South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons^™

Beginning in the nineteenth century and continuing on through the early twentieth century, Thai intellectuals became alert both to the category of religion in general, and to the specific religions that were crystallizing in the colonizing and colonized worlds. Their appropriation of these categories transformed the traditional notion of the satsana, the unique heritage of the Buddha, into Buddhism, merely one of numerous satsanas (religions). Certain contours of this large-scale change in the categories of religious self-understanding emerge when we consider the choices of two Thai authors, Sathiankoset and Nakhaprathip, in their book, Beliefs of Friends (Latthi Kho’ng Phu’an). In …