New Perspectives in Southeast Asian Studies. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2017. xvi, 357 pp. (Illustrations.) US$64.95, cloth. ISBN 978-0-299-30950-3.
Attending a ritual at a Buddhist temple in Thailand, one is tempted to assume the text being chanted has been determined by tradition and is performed the same way each time. A further assumption is that the motivation behind the chanting and the chosen text is strictly religious, aiming to further the spiritual status of ritual participants. Yet as Katherine A. Bowie shows, the choice and style of the chanting matters greatly: the language used, who is chanting, who sponsored the recitation, even whether it is humorous, all provide insights into political relations and motivations, as well as regional identities. To demonstrate these broader contexts and meanings, Of Beggars and Buddhas thoroughly examines the diverse tellings of the stories of Jujaka, the old beggar in the Vessantara Jataka, the Buddhist story of the last life of the historical Buddha before he was born as Gautama. Jujaka is an excellent character to follow because of the intricacies and variations surrounding how he is portrayed in central, northeastern, and northern Thailand, with each different approach shedding light on the forms of Buddhism in each region and the degrees to which Bangkok extended its control and influence—and the resistance to such control and influence—in each region. Bowie’s book is at once the story of a classic Buddhist text and a political, anthropological history of how Buddhism and the ways in which it is practiced illuminate political attitudes across social statuses and regions.
The range of characters—the people on the ground rather than the players in the Vessantara Jataka—that Bowie deals with is the true gift of this book. She moves deftly across the categories of what she refers to as the monarchs, the monks, and the masses, highlighting the motivations and pressures on each group in each of the three regions of Thailand. (Bowie is upfront about not including the south, as she does not have the history and connections in that region she has in the other three.) Using these three regions enables Bowie to develop her argument that the manner in which Jujaka is portrayed in each location reflects the degree of influence coming from Bangkok’s elite as well as how local people (the masses) respond to this influence. She integrates historical context, regional variation, and social perspectives as people across the social and geographic spectrum use the text to their own ends. Part 1 of the book defines how the Vessantara Jataka, and the character of Jujaka in particular, is portrayed and performed in each region. These three chapters provide the geographical grid on which Bowie’s more nuanced analysis is laid out in part 2.
Part 2, also in three chapters, focuses more on the historico-political processes of the different regional interpretations of the story and how they played off of each other over time, up to the present. Bowie uses the motifs of Jujaka as Trickster, as Threat, and as Deity in consecutive chapters as she develops her main argument—and theoretical contribution—of the politics of humour. Throughout the telling, Bowie shows Jujaka as a foil of different political, social agents, from the court elite stifling his role to control how the court is portrayed to the raucous, cunning, and hilarious figure in which resistance to Bangkok is embedded in the north. In addition to the historico-political grid of part 2, Bowie incorporates a dynamic dimension, revealing the changes to the story and the portrayals of Jujaka and other characters in the jataka over time, resulting from evolving power relations across the regions.
Bowie’s encyclopedic knowledge of the literature about Buddhism and the political history and ethnography of Thailand allows her to show the interplay between humour, morality, narrative, and politics from different perspectives. Although someone unfamiliar with at least a basic understanding of Thai society, history, and Buddhism may at times feel lost in her descriptions, it is worth working through the details to unpack the complexities and depth of the evidence underlying her argument.
In building her argument about the politics of humour, Bowie taps into a wide range of theoretical literature. She draws extensively from anthropological, historical, philosophical, and literary theories to provide a complex yet solid framework for her approach to understanding Jujaka in all his manifestations. Ideas of scholars from Mikhail Bakhtin to James Scott to Charles Hallisey, and numerous others, all contribute to the development of Bowie’s original analysis as she frames her argument in response to prior theories of Buddhist literature and Thai history and society, culminating in an original analysis of the power of humour in religious and political practice.
Most impressive is the depth of Bowie’s ethnographic experiences that inform her analysis. She has undertaken extensive ethnographic, political, and historical research in Thailand over several decades. Although most of her work has focused on the north, Bowie availed herself of every opportunity to reveal the histories and perspectives of other regions—from travelling to numerous temples across the kingdom to interviewing and chatting with every taxi driver and shop keeper she encountered. She brings in the perspectives of many monks, including the few remaining who still tell the humorous versions of Jujaka in northern Thailand, villagers across all three regions, scholars, and urban folks. She conducted hundreds of oral histories (mostly in the 1980s) that enable her to highlight the views and understandings she presents through the voices of people involved. Performances of the jataka that she attended emerge through rich and engaging ethnographic details. The result is a vivid and nuanced analysis that is at once entertaining (how could it not be given the emphasis on humour?), compelling, and provocative.
Susan M. Darlington
Hampshire College, Amherst, USA
pp. 192-194