2. Pagoda and Monastery: Reflections on the Social Morphology of Burmese Buddhism*
Abstract
Research Communications2. Pagoda and Monastery: Reflections on the Social Morphology of Burmese Buddhism* SAGE Publications, Inc.1970DOI: 10.1177/002190967000500405 A.W. Sadler University of Vermont, Burlington, U.S.A. What we have attempted here is a study of what might be called (in the manner of the Durkheim school) the "social morphology" of Theravada Buddhism, in its Burmese setting. We will encounter two types of building complex, the paya ("pagoda") and related structures, and the kyaung taik (monastery compound). Correspondingly, we encounter two distinct levels of 1 J. Holmes, "A Canadian Commonwealth", The Round Table, pp. 346-347. 2 Nyerere, J. "The African View of Rhodcsia" Round Table, No. 59, April 1969, p. 135. * The author wishes to express his special debt to Picrrc O. H. Bessaignet, now of the University of Nice, and to the late and beloved U Aung Than, of the University of Rangoon's Department of Pali and Buddhist Studies. religion - lay religion, based upon dathana (dassana, darshan), and monastic religion, based upon vinaya (discipline). In examining the morphology of Burmese monasticism and the morphology of Burmese lay religion, we seek an understanding of the interaction, as well as the separation, between the two. This interaction we find takes