THINKING ABOUT POPULAR RELIGION AND HERITAGE

Denis Byrne

Introduction

In Southeast Asia, archaeology has only been practiced since the nineteenth century and the discourse of heritage is similarly recent. This does not, of course, mean that prior to the appearance of archaeology and heritage the physical traces of the past were meaningless to people in Southeast Asia. In Thailand, for instance, the practice of venerating the remains of old and ancient Buddhist monuments has a very long lineage (e.g. Wyatt 2001) and we know that Buddhism, on colonizing the landscape of present-day Thailand from the sixth century AD, assimilated itself to much older traditions of venerating spirits of place via what Paul Mus (1975) termed "cadastral cults." We know that traditions such as these have continued to inform the way many or most people in Southeast Asia relate to old places and things (e.g. Byrne 2009).

Curiously, archaeologists and heritage practitioners working in Southeast Asia tend to be silent about these popular practices despite the fact that they have received considerable attention by anthropologists and historians. My particular focus in this chapter is the way that popular religion in Southeast Asia provides a context for the relationships many people have with the material past in the landscapes of everyday life. The belief people have that old places and things are occupied and animated by spirits and deities, that they have magical-supernatural properties, or that they are sacred within the context of mainstream religions such as Buddhism, is of central interest to me. My contention is that if we fail to take account of these popular beliefs and the practices they give rise to, we are poorly positioned to enact heritage conservation policies and programs at a local level.

Popular Religion and the Material Past

In Southeast Asia, the earliest religious cultures were animist in nature and these persisted after the arrival in the region of Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam. They typically merged with the later religions so that today, for instance, we commonly find local people believing that archaeological sites (along with natural landscape features such as caves, mountains and trees) have spirits residing at them or associated with them. Such spirits include those referred to as the ITLφITL in Thailand, the nats in Burma, and the neak-ta- in Cambodia (e.g. Spiro 1967; Tambiah 1970; Thierry 1993). It is not uncommon to find shrines to such spirits at archaeological sites and to find that there are local mediums who channel (or communicate with) the spirits.

Turning to consider archaeological objects, the beliefs and practices surrounding the use of Buddhist amulets in Thailand provide a good example of the interface of popular religion with heritage. The practice of stamping small clay blocks with images of the Sakyamuni Buddha became common in Thailand between the fourth and sixth centuries AD. The habit of wearing such amulets around the neck as invulnerability charms is now so prevalent that millions of amulets are now in circulation. They are subject to a form of collecting so widespread and avid as to constitute an industry complete with dealers, thousands of shops and stalls, an array of popular magazines and a flourishing trade in fakes (Byrne 2005; Taylor 2008).

The fact that caches of amulets were sealed inside many Buddhist stupas in early times has been responsible for thousands of stupas being broken open both historically and in the present day. The breaking open and looting of a stupa is an act of desecration but it is motivated by belief in the spiritual power of the amulets contained by the stupa. That a religious monument can be damaged in an act that itself is religiously motivated illustrates the often complex issues that popular religion poses for conservation (Byrne 1995, 276–7).

The belief that certain structures and objects are imbued with divine efficacious power frequently leads to their fragmentation. For instance, fragments of ancient stupas have often been carried away by pilgrims. This type of fragmentation can affect almost any object that Thais consider to be saksit (possessing divine efficacy). The historian Lorraine Gesick (1995, 62) cites a case from southern Thailand where the remains of an old dugout canoe were excavated by villages who placed them in the local temple. But, "gradually," she tells us, "as villagers took away slivers as talismans, it almost entirely disappeared." It was said that people who took the wood died because they could not withstand its supernatural power.

Glass beads are among the other archaeological objects popularly believed to be empowered and that are sought after partly for that reason. Many ancient mound sites in Thailand have been damaged by people digging for glass beads. There are several references in the Western ethnological literature on Southeast Asia which describe village people keeping ground stone artifacts as magical charms. Sorensen (1988, 4) mentions that in central-west Thailand villagers were found to keep polished stone adzes in the bottom of water jars, the water thereby acquiring the power to protect those who drank it against illness and lightning strikes. The transmission of healing properties from ancient stone artifacts to water was also recorded in peninsula Malaysia, while on the island of...