1 ‘Khamtalaengkaankhongkhanasong cangwat Chiangmai lae cangwat Lamphun ryang nangsyy ongsasanaasonghohng’ [Sangha report of Chiang Mai province and Lamphun province about ‘The two schools of religion’], Chiang Mai, 1951. My thanks to Pisith Nasee for providing me with a copy.

2 Resistance was catalysed by new regulations regarding taxation, military conscription and compulsory secular education. Monks were traditionally exempt from the draft and were the principal teachers of literacy. Furthermore, their sacred texts were written in northern (not central Thai) script. For more on Srivichai, see Bowie, Katherine, ‘Buddhism and militarism in northern Thailand: Solving the puzzle of the saint Khruubaa Srivichai’, Journal of Asian Studies 73, 3 (2014): 711–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bowie, ‘The saint with Indra's sword: Kruubaa Srivichai and Buddhist millenarianism in northern Thailand’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 56, 3 (2014): 681–713; Easum, Taylor, ‘A thorn in Bangkok's side: Khruba Sriwichai, sacred space and the last stand of the pre-modern Chiang Mai state’, South East Asia Research 21, 2 (2013): 211–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Paul T., ‘Buddhism unshackled: The Yuan “holy man” tradition and the nation-state in the Tai world’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 32, 2 (2001): 227–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Thai, see especially Pensupha Sukkhata, ed., Khruubaa Chao Srivichai, 3 vols. (Bangkok: Samaakhom Chao Lamphuun, 2561[2018]).

3 Although estimates range as high as 2,000, this figure comes from Phra Wimolayaanamuni's account, Prawat Phra Srivichai (Lamphun: Wat Phrathat Haripunchai, 1940). Because he was the monastic head of Lamphun province, I consider his figure to be the most reliable.

4 Khao means white. Inthacak was abbot of Wat Namboluang in Chiang Mai and Phrommacak was abbot of Wat Phraphuttabat TakPhaa in Lamphun. Khruba is a northern honorific for respected monks; phrakhruu is a title within the national ecclesiastical hierarchy.

5 Foucault, Michel, The archaeology of knowledge (New York: Vintage, 1972), p. 152Google Scholar.

6 Keyes, Charles, ‘Buddhism and national integration in Thailand’, Journal of Asian Studies 30, 3 (1971): 558CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Indeed scholars have ignored the mass disrobings and even suggested Srivichai was treated with tolerance: see for example, Thompson, Virginia, Thailand: The new Siam (New York: Macmillan, 1967 [1941]), pp. 642–3Google Scholar; and Tambiah, Stanley J., World conqueror and world renouncer: A study of Buddhism and polity in Thailand against a historical background (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 246CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Other differences included debates over lay meditation, proper ways of pouring sacral waters (yaat nam), proper ways of chanting, determining correct holy days, and the like.

8 For example, Kaufman, Howard, Bangkhuad: A community study in Thailand (New York: J.J. Augustin, 1960), p. 156Google Scholar; DeYoung, John, Village life in modern Thailand (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), p. 69Google Scholar; Sharp, Lauriston and Hanks, Lucien, Bang Chan: Social history of a rural community in Thailand (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), p. 164CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tambiah, Stanley J., Buddhism and the spirit cults in north-east Thailand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 179Google Scholar.

9 For a historical comparison of pre-Buddhist Tai funerary practices, see Terweil, Barend, ‘Tai funeral customs: Towards a reconstruction of archaic-Tai ceremonies’, Anthropos 74, 3–4 (1979): 393–432Google Scholar.

10 Such inauspicious deaths typically involved immediate burial. Northern explanations of the death of children included spirit-parents reclaiming their children. See for example, Bock, Carl, Temples and elephants: Travels in Siam in 1881–1882 (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1986 [1884]), p. 261Google Scholar.

11 Although the central Thai region had two main orders, the head of the national sangha hierarchy (sangharaja) was in the Thammayut order and therefore had a major role in shaping the central Thai monastic order and practices. Tambiah, World conqueror; Tiyavanich, Kamala, Forest recollections: Wandering monks in twentieth-century Thailand (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

12 Jean-Baptiste Pallegoix, Description of the Thai kingdom or Siam (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2000 [1854]), pp. 124–5. The abbot of Wat Paa Phaeng who oversaw building the first crematorium adjacent to his temple after the Second World War described numerous problems with bodies exploding. However, he also described the earlier problem of buried bodies floating up during times of flooding. Konrad Kingshill notes that sometimes ‘the bones of the corpse are cut with a saw to prevent the limbs from shooting up during cremation’, in Ku Daeng–The red tomb (Bangkok: Suriyaban, 1976), p. 224.

13 Ma Huan, Ying-yai sheng-lan; The overall survey of the ocean's shores: 1433, ed. and trans. J.V.G. Mills (Cambridge: University Press for Hakluyt Society, 1970[1433]), p. 105.

14 Wales, H.G. Quaritch, Siamese state ceremonies: Their history and function with supplementary notes (London: Curzon, 1992 [1931]), p. 137Google Scholar.

15 Crawfurd, John, Journal of an embassy to the courts of Siam and Cochin China, introduction by Wyatt, David (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1987[1828]), p. 321Google Scholar.

16 Wales, Siamese state ceremonies, p. 160; see also Crawfurd, Journal of an embassy, p. 321. The early 19th century was apparently a time of particularly intense religiosity. Crawfurd also notes self-immolation as a ‘solemn religious sacrifice of the highest order’, resulting in the relatives of the deceased ‘forever after taken under the special protection of the sovereign’ (ibid., p. 322).

17 Pallegoix, Inscription of a Thai kingdom, pp. 124–5.

18 Graham, Walter A., Siam (London: Alexander Moring, 1924), vol 1, p. 166. In 1859Google Scholar, Cambodian King Ang Duong also had his body dismembered, Wales adding, ‘This was only done by the wish of the deceased; it long ago ceased to be the custom of royalty, and has now been prohibited by law in the case of commoners’ (Siamese state ceremonies, p. 160). See further Ernest Young, The kingdom of the yellow robe (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1982[1898], pp. 247–8; Younghusband, G.J., Eighteen hundred miles on a Burmese tat (London: W.H. Allen & Co., 1888), pp. 132–3Google Scholar; Dekeyser, Leon, Notes de voyage: Japon, Iles Hawai, Chine, Siam (Bruxelles: Severeyns, 1908), pp. 127–9Google Scholar.

19 Wales, Siamese state ceremonies, p. 137.

20 Crawfurd, Journal of an embassy, p. 321; see also Wales, Siamese state ceremonies, p. 137.

21 Young, The kingdom of the yellow robe, p. 249.

22 Sharp and Hanks, Bang Chan, p. 164.

23 Young, The kingdom of the yellow robe, pp. 246–7.

24 Following the 1932 overthrow of the absolute monarchy, royal cremations took place in temples, but resumed at Sanam Luang with the death of King Ananda in 1946. See Raymond Plion-Bernier, Festivals and ceremonies of Thailand, trans. Joann Elizabeth Soulier (Bangkok: Assumption, 1973[1937]), pp. 50–51. See also Pallegoix, Description of the Thai kingdom, pp. 124–5; Sir John Bowring, The kingdom and people of Siam (Oxford University Press. 1969[1857]), pp. 99–100, 121–3, 142; Crawfurd, Journal of an embassy, pp. 315–20; Adolf Bastian, A journey in Siam (1863), trans. Walter Tips (Bangkok: White Lotus, 2005 [1867]), pp. 176–80; Graham, Siam, vol 1, pp. 164–6; Holt Samuel Hallett, A thousand miles on an elephant in the Shan States (Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons, 1890), p. 248; Bock, Temples and elephants, pp. 73–7; Wales, Siamese state ceremonies, pp. 137–68.

25 Rajadhon, Phya Anuman, ‘The golden Meru’, Journal of the Siam Society 45, 2 (1957): 85Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 86. See also Crawfurd, Journal of an embassy, pp. 318; 315–20.

27 Plion-Bernier notes delays of ‘several months, sometimes even a year’, adding that ‘It often happens that the entire inheritance of the deceased is used for his cremation’ (Festivals, pp. 31–42). Sharp and Hanks also note cremations included gifts for guests (Bang Chan, pp. 165–6); this custom has also become part of northern funerals. By far the longest delays occurred with royal rituals. Because royal rituals were so costly, cremations for lesser royals were often held conjointly: as Graham explains, during royal funerals ‘thousands of people are fed daily and entertained with all manner of diversions’ (Graham, Siam, p. 165).

28 Graham, Siam, p. 165.

29 Kaufman, Bangkhuad, p. 157.

30 For a complaint, see Bangkok Times Weekly Mail, 24 Apr. 1925.

31 Plion-Bernier, Festivals, p. 36. Buddhist scholar Sulak Sivaraksa's family kept their father's body at home for about a year until the cremation was held. Sulak Sivaraksa, interview, 24 June 2019.

32 Younghusband, Eighteen hundred miles, p. 132. Increasingly, it seems that the practice of meditating on decaying corpses (asubha kammatthana) became an element of central Thai praxis. See for example, Klima, Alan, The funeral casino: Meditation, massacre, and exchange with the dead in Thailand (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Understood as a way of suppressing sexual and other material desires, it should be distinguished from wandering monks who meditated in charnel grounds to overcome their fear of phii (Kamala, Forest recollections, pp. 96–105).

33 The bones of the deceased are often treated separately from the ashes. Bastian, in A journey in Siam (p. 176), notes additional options: ‘Following a cremation, the residual ashes are mixed with lime water and used to wash temple walls, or they are kneaded into a Buddha statue and buried under a pagoda, or they are preserved in a funeral urn.’

34 Schouten, Joost, ‘A description of the government, might, religion, customes, traffick and other remarkable affairs in the Kingdom of Siam’, in Francois Caron and Joost Schouten, A true description of the mighty kingdoms of Japan and Siam (Bangkok: Siam Society, 1986[1636]), p. 143Google Scholar. Interestingly, Simon de la Loubère noted the chedis were ‘[w]ithout any epitaph’, in The kingdom of Siam, introduction by David K. Wyatt (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press.1969[1693]), p. 124; see also Crawfurd, Journal of an embassy, p. 321. Writing later, Graham notes the Siamese are ‘content to accept the complete annihilation of the body intended by nature, only marking, occasionally, the spot where the corpse of some one or other of their great ones was reduced to ashes, by a nameless spire, all memory of the origin of which is usually soon forgotten’, in Siam, vol. 2, p. 176.

35 Anuman, ‘The golden Meru’, p. 174.

36 De la Loubère, The kingdom of Siam, 1969[1693], p. 124.

37 Crawfurd, Journal of an embassy, p. 321.

38 Pallegoix, Description of the Thai kingdom, pp. 124–5.

39 Graham, Siam, p. 166; see also Young, The kingdom, pp. 246–7; Plion-Bernier, Festivals, p. 41.

40 Young, The kingdom, pp. 246–7.

41 Sulak Sivaraksa kept his father's reliquary at home until just a few years ago. Interview, 24 June 2019.

42 Kaufman, Bangkhuad, pp. 161, 194; see also Anuman, ‘The golden Meru’, p. 174; Kingkeo Attagara, ‘The folk religion of Ban Nai: A hamlet in central Thailand’ (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1967), p. 117. In the case of royal cremations, ‘The bones not consumed by the fire are collected and reduced to powder. They are mixed with a little clay and of it small statues are formed and placed in a temple destined for this’ (Pallegoix, Description of the Thai kingdom, pp. 125–6). Other sources suggest that the ashes are placed in urns and kept at royal temples (see, for example, Plion-Bernier, Festivals, p. 50). Wales notes that on New Year, Coronation Anniversary and Chakri Day, the relics of all the deceased kings of the dynasty and their first queens are honoured; Siamese state ceremonies, p. 171.

43 Terweil, Barend, Monks and magic: Revisiting a classic study of religious ceremonies in Thailand (Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2012), p. 260Google Scholar.

44 Kingkeo, ‘The folk religion of Ban Nai’, p. 117.

45 Premchit, Sommai and Doré, Amphay, The Lan Na twelve-month traditions (Chiang Mai: So Sap Kan Pim, 1992), p. 159Google Scholar.

46 Younghusband, Eighteen hundred miles, p. 130; Bock, Temples and elephants, p. 261.

47 Hallett, A thousand miles, p. 49.

48 See Bowie, ‘Slavery in nineteenth-century northern Thailand: Archival anecdotes and village voices’, in State power and culture in Thailand, ed. E. Paul Durrenberger (New Haven, CT: Yale University Southeast Asia Monograph no. 44, 1996), pp. 100–38.

49 Graham, Siam, vol. 2, p. 259; Yoe, Shway, The Burman: His life and notions (New York: Norton Library, 1963[1896]), pp. 589–96Google Scholar; Nash, Manning, The golden road to modernity: Village life in contemporary Burma (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 156Google Scholar; Spiro, Melford, Buddhism and society: A great tradition and its Burmese vicissitudes (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), p. 251Google Scholar. At his request, King Mindon was buried in 1878 (Shway Yoe, The Burman, pp. 597–600). For accounts of royal funerals in Chiang Mai, see Daniel McGilvary, A half century among the Siamese and the Lao: An autobiography (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1912), pp 133–9, 145–7; in Nan, see Dodd, William Clifton, The Tai race: Elder brother of the Chinese (Cedar Rapids, IA: Torch, 1923), pp. 303–4Google Scholar; for general northern royal funerals, see Bock, Temples and elephants, p. 261. For an account of a monk's funeral in Burma see Shway Yoe, The Burman, pp. 583–8; for a monk's funeral in Kengtung, see Dodd, The Tai race, p. 302; Adams, Nel, My vanished world: The true story of a Shan princess (Cheshire: Horseshoe, 2000), p. 40Google Scholar.

50 Milne, Leslie, Shans at home (London: John Murray, 1910), pp. 86–97Google Scholar. See also Scott, J. George, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States (Rangoon: Government Printing, 1900), p. 326Google Scholar. Interestingly, it is possible that there was even resistance towards cremation. Writing of the Shan States, Scott notes that ‘The corpse is dressed in new clothes. Care must be taken that there is no mark of a burn on them. It is better to bury the body naked than in such clothes. Fire would consume the deceased in the next existence’ (p. 326). Similarly, Milne writes, ‘burnt clothes might bring suffering to the spirit of the dead’ (Shans at home, pp. 86–97).

51 Even in this village, coffins have changed from hang muu made from a single tree to hang chang, a four-cornered decorative structure, to praasaat, or miniature palaces.

52 According to Poh Ui Sri, Srivichai said that toilets should be outside the temple, that dogs and cats were not allowed inside, and that spitting was also not allowed inside. Interview with Phra Anon, Wat Chamathevi, 31 July 2018.

53 Although the explanations vary, the construction of sand chedi is widespread among Theravada Buddhists across Mainland Southeast Asia.

54 Davis, Richard, Muang metaphysics: A study of northern Thai myth and ritual (Bangkok: Pandora, 1984), pp. 257–8Google Scholar. Keyes notes that the term phii is never used with reference to a monk and he doubts it is used for deceased royalty, an observation I share. See Keyes, Charles, ‘From death to birth: Ritual process and Buddhist meanings in Northern Thailand’, Folk 29 (1987): 186, 202Google Scholar.

55 Nancy Eberhardt notes that Shans also make offerings to monks for those with inauspicious deaths outside the temple because they ‘cannot enter the temple to collect the merit being made for them’. Eberhardt, N., Imagining the course of life: Self-transformation in a Shan Buddhist community (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2006), p. 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Tannenbaum, Nicola, Who can compete against the world? Power-protection and Buddhism in Shan worldview (Ann Arbor, MI: Association for Asian Studies, 1995), p. 151Google Scholar.

56 Shway Yoe, The Burman, p. 592; see also R. Grant Brown, ‘Death customs in Burma’, Man (1916): 22–3.

57 Shway Yoe, The Burman, pp. 592–3. In Bangkok, cremations of commoners were also historically forbidden within the city walls; see Tambiah, Stanley J., The Buddhist saints of the forest and the cult of amulets (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 71, 357CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Sommai and Doré, The Lan Na twelve-month traditions, p. 151. Thung Moli may be the site of Wat Lok Moli, a temple located north of Chiang Mai's city wall with a chedi believed to contain the ashes of several kings of the Mengrai dynasty. For an account of a 1990 royal funeral, see ibid., pp. 161–70.

59 Milne notes Shan corpses are ‘placed with the head to the north towards Mount Meru, the great spirit country’; Shans at home, pp. 86–97.

60 Following Chao Dara's controversial decision to relocate her forebears’ funerary chedis to Wat Suan Dok in 1908, cremations of northern aristocrats and the temple's abbots began to be held there (see Sommai and Doré, The Lan Na twelve-month traditions, p. 152). In these cases, Merus are specially built because Wat Suan Dok does not have a crematorium.

61 McGilvary, A half century among the Siamese and the Lao, pp. 136–7. The rebel, Chaofa Kolan, offered to facilitate this cremation; ibid., pp. 145–7.

62 Kingshill, Ku Daeng, p. 198.

63 See for example, Tannenbaum, Who can compete, p. 150; and Eberhardt, Imagining the course of life, p. 61.

64 Shway Yoe, The Burman, p. 593. See also Brown, ‘Death customs’, pp. 22–3; and Nash, The golden road, p. 152.

65 For accounts of northern monastic funerals, see Keyes, ‘Tug-of-war for merit: Cremation of a senior monk’, Journal of the Siam Society 63, 1 (1975): 44–62; and ‘Death of two Buddhist saints in Thailand’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 48, 3–4 (1982): 149–80.

66 Keyes, ‘Tug-of-war’, p. 45.

67 Anusaranasasanakiarti, Phra Khruu and Keyes, Charles, ‘Funerary rites and the Buddhist meaning of death: An interpretive text from northern Thailand’, Journal of the Siam Society 68, 1 (1980): 8Google Scholar. Determining inauspicious days is complex. In addition to the days of the nine piles (wan kao kong), the ninth days of the waxing or waning of the moons, Wednesday is particularly inauspicious (though some villagers think it is fine for burials, but not for cremations). Because of the homonym of Wednesday and Buddha Day (wan phut), phii cannot receive any offerings.

68 An important poignant moment comes when each participant privately lights incense and asks for or grants final forgiveness for any wrongdoings or misunderstandings that may have occurred while the deceased was alive (khoh summaa, khoh khamaa). Kingkeo also notes this practice in the central region in ‘The folk religion of Ban Nai’, p. 113.

69 Katherine Bowie, Of beggars and Buddhas: The politics of humor in the Vessantara Jataka in Thailand (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2017).

70 For a modernist interpretation, see Klima, The funeral casino, pp. 247–69.

71 Keyes, ‘Tug-of-war’, pp. 47, 60.

72 These include two of Srivichai's disciples, Khruba Khao Pii and Khruba Wong in Amphur Lii, Lamphun.

73 In a controversial decision, Srivichai's body was cremated within the grounds of Wat Chamathevi.

74 Interview with Poh Moh Karuun (in his 70s), Hang Dong, 22 Apr. 2015.

75 Since the central Thai 100th day memorial observance became more popular in the north, some villagers shoot the rockets off on the 100th day after cremation.

76 Nash, The golden road, p. 155.

77 See for example, Kingshill, Ku Daeng, p. 226.

78 Ibid. Shway Yoe remarks that funerary chedi are ‘an honour but rarely accorded in Burma’. Some commoner ashes were moulded into Buddha images for worship at home. Shway Yoe, The Burman, pp. 588, 596.

79 Interviews, Lung Insuan Sricajphaa (in his 60s) and Poh Noi Song Pukhampuan (75), Lamphun province, 29 July 2017.

80 Leslie Woodhouse, ‘A “foreign” princess in the Siamese court: Princess Dara Rasami, the politics of gender and ethnic difference in nineteenth-century Siam’ (PhD diss., University of California-Berkeley, 2009), pp. 194–6. Chao Chakkhamkajonsak (r.1911–43) also moved the royal chedis to their current location in Lamphun due to flooding of the Mae Khuang River. Chao Dara's decision may have resulted from a desire to expand the nearby market, but possibly because of particularly damaging floods in 1905 (see Easum, ‘A thorn in Bangkok's side’, p. 219). Khruba Wong's decision to move an ordinary charnel forest to build a hospital was also controversial; interview with Maha Chamluun, 17 July 2019.

81 Shway Yoe, The Burman, p. 583; for further details see pp. 583–8; see also Keyes, ‘Tug-of-war’.

82 For the similar practice in Burma, see Shway Yoe, The Burman, p. 588.

83 His body was not cremated, but rather placed in a coffin. Interview with Phrakhruu Mangkhalajarn, Wat Thaton, 2 Feb. 2018.

84 Khruubaa Ai of Wat Sapung, T. Muang Noi, A. Basang.

85 Interview, Poh Ui Inpan Maaryan, Wat PhaaNaam, 9 July 2016.

86 Hallett, A thousand miles, p. 152.

87 Ibid., pp. 151–2.

88 DeYoung, Village life, p. 72.

89 Wat Phrathat Haripunchai is located within the city walls.

90 In Sanpatong district, the first temple to have accepted the construction of chedi to house commoner cremains was Wat NamBoLuang, a deserted temple first restored by Phrakhruu Inthacak. Villagers in the nearby village of Kilenoi no longer worship phii. The abbot, now in his 80s, permitted the first funerary chedi in the 1970s in the hopes of attracting the descendants to visit the temple more frequently; however, he lamented, these hopes had not been realised.

91 Many northerners will make a distinction between phut phii (Spirit Buddhism) and phut phrahm (Brahmanic Buddhism), suggesting that the northern formation is based on a belief in phii whereas the central Thai formation is based on Brahmanism.

92 Anusaranasasanakiarti and Keyes, ‘Funerary rites’, p. 5; see also Paul T. Cohen and Gehan Wijeyewardene, eds, ‘Spirit cults and the position of women in northern Thailand’, special issue, Mankind 14, 4 (1984).

93 See Pallegoix, Description of the Thai kingdom, p. 123; Young, The kingdom, pp. 235, 246–7; Graham, Siam, vol 1, p. 164; Kingkeo, ‘The folk religion of Ban Nai, p. 113; Terweil, Monks and magic, p. 248. Other elements reinforce an orientation towards the heavens. Graham explains placing a coin in the mouth of the deceased as ‘payment of the toll at the gates of Paradise’ (Siam, vol 1, p. 164). Kingkeo explains binding offerings into the deceased's hand to help the deceased ‘pay obeisance to the Buddha's hair relic in the Davadingsa Heaven’ (‘The folk religion of Ban Nai’, p. 113).

94 Belief in phii also helps to explain the importance of another controversy over the ‘proper’ way to pour sacral waters for the dead (yaat nam).

95 Terweil notes that in the past central Thai monks also chanted this story (Monks and magic, p. 251). For further information, see Brereton, Bonnie, Thai tellings of Phra Malai: Texts and rituals concerning a popular Buddhist saint (Tempe: Arizona State University, Program for Southeast Asian Studies, 1995)Google Scholar.

96 Pii, Khruba Khao, Sasana Song Hong (Chiang Mai: Rongphim Upadiphong, 1951)Google Scholar.

97 Katherine Bowie, ‘Khruba Siwichai: The charismatic saint and the northern sangha’, in Charismatic monks of Lanna Buddhism, ed. Paul T. Cohen (Copenhagen: NIAS Press; Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 2017), pp. 27–57.

98 See Sangha Report of 1951.

99 Social Research Institute (SRI), Chiang Mai University (CMU); http://www.sri.cmu.ac.th/~elanna/elanna_eng/public_html/customs/custom6.html (last accessed 21 Oct. 2020).

100 Sommai and Doré, The Lan Na twelve-month traditions, p. 152.

101 Ibid., p. 157.

102 Ibid., p. 147. However at this funeral the royal couple only knelt. At the funerals for Luang Pu Waen Sucinno, a famous Thammayut monk (Wat Doi Mae Pang, Phrao) in 1985 and for Khruba Phrommacak in 1987, they performed a full kraab, bowing three times (ibid., p. 147).

103 Ibid., p. 148.

104 A basic service of three days, including renting the funeral sala and the subsequent cremation, costs about 10,000 baht in Chiang Mai in 2019; the three-day funeral for one of my village friends cost 300,000 baht.

105 In northeastern Thailand, villagers also buried bones in unmarked pots in the charnel forest, but about 1940 ‘began making stupa-style tombs and interring the bones in temples’. Hayashi, Yukio, Practical Buddhism among the Thai-Lao (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2003), p. 168Google Scholar.

106 In the central region, cremations have become increasingly commercialised, comprising an important source of temple revenue. As Deborah Wong notes, in the central region, ‘nearly every temple has a small crematorium’. Following the Second World War, the Meru have become modern crematoria, ‘tall stately buildings with ovens discreetly concealed inside’. Wong, Deborah, ‘Mon music for Thai deaths: Ethnicity and status in Thai urban funerals’, Asian Folklore Studies 57, 1 (1998): 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.