Buddhist Dynamics in Life Sustaining Ritual in Nan Province

Abstract

The objectives of this article were 1) to study the origin of Lanna history of Life Sustaining Ritual, 2) to study the concept and value of Lanna Life Sustaining Ritual and 3) to analyze Lanna Life Sustaining Ritual in Nan province on the dynamics of Buddhism. It was a qualitative research. The data were collected from documentary study as palm live and the Thai long book made of pulp from trees of the family uricaceae and focus group from the experts were 25 persons.

The results showed that:

1. History of the life sustaining ritual in Nan Province, it is found that there was a legend from receiving the concept from the dharma chapter on Ayuvatthanakumar. There were 3 types, namely, life sustaining ritual of people, houses, villages and cities. There are many kinds of life sustaining ritual tools, hidden with riddles with deep meanings. It was a tradition that the people of Nan like to make the common and the royal life sustaining ritual on important occasions.

2. Concepts and values of the life sustaining ritual in Nan Province, it found that the concept was a ceremony of Lanna people since ancient times in Nan province. It had got influenced of the believe of ghosts, Brahmanism later, when they had believed in Buddhism, they applied the Life Sustaining Ritual as a ceremony of Buddhism. And there were 5 aspects of the values of Lanna Life Sustaining Ritual, namely: 1) Tradition values, 2) psychological, 3) the value of Buddhist principles, 4) the value of Dhamma puzzles, and 5) The value of creating awareness of the conservation of the nature and environment.

3. The result of analysis of the Lanna succession ceremony in Nan province based on Buddhism dynamics, it found that the historical dynamics of Nan Province can be divided into 3 periods as follows: 1) the era of the autonomous state, 2) the era that was part of Lanna, 3) the era that was annexed to Siam (the reign of King Rama V) and the era that was Nan Province of Thailand today, consists of: 1 ) The dynamics of the combination of animism, Brahmanism and Buddhism, 2) The dynamics of establishing the power to lead the rituals of the monks. There were classified as (1) the ceremonial dynamics, (2) the ceremonial style dynamics, (3) the chant and teaching dynamics, (4) the dynamics of adjusting the Life Sustaining Ritual according to the situation, (5) the dynamics of building a network of Life Sustaining Ritual, and (6) The dynamics of creating discourse on Life Sustaining Ritual.