Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) Tourist Guide


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AT THE BUFFALO SACRIFICE
The Cannibal Guardian Spirits Get Their Yearly Offering

Text : John Cadet
Images : Karin

Well, the buffalo was dead, no doubt about that. The villagers were hard at work, flaying the animal with sharp knives, dividing meat and offal, and cleaning the bones, replacing them under the heavy wet hide, so as to reconstruct the skeleton.

Now in the wan light of early morning, the monsoon rain filtering down through the forest canopy, the ceremony became really interesting, because it was at this point that the Lawa cannibal spirits turned up to claim their share of the sacrifice. They were hungry, evidently, and rather belligerent, so that the spectators shrank back behind the ropes. They might be guardian cannibal spirits, but no sense in getting between them and the victim, not till they’d had their fill.

I should explain that this was my first sight of this oldest of the Lanna ceremonies, some thirty years back – the Bu Se Ya Se Ceremony. Things have changed since somewhat – it’s much more of a tourist melee nowadays. But the basics haven’t altered much since the upper Palaeolithic. The buffalo has to die. The spirits have to be placated with the offerings provided. And with any luck, Chiang Mai and its locality will get the human and natural fertility, along with a degree of physical safety, that its inhabitants need for the agricultural year ahead.

I had the good fortune to have bumped out along the tracks to the place of sacrifice, in a forest glade under Doi Kham, five miles to the southwest of Chiang Mai city, with a kon muang native, a speaker of the Northern dialect and well-versed in the local customs. She was able to keep me abreast of what was going on and provide some background, and just as well, since it’s a complex ritual and the kham muang (local dialect)is what you’ll hear as it’s conducted.

And when the spirits had had their fill of raw flesh and washed it down with the local liquor, one of them chanted an account of the ceremony that even Wasana, my guide, had some difficulty following, the language so obscure.

‘Riding’ the (dead) buffalo

“What you have to remember is that the Lawa were the original inhabitants of the North,” she explained. “We Thais began to arrive about 800 years ago, and like a lot of the peoples of the hills round here – the Naked Nagas and the Wild Wa, for example – the Lawa might have taken heads and almost certainly did sacrifice humans for the fertility of their fields. And when we Thais came along we took over a lot of their customs, but instead of sacrificing people, we substituted the buffalo. Here in Chiang Mai, it was the Jao Muang – the Prince of the city - who sponsored the ceremony, but now it’s the villagers of Mae Hia who keep the custom alive.”

I’d got some idea of this from the chronicle histories of the North. They relate how the Buddha, on a visit to the North, had been attacked by a band of the cannibal spirits who’d been preying on the local people. Of course, they’d been no match for the Buddha, who’d stamped his foot onto a rock, leaving an imprint that can be seen at another location at the foot of the mountains – Wat Phra Buddhabat See Roi. He’d then preached to the aggressive spirits, and sufficiently converted them that they’d agreed to be satisfied with a yearly offering of the buffalo, though a spirit son had gone further by ordaining as a monk, and becoming the founder and protective spirit of Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai’s principal Buddhist reliquary.

Doi Kham, the Golden Mount, overlooking the place of sacrifice, has its own small temple at the top, with colourful images of the guardian spirits around its central stupa. But it is in the forest at the foot of the hill that the important activities take place. In a tussocky clearing, part enclosed by sacred threads, the reconstructed buffalo is laid on a bed of leaves to one side, and a row of offertory tables are raised at another. The men of Mae Hia village cut up and cook the buffalo flesh and offal, while the women prepare some of the other offerings – puffed rice, chicken, flowers and liquor, putting them on the bamboo tables. The tang khao then reads out the invocation:

“Bhonto Ayyaka – venerable ancestors – Bhonto Devakhumbandho – venerable guardian giants – Bhonto Virango – venerable guardian lord Viranga…” etc. “Hear ye! A year has passed. A year has gone by. The customary season has now arrived. We have offerings to give you in accordance with the ancient tradition we have not forgotten. Please come and feast on our delicious offerings – lap (steak tartare), plump boiled chickens dripping with fat, curries, tripes, liquor in beautiful decanters…” etc.

And it was during this invocation that the spirits appeared: that’s to say, the village mediums who act out this drama arrived in a pick-up – a big, burly woman, some pretty girls and a feeble elderly man who had to be guided, his eye-sight was so poor. And if they looked little different from their fellow villagers all around, things changed once they’d put on what Wasana described as ‘their Burmese robes’. In the little open-sided hut set up for them nearby, the spirits possessed them. Collapsing onto the floor they twitched convulsively, made inarticulate cries and from then on there was nothing ordinary about them.

Particularly aggressive was the burly woman, who acted the party of Grandmother Se, and another who took the role of an unregenerate spirit. Old Grandfather Se was low-key throughout, and the four or five girls representing their 27 daughters were – with one exception - pretty docile. One of the villagers guided the spirits to the altars, where they satisfied their hunger on the food and drink set out. He also provided Ya Se with cuts of raw meat and it wasn’t the most agreeable of sights to see her tearing at them with her teeth and nails and smearing her face with gore.

It was at this point that Wasana directed my attention to the other side of the glade, and then the ceremony took on an even more intriguing complexion. Nine Buddhist monks had appeared. Seated on straw mats they were chanting sutras. While they were doing so a long ochre box was opened and to the sound of gongs, drums, flute and cymbals an enormous scroll was taken out, unrolled and hung from a nearby tree. It showed an image of the Buddha, with his disciples Sariputta and Mokallana standing at either side.

“Aha, that’s good, do you see?” said Wasana. “It’s swinging in the breeze. The cannibals will think the Buddha’s still alive and keep their promise not to eat people.”

And just as well, because whatever the pact with the Buddha, it was clear the spirits were of a volatile disposition. A spectator who’d got on the wrong side of the sacred thread was treated to a high volume harangue from one of the spirits, and although Wasana declined to give a word by word translation, it was clear the blunderer wasn’t being given best wishes for the year ahead.

But now attention was diverted to the ‘unregenerate’ spirit. She hadn’t been part of the pact with the Buddha, evidently, and seated on the neck of the buffalo, was quaffing liquor from a bottle provided, at the same time providing her own commentary for the villagers standing around. And amused though they were by what they were seeing, when the spirits retired to the changing hut and offered answers to the questions put to them on the year ahead, it was clear that what they were told – as with the ceremony as a whole – meant more to them than just another item of a morning’s entertainment.

Before the ceremony ended at midday, though, there was one small activity I might have missed if Wasana hadn’t directed my attention to it – the dance of the ‘daughters’ of the guardian spirit before the swinging Buddhist bJohn Cadetr – the phra bot.

“To please the Buddha,” my guide explained. “To show they accept his teachings and won’t do harm.”

Which would have been plausible if one of the dancers, instead of performing the delicate and graceful ramwong of her companions, hadn’t been jumping off the ground with both feet and lashing out at the bJohn Cadetr, screaming furiously.

For once even Wasana was at a loss. “Not respectful, not respectful at all,” she muttered in bewilderment.

But back in the city, I remembered another meeting I’d had with one of the participants, and speaking of the sacrificed buffalo, she equated it with an older victim. “Short horns, short ears,” she said – the buffalo should be a yearling male with horns no longer than its ears – “just like a human.” And not only buffalo blood was spilled at one side of the clearing. One of the village butchers deliberately cut a finger, so that human blood went into the food prepared, offered not only to the cannibal spirits but also the participating chapter of monks.

So that the distance between the swinging and chastised phra bot at one side of the clearing, and the bloody sacrifice at the other is by no means as far as you might at first think.

Wonderfully retentive these ancient practices, you’ll find yourself saying, if like me you go out in the woods on the appropriate day this year.