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E15 10 Moonkham Collective.Pdf Collective Memory and Embodiment of the Naga in the Northern Thai Cultural Landscape An Introductory Observation PIYAWIT MOONKHAM PhD Student in Archaeology Washington State University Abstract A powerful myth tells of the naga, a serpentine spirit or deity, which came to destroy the town known as Yonok after its ruler became unrighteous. Despite this divine retribution, the people of the town chose to rebuild. In many Buddhist traditions, the naga is seen as the guardian of the land and the creator and protector of rivers, lands, villages, and towns. The naga myth is used to understand the changing landscapes. Moreover, it frequently gives people the agency to act, feel, and reflect on their self-embodiment. This paper argues that the myth is an agentive element for people to initiate action. The myth is used as a referential knowledge by the people to interact as well as modify the physical landscapes. It is also seen as a source of knowledge for people to negotiate individual and communal identity within the larger social space. Prologue activities at the temple) with their palms put I grew up in a Theravada Buddhist together by their chest, in gesture we call environment. Every week we went to the ‘phanom mue’, to pay respect to either the temple to participate in religious ceremonies Lord Buddha or the monks. Each time as and to cherish the Buddha. We observed the ceremony progressed, I always felt some Buddhist practices such as offering food to enormous energy enveloping us. The the monks, praying to Lord Buddha, and energy, which I could not easily identify, accepting the monks’ blessings. During the emerged either from the atmosphere chanting ritual, people sit on the floor of the generated by the collection of people in the sala (an open villa and common building sala or the space inside the sala itself. It where people perform most religious seemed as if the space within the sala COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND EMBODIMENT OF THE NAGA PIYAWIT MOONKHAM Map of the studied area, Northern Thailand and Laos Image: Piyawit Moonkham 70 Explorations Volume 15, 2019 COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND EMBODIMENT OF THE NAGA PIYAWIT MOONKHAM released this energy, making people act in a of living and cultural practices, people also certain way: the ways in which people have create the sense or sensation from those been practicing for generations or what they living spaces. These living spaces, such as developed from their immediate under- buildings and material elements, in turn, standing. affect the ones who are dwelling through The differing reactions of people are religious practice within that space as well. 2 not limited to the chanting process. They This paper will mainly discuss and illustrate also vary from one space to another, such as this theoretical picture through analyzing the spaces adjacent to the Buddha statues particular religious practices and beliefs in and other religious figures, namely naga the Northern Thai cultural landscape. This staircases, or the distance from those items. region’s broad floodplain, ringed by its I came to realize that certain materials and misty mountains and rivers, has landscape objects could affect people’s actions, features that are seemingly perfect as a especially animated objects that are related natural abode for spirits. Historically, beliefs to religious beliefs. As Bautista and Reid in spirits pervaded all aspects of religious suggest “faiths have social, public lives that life and daily activities of the people in are lived in and through the believer’s Northern Thailand. Many oral traditions are engagement with tangible things and believed to originate from such spiritual spaces.”1 Thus, the relationship between beliefs, many of which predate the people and those spiritually significant introduction of Buddhism. In this region, objects also somehow reflects their the mythical serpent, or the naga, is seen as interactions and behaviors. It helps people a protector and guardian of the land and maintain a sense of understanding the rivers. Some scholars believe that the naga external world and internal self. This may have been one of the local beliefs engagement creates meaning through the which were practiced by the local people process of living in addition to the practices long before.3 However, the naga eventually which are involved with space and things at became a part of Buddhist trad-ition and all times. Furthermore, through the process belief as there is an abundance of their 1 Julius Bautista and Anthony Reid, “Introduction: Materiality and religious diversity in Southeast Asia,” in the spirit of things: Materiality and religious diversity in Southeast Asia, ed. Julius Bautista (Ithaca, N.Y.: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 2012), 3. 2 Rebecca Lester, Jesus in Our Wombs: Embodying Modernity in a Mexican Convent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005),134-142. Tim Ingold, “The Temporality of the Landscape.” World Archaeology 25, no. 2 (October 1993): 152–174. Anna Kallen, Stones Standing: Archaeology, Colonialism, and Ecotourism in Northern Laos (California: Walnut Creek, 2015),25-30. 3 The estimated time that Buddhism was introduced into Southeast Asia was around the third century C.E. according to many Southeast Asian Chronicles or Tamnan. However, according to archaeological evidence, the earliest form of Buddhist practice appeared in the region around the seventh century C.E., see Donald Swearer, The Buddhist World of Southeast Asia (Albany: State University of New York, 1995); and Charles Higham and Rachanie Thosarat, Prehistoric Thailand: From Early Settlement to Sukhothai (Bangkok: River Books, 1998). 71 Explorations Volume 15, 2019 COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND EMBODIMENT OF THE NAGA PIYAWIT MOONKHAM figures in most Buddhist temples and stories reposition themselves within the larger in Buddhist texts.4 It also became a social space. To emphasize the argument, significant actor in some of the major this paper also discusses the agentic stories of the Buddha's past lives and other elements of the naga myth which have related stories. Perhaps, it most important influenced northern Thai people’s percep- role is in its protecting of the Lord Buddha tions and understandings of self and after he reached an enlightenment. Accord- embodiment. By emphasizing people’s ingly, the naga was later adopted to be the worldviews of the naga myth, it can also guardian of the Lord Buddha’s followers.5 demonstrate the way in which people are This paper examines two aspects of interacting with their community and their the naga myth. First, I argue that the naga physical environment and space. Further- myth itself has an agency to initiate people’s more, it seeks to illustrate how people’s actions and that it can be seen as a figure worldviews and understandings have trans- which partially acts on their behalf. In other formed the cultural landscapes to become words, the naga myth and individual actors their monumentality.7 influence one another to initiate the same action to fulfill the same purpose while the The Body of the Naga action is in motion. As such, the naga myth Apart from the scenic picture that also reflects an individual’s self-embodi- begins to develop with the ideas of ment, regardless of their actual belief. mainstream monastic Buddhism, people in Second, the spaces which have been created my village incorporate other forms of by the naga myth represent the contestation practice which involve animated objects, and negotiation between local belief and including a window ghost’s amulet and the mainstream Buddhist concepts.6 In other story about naga.8 I first came across the words, the naga myth plays a role as an naga when I was young. My grandmother alternative space for people to relate their told me the story of this mythical creature self-embodiments to the myth in order to every night with a full moon, recounting understand how the world functions and to tales of how some of them have certain 4 Promporn Phakkham, Naga: The belief and Sculptural Characteristics in Mekong Basin and Upper Northeastern Thailand. (Bangkok: Silpakorn University, 2007) in Thai. 5 Phakkham, Naga: The belief and Sculptural Characteristics, 33-38. 6 Or state-sponsored Buddhism, see more Pattana Kitiarsa, "Beyond Syncretism: Hybridization of Popular Religion in Contemporary Thailand." Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 36, no. 3 (2005): 461-487. 7 The notion of “monumentality” refers to the production, or reproduction, and transformation of collective memories in relation to the landscape. Monumentality attempts to understand what kinds of memories were given “permanent material form as monument, and why particular versions of the past were privileged over others,” see Neill Wallis, "Networks of History and Memory - Creating a Nexus of Social Identities in Woodland Period Mounds on the Lower St Johns River, Florida," Journal of Social Archaeology 8, no. 2 (2008): 237. 8 This practice is also common in the rural area in Northern and Northeastern Thailand, see more detail on Mary Beth Mills, “Attack of the Widow Ghosts: Gender, Death, and Modernity in Northeast Thailand,” in Bewitching Women, Pious Men: Gender and Body Politics in Southeast Asia, ed. Aihwa Ong and Michael G. Peletz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995): 244-273. 72 Explorations Volume 15, 2019 COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND EMBODIMENT OF THE NAGA PIYAWIT MOONKHAM Naga staircases in front of the vihan. Image: Piyawit Moonkham magical or supernatural powers that can within certain spaces. While I conducted either bless or harm people. However, from interviews with informants from Northern what my grandmother told me, the naga are Thailand, although some of them are not best understood as good supernatural beings originally from the region, they have heard and that the figure of naga is always stories about the naga since they were connected to the Buddha statue of my young.
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