from the wild tribes of the

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forest, punishes, and is served by Brahmanist priests in addition to Buddhist monks. This association with Brahmanism is one of the most signi cant aspects of the Buddhist kingship in Cambodia and more broadly. In the de nition of p rag in Chuon Nath’s dictionary, the Brahmanic aspect of the p ragu’s role is emphasized as related precisely to the royal character of the king: his ksatriya, or royal, lineage. The title p rag is part of a doublet title, p rag purohita, identifying very speci cally the court priest who serves the king. That this was a Buddhist funeral, regardless or perhaps precisely because of the prominent participation of the p rag priests, was conrmed in part by the order of rituals. As is typical in Cambodian Buddhist ritual, the Brahmanist elements happened rst and were preparatory, after which the Buddhist monks showed up to perform what was considered the main work. Thus, the p rag paid homage to the body before the monks; then the monks chanted, with the p rag attending on them. The monks left with the gifts that the p rag brought. We can see in the cremation of a king the very clear hierarchy and singularity of two systems often conceived of as separate or binary. The cremation went on for many hours into the night, long after the reworks, the cannon, and the festival street atmosphere on the riverside had begun to wane and the deep and peculiarly jeweled blue of the sky at sunset had given way to the glow of streetlights against the dark. It was emotional for a great many people, though the reasons for each person’s response were di erent and often quite ambiguous, and do not t neatly into a single narrative, let alone a national one. A Buddhist royal funeral performs the perfected and moralized conclusion of life, demonstrating that all except the Buddha are subject to death and its power.

Notes

INTRODUCTION 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

For di erent understandings of the imagination that have produced important Buddhist studies scholarship in recent years, I recommend especially Bernard Faure and Steven Collins’ work (Faure 1996; Collins 1993). Graeber 2005. Kitiarsa’s notion of “dei cation” also ts this description of autonomous social imaginations (Kitiarsa 2012, 6). The exception is the p rag (a.w. baku), the hereditary priests who serve the royal family. Although their role is hereditary, there is no evidence that it was ever caste based. Tracing a critical and performative theoretical lineage for her own scholarship, Amy Hollywood notes similarly that “Performative actions, like linguistic performatives, constitute that to which they refer” (Hollywood 2002, 96). This understanding of Buddhism as a moral o ense against the everyday world comes to me from Steven Collins, personal communication.

250 2. The Funeral

2. THE FUNERAL 1.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

This same basic process of enti cation is variously presented regarding the consecration of Buddha images (Swearer 2004), how to understand the “presence” of Buddha relics (Strong 2004), and the creation of amulets (Kitiarsa 2012). Thompson 2004, 24. This is the opposite order of invocations in Buddhist rituals, as I discuss in chapter 4. In Buddhist rituals involving Brahmanist elements, those are always performed rst, followed by the Buddhist elements. Ethnicity is both uid and often occupationally linked in Cambodia. In interviews with co n salesmen and ethnic Chinese funerary specialists, it has become clear that some Khmer—especially urban Khmer who feel they are upwardly mobile—have begun to adopt Chinese funerary practices as a component of their negotiations of rising social status. I suspect that Chinese in uence is vastly underestimated in the Cambodian ritual imagination and that many Chinese in uences have been recoded as Indian ones, perhaps especially during the reign of nineteenthcentury Cambodian King Ang Duong. A practice that seems to have been more popular in the past called Bhnu Yong, a “pulling mountain,” is sometimes considered to have been a cremation pavilion like a Meru for commoners (Headley 1977, s.v.), or a place for interring family remains instead of a cetiya funerary monument. Eve Zucker discusses contemporary Bhnu Yong practices that conform more to the latter usage in an upland community in the Cardamom mountains in her recent ethnography (Zucker 2013). Technically the s m ceremony is for the uposatha hall, but for several generations this building has usually been combined in Khmer temples with the vih ra, and is usually called by that name. Chanting liturgies in Cambodian Buddhist rituals deserve their own study. In this case, the most frequent chants were the n massak ra (homage-making), bra ratana tr (homage to the triple gem), and s m s la (acceptance of the precepts). The special knowledge of hora is called the “knowledge of the triple Veda.” I have not investigated the actual texts and training of hora, and cannot con rm that these are actually Vedic texts. Vinaya rule P cittiya 56.

3. Rice, Water, Hierarchy: The Wild and the Civil 251 3. RICE, WATER, HIERARCHY: THE WILD AND THE CIVIL 1.

In uenced here by Beemer 2009; Bowie 1996, 2006; Hill 2001; Jones 2007; Means 2000; Reid 1999. 2. In this, the forest and highland-dwelling minority groups t the model of the “savage slot” described by Trouillot as a part of the cultural power of the projecting or “civilized” group, a historically contingent binary that presents itself as timeless (Trouillot 1991). 3. Morrison 1995, 216; cited in Bailey and Mabbett 2006, 70. Jan Gonda argued that the word for “world” (and in Khmer, also for “monk” or “superior”), loka, originally meant an arti cially cleared area in a forest (Gonda 1967). 4. Collins 1993; Collins and Sahitya Akademi 2001; Collins 1998, 448–451; Gombrich 1988, 85. 5. DN 27 (Collins 1993; 1998, 448–451, 627–634; Benavides 2005; Hanks 1964). These same societies frequently have stories that parallel in key ways the story told in the Agga a Sutta. B. J. Terwiel collects and analyzes many of these, noting that the Khmer seems the oldest and closest to the Pali text (Terwiel 1994, 18–21, 31), but that the legends seem to be of indigenous Southeast Asian origin (Terwiel 1994, 28–39). 6. Terwiel 1994, 30. See also gendered metaphors of rice as self in Khmer proverbs such as “A seedling raises the soil, a woman raises the man” (Fressanges 2009, 122). 7. Water can be seen in ritual evidence that space prevents a full examination of here, including Sroc Tyk (a.w. sraoch teuk) and life-extension ceremonies such as camroen ayu. 8. Porée-Maspero 1962, 5–6. Note that the name Krung V l literally means “King Tax.” 9. Vickery devotes an entire chapter to untangling some of these issues in the seventh and eighth centuries (Vickery 1998). 10. For a useful critique and modi cation of patron-client models, see Walker 2012, 10–13, 19. 11. On the relationship between intimacy and hierarchy in Khmer relations, see Davis 2008. Age is the dominant criterion for pronoun hierarchies, leading to the bewildering e ect (for foreigners) of being able to “hear yourself growing older” (Pérez-Pereiro 2012). 12. One response to this unfortunate dependence is to create multiple networks of dependence through institutions of ctive kinship (Davis 2008). Interactions with spirits resemble those with powerful humans, the difference characterized by the types of goods and powers possessed by the

252 3. Rice, Water, Hierarchy: The Wild and the Civil human patrons versus the spirit ones. Like humans, spirits are thought to have particular personalities, idiosyncratic desires, and particular— and quite various—moral dispositions (Walker 2012, 94–96). 13. Béteille 1980, 827; cited in Bailey and Mabbett 2006, 44. Following Jonsson, Scott points out that highland swiddening agricultural may be preferred precisely because it is a technique beyond the reach of the lowland states (Scott 2009, 194). 14. Reid 1999. There’s a fascinating discussion by Vickery of the homophony between the words for “water” and a word for “slave”; he concludes that in some inscriptions, what has been translated as to “pour the water of o ering on this land” should instead be understood as the o ering (“pouring”) of slaves to the land (Vickery 1998, 243–247). 15. Vickery notes (though he does not explicitly connect it with the slaving raids on the highlanders) that in the lists of eld workers, kñu , there “is frequent mention of children, kon, who almost always accompany females, the latter not usually associated with spouses” (Vickery 1998, 259). This observation is tied into the historically important question of matrilineality versus bilateral lineality; Vickery concludes that it is possible to have multiple inheritance systems in a single culture, and that lower-class servants and workers would more likely reckon descent through mothers (Vickery 1998, 260). Condominas traces a similar evolution of some of the same tribal groups in the context of Vietnamese subjugation, noting the transformation of the meaning of kha from house slave to subordinate independent (Condominas 1990, 46–49).

4. BUILDING DEATHPOWER AND RITUALS OF SOVEREIGNTY 1.

2.

David Chandler has written of an event in the late nineteenth century when two criminals were sacri ced on the sacred mountain of Ba Phnom, home to the spirit of Me Sa, a manifestation of Durga, as part of the investiture of a local o cial. Led up the mountain, they were attended by Buddhist monks who then withdrew, whereupon the two men were sacri ced (Chandler 1996). Ian Harris collects most of the relevant academic citations for historical human sacri ce in mainland Southeast Asia in a footnote (Harris 2010, 235–236n120). This description is accurate regardless of its correspondence to any historical reality; I attend here to the symbolic import of the ritual and its simplifying representations, rather than to the historical landholding

5. Binding Mighty Death 253

3.

4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

regimes debated by Aung-Thwin and Lieberman for Burma, e.g., AungThwin 1979; Lieberman 1980. Ang Choulean 1988, 38. The idea of a building sacri ce that includes a pregnant woman exists for other constructions as well. In an account of the damming of the Aur Dambang river in Battambang province, Taucch discusses the burial of a pregnant woman as a sacri ce (Tauch Chhuong 1994, 24–28). In this chapter I have been in uenced by the work of Giorgio Agamben, whose de nition of the sovereign is “he who decides upon the state of exception” (Agamben 1995). See also Conquergood 2002. Bailey and Mabbett 2006, 153. Note that this strong association can serve as the basis for the “revival” of such authoritative traditions as the identity of the “forest monk.” But this association, strong and authoritative as it is, is not uncontested. According to Rozenberg, some Burmese monks criticize the forest monks in ways that attempt to sever the legitimacy of this association. Thus, he says, “Sainthood develops on the basis of an ideological war” (Rozenberg 2010). See here especially perhaps the temple hospital built by Jayavarman VII, n ga bandha, “Bound N gas,” which features several n gas whose tails have been bound together at the center of a large water tank. Bloss describes very similar stories in the j taka literature (Bloss 1973, 40). I have attended other s m ceremonies where the gift-giving took place prior to the dropping of the s m stones. I do not think the order a ects the meaning of the ritual as I construct it. Most of the cases where the donation took place rst were at wealthier temples and involved more powerful politicians and businessmen than did the ceremonies where the donation took place after the installation.

5. BINDING MIGHTY DEATH 1.

2.

Translators for the Pali Text Society routinely use one of these two translation options. The Pali Vinaya (Mah vagga VIII, 34–35) presents all of the Buddha’s early disciples as pa suk likas, or rag-robe wearers, until the presentation of new-cloth robes to the sangha by a lay disciple, a full twenty years into the Buddha’s teaching. “Represent” might be too weak a word to use here. It is unclear whether a mere metaphor is intended or it was thought that a sort of analogical control was imagined, from the texts studied (Bizot 1981, 69–70). The

254 5. Binding Mighty Death

3.

4.

5.

6.

detailed comparison of the parts of the robe to the parts of the embryo studied by Bizot does appear in older manuscripts, but was not a part of the understanding of any of the monks or c rya I interviewed. Bizot’s work on the Khmer funeral ritual must be contextualized within his larger project: he makes the claim that Southeast Asia, and especially Cambodia, is the site of an “unreformed” Buddhism, which he associates with the “unreformed” Mah nik ya. This can be seen in his study of the funeral, in the pa suk la ritual. For Bizot, this might link the unreformed Khmer Mah nik ya to a “Sinhalese heresy,” a lineage from the Pa suk likas of the Abh yagirivih ra Ther v da sect from the eighth through eleventh centuries in Sri Lanka (Bizot 1981, 85–91). Kate Crosby has cautioned that the evidence we have for such a connection remains largely conjectural (Crosby 1999). Langer 2007, 178, 183–184. Langer quotes Richard Gombrich, who notes a similar fusion in Gombrich 1991, 283. There is a notable similarity between the stated function of the white cloth o ering made during Vedic funerals and the Khmer d ng braling or “spirit ag,” which also plays a role in the funeral ritual but is separate from the pa suk la. Both the d ng braling and the Vedic cloth o ering are said to serve as a component of entry to the realm of Yama, lord of the dead. In the case of the Vedic o ering, it is supposed to act as a garment in that realm; in the case of the d ng braling it is said to act as a “sort of passport.” Similar concerns attend the o ering of funerary gifts to Hindu funeral professionals, in which receiving such gifts “amounts to man-eating or partaking of a corpse” (Heesterman 1962, 25, quoted in Parry 1994, 132–133). Similar feats of heroic consumption take place elsewhere in Buddhist and Hindu stories. In the Mah parinibb na Sutta, the Buddha insists on consuming unintentionally poisonous food entirely himself, without sharing with the other monks, as would normally have been the case. Similarly, one of iva’s epithets, N laka ha, refers to his act of saving the world by swallowing poison and keeping it inside his body. He survived, but the poison turned his throat blue. Note the similarity between this story and the story, rehearsed in chapter 3, of the N ga king Krung V l , who swallows enough water and keeps it within himself that land is revealed for humans to stand on. When Cambodians speak of the pa suk la they almost always mean the ritual act of chanting the pa suk la m tik and its allied ritual actions. I conducted extensive surveys of Buddhist lay members, both with and

5. Binding Mighty Death 255

7. 8.

9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

without specialist knowledge of funerary ritual. Asked what part of any funeral is the most important, two-thirds responded that it is the performance of the pa suk la. Although the other third did not mention the pa suk la, no other response received more than one mention. In all cases except the funeral, monks take care to avoid visiting laypeople as a group of four, or in multiples of four, since this is understood to represent death. The content of the chant varies, especially along lines of national and linguistic tradition. It does indeed contain some of the Abhidhamma m tik content, but this is actually a minor portion of the actual chant, which is taken largely from a collection of standard chants, and a single verse from the Mah parinibb na Sutta. A Khmer manuscript of the pa suk la m tik has been reproduced with an excellent scholarly apparatus as a major part of Bizot’s work (Bizot 1981). McDaniel writes that “Often there is a disjuncture between the contents and the purposes of texts in monastic education. However, it is only a disjuncture if one values texts only for their semantic meaning and not for their usefulness in ritual transformation” (2008, 228). At a minimum, during the following moments: immediately before and during the moment of death; immediately prior to moving the corpse out of the house; during the entire parade or movement of the corpse to the place of its interment or cremation; prior to and during the beginning of the cremation itself; and during the interment of the remains in a grave or urn. This description corroborates Bizot’s account of the standard funeral ritual, with its emphasis on binding and the presence of a s m made of a po and monks (Bizot 1981). Dwight Conquergood noted that “Only middle-class academics could blithely assume that all the world is a text because texts and reading are central to their life-world, and occupational security” (1999, cited in Taylor 2003, 27). Bourdieu 1990, 53; 1977, 218n44, cited in Bell 1992, 97. Two narratives crucial to Cambodian identity have been utterly neglected in this study: the R may na (Khmer: R mak rt ) and Bra Go Bra Kaev, neither of which is properly “Buddhist,” for all that they have clearly been revised in light of Buddhist moralities. Condominas 1986, 40. Note that this insistence that ritual is a form of labor was a foundational plank in Smith’s in uential work (Bell 1992, viii; see also Smith 2004, 53–54n85). I tell a fuller version of Cheata’s story in Davis 2008.

256 6. Gifts and Hungry Ghosts

6. GIFTS AND HUNGRY GHOSTS 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Teiser 1988. Holt points out the likely in uence of the Chinese Hungry Ghost festival, agreeing that it is likely that many of the peculiarities of Khmer Buddhism may be Chinese innovations masquerading as Indic in the Khmer imaginary. If such a reimagining took place historically, it is probably best to examine the reign of Ang Duong (Holt 2012, 11, 66). Thanks to Patrice Ladwig for drawing this to my attention, and for the fruitful conversations we have had on this topic. For textual discussion, see Ladwig 2012; Zago 1972, 315–317. Holt 1981, 5–6. I never saw or heard of this practice, and Porée-Maspero unfortunately contradicts herself on the issue. In one work she describes practices that seem to precisely mirror the sapi kara a, and in another she denies that anything resembling this ritual exists in Cambodia. Porée-Maspero 1950, 47–48; 1962, 333. The chief mourner, as described by Jonathan Parry, is ideally the eldest son, and the ideal deceased the eldest son’s father (Parry 1994, 191, 205). In an article covering this topic, John Holt claims that the Hindu evolution of this rite appropriated the duty of creating a body for the dead from Yama, the king of the dead. Yama continues to occupy a signi cant role in the celebration of Bhju Pi a (Holt 1981, 5). Jayawickrama 1999; Kyaw and Mase eld 1980; Gombrich 1971, 218; Holt 2012, 42 n. 44; Winternitz 1977 (1927). The Vim navatthu is the paired text that discusses preta. A concise summary of normative stories in the Petavatthu is found by David White (1986, 206–207), who notes that while the immediacy of the fruits of this meritorious giving seems to contravene the normative Buddhist understanding of the workings of karma, “the concept of merit-transfer, although quite rare in the P li canon, is almost totally bound up in the discussion of petas” (206). My translation of the Tiroku asutta, found in both the Khuddakap ha (VII) and the Petavatthu (I.5). Both texts may be part of the oldest strata of P li literature. James Egge believes that this particular sutta may be part of the oldest section of either of these (Egge 2002, 29). Egge claims that the Tiroku asutta does not speci cally characterize the ghosts as tormented, but instead “o ers the happy prospect of living in a continuing relationship of mutual aid with one’s deceased relatives” (Egge 2002, 31). The P li literature tends to disagree that gifts to monks are necessarily superior gifts, ascribing causality instead to the intentionality (cetan )

6. Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 257

9. 10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

accompanying the gift. See Egge 2002; Gombrich 1971, 206–207; Holt 2012, 44; Malalasekara 1967, 85–86. Technically these rst fourteen days are called d k pi a, with “Bhju ” referring only to the nal, most important day. The distinctions between the relative degrees of respect given to the ghosts in the two rituals is mirrored in the Khmer proverb “The o ering rice for the ghosts that sneers at the rice for the ancestors” (Fressanges 2009, 55). The reluctance to embrace Po P y Pi a appears to be spreading. During my work, it was widely practiced, even at the Dhammayuttha temple of Sv y Poper. It is no longer performed there and has been forbidden by abbots at other temples. Well-known Buddhist lay teacher Buth Savong has particularly opposed its practices in his widely distributed sermons (Holt 2012, 58, 44). Excluding o ciating c rya, but including those merely present and not acting in an o cial capacity. This appears to be slightly less extreme in cases where a family group brings food to the temple on days special to the family (rather than on days special to the Buddhist calendar); then the male “head of the family” is more likely to be present than in other situations. From a pragmatic point of view, the sermon a monk gives after receiving a gift may be taken as a type of return. My point here is that it is not identi ed as such by those involved in the exchange. Instead, what is explicitly asserted is the lack of exchange that takes place. Mauss 2000. The secondary literature on Mauss is vast. My own engagment with his essay is in uenced by his reception via Bataille and Clastres. See Bataille 1985, 1989, 1993; Clastres 1987 (1974). Independent Evaluation Group 2006. Malnutrition has decreased signi cantly since 2006, though nancial inequality continues to rise. At the time of my observations, it was still natural to discuss wealth inequities in rural areas primarily in terms of access to food. Migration beyond national borders has increased radically as well. The International Organization for Migration currently reports Cambodia as the sixth most frequent country of origin for tra cked men (International Organization for Migration 2012). Where gift exchange produces di erence and mutuality, market exchange produces distance and alienation. Sale and market exchange can then on occasion be used to escape hierarchies or other types of unwelcome relationship. Piot points out that these di erent types of exchange may co-exist, and that gift-giving always creates relationships of alternating hierarchy (Piot 1999, 62-66).

258 6. Gifts and Hungry Ghosts 18. Note that the global economic crisis has already hit the situation of the garment workers and other rural poor. Garment workers have taken to foraging for food along the banks of ponds and streams near the factories, in order to get enough to eat (Sam Rith 2008). 19. Since reporting this case in 2007, I have received many reports from others that con rm that preta is frequently used to denigrate poor patrons, such as (in one case) a bar regular who nurses water in a corner and spends little, or (in another case) a village chief who does little all year, but dependably collects donations and demands electoral loyalty.

7. EATING LEFTOVERS, RUMOR, AND WITCHCRAFT 1. 2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

“Following and extending Ortner, however, we might reconceive food itself as a prime manipulating substance designed to lure and establish a pivotal asymmetry between hosts and guests” (Candea and da Col 2012, S9). I use the term “witch” in a nongendered sense, to refer to both male and female practitioners of a boe, or negatively characterized mantr gama. It would be possible to divide the practices of Cambodian magic into the traditional anthropological categories of witch versus sorcerer, but the overlap and complexities of such an analysis should wait for another work (see, for instance, Stewart and Strathern 2004, 1–9; Evans-Pritchard 1976 [1937]). The term “purchased” is somewhat impolitic here, since most people involved insist that there is no purchase of temple land. Instead, the family asks for permission to build a cetiya on temple grounds, and the abbot does or does not grant it. However, in all cases, in addition to bearing the costs of cetiya construction (in one urban temple in Siem Reap, I was told that an average cetiya would cost between 800 and 2,000, with prices skyrocketing beyond that), a substantial gift is given to the temple. I also suspect she planned to take the remains with her when she moved abroad after marrying a foreign man, which was her stated goal. This may account for the presence of the ko ha in her house for such a long period. These relics, and possibly the relics of past Khmer kings, have been stolen from this site, in a major scandal that continues to unfold as this book wraps up. I have discussed meal styles in which ordered eating—with women waiting to eat until men have nished—does occur. However, this is relatively

7. Eating Leftovers, Rumor, and Witchcraft 259 rare and, I suspect, more interesting for its attempt to conform to supposed norms of eating among the “elite” (Davis 2009, 199–203). 7. On this argument, see Michael Taussig’s book Defacement, especially Part Three, on Tierra del Fuego (Taussig 1999). 8. A pis ca is also clearly of Indic origin, at least in name (Monier-Williams 1899, s.v.). 9. That is, menstrual or parturitive blood, both of which are considered deeply impure and polluting, at least by men. 10. Strathern 1982; Nutini and Roberts 1993; Comaro 1997; Kapferer 1997; Comaro and Comaro 1993; Evans-Pritchard 1976 (1937); Stewart and Strathern 2004. 11. In following up on this latest rumor, I did nd some evidence that it was relatively widespread, though nowhere near on the same level as the earlier one about the selling of pig fat. Also, this rumor was limited to attributions of neglect and incompetence, with no hint of witchcraft. 12. Scheper-Hughes 1996, 2000. Shortly before this book went into production, a series of organ-tra cking scandals involving Cambodians selling organs in Thailand broke.

Khmer Glossary

This glossary compares the ALA-LOC transliteration system used in this book with frequently used transcriptions of Khmer words into English. I have not included all words used, only those that repeat frequently. ALA-LOC T

C T

%t < d>

E

c rya

achaa

ǶǙ>¢

lay Buddhist teacher; lay Buddhist ritual specialist

c rya yogi

achaa yogi

ǶǙ>¢ɉ&Z

c rya with an expertise in funerals, often with a connotation of visionary power

a boe

ampoer

FhĔ`

1. “black magic”; 2. action; 3. murder

a po

ambawh

FhɄi

untwined cotton thread used in establishing s m boundaries for temples, blessings by tying around wrists, etc.

262 Khmer Glossary ALA-LOC T

C T

%t < d>

E

anak bhluk

neak phluk

Fœ$;¤©$

“burning men”; workers who start and tend the cremation

anak t

neak ta

Fœ$ǣ

founder spirit of a village, district, or region

a hidh tu

attitheat

F.”YǦ3]

postcremation bone and ash; relics

babil

popil

::Y?

at, ovate-shaped metal object used in rituals such as marriage, the hov braling, and the funeral ceremony

bhikkho

;Y$‰©

fully ordained monk

pchum ben

;©h8Y2ì

Festival of Hungry Ghosts

bhlyk

phleuk

;¤[$

near-death experience

Bhnang

Phnong

:œ(

indigenous highlander tribe

bo buos n ga

bombuoh neak

8h8_Cǧ$

“ordaining a n ga,” ordination of a novice monk

brahma ya-s san

brahmanya-sasana

ŷD¡³’dzCǧ

Brahmanism

brai

prei

ư

1. forest, jungle; 2. wild, undomesticated

braling

pralung

ŷ?[(

the nineteen vital spirits that help to compose the self

br y

preay

ʅ=

a particularly terrifying and violent spirit, often imagined to be the result of the untimely death of a pregnant or virginal woman

buddhasangha

putthasangh

:]5›C(‹

community of Buddhist monks

cetiya

chedey

ă3Y=

Buddhist funerary monument

d na

dean

ǥ7

1. giving; 2. to give

bhikkhu Bhju

Pi

a

Khmer Glossary

263

ALA-LOC T

Common T

ģ¡>

English

dáng kraboe

tung krapoe

5(mŪĔ`

crocodile ag; white crocodile ags indicate a death or funeral

dáng braling

tung pralung

5(mŷ?[(

spirit ag; a white piece of cloth described as functioning as a passport for the deceased spirit

dhmáp

thmop

6¡8m

1. “black magician,” witch; 2. witchcraft

gr

kru

ūǑ

1. guru, teacher; 2. practitioner of special knowledges, including “magic”; 3. a tutelary spirit

hov braling

hau pralung

ɴŷ?[(

“calling the spirits”; healing ceremony performed to recall missing braling into a patient

jh pana h na

cheabanathan

ǜ87Ǟë7

permanent crematorium

ka

kamdar

$h.>

to accompany; keep company, especially during a grieving period

khmoc

khmaoch

ȱõ)

1. corpse; 2. ghost

khsae

khsae

ģ¦

string; often used to describe patron-client networks

ko ha

gauth

Ȱ.”

a funerary urn

k n krak

koun krak

$^7Ū$

amulet made out of a desiccated fetus

kuti

kut

$]3Y

Buddhist monastic dwelling

l jha

leach

ǯ+

pu ed rice, used in the funeral cortège

lat

lat

E3

case, lining, as in a crude interior co n

lingga

ling

?Y(Š

1. mark, aspect; 2. phallic image representing iva

ar

264 Khmer Glossary ALA-LOC T

C T

%t < d>

E

me

me

Ė

1. mother; 2. titular pre x indicating mastery or control, e.g., “Me Bhumi” = Village Chief

meru

men

Ė>]

1. Meru, the name of the mythical mountain at the center of the indic cosmos; 2. a temporary cremation platform

n ga

neak

ǧ$

intelligent serpents associated with water and its control

nibb na

nippean

7YǪ÷7

Nirvana

p” ch

b acha

Ǩúǚ

crematorium (informal)

pa cu s m

banhjoh sima

8³©iCZǬ

ceremony to establish a monastic boundary (cf. sm )

panlung

banlung

87¤©(

gift given to Buddhist monks on behalf of the deceased

p rag

baku

Ǩ>&^

Brahman priests in lineal descent who serve the royal family

p ram

boramey

Ǩ>

English

p ys

bay si

Ǩ=CZ

various types of tiered ritual objects made out of banana tree bark and leaves; considered “Brahamanist”

bawh bay ben

ɄiǨ=8Y2ì

a nighttime ceremony during the Festival of Hungry Ghosts (Bhju Pi a)

prai r pa

brai rup

Ɲ>^8

“turning the body”; a postcremation subritual in the funeral process

preta

praet

Ƌ3

hungry ghost

puas mukh bhloeng

buah mukh phloeung

8_C / C(Ǽ>

the cycle of death and rebirth

samanera

samane

dz

novice monk

sampatti

sambat

C

English

sm tra

smout

C¡ªŲ

a genre of Khmer funerary song

sp v bhl ng

spov phleang

Cª@ǫöh(

a type of thatching plant material woven into a rope, used in the funeral cortège

sruk

srok

ź]$

1. village, countryside; 2. district, country; 3. domesticated, tamed, civilized

st pa

stup

C˜ª8

a structure used to hold relics of the Buddha; see the more commonly used cetiya

thngai s la

tngai sil

ŖŒCY?

morality day

donchee

.^7+Z

nun

vih ra

vihear

@ÂǴ>

central sanctuary of a modern Cambodian Buddhist temple

vinaya

vinay

@Â7=

1. monastic discipline; 2. Buddhist scripts containing these rules and their exposition

vi

vinyean

nj

@Âǽʲ2

consciousness

yama (also: yamar ja) yuma (yumareach)

=