北タイのカリスマ僧，クルーバー・シーウィチャイの1920年バンコク召喚事件の史実をめぐって

抄録

Khruba Srivichai (11 June 1878–21 February 1939) was a legendary monk in Lanna Thai. Both Thai and foreign scholars have studied his life. Among them, the works of Katherine A. Bowie are most numerous.

In most of her works on Khruba Srivichai, she has relied only on articles from one English-language newspaper, the Bangkok Times, as her main sources. She connects directly such general information in those articles with the particular and individual events of Srivichai. For example, in “Of Buddhism and Militarism in Northern Thailand: Solving the Puzzle of the Saint Khruubaa Srivichai,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 73 No. 3, August 2014, she says the enforcement of the Military Conscription Act caused young men to escape into Buddhist temples. However she fails to show any concrete cases of young men who escaped into Srivichai’s temple. It seems that she made her own story without knowledge of the concrete facts and evidence.

Moreover, she mistakenly mixed up King Vajiravudh’s royal coronation ceremony (Rachapisek) day and his coronation anniversary (Chatramongkhon) day.

Srivichai did not decorate his wat with illuminations and did not beat a gong on the day of the royal coronation ceremony in spite of the order of the district officer. King Vajiravudh had two coronation ceremonies. The first one took place on 11 November 1910; the second one was held on 2 December 1911. After 1912, the coronation anniversary was celebrated on the 11^th of November ever year during his reign.

Srivichiai’s disobedience of the district officer’s order occurred on Rachapisek day (either in Nov. 1910 or Dec. 1911) as is mentioned in the original Thai statement of Sangha (Thalaengkan Khanasong, Vol. 8 no. 5, 1920). However Bowie understood incorrectly that it occurred on a Chatramongkhon day, that it was on “King Rama Ⅵ’s coronation anniversary” around 1919 (the above mentioned Bowie paper, pp. 716–717). Therefore she says, “Srivichai appears to have first run afoul of officialdom in about 1915; this date corresponds closely with the period in which these two acts [the Ordination Act of 1913 and the enforcement of Militarily Conscription Act in Monthon Phayab in April 1914] were being implemented.” (ibid., p. 714). She completely misunderstood the chronological order of events.

Confrontation between Srivichai and local officialdom had occurred by December 1911 at the latest, not as late as around 1915 as she argued.

In addition she says that the 1902 Sangha Act “was not enforced in Monthon Phayab—as these northern provinces were then called—until 1924.” (ibid., p. 713). However, plenty of evidence exists to support that the Sangha Act was enforced in northern Siam in the 1910s. The official proclamation of enforcement of the Act in northern Siam on 6 September 1924 was made only after the implementation was completed.

In the last part of this paper, I will confirm Khruba Srivichai’s date of death as 21 February 1939 relying on Chinese, Thai and English-language newspaper articles that reported on his demise.