[
    {
        "id": 205790,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1969",
        "page_number": 96,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "90\n\nR. BRUCE\n\nLike Sakya-muni who became Gotama Buddha, he left the rich life of the Palace for the austerity of monkhood. His head and eyebrows were shaven, his dress was the yellow robe, his dwelling a cell in a city monastery. He shared the simple life of the most humble. Each morning he went into the streets to receive in a metal alms bowl gifts of food from the people. Each day the monks chanted the Pali sutras, studied, or practised meditation. It was a life of abstinence. No worldly wealth is allowed in the Order. It is absolutely forbidden to tell lies, to take any form of life, to gossip, to steal, to have any contact with women, to handle money, or to eat after mid-day. A monk's demeanour is important - how to stand, sit, walk, how to address people, and how to maintain that composure which is revealed in the face of Buddha's image in every Wat in Thailand.\n\nThe discipline was not irksome to Mongkut, and it became him as easily as the luxury of the Palace. He immersed himself in Buddhist studies and acquired a good knowledge of Pali, the language of the scriptures. He found in his research that there were serious gaps in the collections of texts and commentaries in Siam. At the young age of thirty-three, he had been in the Order three years. Mongkut became the Abbot of Wat Bowaniwate. He ordered many Pali books from Ceylon to repair the omissions in the Buddhist writings. But the most important part of his work as a monk was the reform and revitalising of the Order of monkhood itself.\n\nPrince Mongkut, the Abbot, found the observance of the code of conduct too slack. Some monks in Wat Po, the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, were even gambling and handling money. He set a new standard of discipline in his own Wat and then established a new sect within the Order. This was the Dharmayuta, the Followers of the Law, which survives today. The rules prescribed for this school of monks are far stricter than for the majority group, the Mahanikai, the Great Sect. Mongkut preached to the monks in his Wat and to the people, bringing a fresh interpretation of the Dharma, the Law, in place of what had become atrophied ritual. In creating a new sect among the monks, Mongkut did not bring about a \"Reformation\"; he left no cleavage among the followers of Buddhism. He re-inspired belief and disciplined practice. That this was done by a Priest, half-brother to the King and his likely successor, was doubly significant in a country where",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205791,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1969",
        "page_number": 97,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "KING MONGKUT AND THE KINGDOM OF SIAM\n\n91\n\nthe Throne and Buddhism are, today as much as in the nineteenth century, the foundation of society.\n\nIn the West we might think that life in a Buddhist monastery was poor training for kingship. Not so in Siam. Prince Mongkut came to know his people as no Palace-dwelling King could ever do. His colleagues in the monastery were peasants, artisans, sons of nobles and merchants. He walked the streets of Bangkok with his begging bowl and saw the homes of his people. Like other monks he travelled across the country from one Wat to another. His father, Rama II, only left the Palace once a year for the ceremonial presentation of robes to monks at the end of each rainy season and his brother maintained the same semi-divine remoteness.\n\nMongkut's interests were not limited to Buddhism whilst he was in the Order. His intelligence was singular. He had that rare quality in oriental princes — intellectual curiosity, an eagerness to inquire into things. Not far from Wat Bowaniwate there lived a Roman Catholic priest, no less than the able Frenchman, Bishop Pallegoix, from whom we learn a good deal about the Prince. The Bishop and the Abbot became friends and Mongkut invited Pallegoix to preach Christian sermons to his brother monks in the Wat. The sermons and discussions were impressive. Mongkut admired the Christian morals and achievements which the Bishop explained to his yellow-robed congregation, but the Abbot could make nothing of Christian doctrine. With immodest presumption he commented: \"What you teach people to do is admirable but what you teach them to believe is foolish.\"\n\nBishop Pallegoix learned Pali and a great deal about Buddhism from the royal Abbot and, in exchange, he taught Mongkut some Latin and French. This was the Prince's introduction to the thought of the Western world. He learned about Christianity and the customs of Europeans. He became interested in mathematics and science. Other Christians of a different sort had recently come to Bangkok. These were the American Presbyterian missionaries who brought with them the first printing press, a new kind of Christianity which, to Mongkut's astonishment, included married priests, for they brought their wives and, most precious of all, the English language. Their leader, the Rev. Dr. Beach Bradley, became Mongkut's English tutor. He found in the Abbot a most apt and diligent student who quite quickly acquired a good",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
        "rank": 0
    }
]