ABSTRACT
Southeast Asia, while noted for its tasty cuisine, has no comparable reputation for tantalizing analyses of food symbolism. Unlike South Asia, where Hindu ideology has stimulated sophisticated studies of Indian food symbolism (e.g., Marriott 1964; Babb 1970), Buddhist Southeast Asia has no significant literature on food meanings. This lack of elaboration reflects the limited concern with food in Buddhist ideology; however, interesting questions about women, food, and Buddhism can be raised when we examine familiar questions from an unfamiliar perspective—the culinary perspective. In this article I examine how Thai Buddhist women use their knowledge of food to define categories of natural and supernatural beings, mark changes in ritual time, and address significant intellectual and practical problems posed by the doctrine of Theravada Buddhism.
