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GUARDIAN SPIRITS

The category term phii refers to spirits to which are generally attributed
powers over human beings. It includes a wide variety of supernatural
agents ranging from those who are a permanently existing category of
supernaturals to those who are transformations of dead human beings.
In the widest sense the winjan (soul or consciousness) of every human
being turns into phii at death; in fact a corpse is referred to as phii khon raaw.

In Baan Phraan Muan there are two supernatural agents who, though
they fall into the category of phii, have an elevated status. They are called
Tapubaan (`grandparent' or ancestor of village) and Chao Phau Phraa
Khao (chao = honorific title, phau = father, phraa khao = monk or holy
man dressed in white). Both may be referred to as chao phau, and in
village conception and attitudes they are as much a respected deity as
phii. They are different from a number of malevolent and capriciously

acting phii, from whom they are distinguished. On the other hand, certain
category distinctions separate all phii from thewada (supernatural divine
angels). Thus it may be said that thewada are opposed to phii, who in
turn are differentiated into elevated guardians (chao phau) and malevolent
spirits (phii). Certain important ritual beliefs and acts (systematized cult
behaviour) are associated with Tapubaan and Chao Phau Phraa Khao at
community, household, and individual levels.

The villagers in some contexts distinguish Tapubaan and Chao Phau
Phraa Khao as two separate spirits; in other contexts they are treated as
a unified conception with dual aspects. The logic of this unity and differentiation
follows from their two separate yet also related domains of influence
and interest.

Before we describe these domains, let us be clear about one general
distinction. In relation to Buddhism, the villagers view Tapubaan and
Chao Phau cults as belonging in a separate and even opposed domain
of religious action (just as, at another level, the thewada are opposed to
phii). Thus it is clearly recognized that Buddhist monks do not take part
in the phii cult, for they `belong to a separate party' (hon la heet la khong).
As one informant put it, `Monks are human beings, chao phau are phii.
Monks never chant for chao phau; they are called upon to chant when
human beings die' (i.e. to conduct mortuary rites, a major ritual function
of the monks). Buddhist religious action is phrased in terms of the
ideology of bun (merit)—when one gives gifts to the monks or the temple
(wat) one receives merit; but when one propitiates or placates Chao Phau
or Tapubaan, villagers explicitly consider the transaction as a bargain, an
offering made to gain a particular favour, generally to remove an affliction
caused by the phii because of an offence committed (pid phii).

But this general category distinction between Buddhism and the phii
cult is by no means the whole story. If the distinction were a basic
dichotomy found in all aspects of ritual action our analytic task would
be easy and the theoretical scheme for placing the systems simple. In fact,
at other levels there are intriguing connections and interpenetrations, the
exploration of which is of critical interest.

Tapubaan is the `owner' of the village (baan); villagers sometimes
elucidate this ownership literally in the sense that he was the original
founder and owner of the land. Chao Phau Phraa Khao is, on the other
hand, the guardian of the wat. Thus their domains of authority, baan
(settlement) and wat (temple), are important village ecological and socio-religious
distinctions. Throughout the region in every village the dual
agents, phrased in this manner and called by the same names, are repeated.
(Furthermore, there is a regional cult addressed to a superior guardian

spirit of the swamp to whom the dual village guardian spirits are subordinate.
I shall describe this phenomenon in a later section.) Here let
us note that we are dealing with a widespread religious patterning.

From their respective spheres of influence follow other distinctions
between Chao Phau and Tapubaan. Chao Phau is the phii of a pious man
who lived in the wat, took the ten precepts (the same as those taken by
a novice) and ministered to the needs of the monks. He wore white clothes,
the insignia of a pious layman (upasok). After his death his phii continued
to live in the wat; its place of residence is actually in the bood (the most
holy place of the wat), and there is a wooden statue of him placed beside
the statue of the Buddha. Tapubaan, on the other hand, wears the ordinary
clothes of a layman, and his residence today is a wooden shrine located
at the edge of the village in the jungle. He guards the settlement from its
boundary and his shrine faces the village.

The offerings the villagers make to the two guardian spirits show another
distinction. To Tapubaan is offered chicken, pork, liquor, curries and
other strong foods: he is meat eating. To Chao Phau is offered only pawan[1]
(rice mixed with sugar): he is vegetarian. This meat eating versus vegetarian
distinction is especially intriguing in this context. For unlike
Sinhalese Buddhism, where meat is not offered to the Buddha but is
given to the monks (Obeyesekere 1958; Leach 1962), in Thailand meat
and rice are normal food offerings to the Buddhist statue, as it is to the
Buddhist monks. The Thai villager will say that `the food offered to the
monks is also offered to the Buddha image', which is a perfectly logical
statement. But it appears that at another level—in regard to the white-robed
pious guardian of the wat, as opposed to the secular guardian of the village
—Thai villagers have introduced the Hindu-type pure/impure distinction:
a distinction that is again reflected in the vegetarian offerings to the thewada
as opposed to the carnivoral offerings to the malevolent phii.

Table 6 gives details of Tapubaan's and Chao Phau's separate and joint
spheres of jurisdiction over the villagers and the kinds of action which
call forth their supernatural intervention in the form of affliction and
disease.

In the case of Tapubaan there are certain special interdictions connected
with the vicinity of his shrine (prohibition against cutting wood and
gardening near the shrine) and with eating a certain kind of turtle living
in the swamp.[2] Human beings must observe their distance from him
except to approach him with ritual intent. Chao Phau by virtue of residing

Table 6. Supernatural affliction

                                 

Name of spirit (phii) acting	Human acts which arouse supernatural action	Kind of illness that results
Tapubaan (owner or guardian of the village)	A. Norms concerning village citizenship	[In extreme cases madness or death may occur]
	(i) Extending compound fence on to roads or lanes in the village
	(ii) Going to live in another village without informing and getting permission from Tapubaan via the cham	Fever
	B. Wan phraa taboos (Buddhist Sabbath)
	(i) Polishing rice (female task)	Difficulty in childbirth
	(ii) Taking cart into or out of the village (male task)	Any elder of the village may be afflicted with fainting
	(iii) Cutting and carrying firewood into the village (usually female task)
	C. Tapubaan taboos
	(i) Cutting down trees or bamboo, or gardening in the vicinity of Tapubaan's spirit house	Stomach ache
	(ii) Eating turtle of a special kind (this is associated particularly with the spirit of the swamp (Chao Phau Tong Kyang))	Body pain
Chao Phau Phraa Khao (guardian of the wat)	A. Protection of wat
	(i) Urinating in the wat precinct	Stomach ache
	(ii) Plucking mango fruits in the wat compound, especially by throwing stones at the fruits	Stomach ache
	(iii) Holding any merit-making ceremony at the wat (gnaan bun) without requesting permission from Chao Phau	The abbot will fall sick. Also public brawls or a fire may occur
	B. Wan phraa taboos
	Same as listed above for Tapubaan (B)

in the sacrosanct bood is automatically afforded seclusion from careless
lay approach.

Apart from these interdictions Tapubaan is primarily associated with
norms concerning village citizenship. He acts as a disciplinarian. Common
village property rights, as expressed in public roads and lanes, must not

be infringed by villagers. Secondly, a man cannot change his village
membership and residence without a ritual statement to Tapubaan beforehand
and getting his permission. This ritual statement is mediated through
the cham, who is `elected' by being possessed by Tapubaan or Chao Phau.

Similarly, Chao Phau protects the sanctity and property rights of the wat.
Villagers should not urinate in the compound, nor plunder its fruit trees.
But by far the most important aspect of Chao Phau's authority is that no
collective wat calendrical rite nor any village festival (such as the annual
fair) can be held without first informing him at the bood and getting his
permission. Subsequently permission is sought from Tapubaan in his
shrine. Tapubaan's authority here is secondary, because all such festivals
and rites take place in the wat compound. Villagers say that if permission
is not gained from the wat guardian a series of misfortunes may follow—
people may quarrel and fight during the proceedings, fire may break out,
and the abbot of the wat may fall sick. It may also be noted that permission
is not requested through the monks but via Chao Phau's and Tapubaan's
elected intermediary, the cham. No such permission is necessary for the
holding of private or household rituals, which are not village affairs.

In village thought the necessity to get permission from Chao Phau to
hold Buddhist rituals in the wat is not an indication that Chao Phau is
superior to Buddha, or that his cult is more powerful than Buddhism.
Chao Phau's authority lies only in his protective guardianship of the
temple, and such guardianship is quite common in historical Buddhism.[3]
On the other hand, because of his closer association with Buddhism (his
piety, white clothes and vegetarian food habits), villagers tend to give
Chao Phau a formal superiority over Tapubaan. In actual fact, of course,
their spheres of jurisdiction are both well defined and in some areas
unified.

Both Chao Phau and Tapubaan are directly concerned with certain
taboos relating to the Buddhist Sabbath (wan sil or wan phraa). Village
women must not polish paddy on wan phraa; villagers must not take
a cart in or out of the village, or cut and bring firewood into the village.
It is said that wan phraa is the day on which the two guardians freely
roam about—it is their day of active duty. The taboos, in fact, stress that
villagers should not engage in mundane work on the Sabbath. The segregation

of Chao Phau and Tapu[4] from Buddhist values, however, is seen
in the fact that offerings of propitiation and placation to them (especially
after the cure of a disease or illness) must be made on wan pood (Wednesday),
which is special to them. If the Wednesday is also a wan sil (wan phraa),
offerings cannot be made to the phii on that day, but instead on the
following day or the next Wednesday. This ensures that Buddhist and
guardian spirit rituals are segregated in time.

The third column of Table 6 shows the punishment inflicted by Chao
Phau and Tapubaan for infringement of certain norms. Usually the rules
apply to individuals and the offending individual is afflicted with illness—
stomach ache, fever and body pains being the normal punishments.
However, if certain of the Buddhist Sabbath taboos are broken, any
village elder (phuu thaw) may have a fainting fit. And if a village ritual or
festival is held without prior permission, the whole community may
suffer either a disturbance of the public peace or damage by fire. In all
these matters, then, Chao Phau and Tapubaan act as moral agents and
disciplinarians. They do not act capriciously; they are guardians and
custodians of communal property and community interests.

Yet at the same time it must be pointed out that they are not the most
important guardians of village morality. The range of rules within which
they guard is limited, and to locate the entire range of moral rules other
spheres of village religious action have to be considered. The village
orientation to Tapu and Chao Phau is that of a community of children
dependent on a guardian or a father figure who has power to grant fertility,
rain, individual favours, and to inflict misfortunes.

What has been developed so far concerning Tapu and Chao Phau is
their regulative aspect as guardians, their power to punish. I shall now
describe one feature of their positive benevolent and rewarding aspect,
which also characterizes their role in a village-wide collective cult. They
have the crucial power to ensure agricultural abundance in the village,
which is by far the most vital preoccupation of the villagers.

In this agricultural cult Tapubaan and Chao Phau are propitiated as
closely allied dual agents, this time with the former having precedence.
I have already mentioned that Chao Phau lives in the bood and that Tapu
has a wooden shrine at the edge of the jungle behind the wat. In actual
fact, this wooden shrine has two compartments—one assigned to Tapu
and the other to Chao Phau. The collective rites to be considered now are
enacted at the shrine. In other words, we see that, in this context, the
phii cult is again spatially and conceptually separated from the wat and

Buddhist ritual. No monk participates, and the village assembles as a
congregation under special ritual intermediaries of the guardians.

Twice a year, before ploughing starts in the sixth lunar month, and
again soon after harvest in the first or second lunar month, the villagers
assemble to propitiate the guardians. The ritual officiants are the cham
(intermediary) and the tiam (medium). The pre-ploughing ceremony is
not as lavish as the post-harvest one which celebrates a successful agricultural
season. The purpose of the former is to request agricultural
abundance in the coming season, and it therefore is a kind of bargaining
or promise that if agriculture is successful, offerings will be made again
after the harvest. The typical request made is: `Luug-laan ja tham raj
tham naa ja ma liang haj raksa wua kwai ya haj khon jeb puay' (`your
children and grandchildren are going to cultivate fields and gardens, take
care of the buffaloes and don't allow people to fall ill').

The structure and sequence of the two ceremonies are the same. I shall
briefly describe the sequence before giving a detailed account of a post-harvest
ceremony witnessed in the field.

Each household must in theory provide gai saung pah or two sets of
chicken (i.e. cooked chicken in two trays), plus liquor as an offering for
Tapubaan and pa wan saung pah (two trays of rice mixed with sugar)
for Chao Phau. The householders assemble on the day chosen by the
cham. The cham first lights a candle and invites the two guardians to
accept the offerings, which are then placed in the shrine. After these
collective offerings are made, individuals (qua individuals) may make
offerings either in order to seek personal favours or as thanks-offering
for personal favours granted. This, then, brings out another aspect of the
relationship of guardian phii to the villagers: in their benevolent aspect
they may grant favours to individuals, not as rewards for meritorious
conduct, but as the result of a pledge that offerings will be provided if
the guardians bestow good fortune. Finally, all the villagers sit together
to eat a collective meal of the offerings made to the guardians.