10 - The Sangha and the Polity: From Ayutthaya to Bangkok

Summary

We have paid some attention to Asokan and Sinhalese traditions in the previous chapter in order that we may better understand the dialectics of the relationship between the sangha and the political authority in Thailand. There is in fact an established historical tradition for an ecclesiastical organization and hierarchy, paralleling the secular, periodically regulated by king and polity – a tradition that confirms the Sinhalese precedents.

It is proposed to study in some detail the idiom and rhetoric of sangha purification, the circumstances encouraging such intervention by the political authority, and the details of the administrative hierarchy set up as a consequence, during the Bangkok period. We shall particularly concentrate on Rama I, Rama IV (Mongkut), and on the Sangha Act of 1902 (enacted by Rama V [Chulalongkom]), and the acts of 1941 and 1963 promulgated in the postrevolutionary period ushered in in 1932. But before we undertake that examination, we must marshal whatever evidence we can concerning the nature of sangha organization in the Ayutthayan era and how it may have been linked with the secular administrative machinery.

The Sangha Organization in the Ayutthaya Era

The assumption that in Thailand a national organization of the sangha directly related to the political authority of the king and his administration only became established in the first reign of the present Chakkri dynasty (which started in 1782) is not strictly accurate and may well surprise us in the light of the Sinhalese historical precedents for such an organization that we have already cited.