The Buddha in the Jungle

by Kamala Tiyavanich

In The Buddha in the Jungle, real-life stories about 19th and early 20th century Buddhist monks in Thailand are ingeniously intermingled with experiences recorded by their Western contemporaries. Stories tell of giant snakes, bandits, boatmen, midwives, and guardian spirits and collectively portray a Buddhist culture in all its imaginative and geographical concreteness. By juxtaposing these eyewitness accounts, Kamala Tiyavanich presents a new and vivid picture of Buddhism as it was lived and of the natural environments in which the Buddha’s teachings were practiced.

Genres: Buddhism, History

404 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an unusual mixture of ethnography, history, politics and dharma. It's a series of short vignettes of the exploits of (mostly) Europeans in rural Thailand.--drawn from historical accounts of the time. It was so different from what I normally read, that I was quite into it initially. There were interesting portraits of monks, wildlife, and encounters with Christian missionaries. But the quality and focus of each section varies, and by the end I'd lost a good deal of interest.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating peak into life in Thailand prior to modernization when the local monastery was still the center for village festival and health care. Many, many stories about monks in the jungle, meeting wild animals, living with nature, a book that teaches a lot about Buddhism in a very indirect way.

[Jack Laschenski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thailand in the 19th and early 20th century:

Rural, Filled with Elephants and Tigers

And Buddhist monks..

A terrific book, taken from the memoirs of foreign diplomats of the day.