Re: Dakkhi.nodaka

Believe it or not, I read an English summary of a detailed study on
the origin and evolution of this ritual (sadly, not on the meaning of
the compound word itself) by a Lao scholar, back when I was working
inside the Lao government:

The conclusions of this Lao scholar (no name, no citation possible,
viz., not from myself) were that the ceremony of "discarding" this
/dakkhi.nodaka/ as performed in Sri Lanka is closer to the original,
and that the form now found in Thailand and Laos is a corruption
thereof.

In Sri Lanka, the pouring out of such water onto the ground (after it
has been "used" by the monks, to wash bowls, hands, etc., as they sit
to eat) is done with the intentional assertion of mental detachment to
the rewards of such generosity.  Some verse in Pali is associated with
this, but the point was to disavow the "egoism" of only giving to
monks with some specific expectation of reward --be it in this life or
the next.  This is an exercise in building up the "right intention" of
generosity, and there is no magical potency ascribed to the water
itself, nor to the earth it is poured into, etc.

(I should mention that I have never seen or heard of this ritual in
Sri Lanka, apart from the results of the research in question; but
this would be performed as laypeople exit the temple, after presenting
alms, etc., and might hardly be visible.)

The version of the ritual now performed in Laos and Thailand is
instead associated with the dedication of merit (most often similar to
asking a genie in a bottle for a favour) and there are various beliefs
in the magical agency of the water going into the ground, etc.

As I recall, we (in the Lao department of foreign language
publications) worked up some kind of public education article from
this, instructing the Lao laity that that: no, giving food to monks
and pouring out the water in this way would not assure that they win
the lottery.

Some of the senior monks complained of precisely this (e.g., angry
parishoners asking why they had not won the lottery, when this was
what they "asked for" when pouring out the water, etc.) --and this
apparently sparked the interest in researching the original meaning of
the ritual.

This ritual is unrelated to the many (MANY!) other uses of magical /
lustral water by the monks themselves in the Buddhism of modern,
northern Thailand & Laos.

Some of these involve dousing the layperson with magic water, while
they "gamble", drawing magical sticks out of a bucket, or playing
other fortune-telling games that involve some kind of Las-Vegas-style
apparatus.

A related anecdote: in a remote village in Laos, I once asked to
purchase sugar, but because of one of the local shibboleths, the young
woman interpreted "Nam Than" ( = sugar ) as "Nam Dhan".  The word
"Dhan" here is indeed the Pali word for generosity, as assimilated
into Lao (with natural religious overtones), and so she thought I was
making a kind of religious request that she present me with, "Waters
of generosity".

Perhaps especially confused because of my bald head, etc., she ran to
her father to ask for advice, and he sagely advised her to prepare a
bowl of water to show her generosity toward me.  Eventually, I did
indeed manage to buy a bag of sugar.

E.M.