Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) Tourist Guide


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THE REMARKABLE HISTORY OF HERMIT SUTHEP:
Guardian Spirit of Chiang Mai's Most Famous Temple

Text & Images : John Cadet

Hermit Suthep at WPT

He sits in his little cell facing the entrance to the temple's main courtyard, a turban on his head, a tiger-skin over his shoulder and the most ineffable expression of mildness in the way he looks out at you - butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, you're likely to think on first acquaintance.

But you'd be wrong. As the guardian-spirit and founding-father of Chiang Mai's most-visited temple - the Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, sited a thousand feet above Chiang Mai city and casting its protective spell over it - rsi ('hermit') Suthep has a pretty rugged history at the back of him, and there isn't an inhabitant of the North of Thailand who isn't aware of it. But then in this respect Chiang Mai's residents have an advantage over the outside visitor: not only grandparents who know the legends of the North, but access also to the dumnarn and pongsawadan chronicle-histories for which the region is famous.

Hermit Suthep near Wat Pa Daeng

But first that multiplicity of other images confronting visitors to the temple - the lady wringing the water out of her hair, Earth-goddess Phra Mae Torani: her nearby consort, the Great Serpent, wriggling his way down the balustrades of the impressive stairway: the two kumban (earth-spirits), grimacing furiously at either side of the temple gateway (watch out if you're ill-intentioned - their mission is to scare you off): a goldleaf-encrusted statue of Kruba Srivichai, the monk who built the road up to the temple in the 1930s: and near it, the figure of elephant-headed Phra Pikanet - to both of whom it pays to be respectful: not forgetting, of course, the innumerable images of smiling apsara (angelic beings) around the centrally-placed jedi (reliquary), hands joined in the traditional wai of greeting, as well as vividly-painted episodes from the life of the Buddha adorning the walls of the inner courtyard. But while these images all have their story, none is more remarkable than that of the Hermit Suthep, which according to the legends, runs as follows:

Long ago, when the Chiang Mai valley was inhabited by cannibal Lua who made life difficult for everyone else, the Buddha decided to pay a visit. Disguised as an ordinary monk, he made his rounds of the villages at the foot of Doi Suthep, and one particular family, planning to make a meal of him, followed. This of course was what the Buddha had intended, and when he'd lured them away from their village and they were about to attack him, he stamped his foot into a large rock, leaving an imprint that can be seen to this day at what is now Wat Phra Buddhabat Si Roy (another famous temple of pilgrimage). Deeply impressed by this display of power, the cannibals revised their plans, listening instead to the Great Being lecture them on their evil ways, and reluctantly promising to amend them.

As a result, the father and mother of this family, along with their innumerable daughters, agreed to give up cannibalism, though to this day as the guardian spirits of Chiang Mai, they have a buffalo sacrificed to them annually - and woe betide the city if the custom is neglected. But there was also a younger son who immediately saw the virtue of the Buddha's teaching, agreeing to become the Great Being's first disciple in the region. Initially he was ordained as a monk, according to legend founding the Wat Phrathat that now bears his name. Later though, in a move common in early historical Southeast Asia, he is said to have disrobed to take up the rule of the hermit, and it is in this guise we meet him, wrapped in his tiger-skin, in his cell in the Wat Phrathat courtyard.

But this is not the only exploit Suthep is famous for, nor the only location at which he is respected. Some legends also connect him with a quasi-historical character having an even more sensational background: Queen Chamadevi, the 7^th or 8^th C. ruler credited with bringing civilisation to Northern Thailand and at the same time establishing Buddhism more firmly in the region. Now it has to be said that the legends, not only of Northern Thailand but as far afield as India, ascribe to hermits what might be described as an anomalous characteristic. Famous on the one hand for the firmness of their chastity, they somehow - always accidentally, to be sure - cause conception in one or other manifestation of local femininity: lotuses, deer, mermaids, forest maidens and even the Earth Mother herself. As a result, they are often left looking after the resulting offspring - offspring furthermore who later have fabulously successful histories, as males becoming heroic founders, as females the supernaturally-endowed mothers, of long-lived dynasties.

Well, now, given Suthep's already colourful history and bearing in mind this quirky hermit-characteristic, it's not altogether surprising he's also believed to be the foster-father of the North's most celebrated female ruler. The chronicle-histories - as distinct from the oral tradition - provide us with a toned-down version of her story. They say that as the doyen of the hermits of the North, Suthep thought it time for a higher level of culture to make an appearance in the region, sending to Lopburi (in the 7^th C. an outpost of the Mon-Khmer empire) for a royal personage capable of imparting it. And when a suitably-attended Princess Chamadevi arrived, he founded for her the city of Haripunchai (present-day Lamphun) and had her consecrated there. The oral tradition on the other hand takes a racier line, more in keeping with the hermit's philoprogenitive reputation.

According to the local story-tellers, Hermit Suthep didn't send to Lopburi for his future protege but instead 'found' Chamadevi as a newly-born child in the middle of a miraculously-large lotus-blossom (try telling that to the marines). Although he brought her up as properly as he could in the circumstances, his hermit-acquaintances were scandalised at what appeared to them to be a flagrant breach of the precepts, so that when she reached the age of puberty he sent her down-river to Lopburi, there to be educated at the court of the king, and marry one of his sons. It was as a princess, then - without her husband, but pregnant with twins - that she returned to her place of birth, her former foster-father probing the ground with his staff to establish the most fertile site for her future capital. Consecrated tantrically on a heap of gold, Chamadevi then became a formidably-able ruler, and her sensational battle against, and victory over, a Lua hero named Viranka is one of the best-known legends of the North, both in written and oral form. And all this thanks, one might say, to her hermit 'father'. There he sits then in his little cell at Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, smiling pacifically as the world passes by. Cannibal aborigine, founder-monk of the first Buddhist temple, hermit-protector of the North's most successful Queen, and architect of what has become the kingdom's most ancient city, Lamphun…and looking, as I say, as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Though knowing what we do about him, we're hardly likely to deny that he's earned his tiger-skin.

Jedi, Wat Phrathat

(Text and images © J.M.Cadet 2009)
(The writer lives in Chiang Mai and his works - The Ramakien: the Thai Epic among them - are available at major book stores)