The Protestant episode and Bradley's thesis

Along with other foreign religions such as Islam or Confucianism, Catholicism had long been a feature of the port polity of Ayutthaya since the sixteenth century.Footnote ²⁷ Eventually, the Vatican had recognised its parishes in Siam in 1669, and Louis Laneau (1637–96) was consecrated as the first apostolic vicar of Siam. Apart from guiding their flock, these Catholic priests started to learn vernacular languages and proselytise in them. From the latter half of the seventeenth century, a number of tracts and catechisms on Christianity were written in the Thai script, especially by Laneau.Footnote ²⁸ However, their proselytisation in the Thai language alarmed the Siamese. In the 1730s, the priests were interrogated, books were confiscated or secretly burnt by the priests themselves, and believers were tortured. Finally, a stone inscription was planted in front of the church at Ayutthaya, forbidding them to proselytise to the Siamese, the Lao, and the Mon.Footnote ²⁹ But the real calamity came with the Burmese attack and Ayutthaya's downfall in 1767, at which time, the missionaries perished and their flock dispersed.

After the kingdom was liberated by King Taksin (r. 1767–82), the Catholic mission resumed in the environs of the new Siamese capital. Still, disputes persisted. Christian officials refused to join the ceremony of pledging an oath of allegiance to the King in September 1775 and were imprisoned for months before acceding to the royal demands. Meanwhile, the bishop and priests were also imprisoned for almost a year before they were released. When the Catholics refused again to attend the royal barge ceremony in 1778, all missionaries were forced to leave the country.Footnote ³⁰

The Catholics resumed their mission again after the new court was established in 1782. Arnaud-Antoine Garnault was then given permission to recommence his mission at the Santa Cruz church in Bangkok in 1795. In 1796 his small printing press produced the Khamson Christang (Christian admonishment), the first ever publication of a treatise in romanised Thai.Footnote ³¹ Apart from the unavailability of Thai printing type, the publication of the romanised Thai-language Catholic treatise was partly due to the belief that the Latin script was common to all neighbouring nations where the Jesuits were transcribing works into vernacular languages, that is, Japanese, Chinese, and Vietnamese.Footnote ³² Nevertheless, the Catholics were also possibly trying to avoid persecution, as preaching and religious writing using the Thai script was prohibited in the last years of Ayutthaya, as mentioned. Notably, the Catholics continued to publish their treatises in Roman script even in the mid-nineteenth century when Thai type was largely available. This was an uncertain moment for scriptural translation, especially for key theological terms such God, Christendom, the commandments, and the promise. ‘God’ was most difficult to translate into Thai and was rendered with different terms: the appellations most frequently used for ‘God’ were phra and phra pen chao.Footnote ³³ Essentially, Khamson Christang was a basic book of catechism, though not clearly organised, its topics ranging from the existence of God and creation, eternal life and the promise, judgement day, the commandments, the passion of Christ and his resurrection, and Christendom (phra samai).

Given its inaccessability to most general readers because of its Roman script, Khamson Christang was probably meant to circulate only among religious personnel. As Catholic priests had already been much more successful in converting the resident Chinese and Vietnamese than the Thais,Footnote ³⁴ most likely this vernacular treatise was aimed not at attracting the immigrants but Thai or Lao who could not read the Roman script but could listen to and understand the texts being read aloud. In any case, Christianity remained thus restricted mainly within the confines of the faithful, but this situation would change when the Protestant missionaries arrived in the late 1820s.

Not long after John Crawfurd was sent by the governor-general of British India as official envoy to negotiate a new treaty with the Siamese court in 1821, the first two Protestant missionaries, Charles A.F. Gutzlaff and Jacob Tomlin, had stopped in Bangkok in 1828 en route to their respective postings in China. Prior to their separate departures, they submitted a formal request to the American Missionary Society that a mission should be assigned to Bangkok.Footnote ³⁵ A permanent mission in Siam was subsequently initiated by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in June 1833 and from that year, several missionaries were posted to Bangkok. Most of them were American, although their numbers varied from time to time: in 1850, there were about ten Protestant missionaries working in Siam.Footnote ³⁶

The Protestant missionaries came to Siam at a time when the kingdom was a focus of Western imperial ambitions in the region after the British won their last colonial war of conquest with Burma. Gutzlaff noted in his Journal of the Three Voyages along the Coast of China, in 1834, that the British victory over Burma had created a lot of anxiety among the Siamese elite, even more than the Burmese themselves, because the Siamese viewed Burma as second only to China.Footnote ³⁷ The Protestant mission therefore came contingently at a time when the old world with China as its towering axis was waning, as the Qing dynasty was embroiled in the destructive Opium War (1839–42). As the governor of Saigon remarked sarcastically to Siam's Minister of Military Affairs, it was a time when ‘the Western wind was blowing blissfully’.Footnote ³⁸

Unlike the earlier Catholics who had shifted their focus onto resident Chinese and Vietnamese, the Protestant missionaries targeted the Siamese, quickly acquiring the vernacular and proselytising their faith through various endeavours, including preaching Christian morality, translating biblical tracts, practising the medical profession, and publishing books in Thai script for free circulation. Among the early publications in Thailand's national archive are, for instance, Nangsue kham butxa visatchana wa duai satsana phra yesu chao (Catechism on Lord Jesus’ religion, 1841); Nangsue wa duai phra yesu (Catechism on Lord Jesus, 1841); Rueang kitchakan haeng phra yesu chao (The life of Christ), which was arranged by George Townsend and translated by D.B. Bradley (third edition, 3,000 copies, 1844); and especially the well-known Opium Tract (1839, 1841).

The translation and publication of these tracts in vernacular languages marked a fundamental difference between Protestant proselytisation from that of the Catholic missions, in which the Church and biblical works in European languages were the authoritative media. Vernacular translation reflected the Protestant view that any Christian soul could be called and could access the glory of God by their own efforts. Reading biblical tracts in the vernacular was encouraged and had been a common practice among Protestants since the Reformation in Europe. The Protestants in Siam came not just as missionaries, but as champions of Western knowledge. Scientific discoveries and technological advancements were actively translated and transmitted to Siamese society in the nineteenth century, especially through the periodical Nangsue Chotmaihet Bangkok Recorder. The first commercial fortnightly newspaper published in Siam, its first issue went to press in July 1844 and continued until October 1845; after a two-decade hiatus, the newspaper was revived in March 1865, and would continue until February 1867, under a slightly different title, Nangsue Chotmaihet The Bangkok Recorder, both under the Bradley's editorship.

The paper featured world news, local news, shipping timetables, commodity prices, technological advancements, scientific discoveries, and medical knowledge. SubscribersFootnote ³⁹ could flip through its pages and be amazed with treatises on blood circulation, physiology, elementary chemistry and physics, treatment of ulcers, vaccinations, smallpox and cholera, intermittent fevers, miasmatic theories, histories, and articles on technological advancements such as railways and steamboats. Nonetheless the paper's most notable feature was that it became an arena of contention between the Protestant civilising project and Theravada Buddhism as practised in Siam.

The earliest article that assailed a heavy attack on the Siamese literati was a piece on the ‘History of the Sandwich Islands, Overthrow of Idolatry’, a history of Hawai‘i after the islands were ‘discovered’ by Captain Cook, published in October 1845. The anonymous writer, most likely Bradley himself, described the people of Sandwich Islands as ‘cruel [and] ignorance [sic] because [they] don't have the Book’. Once the islanders had converted to Christianity, became literate, and inaugurated their trade with Western merchants, that ‘idolatrous and ignorant’ country became increasingly prosperous and enlightened, and its people enjoyed their new luxuries and conveniences.Footnote ⁴⁰

This was evidently the first time that the Book (nangsue) was signified and introduced to Siamese society as an emanation of Western modernity and Christianity as reflected in the civilising of a then little-known island. The appellation nangsue corresponded not just with any book but the Holy Scripture. It was not with just any book that a person can learn of this earthly world, but it must be with the Book that represented the pinnacle of Western civility and modernity. Therefore, it was a two-step process: first, the natives would need to convert to Christianity and shed their own backward habits and customs; only then, when armed with a new set of moral values, would they be able to progress or advance as a people. This represented the inextricable linking of Western civility and modernity to the Christian faith, the Scripture as a signifier of Western civilisation. Rather than simply a pillar of faith, the Bible explicitly expressed the Protestant project of spreading civility and modernity. It was the first time that the twinned notions of modernity and progress were encapsulated in the Bible and presented to the Siamese.

In reaction to the claims in this article, Prince Mongkut wrote a letter to his correspondents in New York, Mr and Mrs Eddy, on 18 November 1849, that the missionaries’ work in Siam was set in the same modus operandi as when Christianity was introduced to the ‘savage & barburious [sic] countries’ by Christopher Columbus. For the prince, this was a ‘vulgar desire’ among the missionaries who were used to coping with the ‘savage & barburious nations’ as had happened with the native people of the ‘Sandawed Island & Co [sic]’. Mongkut well knew that Siam was not like those ‘barbaric nations’, and that Siam had its own traditional ‘knowledge of morality & civility’. He went on to argue that, despite being mixed with supernaturalism and Hinduism, Siamese beliefs were more systematic than Jewish tradition that to him was almost as ‘Barburious’. It was only because of its introduction to the Europeans before the age of ‘lights of undoubtable knowledge of wonderful sciences’, that Judaism and Christianity could continue to the present. The Jewish religion was therefore, according to him, dissociated from the European progress of modern scientific and technological advancement. Besides, contemporary European ‘men of knowledge’ of various sciences had attacked and refuted some of the Bible's contents; some had even declared that they did not believe in the Bible in the least.Footnote ⁴¹

Embedded in Mongkut's reading of Bradley's thesis was the prince's own Buddhist reforms. In July 1824 the prince had been ordained as a novice, a mere matter of days before his father's last breath, because of a potential conflict over the succession to the throne at the end of the Bangkok dynasty's second reign. His refuge in monastic life turned out to be a great opportunity for his long career in education, first related to Buddhism before his close association with foreigners, especially the Catholic Bishop Jean-Baptiste Pallegoix, who acquainted him with Western knowledge, that is, Latin, English, astronomy, and geography.Footnote ⁴²

Bangkok in the early nineteenth century was a commercial port that attracted merchants and ships from across the region, from Xiamen, Shantou, Jiangdong (Kangtang), Ningbo, Okinawa, Hanoi, Tonkin, Ha Tien, Batavia, and Penang, to ports along the southern Indian coast.Footnote ⁴³ Since the late eighteenth century, the nature of trade had changed from the court's monopoly on commodities through a tax-in-kind system towards market-oriented production. Money economy and wage labour had expanded to affect the normal populace ever since the last years of Ayutthaya. With the kingdom's downfall in 1767, all economic activity came to a halt and returned to self-sufficiency. Nevertheless, after the efforts of the new Bangkok dynasty to establish a new order, economic activity had resumed to earlier dynamic levels from the early 1780s. The trade with China, both tributary and private, became once again tremendous and lucrative. A number of Chinese merchants from rich families were thus appointed to the Treasury, which was responsible for trade and foreign affairs.

The booming economy would alter the mentality of the Siamese elite away from traditional tax-in-kind exploitation towards a capitalist profit-and-loss perspective that was the modus operandi of the commercial world. The Siamese elite's capital accumulation overflowed. They started expanding their capital city and building more temples. In attempting to reassemble their cultural legacies and to reconstruct a lifeworld that had collapsed along with the old capital that they yearned for, the elite sponsored Buddhist education and literary production. Their literature displayed a bourgeois worldview deeply absorbed with humanistic and empirical perspectives.Footnote ⁴⁴

King Rama I (r. 1782–1809), Prince Mongkut's grandfather, was not only a gifted military tactician who helped King Taksin (r. 1767–82) to neutralise the Burmese and defeat other claimants to the throne, he was also a masterful strategist.Footnote ⁴⁵ In one study of Buddhism and political thought during his reign, Rama I is described as a humanistic, rational man. Ritualistic and miraculous aspects became less important, and religion became more concerned with scriptural Buddhism. Once he was crowned, his ‘more bourgeoisie court’ had attempted ‘to establish humanistic Buddhist principles as state ideology’.Footnote ⁴⁶ He had the Buddhist canons reviewed for their purity. New translations of some Buddhist texts were commissioned, and works on major aspects of Buddhism compiled. Likewise, a large number of poorly disciplined monks were disrobed. A number of royal ordinances about Buddhist practices were also enacted in his reign. In short, in coping with the great social, political and economic disruptions since the mid-eighteenth century, the Siamese elite returned to the Pali texts and offered a more humanistic, realistic and rationalistic reinterpretation of Buddhism. During his reign, Rama I had several questions for the Buddhist patriarch and senior monks. Saichon Wanarat argues that, apart from intending to encourage the monks to return to the core Buddhist texts, these questions were raised to understand Buddhism more rationally and to encourage monks to study Buddhism more analytically.Footnote ⁴⁷

Mongkut therefore carried with him to monastic life in July 1824 not simply a traditional view of Buddhism, but rather a changing lifeworld. During his second Lent as a monk in 1825, Mongkut re-ordained with a venerable Mon preceptor, as he considered that Mon Buddhist practices in accordance with the Vinaya and hence to be more revered. In 1829 he moved to Wat Samorai at the edge of Bangkok, in proximity to the Catholic cathedral where Pallegoix resided. Some of his early disciples reasoned that it was easier for him to observe his new practices at that monastery. Nonetheless the real reform project started when Mongkut moved to become the abbot of his own monastery at Wat Bowonniwet, closer to the grand palace, in January 1836. When Jesse Caswell, a Protestant missionary and an associate of Bradley, was hired to teach Mongkut and his followers the English language, a programme of Buddhist education was also instituted at Wat Bowonniwet. The study of Pali texts was diligently cultivated; a printing press was established to provide educational materials and for religious affairs. A special envoy was sent to the ecclesiastics in Ceylon (Sri Lanka); a new alphabet was created as an alternative script for Pali to communicate with the Sinhalese monks; and earlier cohorts of his disciples were sent to various parts of Siam to found new monasteries for what would be known later as the Thammayuttika order.Footnote ⁴⁸

Caswell wrote in his letter to the American Board on 20 January 1846 that

Seemingly, Mongkut and his associates had arrived at this position on their own rather than by following the Ceylonese. But it is also evident that Mongkut did not only have correspondence with the Ceylonese ecclesiastics, but he seemed to be well-informed about the ongoing reform movement in that island nation off the southern coast of India. In another letter on 26 July 1845, Caswell reported that there were ‘48 Ceylonese residing in his wat, 32 of them priests. All but two of them came in a ship which the king sent to Ceylon last year, and which returned a few months since.’Footnote ⁵⁰ Mongkut undoubtedly learned of the Buddhist reform movement that had embroiled the island since its irruption in the mid-1810s. The movement was revived with Walane Siddhartha Thera's founding in 1841 of the monastic college Parama Dharmma Cetiya, which would become ‘the centre of Buddhist revival’.Footnote ⁵¹ In the 1860s, the movement would attract worldwide attention with the emergence of figures like Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala and Migettuwatte Gunananda (the ‘Lion in Oratory’) who had challenged the Protestant missionaries in Ceylon to debates.Footnote ⁵² This new period of Buddhist–Christian contention had culminated in Migettuwatte's debate with David de Silva in 1873, known as the Panadura Debate, which also involved the Theosophical Society of Ceylon, and pushed Buddhist reform onto the world stage.Footnote ⁵³

It was in this context that Prince Mongkut's comments had found their way to New York; strong as his words were, however, they appeared only in private correspondence. It was thus a preliminary reaction, and public Buddhist–Protestant Christian debates in Siam would only come some two decades later. After a little more than a year in print, in October 1845 the Nangsue Chotmaihet Bangkok Recorder printed its last issue. In William L. Bradley's words, ‘There developed a serious rift within the mission over a difference in doctrine, at last the American Board, which was faced with financial problems at home, decided to close its mission to Siam.’Footnote ⁵⁴

First Buddhist–Protestant Christian debate

Historical studies have shown that the transitional 1830s and 1840s had a profound impact on Mongkut's mindset; he was mesmerised by the very civilising process he was attempting to resist.Footnote ⁵⁵ Arguably, he accepted only the secular aspects of that process but not its spiritual ones. In other words, he was trying to break down the civilising process into its different components rather than accepting everything as a package. Undoubtedly, Mongkut read widely, subscribing to, among other periodicals, the Anthropological Review,Footnote ⁵⁶ seeking to understand the fundamentals of a ‘civilised and enlightened nation’. In one of his letters in 1853, however, he admitted that Siam was still ‘half civilised and half barbarian’.Footnote ⁵⁷ Once he was crowned King of Siam in 1851, Mongkut inaugurated a civilising project of his own. He had procured an English governess for his children, contracted foreign consultants for many of his reform projects, and even named one of his daughters ‘Princess of Light and Progress’.Footnote ⁵⁸ It was during his reign that Siam had started sending students abroad, or on shorter study-visits for training in new technologies such as printing or minting.

These developments undoubtedly created another generation of Siamese literati who would become Bradley's readership in the next two decades, after which he resumed publishing his newspaper after a hiatus. As their mission closed in the mid-1840s, most of the missionaries were reassigned to posts in China. Both Caswell and Bradley were ‘persuaded to resign completely’ from the American Board. At the time of its closure, Bradley himself was in America after his wife passed away and remained there for another few years. When Bradley returned to Siam from America in 1849, he lightened his medical practice and devoted himself to conversion and commercial publishing, the latter due to a lack of financial support from the American Missionary Association, his new affiliation.Footnote ⁵⁹ Endeavouring to improve his financial situation, Bradley also inaugurated the age of print for Siamese society, unleashing a flood of classical texts and poetry as well as new knowledge.Footnote ⁶⁰ Significant in the context of the present discussion of Protestant–Buddhist debates on faith, civilisation and modernity was his reissuing of the Nangsue Chotmaihet The Bangkok Recorder.

In reviving the Bangkok Recorder in March 1865, Bradley declared that his paper would publish material concerning politics, scientific discoveries, general knowledge, commerce, world news, and local news. He intended to offer his paper as a ‘telescope’ and a ‘great light’.Footnote ⁶¹ A year later, after having been attacked by King Mongkut, who said that the populace should not believe in his newspaper's ‘mutterings in delirium’,Footnote ⁶² Bradley expounded on this position again: his paper was equivalent to a ‘great light’ that helped illuminate the city and lessen its darkness. He suggested that wildlife and criminals were fond of darkness, and they run away and seek refuge when the sun rose. Contrary to the royal complaint about his newspaper's delirious mutterings, he argued that his paper would nourish and strengthen the country's happiness.Footnote ⁶³

From its inception, the debate between Bradley and a group of Siamese literati gradually galvanised to become one of discursive negotiation without parallel in Siam's intellectual history. The discussions encompassed religion, the West and the East, the material and spiritual worlds, light and darkness, tradition and progress, spanning a period from June 1865 until May 1866. The debate commenced with Bradley's article on the university in June 1865, which reported news of merchant donations to build a university in Bombay. Bradley suggested that the Siamese government should take advantage of this example of progress by instituting a university to teach various sciences, as well as English, French and German. The Siamese government would thereby be able to translate international laws, which would be very beneficial and necessary for the country. Bradley now offered an alternative geographical discourse, saying that Siam on the civilisational scale was not in the same ‘location’ as before. It had already moved to be in proximity with European nations. If Siam did not procure for itself European knowledge, shame and ignorance would befall it. Besides, the surrounding countries would become more advanced in terms of languages and science.Footnote ⁶⁴

A month later, in July 1865, Bradley printed an even more provocative article on a scale of progress that would help measure the differences between Western and Eastern civilisations. If one compared all things of the West and of the East, said Bradley, those that originated in the West were ‘more magnificent’ (prasoet wiset, lit. exceptionally splendid) than things that originated in the East. Epistemologically, this article was the first treatise in the discursive mode that Edward Said would later call Orientalism directed at the Siamese elite. The West meant rationality and progress. Bradley went on to claim that, armed with rationality, the West could invent many magnificent wonders. Meanwhile, the East was irrational and traditional; the East worked labouriously rather than intelligently, apparently, not able to advance. Bradley clearly states that the main reason behind Western progress was Christianity. In short, since the West has the blessing of ‘divine scripture’ (khampi wiset, lit. the excellent canon that is almighty and invincible), Westerners can observe the ‘Dharma teachings of the true God’ (thamma khong phrachao phu thi thiang thae).Footnote ⁶⁵

In October 1865, there was a response from a reader in defence of Buddhism. The anonymous reader supported the idea of founding a university, but feared that Siam might be corrupted with malicious foreign ideas. The reader complained that Bradley always associated mundane knowledge with religion. Should the university be founded, the missionaries might not only illuminate with their Western knowledge, but most likely they would also proselytise the Christian faith to their students. Finally, Buddhism would disappear.Footnote ⁶⁶ In the same issue, there was another essay on ‘European education’, presumably composed by Bradley. Its author argued that the general anxiety over the founding of a university showed that it might threaten the existence of Buddhism in Siam because the Siamese were profoundly more fond of Buddhism than of knowledge. They were worried that Buddhism would not continue to exist under the light of science and knowledge from Christian origins, just as the darkness of night could not persist when the sun has risen. If Buddhism was genuinely magnificent, he challenged, why were there no great scholars in China, Burma and Siam when there were plenty of scholars in Europe who were adept in linguistics, mathematics, astronomy, anatomy, chemistry and so forth? If Buddhism was truly great, why were there no great and strong Buddhist countries similar to the Christian nations. Above all, he reasoned, Buddhism was responsible for ‘darkness’. As a result, the Siamese have less knowledge, rather like having a little torch of light whose brilliance would vanish under sunlight. If a Siamese scholar went to Europe to demonstrate his knowledge, he would cease to exist just as a candle loses its light in daytime. The Siamese affiliation with Buddhism was thus equivalent to ‘a love of darkness rather than a love of light’. While the sun beamed its light brilliantly on the horizon, the Siamese would still be carrying his little torch.Footnote ⁶⁷

Certainly, darkness, light, and sun were not invoked here as mere metaphors of intellectual and cultural conditions of ‘uncivilised’ versus ‘civilised’ people, but it is important to note that they were also biblical. The image of ‘light’ to refer to God to contrast with the darkness of paganism, unbelievers, and sinfulness referred back to the Old Testament and is an important theme in the New Testament. They refer respectively to the spiritual darkness of unbelievers who have not yet been saved by the light of the gospel. Their semantic connotations are highly charged with Western logics of modernity and the civilising mission, invoked deliberately to posit Christianity as a moral imperative for the Siamese. On the one hand, Bradley proposed the same thesis encapsulating Christianity and modernity that he had advanced two decades earlier. On the other, he offered another discourse, one that presents Buddhism and Christianity as polar opposites. In short, he explicitly argued that Christianity was a source of progress and modernity, whereas by contrast, Buddhism was a source of darkness, ignorance, and an obstacle to progress.

In the following issue, there was an article ‘Kham tuean sati than thanglai’ (Advice to all sentient beings) by an anonymous author who announced that he was someone who truly loves, but does not live in, Siam. The writer praised the Japanese government for recently sending 19 young gentlemen to study in Britain, and complained that there was no one in Siam who was truly thirsty for real knowledge that would be of benefit to the country. Whenever an international problem occurred, Siam always needed to hire a foreigner to translate the official documents of state. That was hardly tolerable, according to the writer. A country that was not well prepared in its administration and did not keenly seek knowledge and observe morality would certainly not survive as independent and in the end would become subject to another country.Footnote ⁶⁸

In the same issue, another anonymous letter attacked Bradley's piece on European education. Its author insisted that Buddhism must be considered only within the spiritual realm as a religion that is resistant to human passions. That would already require high intelligence and contemplative qualities. With such a stance, the writer refuted Bradley's thesis of encapsulating Christianity and modernity: a lot of Europeans did not affiliate themselves with Christianity, but were just as learned and prosperous as Christians.Footnote ⁶⁹ Instead of Bradley's polarising discourse of Buddhism and Christianity, the writer offered another binary category: matter and spirit, the secular and the sacred. In terms of matter and the secular world, the writer chose to adopt the progress and rationality introduced by the West. But in terms of spirituality and religiosity, Buddhism was praised as a model of spiritual guidance.

Because of its strongly worded attack on the civilising logics of Christianity and modernity, Bradley cautiously responded with ‘Khamtop than phu sansoen phutta satsana’ (A reply to the one who praises Buddhism) in the following issue. Bradley argued that any pious person who has true faith, that is, Christianity, whether wise or ignorant, shall be saved. He then took pains to offer an encapsulation of Christianity. Despite some pockets of atheism, European countries were progressive and prosperous because of their Christian origin. Atheists were simply taking advantage of Christianity. In other words, all European knowledge was the sweet fruit of Christianity, just as the darkness in Siam had its origin in Buddhism. The progress of European unbelievers was a luminous product of the Bible that the Lord Jesus Christ had benevolently revealed; similarly, the darkness in Siam came from the Buddhist canon. The reward for a good deed in Christianity, that is ‘light and will power’, was superior to the rewards of Buddhism. Meanwhile, the backwardness of Chinese and Vietnamese Christians in Siam was due to their lip-service to the faith, and hence they could not be seen as true Christians.Footnote ⁷⁰

Two issues later, in December 1865, Bradley printed two more pages on the same topic, indicating that relations were quite tense between the missionaries and the Siamese literati at the time. In attempting to demarcate a difference between the true Christian and the lip-service Christian, Bradley wrote, God truly loves true Christians and blesses them with magnificent things for their country. These Christians are a light that illuminates the earth. Wherever they may be, they will contribute to their country. Their country will be stronger than others, and stronger than that of non-believers. Lip-service Christians who do not truly love the Lord Jesus, but live in a truly Christian country, would definitely enjoy those blessings of the Lord, just as the sun shines its light on the good and the evil alike. A good example was the French anarchy of 1789. For Bradley, the upheavals were a direct result of Robespierre's regime cruelly forcing the people to abolish religion, with the rationale that there was no God, that the world exists by itself, and there was no need to fear God. The anarchy that prevailed was thus God's punishment. The world became peaceful again after a group of the faithful captured and executed Robespierre. Bradley later narrated the tale of an infidel king who had an audience with Queen Victoria. The king had enquired why Britain become a greater power than any other country? The queen replied piously that it was because the British had the Bible.Footnote ⁷¹

After Bradley's great efforts to convince doubting readers over two months, an anonymous author, possibly King Mongkut, gave a long reply, saying that Bradley had to publish it in two issues. Fundamentally the article was a refutation of Bradley's thesis that the Bible was a great light and a source of ‘enlightened wisdom and knowledge’. That claim sounded strange, said its author, and he was not certain whether it was a serious or a frivolous remark. If one examined world geography, one would never satisfy oneself with answers from the Book of Genesis. He then proceeded with modern scientific knowledge that clearly departed from traditional Siamese cosmography: the duration of day and night as a direct result of the earth's rotation rather than a creation of God. He wondered whether God had any knowledge of modern discoveries, including the steamboat and latitude and longitude. If God did have such knowledge, he enquired, why did He not reveal it to Noah during the Flood? He reasoned that the Bible stood for ignorance of certain kinds of knowledge, especially modern astronomy. In short, Christianity was bifurcated from science and progress. Some learned men, he argued, were well-versed in modern astronomy yet had a high regard for Buddhism as being superior to all other religions. And the writer still was its faithful follower.Footnote ⁷²

Bradley retreated and acceded to this bifurcation of Christianity and modernity in an article ‘Nangsue top phu thi sansoen phuttha satsana’ (A reply to one who praises Buddhism) in the following issue. He admitted that the Bible was not a handbook of all knowledge. Fundamentally, the Bible was a canon that illuminates minds to recognise the existence of the Creator, who is the absolute true and permanent God. Men should have faith and pay absolute respect to Him. Originally, man had fallen and committed great sin, in ignorance, and forgot to pray for Him. But a man who follows the Lord's command, shall once again become enlightened.

It is tempting to argue here that Bradley's attempt to yoke Christianity and modernity together finally lost its emotive power in this article. The discursive pair became bifurcated and incompatible. Simultaneously, Bradley introduced a new topic: a history of the fall. Original sin had dispatched all mankind from the Garden of Eden to a terrifying darkness where God could not be known. Nevertheless, the Messiah was God's promise for salvation from that unfathomable darkness. The Bible was thus an instrument that would assist in the purification of the mind's darkness, superior to all other religious canons. All scientific knowledge was not, therefore, equivalent to the gospel because it was the Bible that helped mankind discover ‘light’ that would make hearts hundreds of thousand times more joyful than any infidel faith could. Despite agreeing that Christianity was not equivalent to modernity, Bradley persisted in arguing that, apart from illuminating one's mind and happiness, the gospel was helpful in inducing insight and intelligence in all of its followers in all branches of knowledge more profoundly than any other religion, even though the Book did not deal with such secular things.Footnote ⁷³

The allegory of the fallen angel was used here to signify the moral superiority of Christianity to which the infidel native is required to submit. Though Christianity was not in tune with scientific advancement, it had moral force. In other words, the Christian mind is morally sanctioned and superior to the Buddhist one. This article had thus claimed certain ground for the moral space of Christianity in Siam. After this, there would not be any writing, either by Siamese or Westerners, on the topic again for as long as the Bangkok Recorder was still in print; in February 1867 Bradley decided to wind up his paper in the final issue of its second year.

Thai Buddhism's defence of science

It is indisputable that these debates had revolved around the ongoing controversy of identifying the one true religion. Thongchai has demonstrated that since the mid-nineteenth century the missionaries in Siam had started to churn out catechisms and contentious arguments. There was something rather different in the nature of the Buddhist–Catholic controversy compared to the Buddhist–Protestant debates due to their different positions. Whereas Bradley and the later Protestant missionaries attempted to extend their theology to include scientific advancement, namely by bringing together Christianity and modern science, the Catholics would retain their arguments on the theology of God and the refutation of Buddhism.

In 1844, Bishop Pallegoix, head of the Catholic Mission in Siam, published the Butxa visatchana (Questions and answers) in romanised Thai, and republished this book in 1850 in Thai script under a different title, Maha kangwon (Of great concern); in 1894 and 1897, both were reprinted under the same title, Butxa visatchana.Footnote ⁷⁴ In the 1897 editions, Pallegoix expressed great concern regarding which religion was genuinely the true one. He pondered that only the religion that submitted to Lord Phra phutti chao was true. Only a faith that offered norms for correcting human behaviour and relations with God and fellow men could be judged as the true religion.Footnote ⁷⁵

In invoking the term Phra phutti chao, literally, the Magnificent Buddha who is the Lord, Pallegoix meant God, the Creator.Footnote ⁷⁶ In other words, he translated the concept of a supreme being, that is, God the Creator, boldly using a signifier for the Lord Buddha in the Siamese semantic system. For Pallegoix, only God the Creator was the true Phra phutti chao.Footnote ⁷⁷ Further, Lord Buddha, the Gautama, was not the genuine Phra phutti chao; since he was a mere human being. Pallegoix explained that the being of God is incompatible and far from the being of humankind.Footnote ⁷⁸ The true God is pure spirit, with qualities of omnipotence and perfection equivalent to none. He has no origin and no end. He exists everywhere, in heaven and on Earth, in ways comparable to the sunlight illuminating the Earth. He enlightened all in the past, the present, and the future. God is thus beyond human comprehensibility, much like gazing on the dazzling rays of the midday sun, impossible for human eyes. On the contrary, Lord Gautama was not the true Phra phutti chao, that is, God, since he did not have the abovementioned qualities. Men should not, therefore, pay due respect to the Lord Buddha. Instead, humankind must totally submit to God, the Creator, who was the true Phra phutti chao.Footnote ⁷⁹ Pallegoix's explanation was not only provocative but would have been extremely unconvincing and absurd to Siamese readers.

Thereafter, apart from biblical tales of creation and original sin, God's commandments were compared with the Buddhist canon, that is, the Tipitaka. In contrast to the commandments, the Tipitaka had a human creator, the Buddha. Its principles existed in and by themselves; and its life-cycle logic was untrue.Footnote ⁸⁰ Pallegoix pointed out further that there were differences between the idolatry of a Buddha image and the practice of worshipping Jesus Christ, the Cross, and the saints. The Christian did not worship these relics as equivalent to God; Jesus and the Cross were worshipped because of His sacrifice on the cross for human redemption; Mary, mother of God, because she was immaculate and holy; and the saints for strictly observing the commandments and practising pieties.Footnote ⁸¹

Pallegoix also explained Catholic ecclesiastics, the state of death, judgement day, and paradise that would be permanent and bring supreme joy. He was of the opinion that there would be no Nirvana in the Buddhist sense. Arguing that if the spirit was no longer in existence, there could be no more supreme happiness.Footnote ⁸² In later chapters there are elaborations on Catholic doctrine, Christianity in China and Vietnam, sketchy notes on Hinduism, Islam, and indigenous beliefs. Finally, there is a short review and criticism of the Protestant missions in Siam—‘heretics’, he called them—before concluding with a Catholic prayer manual.

In 1867, the year that Nangsue Chotmaihet The Bangkok Recorder ran its final issue, Reverend John Taylor Jones published Trachoo thong (The golden balance), a balance scale between Christianity and Buddhism. Jones said that he intended to help people know what was right and what was wrong, useful and harmful, truthful and deceitful. He asserted that his balance would be meticulously precise in measuring religion. In this regard, many people were almost sightless, equivalent to the blind. He hoped his small but magnificent book would be a magic pharmakon that could help enlighten human vision and be pure as the celestial eyes that had the power of sight even in darkness. Disputes between Buddhism and Christianity—about which religion was truthful, and which was not—would be settled. Either Buddhism or Christianity was the only one that could be true, not both.Footnote ⁸³

These contentions, of both the Catholics and the Protestants, eventually led to the publication of a significant text in Siam's intellectual history, Chaophraya Thipakorawong's Sadaeng Kitchanukit, first published in 1867.Footnote ⁸⁴ I will argue that one can never fully understand this monumental work without the texts and context of the debates discussed above.Footnote ⁸⁵

Thipakorawong or Kham Bunnag, an aristocratic member of the literati, was a high official, a minister of foreign affairs during Mongkut's reign, and above all a scholar: a translator of Chinese dynastic history, and compiler of the Bangkok dynastic chronicle from the First to Fourth Reign (1782–1868).Footnote ⁸⁶ After his manuscript of Kitchanukit had been denied publication by the missionaries, partly because of its provocative anti-Christian content, he published the book himself on a lithograph of his own devising.

Thipakorawong not only retained the bifurcation of religion and science, Christianity and modernity as seen earlier in the press debates, he insisted that ‘all [religions] … [were] opposed to true astronomical teaching’.Footnote ⁸⁷ In Islam, claimed Thipakorawong, when scholars had discovered that the earth was spherical and rotating in space, Mohammedan followers put them in prison as this explanation was opposite to the teachings of God.Footnote ⁸⁸ He challenged the missionaries’ claims that this astronomical fact—that the earth is spherical and rotates on its own axis—was Christian doctrine and not opposite to the teaching of God. In fact, it was formerly treated as heretical thought that risked severe punishment.Footnote ⁸⁹ Even a vernacular Buddhist text such Traibhumi lokawinitchai (Three worlds cosmographical description) was also challenged. Its teachings were not only untrue, in Thipakorawong's view, but also included non-Buddhist elements of Hinduism within Buddhist cosmology.Footnote ⁹⁰ Indeed people of various origins, whether they were Hindu, Chinese, or European, had similar ideas about ancient astronomy. The axiom that the Earth was spherical and rotating was definitely a novel astronomical idea of learned men who were not of Christian origin.

In terms of religious knowledge itself, Thipakorawong questioned the missionaries’ claims that Buddhism was not a true religion and not equivalent to Christianity.Footnote ⁹¹ He attacked the missionaries stationed in Bangkok, one by one. For a certain Catholic missionary (apparently Pallegoix) who wrote a book called Maha kangwon (Great concern), Thipakorawong suggested that his concern should focus on proselytising his own religion. Meanwhile, he raised a few questions for the author: If God is indeed the Creator, why should He create various great teachers, all of whom claim that they are the only true followers of God, and the others are enemies of Christianity? Why would God, if he is indeed the Creator, create many religions that would become enemies of His teachings?Footnote ⁹²

As for the Protestant missionary Charles Gutzlaff, who opined that Buddhist teachings were meaningless because their main aim was paying homage to the Buddha, Thipakorawong wondered whether this was not also the case with Christianity or Islam, which proselytised their followers to worship only God. If a person who had committed a mortal sin converted to Islam, he would be forgiven and go to the paradise. But if he did not convert, he would remain in hell infinitely. Why would God create many religions to test man? Would it not be better if He created only one and all men could go to paradise?Footnote ⁹³

Thipakorawong stated that he had once inquired of Jesse Caswell: How do missionaries know that the Christian God exists but Chinese gods do not, when there was no evidentiary proof of either and none could behold them with their own eyes. The myth of God and Creation is thereby of ancient peoples’ invention in their own minds. If God is indeed the Creator and man is his creature, would it not be so with the appendix in man's intestine? An operation undertaken by a missionary to remove it would be in contradiction with God's will. According to the missionaries’ proselytising, the appendix was created purposively by God as punishment for human sin. Caswell was very angry with him and labelled Thipakorawong an ‘incurable man’ who was unteachable.Footnote ⁹⁴ As for Jones’ Trachoo thong, Thipakorawong simply brushed it aside; he viewed Jones’ ‘balance’ as ‘very one-sided’.Footnote ⁹⁵

Overall, Thipakorawong was problematising the Protestant discourse that fused Christianity and modernity. For him, Christianity and modernity were incompatible, and they needed to be kept separate; this would be crystallised in his reply to Gutzlaff's claim that Western technology—the steamship, railways, telegraphs, guns—was superior to that of other human races. Thipakorawong opined that all human beings suffered similarly, and none were better or worse than any other. Technological advancements were a secular aspect of the evolution of human knowledge, and had nothing to do with religion. There was no evidentiary proof that God had given such knowledge to the Europeans. It was also not true that if a man converted to Christianity, he would be saved from original sin. There was no such thing, for him. The convert also suffered during the labour of giving birth, and from infant mortality, and all other sicknesses in the same manner as the infidel.Footnote ⁹⁶

Thipakorawong did not only discuss Christianity; he also offered a sort of comparative discussion of religion by drawing on Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.Footnote ⁹⁷ Religion was a personal choice, according to him, and one could choose which was the true religion. There was no end to the disputes between the followers of each religion to determine which was the most righteous. Even the Kha, a tribal people in Laos whom Thipakorawong classified at the lowest level of social evolution, held animistic beliefs and worshipped certain spirits as their benefactors. It was impossible to convince them to abandon their spirit cults.Footnote ⁹⁸ Just as there are the Sunni and the Shia among the Muslims, within Christianity itself there were different denominations such as Catholicism, Mormonism, and Protestantism. For him there were only two kinds of religion: those calling for help, and those relying on the self. Christianity was of the first kind, calling for help, and Buddhism was of the latter.Footnote ⁹⁹

Buddhism, progress, evolution

In his works on Thipakorawong's Buddhist thought published in the early 1870s, just a few years after Kitchanukit was published, Henry Alabaster (a British diplomat turned Siamese royal adviser) called Thipakorawong the ‘Modern Buddhist’ and concluded that in his discourse religion is ‘the science of Man, and not the revelation of God’.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ In Siam the controversy continued to reverberate time and again during the late nineteenth century.

After Bradley's publishing venture went bankrupt, partly because of a libel suit filed against him as editor, another entrepreneur came along. Samuel J. Smith was a Presbyterian missionary who served his calling at Bangkholaem not far from the European residential quarter. He later established a private college called Siam University. From 1868, Smith and his associate, Thomas S. Andrew, founded the first English daily newspaper in Siam, the Bangkok Daily Advertiser, which ran for less than a year, and later in that same year Smith started another daily paper, the Siam Daily Advertiser. His success with the commercial publication of Thai literary writing became legendary. Eventually he decided to publish a fortnightly Thai periodical, Chotmaihet Sayam Samai, which was published from 16 August 1882 until to 18 August 1886. Its yearly subscription rate was 3 baht, and it sold for 1 salueng (1/4 baht) per copy.

Broadly, Sayam Samai was similar in many ways to Bradley's Bangkok Recorder. It printed reports on world news, local news, obituaries, official decrees, complaints, and commentaries on various topics such as the monkhood, the Chinese-immigrant tax, theatre, and entertainment. For instance, a series of commentaries on political economy was published over several issues covering property, use-value and exchange-value, and labour. Among the topics that most attracted readers and occasionally stirred a series of exchanges were commentaries on the meaning of the civilising process and comparative religion. Apparently, the state of being civilised (siwilai) and how to measure whether Siam was or was not yet civilised was of great interest.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Occasionally, the paper would print news and comments on Christianity, for example, on ‘Krut farang’ (Christmas), held in memory of God's benevolence that has given ‘the passage of salvation’ to humankind. Those who accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord (phra borom lokanatha, lit. the magnificent Lord who is the pillar/saviour of this earth, a Pali-Sanskrit term Siamese used to refer to the Buddha), would be emancipated from the fear of hell as they were destined to go to heaven.Footnote ¹⁰²

In February 1883, Smith printed an anonymous letter written to complain that the author just wanted to read about official matters and it was foreign notices, and especially news from Europe, which lots of people also wanted. Stories about Jesus Christ should be published in full, but as a complement for subscribers. He warned that proselytising Christianity in Siam would not be easy as the Siamese had long been adherents of their own religion, and the Siamese were quite fearful of being tortured for wielding the cross.Footnote ¹⁰³ Possibly, he was recalling the persecution of Catholics in the late Ayutthaya period or during King Taksin's reign.

The debate over salvation was still very much alive. In the next issue, another reader was doubtful of the Buddhist concept of salvation/enlightenment. Making lots of merit such as temple-building and donations aiming to make merit for the next life, he wrote, does not mean ‘gaining merit’ in Christianity. In that faith, a person must be baptised before he could be saved.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ The Buddhist–Christian debate thus resurfaced in this paper. The discussions attracted both Buddhists and Christians, though presumably the latter were Protestants rather than Catholic readers of this Presbyterian paper. In one case, a Christian defended his faith, saying that Jesus was both human and divine, since he was the incarnation of God. He had just appeared for man's eyes in human form, but in fact his soul was the soul of God.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ Smith at once printed his own comment alongside the article. He explained that God is not human and a human being cannot be God. Jesus had appeared in a human body, but his soul was God's spirit. Jesus had thus performed miracles, such as walking on water, raising the dead, and letting the blind see. He was crucified because he wanted to demonstrate before men's eyes that he had sacrificed his life for man's original sin. Men and sinners who believed in and followed him would thus be saved on judgement day.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

A few issues later, a letter by a Buddhist queried these assertions. In claiming that the God for all nations is the same God, its author asked about His origin, who appointed Him to be God, and who had made Him the ‘owner’ (chao khong) of all life? The letter's author wanted more elaboration. Since Smith had always referred to the Bible, the author wanted evidentiary proof from the canon. As for himself, the author of the letter said, he believed in the Buddha's teachings because he could see their truth. The Buddha was not jealous of other religions, and he did not boast that he was the true God. It was thus more beneficial if Smith would print only useful teachings, he suggested. He and his associates would then observe its truth and choose their own practice.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Smith replied that it would be hard to elaborate on these matters in a short space. He simply suggested that if a person would really like to know more about these matters, he should buy a book called Butxa lae Visatchana.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

In a letter commenting on the country's progress, in terms of more buildings and cleanliness, its author opined that this was so because Christianity had been proselytised in Siam.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Another author pointed out that the main reason for progress in all kinds of fields of knowledge, or wealth and happiness in countries such as Britain and America, was Christianity. Once again, the story of Queen Victoria who had replied to this very question by referring to the Bible was reiterated.Footnote ¹¹⁰ In reforming their country, another said that the Japanese had made the West their teachers. It was because the Japanese believed in the power of Christianity that Japan had thus achieved a reputation for its progress.Footnote ¹¹¹ In contrast, another reader commented that a country's progress had nothing to do with religion. Instead, it depended on its people. Progress was possible because a country's population was harmonious and unified in its practices of commerce and technological advancement.Footnote ¹¹²

The debate was never-ending until the paper ceased publication in 1886. Nonetheless, Bradley's original thesis encompassing Christianity and modernity was never taken for granted again. But perhaps the appetite for debate about both propositions, that is, Christianity as a cause of progress and its refutation, had faded?Footnote ¹¹³ One letter, aside from reporting that some Siamese took the free Christian tracts to use the paper to roll their tobacco in, for example, complained that there were some people who would like to convert but declined to do so out of fear of persecution by the authorities. They therefore wrote these questions-and-answers for Smith's paper anonymously, hoping that it would help publicise their faith to a wider audience.Footnote ¹¹⁴ So the debate continued, but with different positions. Themes of the debate tended to focus more on religious matters, for example, on the cycles of birth and rebirth, merit-making, and the ethics of animal slaughter.

The two-decade interval between Bradley's paper in the mid-1860s and Smith's in the mid-1880s seems to have not only changed the readership for such periodicals but expanded it as well. The literati who authored letters and comments printed in the 1880s comprised of readers from several walks of life associated with the new bourgeois money economy. They included state officials, Buddhist monks, local Protestants, foreign residents (presumably the so-called ‘Asiatics’ from other parts of Asia who were able to read Thai), local clerks of foreign companies who had travelled abroad, and residents of outer provinces such as Phetchaburi.Footnote ¹¹⁵ This expanded readership in the 1880s was arguably the outcome of Bangkok's economic and social development following the signing of Siam's free-trade treaty with Britain in 1855.

It is tempting to argue that the 1880s debates had not involved the leading elites as had been the case with the 1860s readership. The 1880s was a crucial transitional period in mainland Southeast Asia as Upper Burma had fallen to the British in 1885, and Tonkin and Annam had become French protectorates in the 1880s. In parallel, Siam was on the eve of its own reforms, centralising the Bangkok dynasty's power over autonomous principalities. The younger generation of King Chulalongkorn and his brothers who would become a major force for reform were all in their twenties or thirties and were consolidating their power, especially after the death of the regent Suriyawong in 1883 and the last ‘second-king’, Prince Wichaichan, in 1886. When the last issue of Smith's paper was printed in mid-1886, sweeping reforms were well on their way.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Visible signs of these changes were new industries such as the mechanical rice mills along the Chao Phraya and the arrival of trams in the late 1880s.Footnote ¹¹⁷

In addition, the growth of Western education was at least as important as the economic and social development. Over time, Siam began to have a critical mass of elites trained in the West and therefore easily able to separate secular/material from spiritual progress and refute Bradley's views. These Siamese reformers saw themselves as men of science and scientific inquiry piqued their interest. A brief glance at journals published in the same period as Smith's paper in the 1870s to 1890s, that is, Davunovada, Museum, Vajirayan, and Vajirayan Viset, should suffice to fill in this picture. Scientific knowledge dominated the pages of these periodicals. For instance, Prince Kashemsanta Sobhaga, the editor of this generation's first periodical, Darunovada, published in 1874–75, wrote on modern geology.Footnote ¹¹⁸ Museum, published in 1877–78, featured essays on mineralogy, obstetrics, and the laws of nature.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Phraya Pasakorawong, a minister of education during Chulalongkorn's reign, wrote a short piece printed in the first volume of Vajirayan on the meaning of science.Footnote ¹²⁰ Prince Damrong, the driving force of reforms as minister of education and later minister of the interior, wrote an article on elementary physiology.Footnote ¹²¹ In short, these journals continued to publish articles on scientific topics such as the life cycle of trees, modern geography, and so forth.Footnote ¹²² Phenomena such as chemiluminescence, bioluminescence, and unknown animals became objects that were worthy of gaze and observation.Footnote ¹²³

On religion, notably among the Thammayuttika order closely associated with the royal house of Chakri, the main preoccupations were making Buddhism more rational and more scriptural/canonical. The Buddhist canon was printed in Thai script for the first time, as opposed to handwritten texts using traditional and obscure scripts such as khom, and widely studied and translated. The Jataka tales were regarded as parables for their moral lessons. Meanwhile, Chulalongkorn also sponsored the British Pali Text Society's translation and publication of the Tipitaka in English. Prince-Patriarch Wachirayan Warorot, another of Mongkut's sons, was also instrumental in Buddhist educational reform.Footnote ¹²⁴

This next generation's interest in scientific inquiry eventually made a tryst with Buddhism. In an essay titled ‘Buddhism as Exists in Siam’ that was read on his behalf at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, Prince Chandradat informed the gathering that Buddhist tradition in Siam taught that all things came from the Dharma, the ‘essence of nature’. The Dharma itself consisted of two essences: matter (rupa) and spirit (nama). Matter represents ‘the world and the corporeal parts’, while spirit represents ‘the mind of man’. The Dharma, however, represents three phenomena of ‘the universe’ that ‘exist in every being’: the accomplishment of eternal evolution; sorrow and suffering; and a separate power that is uncontrollable by human desire and belongs not to human beings. The universe's phenomena, he argued, ‘varied according to the degree of evolution accomplished within it’. For him, Buddhism means evolution. ‘The difference between all material things,’ said Chandradat, ‘depends upon the degree of evolution that is inherent to matter; and the difference between all spirit depends upon the degree of will, which is the evolution of spirit.’ In short, all things are thus perishable in nature and shall be destroyed and recreated time and again continually ‘by an eternal evolution’.Footnote ¹²⁵

What Chandradat was referring to here is the Buddhist concept of impermanence and also, arguably, Darwin's theory of evolution. The Siamese literati had access to this seminal work not long after it was published in 1859. The sixth edition of Darwin's The Origin of Species, published in 1882, appeared in the 1892 Catalogue of the Books of The Royal Vajirajan Library.Footnote ¹²⁶ The earliest account related to Darwin's evolution that I could trace was a short essay on human races in Vajirayan Viset in 1886, written by Prince Sonabandit. Few authorities, he wrote, would argue that all human races shared the same origin and came from the same parent. Another authority believed that human beings were even evolved from certain animals similar to apes, but not monkeys as they are today, and that these apes were the primordial ancestors of mankind. They had evolved gradually, both physically and mentally, until they were in human form. Thereafter, they had advanced in time to become human beings as they are today.Footnote ¹²⁷ In another essay, Prince Prisdang took a comparative perspective on evolution, citing for instance that there was a big difference between forest people such as the curly-haired natives who still eat human flesh and civilised people such as the British or Siamese.Footnote ¹²⁸

These Siamese literati began to participate in the international networks of scientific advancement that became embodied in the Natural History Society of Siam, founded on 4 February 1913. For instance, Prince Chumpon was recruited as a member, and exhibited more than 50 specimens of fungi collected from various regions of Siam at the second general meeting of the society in 1916 at the Bangkok Times office on 16 August. At the second general meeting of the society on 3 July 1917, at the same venue, the prince exhibited specimens of birds, mammals, and shells that he had collected from southeastern Siam.Footnote ¹²⁹

Twentieth-century legacy

The debates between the Siamese literati and Protestant missionaries not only illustrate a conjuncture of two epistemologies that clashed over the projects of revelation and progress. They also demanded a reappraisal by the literati on the meanings of mundane knowledge and religiosity. In contrast to the Protestant thesis that combined soteriological matters with a civilisational discourse, Buddhism as practised in Siam, from the point of view of its literati, was superior and precocious in its understanding of the laws of nature. In short, they argued that Buddhism was scientific, and its teachings on level with the contemporary vogue for evolutionary theory.

The emphasis of this epistemic position was more forceful in the publications of another Siamese generation, especially the young men who had studied abroad in the early twentieth century and were attracted to Orientalist studies of Buddhism by figures such as T.W. Rhys Davids, Max Müller and Monier Monier-Williams. An early notable was Luang Suriyaphong Phisutthiphaet (Krachang Bunnag), son of Siamese nobleman Phraya Suriyanuwat, minister plenipotentiary in Berlin at the time of Krachang's birth in 1891. Krachang spent the first half of his life as a student in Europe. He studied in the German gymnasium system before becoming a student of medicine at Heidelberg University in 1912, graduating as a doctor from Berne University in 1921. After a three-decade-long career in Europe, including a period as a POW during the war that cost his engineer-student brother's life, Krachang returned to Siam as a lecturer at the medical school before moving to the railways medical service. Later in life, he developed an interest in Buddhism. His grounding in Buddhism came not from the Siamese monastic tradition but translations, studies, and interpretations of the abovementioned Orientalists. For Krachang, the Buddha was a real historical person whose existence could be proved by archaeological excavation and historical evidence such as the discovery of his ashes in Piprahwa in 1898, the Lion Capital of Asoka erected at the border of Nepal found in 1890–98, and early Chinese travelogues. In one of his writings in English on ‘The Buddha's Doctrine of Truth’ (c.1935), he pondered on the law of dependent causation that ‘all natural phenomena … is subject to cause and effect, and that everything which we can grasp with our senses arises and ceases in dependence of each other’. Accordingly, ‘nothing in this world remains the same for two consecutive moments and everything that we experience with our senses is transient, miserable and non-self’.Footnote ¹³⁰

Most remarkable among these figures was Samak Buravas, who had a Bachelor of Science with first-class honours from the Royal School of Mines, London University, and was an eloquent author. When not occupied with his studies or profession, Samak composed treatises on various topics. In 1935, still an undergraduate engineering student in London, he wrote a treatise on scientific Buddhism and sent it back to be published in Bangkok. Among his most well-received works, still in print today, was a treatise on Buddhist philosophy as explained from a scientific perspective.Footnote ¹³¹ The Buddhist new millennium (yuga phra sri araya) will surely start in this atomic age, wrote Samak, and it would be a real scientific era (yuga witthayasat an thae ching). Unlimited funds will be channelled for scientific affairs, all research will be devoted to pure knowledge, and scientists will find their utopia on this earth.Footnote ¹³² Another notable member of this generation was Yong Hoontrakool, who also had a Bachelor of Science. In 1953, Yong published an English essay on ‘Buddha Dhamma and Science’ for the annual Visakha pamphlet of the Thailand Buddhist Society, intended for circulation to Buddhist societies abroad. This essay was later translated and published together with an original English version as a cremation volume reprinted several times. Apart from elaborating on the genesis of the Paticcasamuppada and the laws of physics, he proposed that ‘The Law of Kamma is, in fact, the mother of Newton's Third Law of Motion’.Footnote ¹³³ Likewise, Professor Uay Getusingh, a former head of physiology and dean of pharmacy at Siriraj Medical School, delivered a series of lectures on Buddhism and science in the 1960s, proposing that the Buddha's analysis of relations between sense-organs, sense-perceptions, and mental states were more advanced in their detail than modern physiological research by two-and-a-half millennia, and had been formulated without the benefit of modern laboratories.Footnote ¹³⁴

This epistemic position has been reproduced or expounded time and again in Thai Buddhist literature, either by scholars or observers. Among recent publications along these lines was an attempt by an engineer-turned-monk to bring Buddhism and science together by proposing that both branches of knowledge share the same end: a search for truth in nature.Footnote ¹³⁵

A towering figure among these scholars and observers was Buddhadasa Bhikkhu (1906–93), whose life and works have been highly influential in twentieth-century Thailand.Footnote ¹³⁶ In an interview with one of his disciples, Buddhadasa stated that Samak Burawas’ scientific explanation of Buddhism had inspired him to employ scientific principles and empirical demonstration to elaborate his reinterpretation of Buddhism.Footnote ¹³⁷ Among his astonishing remarks was that the Buddha's teachings of centuries ago were scientific. Generally basing his thinking on the Kalama sutta, a sermon of the Buddha that alleges truth cannot be established until it is verified by personal experience, Buddhadasa also invoked other teachings of the Buddha to offer a reinterpretation of rebirth and suffering (jati/bhava and dukkha), which is, in fact, a psychological or mental state conditioned by the law of cause-and-effect (hetupaccaya).Footnote ¹³⁸ Suffering and rebirth were thus reinterpreted as psychological consequences here and now in this world that everyone can observe and make manifest; they have nothing to do with the previous life or the next life, as is usually interpreted in the Theravada doctrine.Footnote ¹³⁹ Buddhism and science, for Buddhadasa, ‘are alike in their scientific principles’,Footnote ¹⁴⁰ and Buddhism is thus a scientific religion.