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THE REGIONAL CULT

Tapubaan as guardian of the village settlement and Chao Phau Phraa
Khao as guardian of the village wat are to be found in every village of the
region. All these individual village expressions are pulled together in
a wider comprehensive cult focused on the guardian of the largest swamp
in the region, called Byng Chuan. The villages situated around this
swamp participate together in propitiating this guardian.

These facts dictate an observation which I wish to emphasize: just as
Buddhism finds a local representation in each village through its wat
(which at the same time attracts devotees from many other surrounding
villages to its festivals and grand merit-making occasions), and again at
another level portrays a regional (or wider) participation when devotees
from a whole region or country are drawn to famous common centres
of worship and pilgrimage, so here in the cult of the swamp guardian we witness both regional and lower level village identities. Clearly, then, we
must view the guardian spirit cult as a collective phenomenon in some
respects comparable in scope to Buddhism, provided we keep in mind
the more localizing aspect of the former—for example the domain
of the village guardian shrine is a settlement of people within a small
area, and that of the swamp guardian a region composed of such settlements
in a specified territory; in contrast Buddhism, while it has similar structural
components, cannot be exclusively defined in the same way. In so far as
these two complexes are collective religious expressions we must discard
that formulation which only sees Buddhism as a collective religion,
organized as a `church', while spirit cults are by comparison `magical'
and pertain to individual clients—an erroneous formulation that goes back
to Robertson Smith and Durkheim and has been surprisingly revived by
some contemporary anthropologists. My viewpoint will have more weight
when we see that the guardian cult is characterized not only by formalized
ritual but also by complex mythology.

I shall describe the cult centred around the Byng Chuan swamp, in
which our village of Phraan Muan traditionally participated as a member,
and how it is refracted in individual villages.

Figure 2 in Chapter 2 plots the location of the Byng Chuan swamp and
the settlements in its vicinity. Some sixteen of these settlements are said
to participate in propitiating the swamp guardian, who is called Tapu

Byng (`grandfather' or `founding ancestor' of the swamp) or alternatively
Chao Phau (`respected father') Tong Khyang.[7] The shrine to the swamp
guardian is built on piles in the very centre of the swamp.

The collective propitiations addressed to the guardian are very similar
to those made to the guardian spirits in village shrines—that is, biannual
offerings made before ploughing and after harvesting—with these differences:
the participating units are villages and not households, and
the offerings made to the swamp guardian precede in time and also take
ritual precedence over those made to the village guardians. Thus the
regional community, constituted of village settlements, takes precedence
and propitiates in advance of the individual village communities composed
of households.

The offerings to the swamp guardian follow a three-year cycle. The
one made before ploughing (which begins with the onset of rains in the
sixth lunar month) is annual and consists of cooked chicken. The post-harvest
offers, made in the second lunar month, follow a different pattern.
For two consecutive years cooked chicken is given, but every third year
a large offering (liang yaai) consisting of a buffalo sacrifice is made.
Money for buying the sacrificial buffalo is collected from the member
villages, and the buffalo is sacrificed at the shrine, cooked and eaten by
the ritual representatives of the contributing villages.

I have already noted, in the section on tiam, that while villagers
distinguish the swamp guardian from the village guardians, they also
fuse them as a single manifestation. When distinguished, the swamp
guardian is the superior; thus, for instance, Tapu Byng is said to be the
father-in-law of Tapubaan. But often both are said to be one, just as within
the village the village and wat guardians are, according to context, separated
or fused. And the ritual officiants as well are seen as agents of both levels
of spirits, again according to context. Above all, the swamp guardian
represents, on a regional scale, what the village guardians represent at
the level of local settlement, namely, the guarantors of rain, agricultural
prosperity, the good health of humans and their domestic animals, especially
the buffalo. It is perfectly understandable that in this dry, arid region of
North-east Thailand, swamps, rivers and streams should not only be
conspicuous landmarks but also symbolize rain, and the fertility of crops,
and the well-being of human beings.

The functionaries connected with the swamp spirit are many in number
and the pattern of their differentiation allows us to bring into relief
certain features in a way we could not do when describing the situation
in the village of Phraan Muan. Two villages, Baan Naapu and Baan Hua
Bueng, are the cult centres for all the sixteen-odd villages that participate
in the cult. These are said to be the oldest villages in the area; they are
also, in fact, the ones closest to the Byng Chuan swamp, with their fields
stretching to its banks. Each of these two villages has a chief medium
(tiam) of the swamp guardian who is, and always should be, a male.
Of the two mediums, the one resident in Baan Naapu is considered the
senior. The two function as the chief officiants of the regional cult at its
biannual offerings and each acts as the chief officiant at his village shrine.
Each has an assistant, the cham, who assists in the rites but is not the
agent through whom the guardian spirit speaks. This distinction and
relative position of tiam and cham was not evident in Phraan Muan village
and in many other villages, for a good reason. A medium has to be `chosen'
by the spirit and should be able to experience repeated possessions by it.
The appearance of such a person may occur infrequently. While a resident
medium is a luxury and can be dispensed with by a village—for its
residents can consult the medium of another village when exceptional
circumstances require it—a cham is a necessity for the making of frequent
offerings. Thus all villages have an appointed cham, even if they have no
tiam.

The rather complex situation that arises may be stated as follows.
In addition to the two chief mediums resident in the cult centres, and
the subsidiary mediums randomly distributed in the region, there is in
every village an appointed male intermediary (cham), who normally makes
the offerings to the village guardians at village shrines, collects money
and food offerings from village members, and acts as the representative
of his village in the biannual rites addressed to the swamp guardian at
his swamp shrine.

Whereas at the cult centres and at the swamp shrine the prime officiants
at rites of propitiation are the mediums, assisted by the intermediaries, in
villages other than the cult centres the intermediary tends to act as
officiant, with the medium, if present in the village, figuring mainly in
divination procedures in severe cases of affliction.

Now we can deal with the interesting phenomenon of the subsidiary
mediums. They are usually female but not exclusively so. As in the case
of Phraan Muan village, they are sometimes male. It is not at all strange
that the female mediums are concentrated in the cult centres. In the village
of Naapu there were three and at Hua Bueng one, all four subordinate to

the chief male mediums. Their main role is to deal with individual cases
of affliction by the swamp or village guardian spirits, who, apart from their
communal significance, act punitively to cause illness in individuals.
In such instances, the female mediums, serving as oracles of the guardian
spirit, inform the victim and his family whether the spirit is responsible
for the illness and, if it is, what offerings it requires as expiation. The
subsidiary mediums also have a wider divinatory role, for the guardian
spirit of the swamp, in his capacity as benevolent protector of humans and
being superior to lesser, capricious spirits, can also reveal which malevolent
spirit is causing a particular affliction and what placatory offering would be
efficacious. Thus the guardian spirit, in his benevolent aspect, serves to
combat the ravages caused by lesser, capricious and malevolent agents.

The sex composition of the mediums of the guardian spirits, their
mode of recruitment, and their ritual techniques, open up important
questions of comparison. All mediums are recruited through possession,
and the distinctive features of their rituals are ecstatic possession and
dance, and oracular statements—which characteristics are altogether
different from those exhibited by monks and the paahm who conduct
sukhwan rituals. Linked with these features is the fact that, although the
chief mediums of the cult are male, the majority of subsidiary mediums
are female. Here, then, for the first time in village religion we see an
opening for female functionaries associated with a certain kind of religious
expression.

This correlation is manifestly recognized by villagers. Women are by
temperament prone to possession and the spirits possess them because
they are soft and penetrable; therefore they are effective hosts. (Although
we are here interested in female mediums, it is appropriate to note that
this logic is extended to possession by evil spirits and ensuing illness; as
we shall see later, women are said to be the commonest victims of attack
and subjects of exorcistic cure.) Such ideas are perhaps more finely
elaborated in North Thailand, where mediums are called maa khii, that
is, `horses ridden' by spirits. Usually such mediums have suffered attack
by the spirit (expressed as illness, fits, or certain states of dissociation) and
were `cured' only when they agreed to subject themselves to the authority
and sovereignty of the spirit and thus became his medium; that is, the
cure consists in redirecting the illness itself to a positive and culturally
acceptable use. We may thus state that the guardian spirit cult, in so far
as it is associated with afflictions resulting from attack by the guardian
spirits, has a special kind of female functionary who through possession
acts as their vehicle. This is the only sphere in which females have
a dominant ritual role to play.

While the role is not confined only to females, it emphasizes a `feminine
syndrome' of behaviour. Both males and females who act as the vehicles
and whose position is that of mediator between humans and the guardian
phii, adopt a ceremonial dress and engage in behaviour that is somewhat
ambiguous. The costume consists of a black waist cloth or skirt, and a
blouse, head cloth, and handkerchief all red in colour. If these are worn
by a male, he resembles a female; if worn by a female, she resembles
a man. That is to say, the mediator assumes somewhat of a transvestite
appearance, and engages in an unrestrained ecstatic behaviour in which
liberal consumption of liquor and smoking tobacco is an element. The
transformation is especially conspicuous in a female medium who, in
addition to all these features, speaks in a male-like voice.

For reasons of insufficient data and competence I must conclude the
discussion on this note, a discussion limited to the reporting of cultural
conceptualization of the mediums' characteristics and observed role
behaviour, and not venture into the possible motivational and psychological
aspects of the medium's personality. Spiro's (1967) discussion of
these aspects in respect of the Burmese nat kadaw (nat wife), who conventionally
is a female medium of the nats while in fact, as in our case,
a small number of males also assume the role, seems to be echoed here,
but I am unable to confirm his interpretation.