Abstract:Marshall Sahlins argues that kings are ‘stranger kings’, as they typically originate from outside their kingdom or from the celestial realms. He advances that kings draw authority precisely from an ability to appropriate a geographic and cosmological Other for the benefit of their subjects. With this article, I propose that, in contemporary Thailand, a kingdom ruled by a Buddhist monarch, this defining ability of kings spreads to commoners. An ethnographic study of diviners (mo du) and their clients (luk kha) … Show more
“…the Buddha's teachings and the reality they describe, is the ultimate cosmic law. Because the cosmos is believed to be subject to impermanence (anijja), the rules that govern it are in a state of flux, requiring constant study to identify new formations (Siani 2018). It is here that diviners come into play.…”
“…the Buddha's teachings and the reality they describe, is the ultimate cosmic law. Because the cosmos is believed to be subject to impermanence (anijja), the rules that govern it are in a state of flux, requiring constant study to identify new formations (Siani 2018). It is here that diviners come into play.…”
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