A Book Review of Burmese Supernaturalism: A Study in the Explanation and Reduction of Suffering – Melford E. Spiro-Author (original) (raw)
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Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2019
Anthropological work on Southeast Asia was crucial for developments in Religious Studies in the second half of the twentieth century. Melford Spiro’s 1970 Buddhism and Society drew on the example of Burmese Buddhism to define religion more broadly as a complex cultural and psychological system. Clifford Geertz’s 1973 feat of thick-description, “Deep Play,” inspired scholars to read cultural forms as texts with its colorful analysis of Balinese cockfighting. Stanley Tambiah’s 1976 World Conqueror and World Renouncer used the example of the co-dependence of polity and Buddhism in Thailand to argue against Max Weber’s claim that Buddhism was otherworldly. And Buddhism Transformed, Richard Gombrich and Gananath Obeyesekere’s 1988 examination of Sri Lankan religions, gave us the term “Protestant Buddhism.” These studies from the late-Cold-War era impressed scholars from multiple disciplines by weaving detailed ethnographic research from politically-fraught Southeast Asia into larger theories of religion, culture, and the state. Southeast Asia, especially Myanmar, is reemerging as a site for broader explorations of religion. The so-called “Burmaissance” began after Myanmar’s isolationist military regime officially dissolved in 2011 to establish a civilian parliament (with many former military officers in leadership positions). New international interest in Myanmar turned from optimism about the government’s release of political prisoners, elections, and new opportunities for foreign investment into horror as the ethnic cleansing campaigns against the Muslim Rohingya began to be reported in 2012. In 2013 and 2014 respectively, Erik Braun’s Birth of Insight and Alicia Turner’s Saving Buddhism shed new scholarly light on Burmese religious history with their excellent studies of the innovative ways that Buddhist leaders and communities protected religious traditions and developed new ones in the decades after the British colonial defeat of the country’s last Buddhist kingdom in 1885. Other scholars who, like Braun and Turner, had managed to conduct research in Myanmar during the end of the military regime began to release their own studies of Buddhist history and culture; and in 2018, Thomas Patton published the Burmaissance’s first prominent anthropological monograph on Burmese Buddhism: The Buddha’s Wizards: Magic Protection, and Healing in Burmese Buddhism.
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Spiro admitted puzzlement about the lack of involvement of Buddhism in lifecycle ceremonies of Burmese Buddhists. He could find no reason for it and considered Burmese Buddhists anomalous in their behaviour when understood within the context of other world religions, almost all of which seek to assert central control over such ritual moments. The role of the beiktheik saya is as yet hardly understood: this is a fascinating ‘Brahmanic’ role voluntarily put in charge of lifecycle rituals in the Burman Buddhist context. Here I aim to contextualize possible answers to Spiro’s puzzlement. I describe the role of the beiktheik saya while at the same time addressing the apparent incoherence and apparent ‘neglect’ of lifecycle rituals among Burmese Buddhists. I present two lines of thought. First, Brown categorized Buddhism as a ‘hyper religion’ that hovers over and above societies that were historically already ritually stratified by Brahmanism, over which Buddhism never made any attempt to exert control. This echoes Gombrich’s idea of Buddhism as ‘accretive’ compared to other religions. Since, unlike most other world religions, Buddhism outsources so many functions, it cannot be a totalizing religion and readily lives alongside other systems (including non-Buddhist supernatural, legal and other systems). Second, Van Gennep presented rites of passage as more ‘circular’ (and more philosophical) in the case of Buddhism as compared with more ritualistic ‘rectilinear’ societies.
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