Before I embark on the third complex frame of analysis that will complete my interpretation of the biography, I want to again introduce the concept of indexical symbol as a useful device for comprehending how all the layers of meaning and significance, both “semantic” and “pragmatic”, ride simultaneously on the same “form” (the biography) and thus constitute a single totality of meaning.

The main point about indexical symbols, as I have already stated in Chapter I, is that they have a duplex structure, because they combine two roles – they are symbols that are associated with the represented object by a conventional semantic rule, and they are simultaneously also indexes in existential pragmatic relation with the objects they represent. This duality thus points in two directions at once – toward the semantic direction of cultural presuppositions, paradigms, and conventional understandings; and toward the pragmatic and interpersonal context of the activity in question, the lineup of the participants and the processes by which they establish meaning, and create, affirm, or legitimate their positions and privileges.

Let me relate these conceptual and analytical statements to this book. The biography of Acharn Mun is an indexical symbol in the sense that on the one hand the saint's life is symbolically and semantically related to the classical conventional hagiographies of the Buddha and exemplary Buddhist saints (the theme of the preceding two chapters), and on the other hand the composition is indexically and pragmatically related to the purposes and objectives of the disciple-author, the context in which he composed it, and its distribution to and reception by the public, who are its readers and audience. This latter exegesis is the task of this and the succeeding two chapters.