A Half Century Among the Siamese and the Lāo: An Autobiography

by Daniel McGilvary

The Phraner Memorial School for small children, in connection with the First Church, Chiengmai, under Mrs. Campbell’s direction, is preparing material both for High Schools and for the College. We have good schools for girls in Lakawn, Nān, and Chieng Rāi; and parochial mixed schools in most of our country churches and out-stations. The young women who have been engaged in this department, and many self-sacrificing married women, have great reason to rejoice over the work accomplished. No greater work can be done than that of educating the wives and mothers of the church and the land. Educated Christian men are greatly handicapped when consorted with illiterate and superstitious wives. Without a Christian wife and mother there can be no Christian family, the foundation both of the church and of the Christian State.

On a recent visit to Chiengmai, Princess Dārā Ratsami—one of the wives of His late Majesty of Siam, and daughter of Prince Intanon of Chiengmai and his wife, the Princess Tipakēsawn, often mentioned in the preceding narrative—was much interested in the Girls’ School, and was pleased to name it the Phra Rajchayar School, after herself—using therefor her title, and not her personal name.

The mission had been founded twenty years before it had, and almost before it could have had, a School for Boys. It is the intention of the mission to make of this school—the Prince Royal College—the future Christian College. Similar schools have been established in the other stations.

Since the Siamese government assumed control in the North, it has manifested a laudable zeal in establishing schools, in which, however, the Siamese language alone is taught. His Majesty is most fortunate in having such an able and progressive representative in the North as the present High Commissioner, Chow Prayā Surasīh Visithasakdī. And the country is no less fortunate in having a ruler whose high personal character and wise administration command the confidence and respect of all classes. He is interested in educating the people, and in everything that advances the interests of the country.

I regard the educational question as the great question now before the mission. The existence of the Siamese schools greatly emphasizes the importance of our own work, and the necessity of maintaining a high standard and a strong teaching force in Siamese, English, mathematics, and the sciences. Their schools then will be tributary to ours.

The ultimate prevalence of the Siamese language in all the provinces under Siamese rule, has been inevitable from the start. All governments realize the importance of a uniform language in unifying a people, and have no interest whatever in perpetuating a provincial dialect. The Siamese, in fact, look down with a kind of disdain upon the Lāo speech, and use it only as a temporary necessity during the period of transition. And the Siamese is really the richer of the two by reason of its large borrowing from the Pali, the better scholarship behind it, and its closer connection with the outside world.

These two forms of the Tai speech—with a common idiom, and with the great body of words in both identical, or differing only in vocal inflection—have been kept apart chiefly by the fact that they have different written characters. All of the Lāo women and children, and two-thirds of the men had to be taught to read, whichever character were adopted; and they could have learned the one form quite as easily as the other. Had the mission adopted the Siamese character from the start, it would now be master of the educational situation, working on a uniform scheme with the Siamese Educational Department. Moreover, the Siamese language in our schools would have been a distinct attraction toward education and toward Christianity. And thus there would have been available for the North the labours of two or more generations of able workers in the southern mission, from which so far the Lāo church has been mostly cut off. The whole Bible would have been accessible from the first; whereas now nearly half of it remains still untranslated into the Lāo. If the future needs of the Siamese provinces alone were to be considered, it might even be doubted whether it were worth while to complete the translation. When the monks, in their studies and teaching, adopt the Siamese, as it is now the intention of the government to have them do, Lāo books will soon be without readers throughout Siam. When for the young a choice is possible in the matter of such a transcendent instrument of thought and culture as language, all surely would wish their training to be in that one which has in it the promise of the future. These words are written in no idle criticism of the past, and in no captious spirit regarding the present; but with full sense of the gravity of the decision which confronts the mission in shaping its educational policy for those who henceforth are to be Siamese.

Meanwhile, Lāo type and books in the Lāo dialect are needed, not merely for the present generation of older people who cannot or will not learn a new character, but also for the instruction and Christianization of that much larger mass of Lāo folk beyond the frontier of Siam as revealed by recent explorations. Removed, as these are, entirely from the political and cultural influence of Siam, and divided up under the jurisdiction of three great nations of diverse and alien speech, it is inconceivable that the Siamese should ever win the ascendency over them. Nor has either of these nations any immediate and pressing incentive toward unifying the speech of its provincials, such as has actuated Siam in this matter. If the field of the Lāo mission is to be extended to include these “regions beyond”—as we all hope that it soon may be—Lāo speech will inevitably be the medium of all its work there. Then all that so far has been accomplished in the way of translation, writing, and printing in the Lāo tongue, will be so much invaluable capital to be turned over to the newer enterprise.

As regards the medical department of the mission, the Lāo field has been an ideal one for its operation and for demonstration of its results. When the field was virtually closed to the simple Gospel, the missionary physician found everywhere an exalted, not to say exaggerated, idea of the efficacy of foreign medicine, and a warm welcome for himself. Dr. Cheek, who virtually founded our regular medical work among the Lāo, had been on the field but a short time when he reported thirteen thousand patients treated in one year. Probably no subsequent physician has had such absolute control of the situation as he had, so long as he gave his time and talents to his calling. But even the layman finds his medical chest an invaluable adjunct to his evangelistic work, as we have had frequent occasion to notice. We are devoutly thankful for—we might almost envy—the influence that our medical missionaries have exerted in the civilization and the Christianization of the Lāo tribes.

Somewhat of the present status and importance of the medical mission may be judged from the following facts: Dr. J. W. McKean’s projected Leper Asylum is the largest charitable institution ever planned in the kingdom. The new Overbrook Hospital in Chieng Rāi, the generous gift of the Gest family of Overbrook, Pennsylvania, is the finest building in the mission. The Charles T. Van Santvoord Hospital in Lakawn is another similar gift. Native physicians, trained as far as present opportunities permit in Western surgery and medicine, are now maintained at certain posts by the Siamese government. And especially the work of Dr. Arthur Kerr, the government physician in Chiengmai, and his unremitting kindness to the mission, are deeply appreciated by us all.