Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words

Histories of Buddhist Monastic Education in Laos and Thailand

Justin Thomas McDaniel

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• Published: August 2008
• Subject Listing: Asian Studies, Religious Studies
• Bibliographic information: 384 pp., 28 illus., notes, bibliog., index, 6 x 9 in.
• Territorial rights: World rights except Asia
• Series: Critical Dialogues in Southeast Asian Studies
• Contents

Winner of the Henry J. Benda Prize sponsored by the Association for Asian Studies

Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words examines modern and premodern Buddhist monastic education traditions in Laos and Thailand. Through five centuries of adaptation and reinterpretation of sacred texts and commentaries, Justin McDaniel traces curricular variations in Buddhist oral and written education that reflect a wide array of community goals and values. He depicts Buddhism as a series of overlapping processes, bringing fresh attention to the continuities of Theravada monastic communities that have endured despite regional and linguistic variations. Incorporating both primary and secondary sources from Thailand and Laos, he examines premodern inscriptional, codicological, anthropological, art historical, ecclesiastical, royal, and French colonial records. By looking at modern sermons, and even television programs and websites, he traces how pedagogical techniques found in premodern palm-leaf manuscripts are pervasive in modern education.

As the first comprehensive study of monastic education in Thailand and Laos, Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words will appeal to a wide audience of scholars and students interested in religious studies, anthropology, social and intellectual history, and pedagogy.

"This book is a gold mine of descriptive information, analysis, and informed speculative inference. It will add substantially to our knowledge of Buddhism in northern Thailand and Laos, monastic education, the relationship between canon and commentary, and, I hope, will promote the study of pedagogical intertextuality, which is at the heart of McDaniel's project." - Donald K. Swearer, Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School

"This is a brilliant study which will establish McDaniel as the foremost student of the relationship between Buddhist religious texts and the contexts in which they are read, heard, seen, and interpreted." - Charles Keyes, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and International Studies, University of Washington

Justin McDaniel is associate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Riverside. Visit the author's Web site at:
http://www.justin.mcdaniel.name

"This is an ambitious book, and a successful one - one that deserves wide readership... among those interested in Theravada Buddhism... Students of language, literature, history, and education, to name only a few disciplines, will find this an interesting and valuable addition to their libraries. McDaniel has given us a remarkable and enlightening study, one that will be widely influential for a long time to come." - The Journal of Asian Studies

"Gathering Leaves and Lifting Words provides highly original and deeply engaging perspectives on the complex histories of Theravada Buddhism in Laos and Thailand from the 16th century to present... The result is... a sophisticated, paradigm-challenging argument about continuities and transformations in monastic education and interpretive communities...and...elegant scholarly writing that moves nimbly between the esoteric and the down-to-earth."-Asian Studies Newsletter

Acknowledgments
Note on Transcription
Introduction

PART I. Structural Mechanisms: The Institutional History of Monastic Education

1. From the Sala Vat to the Institut Bouddhique

2. Wandering Librarians

3. Kings and Universities

PART II. Proximate Mechanisms: Toward a Curricular History of Monastic Education

4. Genres, Modes, and Idiosyncratic Articulations

5. The Culture of Translation

6. Canons and Curricula

PART III. Vernacular Landscapes: Teaching Buddhism in Laos and Thailand

7. From Manuscript to Television

8. Philosophical Embryology

Conclusion
Notes
Note on Manuscripts, Archives, Monastic Libraries, and Catalogs
Bibliography
Index