ABSTRACT
In the days when the Brahmans were supreme it was, of course, to them that such gifts had to be made, and one of the most magnificent occasions on which the royal bounty was displayed was at the ceremony of sulahara. This chapter discusses the Royal Bounty as displayed for the benefit of the Buddhist monks, which remains to the present day one of the most important and most flourishing of all Siamese State Ceremonies. The Master of Ceremonies stood in front of the pavilion, the palace ladies sat outside the curtains, while the four grus and the first four ministers of State sat inside the curtains. Graham has incorrectly identified the Paknam Water Festival as a survival of the Ceremony of the Speeding of the Outflow. Van Vliet mentions that there was, in his time, only one Royal Kathina by land, but many by water which took place at the end of October or in the beginning of November.
