KINSHIP PARTICIPATION IN MORTUARY RITES
Death is not solely a concern of the kin of the bereaved family; neighbours
and fellow villagers are obliged to participate. No concepts of pollution
apply to close kin or participants; rather, participation is regarded as
merit-making. The scale of social participation at three crucial moments
in the mortuary rites may be judged from these figures. On the day of
coffin-making, on the day of making the prasaat peueng, and finally at the
merit-making for the dead—the number of adults present was 62, 78 and
52 respectively, and of these the number of kin (yad) was 32, 23 and 30.
The concepts of kinship in Baan Phraan Muan must now be defined:
both cognatic and affinal kinsmen are classed as yad, and a classificatory
terminology of the generation type is consistently applied to them (see
Chapter 2). Our data on participation in various rites show that when in
fact large numbers of kin on both sides were present in the village there
was a wide spread, up to second cousin range, on both ego's and his
wife's side.
The concept yad phii naung in fact embraces all kinds of kin on all
sides. And in this village, where generation and relative age are important
criteria of social classification, the terms for parents, siblings, children
and grandchildren are applied widely (although the kinship terminology
contains more specific terms).
Within this wide range of community and kin participation, it is the
close kin of the deceased and his or her spouse who play the crucial roles
—notably children of both sexes, sisters and brothers and their spouses,
and wife's siblings. But from the point of view of social ideology, the
kinship categorization (from the standpoint of the deceased) is in terms
of the phii-naung (siblings of same generation), playing the role of ritual
leadership, and the luug-laan (children and grandchildren in the classificatory
sense), playing the vital ritual and manual roles connected with
paying respects to the deceased. All the manual tasks—making and
carrying the coffin, cutting wood for the pyre, cooking food, cleansing
the corpse—are devoted to enabling the elders of the parental generation
to go safely to the other world, and to the making and transferring of
merit on their behalf.
