Pichet Saiphan
Faculty of Sociology and Anthropology, Thammasat University
This topic is the result of a research project entitled “Dynamics in Cosmology and Worldview of Lao Song / Tai Dam’s Ritual of Death” supported by The Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthropology Center. The comparative study of funeral manuscripts, Kwam Bok Thang or Kwam Song Phi Khuen Muang Fha, was carried out among Tai Dam in Sip Song Chou Tai, Twelve Tai principalities, located in northwestern Vietnam and Tai Dam or Lao Song in Thailand. This work revealed that the Tai Dam in both areas still practice the use of traditional funeral manuscripts, sharing the same structure and details of the texts in spite of the fact that the Tai Dam in Thailand migrated from Sip Song Chou Tai to Siam more than 200 years ago. At the present time, they even preserve the classic cosmology of Heaven and Earth, Muang Fha-Muang Lum and worldview, including the history of migration from their place of origin, muang lo, where the last location on earth then connects the way from the sky to the heavens. In the funeral rite, kwan, the spirit or the essence of life, will be sent from the current settlement to go back along the route of migration to Muang Lo ending up in Muang Fha in order to meet Thaen God and their ancestor spirits.
Traditionally, a funeral manuscript is a Tai Dam document that would be created by a ritual conductor during a funeral rite. It is keeping up an orthodoxy of Tai Dam belief system in Thaen and the cosmology of Muang Fha-Muang Lum. The text encourages a strong belief in the principle or doctrine of a moral system and righteous position in the context of the cosmology under the control of Thaen God’s will. The right practices in rituals will support and sustain the social world in the appropriate order.
The themes of the narratives portray the route back to heaven along the way of binary worlds, Muang Lum on earth and Muang Fha in the heavens. Muang Lum represents human world surroundings, including settlements, houses, rice fields, rivers, forests, mountains, villages and townships, where the spirit will be sent on the way back along the history of migration to the place of origin, Muang Lo, the first establishment on earth in Tai Dam historiography. Details describing the world of Muang Lum sketch out geographical perception and significant places in memory of their migration history. This could be regarded as Tai Dam diaspora consciousness of their ancestor homeland. Muang Fha is considered the heavenly world, a sphere for life after death and is the space of Thaen God. Muang Fha geographically parallels the human world, but is structured into levels of each kind of spirit places, with the highest arena belonging to the superior God, Thaen Luang. The designated place that the spirit, kwan, is sent back to on the route to heaven will be finally completed to live eternally with their ancestor spirits land.
(Presented in the 2020 Chulalongkorn Asian Heritage Forum : Thai-Tai Language and Culture, 20 July 2020, The St.Regis Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University, Department of Thai, Department of Linguistics, Southeast Asian Linguistics Research Unit, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University)