Promotional Information

Examines modern and premodern Buddhist monastic education traditions in Laos and Thailand

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Note on Transcription

Introduction

Part One | Structural Mechanisms: The Institutional History of Monastic Education

1. From the Sala Vat to the Institut Bouddhique

2. Wandering Librarians

3. Kings and Universities

Part Two | Proximate Mechanisms: Toward a Curricular History of Monastic Education

4. Genres, Modes, and Idiosyncratic Articulations

5. The Culture of Translation

6. Canons and Curricula

Part Three | Vernacular Landscapes: Teaching Buddhism in Laos and Thailand

7. From Manuscript to Television

8. Philosophical Embryology

Conclusion

Notes

Note on Manuscripts, Archives, Monastic Libraries, and Catalogs

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Justin McDaniel is associate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Riverside.

Reviews

"This book is a gold mine of descriptive information, analysis, and informed speculative inference. It will add substantially to our knowledge of Buddhism in northern Thailand and Laos, monastic education, the relationship between canon and commentary, and, I hope, will promote the study of pedagogical intertextuality that is at the heart of McDaniel's project." Donald K. Swearer, Harvard Divinity School "This is a brilliant study which will establish McDaniel as the foremost student of the relationship between Buddhist religious texts and the contexts in which they are read, heard, seen and interpreted." Charles Keyes, University of Washington