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HERMIT SUTHEP:
Founding Spirit of Wat Phra That Doi Suthep Text & Images: John Cadet
Hermit Suthep at Wat Phrathat Doi Kham
There are so many other images, it's easy to overlook him.
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.
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 kumparn (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 as
remarkable as that of the Hermit Suthep, which according to
the legends, runs as follows:
Mother Earth, wringing the waters out of her hair
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 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 with an even more sensational background:
Queen Chamadevi, the 7th or 8th 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.
Phaya Nak, at the foot of the staircase, Wat Phra That
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 7th 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.
Text © J.M. Cadet 2007.
(The writer lives in Chiang Mai and his works - The Ramakien: the Thai Epic among them - are available at major bookshops).
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