Merit and the Millennium
Subtitle: Routine and Crisis in the Ritual Lives of the Lahu People
By: Anthony R. Walker.
Series: Studies in sociology and social anthropology
Publisher: Hindustan Pub. Corp., New Delhi
Published: 2003
Place of publication: New Delhi
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 907
Copyright date: 2003
Subjects: Lahu (Asian people); Thailand, Lahu people;North Thailand: Lahu people; China: Lahu people; Yunnan: Lahu people.; Southeast Asia -- Religious life and customs.
Genres: Ethnology; religion
Description: xxx1, 907 p. : ill., maps; 25 cm.
Notes: The Lahu mountain folk, numbering some 700,000, are traditionally swidden farmers, who share with other peoples the rugged highlands along the borderlands between China’s Yunnan Province and the Southeast Asian nations of Burma, Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.
Lahu ideas and practices related to the supernatural world include a traditional animism affirming innumerable spirit entities, with varying capacities to protect and to harm mortal beings, and investing culturally significant phenomena with animating soul force. The majority of Lahu recognize an almighty creator-divinity, who is for many the principal focus of worship. The author argues that Mahayana Buddhist monks in Yunnan likely generated this situation during the 18th and 19th centuries, by linking the Lahu’s earlier concept of a non-intervening creator-divinity with their own notions of transcendental Buddhahood. Subsequently, monotheistic Christianity was able to utlize and strengthen an already well-established Lahu theistic tradition.
For 200 years or more, the everyday ritual lives and supportive ideologies of many Lahu communities have been challenged periodically by messianic priests, usually seeking to unite their politically fragmented mountain folk into a wider polity capable of challenging the might of valley-dwelling overlords. A series of theocratic Buddhist monks were significant perpetrators, if not the founders, of Lahu messianism. Important Christian missionaries likewise were seen as messiahs by large numbers of their Lahu followers.

This book, the result of more than 35 years of research in field and library, seeks to explain the diverse ideological strands and associated liturgical practices that inform the worldviews of the Lahu-speaking peoples.  
The work is presented in three parts. One: a micro-study of the Lahu community in North Thailand in which the author lived for four years, together with an investigation of that community’s social-historical matrix; Two: an examination of the diverse strands of Lahu supernatural ideas and ritual practices, from routine animo-theism to Mahayana Buddhism and the religio-political crises generated by messianic priests; and Three: a portrayal of the Lahu’s experience with Christianity, a worldview that has attracted about a quarter of the entire ethnic category, in the author’s view  because its propagators have been able to  manipulate to their advantage the Lahu’s prior messianic traditions.
Table of contents: title: Preface (ix-xv); title: Notes on Reference Styles and the Provenance of Unpublished and Rare Materials (xxiv-vii); title: Orthography and Pronunciation (xxviii-xi); title: PART ONE: A LAHU VILLAGE IN NORTH THAILAND AND ITS SOCIO-HISTORICAL MATRICES; title: Chapter One: The Beginnings of an Odyssey: One Lahu Village in North Thailand (2-49); title: Chapter Two: Broadening the Focus: The Lahu People Between Han and Tai (50-108); title: PART TWO: THE DIVERSE STRANDS OF LAHU SUPERNATURAL IDEAS AND RITUAL PRACTICES; title: Chapter Three: Animism and Theism in Lahu Ontology (111-68); title: Chapter Four: Calling Back Souls, Dealing with Spirits: Animism in Practice (169-279); title: Chapter Five: Garnering Merit, Practising Sorcery: The Extremes of an Animistic Continuum (280-309); title: Chapter Six: Mahayana Buddhism in the Lahu Mountains (310-61); title: Chapter Seven: Temple Worship: The Cult of the Creator Divinity (362-413); title: Chapter Eight: The Cycles of Year and of Life: The Routine of a World View (414-504); title: Chapter Nine: Lahu Messiahs and the Search for Utopia (505-47); title: PART TEN: THE CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE: CULTURAL CONTINUITIES AND DISCONTINUITIES; title: Chapter Ten: Christian Proselytism in the Lahu Mountains (551-628); title: Chapter Eleven: The Consolidation of Christianity among the Lahu-speaking peoples (629-733); title: Epilogue (734-38; title: Glossary of Lahu Words (739-52); title: Glossary of Chinese Characters (753-67); title: Glossary of Words in Thai (Siamese) Script (768-70); title: Bibliography of Works Cited (771-842); title: Author Index (843-49); title: General Index and Glossary (850-907)