 | Buddhism and the spirit cults in North-east Thailand |  |
AFFLICTION BY NATURE SPIRITS
There is also the large category of highly miscellaneous spirits which
reside in mountains or rivers, or are allotted to particular locations, that
is, they are nature spirits. Thai imagination is prolific in the creation of
free-floating malevolent spirits; there is no standard collection of them,
and any one of them may be divined on circumstantial evidence as the
cause of a particular affliction. There are, however, certain kinds of
phii in this category which are most frequently named as agents of misfortune.
Within the sphere of intra-village activities, phii rai phii naa (spirits
of the rice field) are said to attack villagers. The belief is that each owner's
field has a resident spirit, and it is not unusual for farmers to set up
shrines for them in their respective fields. There is no systematic thinking
as to why field spirits may cause affliction to the owners and their family,
or to any other person walking on or near the field.
The field spirits are essentially the guardians of the fields, and farmers
dutifully make offerings at their field shrines before ploughing and after
harvest. Field spirits are in this respect secondary and individualized
counterparts of the guardian spirits of the village, who protect the collective
agricultural interests of the entire village and are propitiated before
ploughing and after harvesting. The offerings to the field spirits by
individual farmers are made immediately after the collective offerings to
fields, are guardians of household property rights, who are promised and
given their fees for their protective function.
But clearly they are not moral agents when they cause individual
afflictions, for they are seen as acting capriciously when they cause them.
To achieve a cure the owner of the field secures the services of the mau lek
(astrologer, fortune teller) and together they promise an offering and
invite the spirit (kuad) to leave the patient; after he is well, they offer
chicken, boiled egg and cooked rice, provided by the patient or his
family.
There are many spirits which a man may encounter while he is travelling
outside his village. For example, phii pu loob is a spirit that lives on the
mountain and afflicts passers-by with fever, stomach ache and headache.
Often a particular tree at a particular spot is known as the location of
a spirit, and villagers will pay their respects to the spirit as they go by.
If it afflicts a person it is placated in the manner described above for
a field spirit.
Sometimes a returned traveller who falls sick is diagnosed as having
been afflicted by a pair of spirits, male and female, chao phau san and
nang keo, who are guardians of the east and the west. Their names suggest
that they are powerful and elevated guardian spirits. I have not witnessed
a ritual performed for them, but villagers say that on recovery expensive
and `strong' offerings have to be made to them. The offerings named
were opium, liquor, an uncooked chicken, tobacco, and betel nut—plus
a male organ (lotus flower—dogbua) for the female spirit and a female organ
(turtle shell—daung taw) for the male spirit. These are placed under
a tree, pointing in the correct east-west directions.
It must not be thought that the threatening presence of malignant
spirits in trees, forests, streams and mountains prevents villagers from
travelling and visiting other villages, markets, and Buddhist temples.
Nevertheless villagers view their own village as a more secure universe than
the outside world. As we saw earlier (Chapter 13), one of the situations
the sukhwan ritual is concerned with is the departure and return from
long trips; this ceremony is essentially directed to the charging of morale,
and to emphasizing to the traveller his membership in the village before
he departs from it, and his reincorporation into it upon his return. When
a traveller actually falls ill and when this is interpreted as caused by
malignant external spirits who reside in nature, then placation takes
place, and the outside agent's influence is removed. In a sense, then,
sukhwan rites and spirit placation rites are complementary, the former
seeking effects on the mind, the latter physical cure. This point will be
undergo both sets of rites without incompatibility: they are performed
separately, by different officiants, in totally different ritual idioms.
| Buddhism and the spirit cults in North-east Thailand | |