Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) Tourist Guide


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DON'T MISS THE LOI KRATONG FESTIVAL
But Don't Forget the Mahachat Either

Text & Images : John Cadet

Mahachat recitation

You've probably noticed that Chiang Mai isn't without the odd festival or two - and they're increasing all the time. Songkran, of course, in April, celebrating the Thai New Year: once experienced, never forgotten. The Flower Festival in February. The great Sao Inthakhin Ceremony at Wat Chedi Luang…and so on. Not to speak of the Winter Fair, that'll be running through from the end of next month to the beginning of the New Year. But November is a particularly auspicious month to be in the Northern Capital. The Loi Kratong ceremony which takes place here hardly needs introducting to any but the newest of visitors to Southeast Asia - Yi Peng as it's known in the local dialect. There is though another form of celebration that's altogether lower key, but in many respects just as important. That too takes place this month, and while you certainly won't want to miss floating your banana-leaf boat with its load of bad luck down the river and out to oblivion, it wouldn't be a bad idea to gain a bit of merit by also looking in on the Mahachat, at one of the temples where it's being celebrated.

While the Loi Kratong festival is somewhat loosely associated with legends and practices that have their basis in paying respects to the spirits of the rivers, the Mahachat is firmly based on a piece of Buddhist literature known as the Vessantara Jataka, a story of quite astonishing antiquity and wide distribution. In its Buddhist form - as the account of the last but one of the incarnations of the being who became the Buddha - it can be traced back some 1,300 years, while there is no country in the Buddhist ambit, whether Mahayan or Theravada, that does not have a version of it. In Thailand it is know as the Wetsundorn Chadok, and its annual ceremonial relation is called the Tet Mahachat - ‘The Sermon of the Great Life'.

The story runs - in summary - as follows:

In his last but one life, the Buddha was born the prince of an Indian state known as Siwirat. Committed to practising the virtue of generosity, as a child Vessantara gives away all his toys, which no-one takes exception to. But when as a young man he gives away his city's white elephant talisman, the citizens demand that he be exiled. The fact that Vessantara takes up the life of a hermit in the Himaphan Forest does not bring his generosity to an end, however, because when a brahmin beggar appears, he gives him his two children, and would have donated his wife as well if the god Indra hadn't prevented him. You will have gathered by now this is no ordinary story of morality, and you will be right, because Vessantara is willing - if he has nothing else - to give his life in order to achieve the self-perfection leading to enlightenment. And this brings us to the Jataka's quite extraordinary climax. When his father leads an army into the forest to bring the son he and the citizens now understand to be an exemplar rather than a malefactor back to the city, at the family reunion, the emotions run so high that not only the family collapse in a dead faint, but so too do the attending courtiers and the army itself. This faint is so deep that only Indra himself can revive those affected, by sprinkling a life- restoring red rain…after which they return to the city. There Vessantara succeeds his father as king, and with the completion of his life achieves the perfection of generosity that ensures that only one more life is needed to attain to enlightenment, that of the historical Prince Siddharta.

Vessantara Jataka scene (courtesy Dr. H. Baenziger)

Incoherent as this bold summary makes the Jataka appear, a closer reading first suggests, and later study confirms, that there is a mystical substructure making it cognate with and in fact genetically allied to such celebrations of renewal as the Egyptian Mystery Dramas and the Grail Romance. It is in other words not even an ordinary Buddhist tale, but rather a dramatic representation of death and regeneration from which not only the individual but also the community that understands and correctly employs it may benefit.

This then is the story narrated from the pulpits of temples during the two-day Mahachat (‘Great Life') ceremonies in Chiang Mai, and if the length of the reading and the difficulty of the language make it accessible only to its Thai auditors - and its esoteric message (for there is one) accessible to only a very few of those - we outsiders can at least admire the extraordinarily elaborate decoration both of the houses around the temples, and the environs and interiors of the temples themselves. If you go around the city in the days preceding the ceremony, you will see houses and shops decorated with various forms of greenery as well as flags and inscriptions. But it is the temples where the occasion is being celebrated that undergo the biggest change at this time. By far the greatest part of the story deals with the Buddhist hero's exile in the forest, at a location called Khau Wong-got (‘Labyrinth Mountain'). And this is why the interior of temples is usually elaborately decked out with very passable symbolic representations of the forest's fertility - with palm and banana fronds, sugar cane, flowers, fruits and roots: while parts of the vihara will be fenced off, and have a curious network of sacred thread suspended above it. This network is connected with the pulpit from which the recitation of the story is made, as well as the temple's major Buddha images, and auditors of the recitation of the story will plug themselves in - so to speak - to the power telling the story generates, by winding the balls of thread dangling from the network around their own heads. In this way the merit gained by Phra Vessantara which led to his eventually enlightenment as the Buddha, is shared by all who join the Mahachat celebration. This at least is the popular understanding of the importance of the occasion.

Bamboo wong-got

There is though a great deal more about this remarkable festival than is to be seen on the face of things at the popular level, and it is a curious conical structure at the forefront of the decorated vihara that provides a clue to what is being referred to below the surface of the narrative - as does the labyrinth made of bamboo erected outside the vihara of some of the temples. This conical structure is sometimes referred to as a khan gaeow or ‘crystal womb'. Important guests will be invited to sit inside it with the sacred strings tied around their heads. This khan gaeow can also be called wong-got or labyrinth. What takes place in it - the evidence unambiguous though too detailed to provide here - is a symbolic death and rebirth, and what is undergoing those processes, what is provided with a new and stronger infusion of life, is not only the individual invited to enter, but the community sponsoring the performances described here, and the city-state as a whole. The Mahachat ceremony, in other words, the recitation of the Vessantara Jataka and its associated rituals, is an ancient festivity restoring life to both micro- and macrocosm, almost equal in age to and along the lines of the great Egyptian mystery-dramas referred to above.

There's a great deal more to be said about this remarkable ceremony, and a great deal more to be learned of the people who have preserved it, than there is space for here, but this is enough to be going along with. What's worth doing is attending one of the two or three temples in Chiang Mai at which the Mahachat is most fully celebrated (see below). Just listening for ten or so minutes to the musical interludes, participating in the rather quiet (considering the emotional impact the story delivers) ceremony of recitation, admiring the elaborate decorations transforming the vihara for the two or three days of the festival, will probably take visitors a little below the surface of life as it is lived in Thailand…

And having done so, is likely to remain with them long after many of the noisier external aspects of their visit have been forgotten.

So certainly you should enjoy the Yi Peng/Loi Krathong festivities for which the Northern Capital is celebrated. But don't forget the Mahachat. It's just as important.

YI PENG SCHEDULE
November 11-17, 2005

11:	Events	Location
7-10 p.m.	Concert from Northern Symphony Orchestra.	In front of the residential house of Chiang Mai Governor.
12:	Events	Location
7-10 p.m.	Look Toong song (folk song) concert from Ja Nok Rong School's band from Phitsanuloke, winner of the Look Toong song contest held by Channel 9 TV programme "Ching Cha Sawan".	In front of the residential house of Chiang Mai Governor.
13:	Events	Location
7-10 p.m.	Traditional Lanna music performance by Panutat ‘Kru Add' and his team and the singer ‘M the Star'.	In front of the residential house of Chiang Mai Governor.
14:	Events	Location
7-10 p.m.	Lanna-style Look Toong (folk song) concert by the famous Lanna singers ‘Witoon Jaiprom' , ‘Terdthai Chainiyom' and guest performers.	In front of the residential house of Chiang Mai Governor.
15-17 :	Events	Location
7-10 p.m.	Special Performance: Reminiscence of Lanna Ways of Life	In front of the residential house of Chiang Mai Governor.
Activities Sponsored by the Chiang Mai Municipality
9-17:	Events	Location
6-11 p.m.	Plenty of activities focusing on the theme of tracing back to the ancient Yi Peng festival	Three-Kings Monument
15:	Events	Location
6-10 p.m.	Procession of the Yi Peng lanterns (Lanna- styled lanterns)	Along Chang Klan road and Night Bazaar area.
15-17:	Events	Location
8.30-11.30 p.m.	Light and Sound shows at the stage on the Ping Riverbank	Opposite Chiang Mai Municipality Office.
16-17:	Events	Location
7-12 p.m.	Miss Yi Peng beauty pageant.
16:	Events	Location
6-12 p.m.	Procession of the small Krathong.
17:	Events	Location
6-10 p.m.	Procession of the large Krathong.