Journal of the Siam Society; 86

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The Journal of the Siam Society

Patrons of the Siam Society Patron His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej Vice-Patrons Her Majesty Queen Sirikit His Royal Highness Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Her Royal Highness Princess Galyani Vadhana Krom Luang Naradhiwas Rajnagarindra Honorary President Her Royal Highness Princess Galyani Vadhana Krom Luang Naradhiwas Rajnagarindra Honorary Vice-Presidents Mom Kobkaew Abhakara na Ayudhya His Serene Highness Prince Subhadradis Diskul

Council of the Siam Society, 1998-2000 President

Bilaibhan Sampatisiri

Vice-Presidents

Prof. Krisada Arunwongse John Reid Khunying Niramol Suriyasat

Leader, Natural History Section

Dr. Weerachai Nanakorn

Honorary Secretary Honorary Treasurer Honorary Librarian Honorary Editor, JSS Honorary Editor, NHB

Monita Singhakowin Robert Siedell Michael Wright Dr. Ian Glover Dr. Warren Y. Brockelman

Members of Council

Navarat Laekhakula Fran\!ois Lagirarde Paul G. Russell Peter Skilling Vara-Poj Snidvongs Chaisak Suwansirikul John K. Withrington Albert Paravi Wongchirachai Dr. Woraphat Arthayukti

The Journal of the

Siam Society Volume 86, Parts 1 & 2 1998

Honorary Editor Ian Glover (University College London, UK)

Advisory Committee Prapod Assavavirulhakarn (Chulalongkom University, Thailand) Oskar von Hinliber (University of Freiburg, Germany) Sunait Chutintharanon (Chulalongkom University, Thailand) Pirya Krairiksh (Thammasat University, Thailand) David K. Wyatt (Cornell University, USA) Charles Higham (Otago University, New Zealand) John Guy (Victoria and Albert Museum, UK) Charles Keyes (University of Washington, USA) Dhirawat na Phombejera (Chulalongkom Univc;rsity, Thailand) Nandana Chutiwongs (Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, The Netherlands) Phasook Indrawooth (Silpakom University, Thailand) Louise Cort (Smithsonian Institution, USA) H. Leedom Lefferts (Drew University, USA) Claude Jacques (Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes, France)

Editorial Board Bruce Evans Kanitha Kasina-ubol Euaypom Kerdchouay Frantrois Lagirarde Albert Paravi Wongchirachai Martin Perenchio Peter Skilling

© The Siam Society 1999 ISSN 0857-7099 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the Siam Society. The Journal of the Siam Society is a forum for original research and analysis. Opinions expressed in the Journal are those of the authors. They do not represent the views or policies of the Siam Society.

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The Journal of the Siam Society Volume 86, Parts 1 & 2 1998 CONTENTS

Ian C. Glover Editorial

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ARTICLES Andrew Turton Diplomatic missions to Tai states by David Richardson and W. C. McLeod 1830-1839: anthropological perspectives James R. Chamberlain The origin of the Sek: implications for Tai and Vietnamese history

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Paul T. Cohen Lue ethnicity in national context: a comparative study of Tai Lue communities in Thailand and Laos

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Pierre Le Roux Coudee magique, eau lustrale et Mton enchante: rites et croyances dans la construction de !'habitat traditionnel des Jawi (Patani, Thai1ande du Sud)

63

Berenice Bellina La formation des reseaux d'echanges reliant 1' Asie du Sud et 1' Asie du Sud-Est a travers le materiel archeologique (VIe Siecle Av. J.-C.-VIe Siecle Ap. J.-C.-le cas de la Thai1ande et la Peninsule Malaise Michael Smithies Siamese Mandarins on the Grand Tour, 1688-1690

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John Villiers Portuguese and Spanish sources for the history of Ayutthaya in the Sixteenth Century

119

Richard A. Engelhardt and Pamela Rumball Rogers The ethnoarchaeology of Southeast Asian coastal sites: a model for the deposition and recovery of archaeological material

131

Gerd Albrecht and Johannes Moser Recent Mani settlements in Satun Province, Southern Thailand Bernard K. Maloney A 10,600 year pollen record from Nong Thale Song Hong, Trang Province, South Thailand

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201

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Contents

KlausWenk Thai literature as reflected in Western reports during the 17th to the 19th Centuries

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NOTES AND COMMENTS J C Eade Round-number reckoning in Thai for the 5000 years of the Buddha

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Anthony Diller A Trang cave text of 1614 AD

232

Frederic Maurel The work of George Credes: views of a young man

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Betty Gosling Comments on Christian Bauer's 'The Wat Sri Chum Jataka glosses reconsidered'

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REVIEWS Ronald Bruce StJohn Thailand's Boom and Bust by Pasuk Phongpaichit and Chris Baker

241

Ronald Bruce StJohn Khmer Mythology: Secrets ofAngkor by Vittorio Roveda

242

Ronald Bruce StJohn Loyalty Demands Dissent: Autobiography of an Engaged Buddhist by Sulak Sivaraksa

243

William J. Klausner Loyalty Demands Dissent: Autobiography of an Engaged Buddhist by Sulak Sivaraksa

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Peter Skilling The Dviiravatf Wheels of the Law and the Indianization of South East Asia by Robert L. Brown.

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Peter Skilling Singhalesische Handschriften, Tei/2, Die Katalognummem /99-376 (Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland Band XXII, 2) by Heinz Bechert

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Notes for contributors to the Journal of the Siam Society

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Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 86, Parts 1 & 2

EDITORIAL This volume brings to a close the second of the two years for which I was appointed Hon. Editor of The Journal of the Siam Society and, at the time of writing the Society's Council is considering the appointment of an editor for the next issues. Once again I have some apologies to make to members and other subscribers. Despite strenuous efforts it was not possible to get the volume published within the year for which it is dated-largely because there was no backlog of contributions after the publication of Volume 85; and although, unsolicited and solicited, they came in steadily, throughout the year it was only by November 1998 that enough material was available to make up a respectably-sized issue. In Volume 85 I expressed the hope that we could revert to the Society's former practice of publishing two separate parts but in July 1998 I was again asked by the Council to make, for the sake of economy, one double issue, and this we have done. Another, and more serious error has been called to my attention by Sheila Middleton in connection with her paper on engraved gems from Southeast Asia, and these are detailed in a separate errata slip. In fact, most of the items she asked to be noted are not so much errors as changes in wording made by myself or suggested by a referee in an attempt to clarify what we thought to be ambiguities or obscure passages in the text. As the completed paper and referee's comments were received only a short while before I left for Bangkok with the material for the printer there was no time to resolve all the changes we wanted to make with the author. In retrospect it would have been best to postpone publication until this was done, and in failing to do this I apologise both to the author and the readers. There were far more errors in the J.S.S. 85 than I had wished for, and perhaps the most in my own article. One careful reader even asked me, 'Where is the dog ?' mentioned in the caption of figure 11 (p. 179); and of course it was not there. At the last minute, I substituted, on the advice of the printers a photograph of Henri Parmentier, his daughter and J.-Y. Claeys (but

without the dog) at Tra Kieu in 1927, but forgot to amend the caption. This shows how necessary is careful independent proof reading by someone who has not written nor worked on the text for some time. One sees what one thinks should be on the page rather than what actually is there. Fortunately, the new Hon. Secretary of the Society has taken on the job of recruiting a number of proof readers for this issue so there should be fewer careless errors. In my last editorial I mentioned that the majority of the papers delivered at the sixth conference of the European Association for Southeast Asian Archaeology which were not included in J.S.S. 85 would be published in a volume, to be entitled Southeast Asian Archaeology 1996, and this, edited by Marijke Klokke and Thomas Bruijn came out in September 1998, and is available from the Centre for South-East Asian Studies, University of Hull, HU6 7RX, UK. Since then the same association held its seventh biennial conference at the Museum ftir Volkerkunde, Berlin in August 1998 and most of the papers given then will be published in a similar volume to be edited by Dr Wibke Lobo, the conference organiser. In this volume of the J.S.S. readers will note some further changes but also continuities, in style and layout. We have kept the same page size but used 'Times family' fonts which make the use of diacriticals for Sanskrit and other languages easier to handle. The 'Notes for Contributors' at the end of this volume has been slightly amended to take account of some omissions for instance how best to refer to multivolume books-so potential contributors are advised to consult the latest version. As on the last occasion, I and any future Hon. Editors of the journal will have to be quite rigorous in asking contributors to adhere to the guidelines laid down. Only rarely will it be possible to have contributions re-typed into machine-readable format and I do not regard it as the editor's job carefully to check or complete references.

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Ian C. Glover, Ruthall Cottage, Ditton Priors, Shropshire, UK, December 1998.

DIPLOMATIC MISSIONS TO TAl STATES BY DAVID RICHARDSON AND W. C. McLEOD 1830-1839: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Andrew Turton* Abstract This paper examines the ethnography of travelling embassies to Tai states in the 1830s (Chiang Mai, Chengtung, Chengrung and other Shan States) as seen primarily through the unpublished journals of two British officials based in Tenasserim: Dr David Richardson and Captain W. C. McLeod. It considers features of the lengthy overland journeys and the daily journals themeselves. The main analytical focus is on pre-modem Tai diplomatic practices and their engagement with European diplomatic guests. It explores themes of diplomatic ceremony and propriety, delays and mutual suspicions, cordiality and friendship.

Introduction

London in 1591 after a nine-year Asian tour regaling Shakespeare's contemporaries and the London inns, with tales of fabulous Pegu, and his claim to have made a side-trip in 1587 to Chiangmai (see Ryley 1899; Edwardes 1972; Hall 1928). By 1600, year of the formation of the British East India Company (EIC), Sir Foulke Greville was advising Queen Elizabeth to send a mission to Siam, as it was free from Portuguese or Spanish influence. In Banten in early 1608 EIC Captain Keating invited to dinner the Siamese ambassadors who were on their slow way to Holland. They seem to have made it clear that the King of Siam would welcome an embassy from the English. 2 The first British embassy duly arrived in Ayutthaya in 1612, and in the following year a trade mission was sent to Chiangmai from Ayutthaya headed by two representatives of the EIC, Thomas Driver and Thomas Samuel (see Hall 1928; Hutchinson 1940). Or we could pick up the thread again from the years 1683-87 when Captain John Burnaby, an Englishman, and what the EIC

In writing this as an anthropologist, I am aware that I am treading rashly in the historian's territory, if not literally, then in the historian's time and sources. The specific time is the 1830s, but it starts earlier. It starts with a new European and world order after 1815; a late enlightenment intellectual climate combined with incipient industrialization. When John Crawfurd sailed from Calcutta in 1821, he remarked later with hindsight (Crawfurd 1967 [1828]), there were no steamships, but by 1824 a small steamship, named Diana, was in action against the Burmese army on the Irawaddy. 1 It starts with Thailand in confident and expansive mood, with increases in empire, in the China trade, in population, and freedom from war with Burma. It starts also with the Crawfurd mission to Bangkok in 1822, and, more intimately for my story, with the arrival in Madras of two young Anglo-Scots, William Couperus McLeod as an infantry cadet in 1821 and David Richardson as an Assistant Surgeon in 1823. The story of British diplomatic contact with the Tai world starts earlier still of course with the travelling merchant Ralph Fitch, back in

• School of Oriental and African Studies, Thomhaugh Street, London WClH OXG, e-mail

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Andrew Turton

Lao or Shan) and one by Richardson to Bangkok. While most of the reports have been publishedin the JASB 183~0 (Richardson 1836, 1837, 1839-40); in Parliamentary Papers in 1869 (McLeod 1869; Richardson 1869); and in the five volumes of the so-called Burney Papers in 1910-14 (Burney 1910-1914)-none have been properly edited or commercially published to date, though the journals of the Richardson and McLeod missions of 1837 are due to be published, edited by Volker Grabowsky and the present author. We have not yet examined all the manuscript versions of these sources, but it seems that virtually all relevant material has in fact been published in the limited forms mentioned. For example the Burney Papers, published safely after the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909, released much correspondence originally classified as secret. The territory in which these events take place is not so unfamiliar or off limits to me as it happens. I have spent quite some years living in Thailand, especially the North, and have visited, as McLeod and Richardson did between them: Chiangmai, Lamphun, Lampang, Chiangrai, Chengrung, and neighbouring places they spoke of: Chiangsaen, Chiangkhong, Nan, Luang Prabang, Puerh, Kunming, Tali and so on. I have also spent quite a few days walking through the hills and foothills, occasionally camping in the forest, as they so frequently did. Even more intimately, McLeod twice passed right through the area of a village and district in Chiangrai where I lived and researched for more than two years. This was then known until the early twentieth century as Muang Nong Khwang, now Amphur Mae Sruay. McLeod describes flora and fauna, crops, hot springs, elephant hunting, trading with Chengtung, political allegiances and dependencies and so on, which were as I found or had told to me. 4

called an 'interloper', or free trader, was Governor of Mergui, as a Siamese official (Hutchinson 1940), as W.C. McLeod was to be under British over-rule 150 years later. 3 Despite these linking threads of narrative, discontinuity is more marked than continuity. In the early 1820s, as Stamford Raffles noted when he commissioned John Crawfurd to undertake the first proper European diplomatic mission to Thailand since 1687, European knowledge of, and relationship with the Tai world-indeed the whole area of 'the countries between Bengal and China' to use a contemporary phrase, was virtually starting again from scratch. Though true in diplomatic terms, this is a bit misleading however, since for several decades Calcutta had been a centre for commissioning, storing, and disseminating knowledge of the East Indies region. For example we may note the founding in 1788 of Asiatick Researches, later to become the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (JASB), the journal in which several of Richardson's reports were to be published. There was the publication in 1810 of the first English language outline Thai grammar by Leyden. In 1824 Captain James Low, aged 33, based in Penang, who also made a number of visits into Tai territory in the Peninsula in the 1820s was awarded by the EIC a bonus of 2,000 Spanish dollars for his expertise in the Thai language of Bangkok, which he never visited, and in related Tai studies, which he had acquired over some six years with the help of Thai informants. By about this time-if we include the occupation of Singapore in 1819 and the treaty of Yandabo in 1826 by which Britain took the Tenasserim Provinces, from Mergui in the south to Moulmein in the north-by this time, British India bordered most of the long western edges of the Tai-speaking world. From Manipur in the North to Penang in the South, there were Tai speaking residents, subjects of the Government of India. So much, by way of introduction, for a heterodox appropriation of the historian's dimensions of time and chronology. As for my principle sources, they are principally the reports of five missions undertaken by Dr David Richardson and one by Captain W.C. McLeod to Tai states (mostly known then as Western

The travelling embassies of the early modern period are extraordinary kinds of transcultural encounter. 5 They start with assumptions of the possibility of a cultural 'bridgehead' of mutual understanding. There is both strong self-interest and commitment to some common interest. Some mutually beneficial exchange is sought. It is a

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Ethnography of embassy

Diplomatic missions to Tai states by David Richardson and W. C. McLeod 1830-1839

negotiation. The diplomatic encounter constitutes a contested zone. Accounts thus have the merit of a kind of robust honesty, reflexivity even, about self-interested purpose and the difficulties of 'translation' in various senses; a transparency all too often lacking in other travellers' and some academic accounts. And despite the fact that there are fewer Tai records, or for some missions none at all, there are opportunities to see the Tai side exercising reverse determination: facilitating, blocking, dissimulating, modifying, appropriating and so on. Part of my method is to identify recurrent rhetorical themes or tropes, what have been called 'formulaic commonplaces' (cf Boon 1982, 1991) or what in the history of literary rhetoric are called topoi, which is to say figures of speech, which can be seen in these and other accounts. I argue that they are not so much accidental, or merely stylistic or symptomatic, but largely constitutive of the events as recorded. They include a series of critical, rhetorical complaints: of excessive ritualisation and ceremony; of excessive control, surveillance and lack of freedom; of endless, unnecessary delays and frustrations; of lack of 'civilization' among the host society (including excessively deferential and despotic behaviour, absence and style of clothing etc.). Then there are classifications of peoples in an ethnicising, gendering, sometimes racialising, and almost always hierarchising way. Interesting} y, some of these hyperbolic styles seem to serve to reveal-just as well, or better than the equally exaggerating method of claiming to present standard-average descriptions-or let us hear, something of the voice from the other side-their concerns and suspicions about possible threats, duplicity, espionage, and bad faith; their evaluation of the European; their lack of unanimity and so on. And there are plenty of other themes, currents or undertones, some of which may be contradictory or which leave the whole not adding up in any convenient or expected way. One of these I discuss below as the trope of friendship and delicacy; themes which I would argue are worthy of greater attention in historical and ethnographic studies. 6 One influence on my approach has been from reading about Chinese diplomatic

practices, which seem to have been replicated or transformed in many East and South East Asian countries. Bangkok was sending almost annual missions to China in this period. There are quite a few interesting references to Thai and Burmese diplomatic officials met by Europeans who had had previous experience of missions to Beijing. There had been Burmese diplomats in Beijing when Lord Macartney first went there in 1793. Burney translated the account of a Burmese mission to China in 1833. One of the Tai states visited by McLeod, Chengrung, had been under Chinese suzerainty for centuries. Richardson meets, on the road, a Burmese official he had met a few years earlier, who had since been to Beijing as second ambassador. But in terms of my present focus, on what I do of course concede are relatively small scale missions, what struck me-totally freshly on a second reading-was the similarity of structure and processes of these British missions to those in Bangkok in 1822 (Crawfurd 1915, 1967; Finlayson 1826) 1825-26 (Burney 1910-14), 1850 (Thailand 1936), 1855 (Bowring 1857), to a Srilankan mission in 1750 (Pieris 1903 ), to the French missions to Ayutthaya in the 1680s (Choisy 1993), the Dutch in Vientiane in 1641 (Van Wuysthoff 1987), and so on further back and farther afield. What we can call the intertextuality of this discursive phenomenon is a fascinating aspect. This includes the way in which authors refer to the texts of others, meet each other if contemporaries, are briefed from Calcutta by scholar officials with access to excellent libraries and archives, and so on. There is clearly a cumulative production not just of a corpus of texts, but more than that of a discourse on the Tai world, which is increasingly shared with the Tai side over time. In 1834 Cao Lamphun consults his copy of the Tai text of the Burney treaty of 1826; and in 1839 the future King Mongkut's younger fullbrother, the future Upparat, shows Richardson a copy of 'Crawfurd's map' published in 1828, and so on. Some of this is part of the ethnography itself. For example, Richardson records a conversation in 1838 between Henry Burney, who was then British resident, or Commissioner, at Ava, and the new King of Burma, Tharrawaddy.

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Andrew Turton

The journeys

Richardson had made many other visits to Ava, receiving an honorific title from the previous king. This is a year before Richardson follows in Burney's footsteps on a mission to Bangkok. He has also travelled, sometimes in the company of Burney, to Calcutta for various briefings and debriefings. Earlier still he has. kept the knowledgeable Mrs Ann Judson company in Moulmein, while her husband Dr Adoniram Judson accompanied the notoriously 'undiplomatic' Crawfurd as interpreter on his mission to Ava in 1826. Richardson reports the Burmese king as saying to both of them that he is willing to talk to diplomats like Burney and Richardson-both we can assume totally fluent in Burmese, after some 14 years continuous residence- 'but', he goes on, and Richardson seems to quote almost verbatim 'let any "green man" who does not know the language and customs of the Burmese, and assumes a higher tone, be sent here, he will look to it as a warning to prepare his troops; ifMr Crawford (sic) were here now, it would be war directly' (Richardson 1869: 146). The similarities-as between Bangkok and the other Tai states-are in this case more interesting than the differences. Though once we have established the comparabilities, the detailed differences once again become compelling. I might briefly mention a few broad differences. They mainly derive from the fact that the Siamese state centred on Bangkok (or the Burmese at Ava, or the Chinese at Peking) are sovereign states or rather empires, and possessed of far greater wealth and resources than their 'vassals' the phrathetsarat. So the difference is mainly in the scale of magnificence and ceremoniousness, and in the extent of possibilities for a less formal, more egalitarian, more participatory encounter (for example in access to various parties and classes of people, such as exiles, monks, women, other foreigners etc., less punctiliousness about sitting on chairs or removing shoes etc., more reference to use of alcohol in socialising. And also by virtue of the lesser status of these vassal states-and, which is almost the same thing, their lack of any maritime frontier-the missions are the first or the ftrst remembered, direct encounters on home territory with Europeans at this level of formality.

Let me now give a starkly factual description of the missions and journals. All six missions were overland journeys (excepting a little by riverboat and raft) from Moulmein to Tai territories and back to Moulmein, the administrative capital of British Tenasserim Provinces. They were journeys on foot, both human and animal feet. They were among the first, certainly the first well documented, and the first diplomatic journeys by Europeans into the hinterland of mainland South East Asia, to anticipate a term of political geography-of German origindating from the high imperial 1880s and 1890s. Earlier accounts had been of journeys from port to port, and they contain descriptions of whatever was encountered on the way. So we have ethnography of the Cape of Good Hope prefacing an embassy to Beijing (Cranmer-Byng 1963; Staunton 1797); or of the behaviour of Eurasian high society in Malacca in Crawfurd's narrative of his mission to Bangkok. McLeod and Richardson, on the other hand, travel from the land frontier inwards towards the capitals, and so they have seen much of the conditions of the country before seeing its rulers. The journeys were made in 1830,1834, 1835, 1837 and 1839. They usually started in midDecember of the year before, and tried to return before the rains set in the following May. Richardson's 1834 mission arrived back on 21 May; it had rained throughout the final week, causing several deaths from exposure and most of the party to suffer from fevers. On the whole the accounts minimise the physical dangers and risks. The number of people on these journeys varied from about 50-100 and up to 300 and more. The caravan consisted first of all of the personal party of Richardson and McLeod. This consisted of about 20-30 people, comprising five or more Indian soldiers, personal servants, tent pitchers, interpreters, guides, and so on. Then there were the elephant drivers and others in charge of bullocks and horses; and people referred to as 'coolies', who I think were porters on foot. The porters and the animals carried food and other supplies, trade goods, and very importantly diplomatic gifts, which I discuss later. There were often other traders, on their

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Diplomatic missions to Tai states by David Richardson and W. C. McLeod 1830-1839

own account, some of whom joined at later stages of the journey, taking advantage of the protection as well as the trading opportunities offered by the expedition. In addition there was sometimes an armed escort from the host state. As far as one may tell, Richardson and McLeod were the only Europeans on these journeys. 7 If the expeditions are, somewhat anachronistically, thought of as research missions, then compared with the embassies to major capitals, which involved quite large multiskilled teams, these were more like solo field trips. However, the value of a small entourage of experienced traders and interpreters, and other sources of local knowledge, must have been considerable. In any case they were not accompanied by relatives, as were the leaders of several other missions. For example, Crawford took his wife in 1822, Burney his wife and six year old son in 1826, and Bowring his adult son in 1855. The traders and others would usually include Bengalis and other Indians, Mon, Burmese, Shan, maybe Karen and Yunnanese Chinese. There were Animists, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, and Muslimsthough the religious differences or practices of members of the caravan are hardly ever alluded to. With one exception, there is no mention of religious holidays, not even Sundays, or Ramadan for instance. By contrast local religious events, such as Northern Thai New Year, Buddhist ordinations and funerals, and some other festivals, and Buddhist monks encountered are mentioned. The total journey times were approximately as follows: McLeod five and a half months, and Richardson respectively three and a half, two and a half, four and a half, eight and a half, and seven and a half months, a total of over two and a half person years. The distances covered averages about 10--12 miles per day in a median range 8-16, at a walking pace of about 2.5 miles per hour or less. In colder, flatter country, and for one stretch without elephants, which were usually the most important limiting factor, McLeod averaged 15 mpd (24 km) over a fortnight without halting for a day; and on another occasion 20 mpd (32 km) over a week without halt. 8 Richardson had had even more demanding experiences in Burma during the war (1824-

26) as an army surgeon in sole command of caravans of wounded soldiers and field hospital staff. For example in January 1826 he had led a caravan of 263 people, including 63 wounded on carts and stretchers, for three days, covering 120 miles by land and river. Richardson wrote to his father that he would decline 2,000 rupees (about six months salary) to do the same again. They seem to have usually made only one march in a day, arriving mid-day to early afternoon. Even if they rose well before dawn it would usually take two to three hours to cook, eat, and look after animals before leaving at 7.00 or 8.00 am or even later. The times recorded seem mainly to be of the main party which travelled faster, whereas elephants and load bearing 'coolies' sometimes took longer (10-12 hours), and sometimes arrived after dark. They seem never to have halted for the day unless absolutely obliged to by the needs of the pack animals, by the need to supply food, or more usually, by the political demands of their immediate hosts, which could mean a wait of several days on end. Reference to these unwelcome delays becomes a regular figure in their narratives. They usually spen~ about two to three weeks-and up to a couple of months-in major centres, a week or two in lesser ones. While roughly 60 percent of the total time was spent travelling between centres, more journal entries are written at these centres, as one would indeed expect. Journal entries, however brief, are made for almost all days. Every day's entry records distance, direction(s) and duration of march, sometimes the actual times of departure and arrival; place names where inhabited or known (villages, mountains, rivers, and small streamsand their breadth and depth); and occasionally the estimated height above sea level is calculated from the temperature at which water boils. In the Appendix to this article I give excerpts from each of Richardson's and McLeod's 1837 journals chosen as examples of fairly short entries on the march, just to give some flavour.

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Pre-modern Tai diplomatic practices It might be thought that these missions were too

low level and small scale to be called diplomatic missions, and that they were at most like consular

Andrew Turton

or trade missions. The emissaries were well regarded by their superiors and each had several years experience, military and administrative, but neither was senior in rank: Richardson had the rank of Assistant-Surgeon, and McLeod was only made up to Captain for the mission, or was possibly promoted immediately after. Both were aged about 33 on their first missions, which may not be an advanced age but nonetheless one by which many of their contemporaries had reached high office and responsibility. Although authorised by the Government of India, like Crawfurd and Burney, the letters they bore came from the Commissioner of Tenasserim Provinces. They are not conventionally thought of as 'diplomatic' missions, although the title of Langham-Carter's 1966 article, does refer to Richardson as 'diplomat and explorer' (Langham-Carter 1966) and Walter Vella also refers to Richardson as a 'diplomat', at least in regard to his mission to the King at Bangkok in 1839 (Vella 1957: 124). However I think is it useful to assimilate these missions to the category of 'embassy' or diplomatic mission, for several reasons. First, these were the first official encounters between Britain (not just Tenasserim or India) and these Tai states; in the case of Chiengrung, almost certainly the first local encounter with Europeans of any sort. Secondly, for all that these were tributary states-always looking over their shoulder, so to say, towards Ava, or Bangkok, or China, actually Puerh, or Kunming at bestthey had varying amounts of autonomy, a sense of their own dignity, and a desire, and some freedom, to pursue their own external relations. The British tended at first to exaggerate the sovereignty of the Burmese Shan states, but more out of ignorance perhaps than for any devious reason. Some evidence for the relative autonomy of Chiangmai, for instance, is that the Cao Chiangmai had sent a letter to the British in Moulmein arriving as early as March 1825, from the 'ruler of 57 provinces and possessor of the richest throne in the East'. Possibly this was from King Phuttawong in the first days of his reign, or near the death of the previous ruler. This was just a few months after the occupation of Tenasserim by the British during the war but nearly a year before the treaty of

Yandabo, and seven months before Burney's embassy to Bangkok started in November 1825. Another letter, perhaps from the ambitious viceroy was sent in 1828, not long after the sack of Vientiane by the Siamese in 1827. A third letter from Lannathai arrived in Moulmein from Bunma, the Cao Lamphun and titular cao ciwit, or senior cao in the north, in early December 1829, and was either the trigger or the final authorization for Richardson's first mission which departed Moulmein on 11th December 1829. Brailey, my source for these letters, surmises plausibly that Burney had probably met Phuttawong and Bunma, called 'Western Lao Chiefs', in Bangkok on his visit in 1825-26 (Brailey 1968). Assembling vassal state rulers to attend major foreign embassies seems to have been a likely practice, so that several of the Shan cao probably had experience of meeting British officers at Ava (from the Symes mission of 1785 onwards) or Bangkok, prior to any formal direct contact, and they certainly would have known how various ambassadors were treated. Thirdly, and most importantly for my approach (and which I may hope gives it some originality), my analysis shows that the structure, the semiotics, and practices of the whole mission, and within it the more focused episodes 'at court', and in the performances of royal audience and reception, allow us to assimilate these events to the category not just of diplomatic embassy, but of a generic Tai diplomatic event, at least to an extent that permits some comparison and further analysis. Let me develop this last point and take the argument forward. I have just implied that there may be apparently factual, reliably constant features of formal events: rules or norms of language, practice, and behaviour, whether of a more ritual or more broadly social kind. For example the King or Cao receives the visitor, the khaek muang, in a palace (phra raja wang or ho luang); he sits in a relatively high position; the diplomats are accorded some privilege but must obey certain local rules of behaviour; there are rather strictly governed exchanges of letters, of formal questions and other rhetorical niceties, of gifts etc; hospitality and security are provided; information is requested and exchanged, or withheld within certain rules, agreements are

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Diplomatic missions to Tai states by David Richardson and W. C. McLeod 1830-1839

made and recorded, and so on. All this, though recognizably part of an even more general category of pre-modern South East Asian embassy, is conducted in a distinctive Tai idiom; it is not identical to Burmese or Vietnamese, for example. In the first place, it is interesting to study this in itself as part of a general history and ethnography of social forms, and not just in order to see what was the outcome of the negotiations, or what specific bits of information were recorded.

But what can we do with this material? Most often it is mined for factual information on British colonial history, on the structure and political economy of Tai states, on the Karen and other peoples, on elephants and so on. I myself have used it as a source on Tai practices of slavery. Nigel Brailey in his unpublished 1968 SOAS PhD thesis made particularly good use of it to consider the political dynamics of the Lannathai or Chiangmai Kingdom in the nineteenth century and the origins of its incorporation by the Siamese (Brailey 1968). My current purpose is to examine these texts as a genre of ethnography, and more particularly as ethnography of embassy, ethnography of diplomatic missions. This is part of a larger project which does the same for other European accounts in the early modem period9 • We might say that these embassies produce three kinds of ethnography. First, the most obvious sort, what I call 'narratives and classifications of other peoples'; this is ethnography .Ill!. the embassy. Secondly, there is 'ethnography of the embassies' themselves. And thirdly, a kind of ethnography in the embassy; a less than explicitly descriptive or narrative account, an ethnography of each side's calculations and efforts as they test ways of communicating their desire to be and to remain both distinct, distant and autonomous, and yet closer in friendship; and a desire both to accept and reject the other's view and opinion of oneself. On the face of it my sources mainly belong to the genres of official report writing, of diaries or journals, and of writing about journeys. They were not written for publication (a contrast with the accounts of Finlayson (Finlayson 1826),

Crawfurd (Crawfurd 1967), Bowring (Bowring 1857) and many others) and neither McLeod nor Richardson themselves published their accounts. This was mediated by superiors. Of the two Richardson may be considered the more reflective and scholarly. He also wrote detailed and thoughtful letters to his father, extracts from which were published in 1966; and he translated a basic Burmese law text which was first published a year after his death in 1846 (Richardson 1847). The journals of McLeod and Richardson are more like the field diaries of later academic ethnographers than other accounts of the period. This is partly due to their general familiarity, gained over many years of residence, with much of the region, and many of its peoples and languages, and to their travelling for long periods in the company of a multi-ethnic caravan. All this and their ability to witness and participate in many aspects of the life of the ordinary people as well as the nobility, and the frequency of their visits, gave them some advantages over many academic researchers, who are faced with different opportunities and constraints on their time, mobility and access. Like many ethnographers of other peoples, they become somewhat, or more than somewhat seduced by the exotic, or rather, by the exotic become routine or a second home. 10 Richardson makes many allusions to the attractiveness ofTai--or at least Khon Muang and Shan-ways of life, for example the looks and behaviour of northern Thai women, music, hospitality, and food (the latter in contrast to the predominantly Chinese and possibly Eurasian food prepared for diplomatic visitors in Bangkok, as when at one formal dinner he says '[I] smuggled my own [Indian style?] curry onto the table'). In a village just outside Lampang Richardson's party were offered a meal of 'rice and vegetable stews'. 'These were brought out by the women of the village, young and old; the former, as usual, uncovered to the waist, and finer busts are not to be found in the world, and many of them fair as Europeans.' (Richardson 1836: 699) Richardson seems to have committed himself fairly early on to a career or even a lifetime spent in the region. He said in a letter to his father, fairly soon after his arrival in Burma, that he had a premonition he would not return,

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The journals

Andrew Turton

even to Madras. He was said by his grandson in 1947 to have married the daughter of a Shan cao, to have died in Moulmein-he died aged 49-and by that time to have turned to Buddhism (Langham-Carter 1966). It is quite possible that he was married by the time of some of his later missions. Let me give some examples of seemingly near verbatim, and instantaneous reports of richly textured, sometimes polyvocal, multiethnic encounters and performances-no doubt written up before going to bed as all good anthropology fieldworkers do! 11 Here is an entry for 29 January 1837. Richardson is in Karen country: I had a long conversation this morning with an old Shan woman, from Monay, the wife of the chief man of business and interpreter; she gave her opinions freely of the Kareans, in the presence of the [Karen] chiefs son . . . she said they were jungle wild animals; they had neither temples nor laws; did not know good from evil, and were perfectly uncivilised; the bystanders, or rather sitters, though she was understood by two-thirds of them, seemed perfectly unmoved by her eloquence (Richardson, 1869: 109).

It is most likely, if not absolutely certain, that she was speaking in Tai. In any case I feel I can almost translate this directly back into Shan or kham muang colloquial cliches. 12 The mutely self-deprecating (non-)response of the Karen also rings true. Or this brief extract from his 1839 journal, written in the evening at a camp made for the night in the forest, perhaps not far from the Three Pagodas Pass. Given the scarcity of Karen villages, they have run out of rice and have eaten yams and ferns for three days:

McLeod had similar opportunities and a certain talent for writing. It is May 1837. He has been talking, on the road not far, from Chiangmai, to the Cao Ho Na of Chiangmai, who was the viceroy and in practice probably the most powerful member of the ruling group. The prince has an escort of about 100 elephants and 700 armed men; compared with him McLeod must have seemed like a backpacker! The prince has just come back from a diplomatic trip to Bangkok, which may also have been something of a shopping trip: He spoke of Dr Richardson's mission [in 1834?], and said he was sure the Red Karengs, who were the bitter enemies of the Burmans, would never consent to their passing through their country. I asked him how his countrymen, being good Buddhists, could permit and encourage the slave trade with that country. He said that God had provided every nation according to its necessities; that to the Red Karengs, he had given men but no salt. The Chief of that tribe, who accompanied him down to Bangkok, went back soon, considering the capital a most disagreeable place, and Zimme far superior to it, though nothing equal to his own mountains . . . [though they were both] loud in their praises of the English shop at Bangkok' [presumably the godown of Robert Hunter, the only European commercial establishment in the city at the time] (McLeod 1869: 95).

Ceremony and diplomatic propriety

For me, this seems to resemble a comic interlude in front of the curtain in a Shakespeare history play; a few days later Richardson would be in audience with the King of Siam.

The earliest European account of the Ayutthaya court, in about 1515, says that the King 'is very ceremonious with strangers' and that his 'ambassadors carry out their instructions thoroughly' (Pires 1944: 103-4). In the sixteenth century, Anthony Reid says, an important 'measure of a ruler's greatness' was to have a harbour 'full of foreign ships and the court of foreign envoys' (Reid 1993: 190). Nicholas Gervaise, referring to the court of King Narai (r.1657-88) commented 'There has never been any court anywhere in the world more ritualistic than the court of the King of Siam' (Gervaise 1989: 221). Chiangmai may not have been full of foreign envoys, but there were a number of exiled cao

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One of our Karen companions is at this moment giving the most ludicrous and savage imitations of the dances of the Siamese, Taline [Mon], Birman and Sawas by the ftre-light.' (Richardson 1839-40: 1028)

Diplomatic missions to Tai states by David Richardson and W. C. McLeod 1830-1839

muang kept close to court and Richardson observed that the shutters on the reception hall had paintings of foreigners paying homage or respects to the King, including farang dressed in early eighteenth century costume. And compared with Ayutthaya or Bangkok, the ceremony, both for the visiting diplomats and local nobles is perceived as less deferential. However, a straightforward structural kind of analysis of the more focused ceremonial parts of the missions, reveals common elements, and variations which permit an understanding of, on the one hand, the different degrees of wealth, strength and vassal status of the Tai states or muang in question; and on the other hand, of diplomatic tactics. Richardson's first visit to Lamphun may serve as an example. It has most of the 'basic' elements which can be summarised as follows: a meeting outside town by a senior royal official; a request for an audience together with frrst mention of an official letter and gifts; arrangement for the audience (in this case the very next day) and details of protocol, including refusal of his request to wear a sword; the audience itself and its key elements: seating, dress code (especially shoes), gestures of respect (from both sides towards ruler), presentation of letter and gifts, formal exchange of questions and answers etc.; entertainment afterwards (feasting, music); socialising on the days following (attending religious ceremonies, for example New Year ceremonies, rocket festivals, funerals, ordinations of Buddhist monks, and also authorised visits of inspection of the town and its fortifications); semi-formal meetings with other senior officials to discuss business; other informal meetings with officials but also monks, women, exiles, traders etc.; throughout the visit: a succession of small gifts of provisions etc. to the visitors; an audience of departure; presentation of return gifts.

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A distinctive ceremonial element in the northern scenario is the ritual of soul-calling and wrist-tying (pouk[khwan]) 'beyond which' he is told 'there is no possible mark of friendship'. Much used throughout the Tai world in popular practice, this is still used, and indeed has been re-emphasised in formal government receptions in Laos. Although Richardson sits on a lower level, and on carpets and not chairs in royal audiences (though on a chair with the Phra Khlang in Bangkok), he always notes that he is permitted to keep his boots on, even in Bangkok. The Burmese commissioners do however try to get him to remove his shoes; Richardson says he would do this only in the company of princes, but the Tai do not insist. Richardson usually bows from a standing position, and remarks that the chiefs 'assume a much more manly position than in the presence of some of the lowest chiefs of Bangkok'. Even on his visit to the Karen Chief, PhaBho, Richardson notes, albeit with heavy irony, a few details of ceremony. Having described the chiefs house as little different from the other 70 or so houses 'in the worst Burman style', he refers to 'his Majesty's mansion' and 'the royal presence'; the room is a very dark interior with a frre burning in the middle of the floor, and 'the roof splendidly varnished with soot', but there was a carpet. Richardson gives gifts [unspecified on this occasion but usually in such cases a gun and some cloth] 'The only indications of his chieftainship were a gold and silver sword and silver betel box, both of which he carried himself, and his only attendant was the old Sban .. .' , a 'factotum', as Richardson calls him, who wrote the chiefs letters in Burmese. However this chief was the man who Richardson says had the power to extract 'the blackmail' (a nice historical Scottish term for the political economy of frontiers and cattle trade!) from both local Burmese and Shan, and who, when Richardson frrmly refuses his request that the British ally with him in fighting the Burmese, nonetheless 'promised his protection to traders from Maulamyne and to people (Chinese included) from the northward'. There are other instances of the contradictoriness of Richardson's representation of the Karen chief. Of the people in the soon

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crowded room, he writes: 'their whole demeanour was civil and respectful,-very different from what the Zimmay chiefs wished me to believe'. But having heard and seen some effects of slave raiding by Karen-if cultural relativism will allow me to call it that-including an interview with a pregnant woman whose husband had been 'cut to pieces in her arms', and who had been separated from her two daughters and all fellow villagers, and other 'diabolical scenes' as he calls them, Richardson does not mince his words and refers to the Karen in general in terms of 'the terror with which these detestable savages have inspired their neighbours, though I am convinced they are equally despicable and detestable'. Richardson nonetheless maintains a diplomatic propriety, telling the chief that 'I had come as he had requested, and as the Commissioner of Maulmayne [sic] had promised last year, from whom I had brought a letter and presents, and wished to open the gold and silver road between us, and be friends with the Kayen nation, etc. etc.' And he is convinced that PhaBho himself 'discourages men-catching', and that he has secured 'the good-will towards us of the Red Kayens'. And although there is a fair amount of disparaging language-much of it is only of the order of 'shabby' and 'vile smell of the house', which together with the noise he says gave him a headache-his invective is reserved for the practice of 'kidnapping and selling their neighbours'. It is only this practice that he refers to when he says: . . . it is possible that the intercourse with these people now commenced may lead eventually towards their civilization, and that our influence with them may hereafter be successfully exerted in putting an end to their system of kidnapping and selling their neighbours. . . .

Chief to ask when he may see him. 'After breakfast' is the reply. In Bangkok in 1839, in some contrast, Richardson is invited to the royal audience ten days after his arrival. King Rama ill had received Burney 15 years earlier and had been present at Crawford's mission. The King had no doubt had Richardson's visits to the north reported to him. Richardson is carried in a 'hammock' by eight of his own servants. He no doubt had read of Crawford's physical and diplomatic discomfort at being carried rolled in a soft hammock by only two porters provided by the Thai side. When the Siamese and 'native Christians' 'fell on their knees and made as many prostrations as they could' Richardson sat on the carpet at the designated spot and, in his words, made 'two or three salaams to his Majesty', which, though in Anglo-Indian usage could mean any greeting, I translate or interpret as a gesture with the hands and head, rather than merely a bow from the waist. During the royal conversation Richardson remarks 'From the knowledge I have of the Laos language, and its affinities to the Siamese, I could make out that my answers to the king' s questions were modified to meet the royal ear'. He comments that, On the whole, my reception (as I was frequently told it would be) was one of more state and ceremony, and oflonger and more friendly nature as regards the time of its continuance, (lasting one hour and 20 minutes) and number of questions put, than has been granted to any mission for many years, which I presume may be attributed to . . . ' [I paraphrase] British power in Burma . . . and 'a more just appreciation of our relative rank in the scale of nations', and [again I paraphrase] . . . the efforts of Mr Hunter (the Scottish and sole European resident trader in Bangkok 1824-1844).

This is a quite rare instance of moralizing. And it is noticeable that those Farang writers who have spent longest in the company ofTai (I would include also James Low and Bishop Pallegoix) are the least prone to use hierarchical notions of degrees of 'civilization' and so on. When Richardson arrives at the Karen village in the evening, he pitches his tent 200 yards from the village. Early in the morning he sends to the

McLeod finds Lamphun in 1837 in a weakened state following the death of the cao chiwit, with the palace recently 'pulled down', and hardly prepared for a formal visit. He goes on to Chiangmai where the officials are better dressed than at Lamphun though 'some are without jackets' and the 'Tsobua' is preceded 'by a few men shabbily dressed, armed with swords and spears'. The Tsobua himself wore a white jacket and 'ordinary cloth of the country',

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carrying himself an ordinary sword without a scabbard, said to be a Lawa custom. In Chengtung by contrast, for all that the palace is described as a 'shabby pile of wood'. it is 'richly gilt' inside, has a throne with a door at the back as at Ava, and there are men holding swords with golden scabbards. McLeod says he is 'struck with the grandeur of everything compared with what I had seen at Zimme'. The officers, all Shan, were dressed in the Burmese fashion, the rest with Shan jackets and blue trousers. On his second, less formal visit to the Tsobua (the Cao Chengtung Mahakhanan), McLeod spends nearly four hours sitting on a mat. He comments

I want to bring into focus frequent references in the embassy literature to personal friendship, pleasure, delicacy, kindness, and appreciation. They occur alongside expressions of negative prejudice, and politically motivated protest. I am in sympathy with Theerawat Bhumichitr, a relatively new member of a long tradition of

Thai scholar-diplomats. He argues the importance of the study of emotion and interpersonal factors in international politics (Theerawat 1993). There are limiting cases of envoys being arrested, even killed (certainly Burmese and Vietnamese). We are also alert to the ambiguities of hospitality. But the positive side tends to prevail, that sense of 'cherishing men from afar', as the Chinese annals put it. The summit of proceedings is the moment when the King briefly addresses the envoys. This is remarkably like the Chinese practice of the Emperor offering 'soothing words' (cf. Hevia 1995: 176), referred to in Thai for example as song phraraja phatisanthan sam khrang ['the three gracious royal questions']: how is your King; is there peace in your country; how long have you travelled? These are uncontentious words of welcome, formally friendly. Whether we are in Bangkok or the Shan States we hear these questions repeatedly. The experience of progressively, or perhaps intermittently, more relaxed, 'cordial', conversations and expressions of care and generosity during the course of a mission can be interpreted in much the same way as the process of 'centring and channelling' which is a feature of diplomatic strategy within Chinese guest ritual. It could be reduced and turned off, as well as turned on and up 13 • Cushions and chairs could be provided or not; boat crews could be dismissed, elephants take longer to assemble, privileges and concessions modified. And there was the final assessment of the return gifts, when all other business had been concluded. In addition to this highly managed aspect of personal treatment, there are many instances of something more personal. McLeod's experience can stand as an example. On the sixth day of his visit to Chiangmai in 1837, the day after his royal audience, he meets the third most senior prince who is commander-in-chief. The meeting starts formally. 'He received me with proper Siamese (sic) indifference'. McLeod thinks he is suspicious of English motives. But 'he soon made himself pleasant' and 'before we parted he threw off all reserve, put on my cap, and introduced his wives and children, of both of whom he has a vast number'; and McLeod records

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The position in which I was seated not being the most comfortable, which his son observing [the Tsobua was blind], whispered to his father; when pillows were ordered to be brought in for me. None of the officers are permitted to use these in the Tsobua's presence.'

He was also given refreshment in a gold cup and on silver trays. In Chengrung there is another contrast. The palace buildings and decorations are said to be Chinese, as is the costume of the court officers. Chinese is the language of the court, with one in ten of the officers able to write in Shan, we are told, and one in a hundred in Burmese. There are tables and chairs in the throne hall, and at the formal dinner with the regent, widow of the late ruler, there are three high tables with chairs and other lower tables with mats. McLeod has brought with him his own spoon and fork and wine glass, which it seems he is obliged to give as a present to the Regent at her request. The recent death of the Ruler is given, apologetically, as the reason for lack of a ceremonious reception suitable for 'a stranger of rank'.

Cordiality and friendship

Andrew Turton

that he was offered miang [fermented tea leaves] and coconut juice (McLeod 1869: 29). In addition to visits of ceremony and business there are visits of a more personal kind, motivated by personal curiosity, when conversation turns to trivial matters, including for instance inspection and admiration of Richardson's equipment, his magnificent double-walled tent and 'brass-bound bullock trunks', his scientific instruments (including sextant, thermometer, watch, and compass) and, he lets slip, his greyhounds, English racing dogs, which must have travelled many hundreds of miles with him. Prominent among these visitors are monks, and on other occasions groups of women, who in Bangkok, but more especially in the north are not backward in introducing themselves. Conversations with women feature with some regularity in the journals of these two men, who give a strong impression of reporting the women's speech quite directly. McLeod is generally sensitive to the intimate dimension. Gift giving as ever provides a good medium. He grows fond of the Cao Chengtung (Mahakhanan) to whom, when he discovers he is blind, he gives a musical box 14 • When in Chengrung he is given-in true imperial style-a Chinese, or should I say Tai, official's robe and an inscribed gold plate to hang round his neck. They ask him to put these on, 'which [he says] I did, much to their satisfaction'. One of the princes asks him to bring as a present, when he next comes, together with reading spectacles and a compass, 'some flower and garden seeds', 'he being fond of gardening' (McLeod 1869: 55-83). Music plays a consistent part in these narratives 15 • Musical performance is always offered by the Thai side; sometimes by the Farang side. Most Farang· seem to appreciate what they hear. Richardson-whose 'seduction' was rather complete, as we are seeing-heard a male and two female singers in Lamphun on his second visit and comments that 'the voices of the performers, both in sweetness and in compass were, beyond comparison, superior to anything I have heard out of Europe' (Richardson 1836: 690). 16 In time-honoured diplomatic fashion McLeod loads his elephants not only with hunting guns and musical boxes, but also with cases of whisky, cherry brandy, and port wine.

He says these helped communication in a region where the cao were fond of spirits. He sums up his experience in Chengrung 'the aim of the [Burmese] is to treat strangers . . . with marked indifference and slight; whereas with my new friends the reverse is the case, their politeness being extreme' (McLeod 1869: 82). Richardson was instructed to 'endeavour to render [himself] agreeable to the people and their chiefs through whose country [he would] pass'. Friendship and general goodwill were criteria by which he judged the success of his work. He writes:

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In my mission so far, I have perfectly succeeded, as far as the feelings of the chiefs here are concerned, and my intercourse with all classes of the people since the first few days has been all I could wish . . . (Richardson, 1869: 130, emphasis added).

Two years earlier he wrote: 'The kind feeling our north-eastern Shan neighbours towards us, have [sic] been increased by my late visit. The mixture of firmness and conciliation I had it in my power to exhibit towards them on the points discussed, has tended to convince them that we are firm and consistent friends, not desirous of aggrandizing ourselves at their expense, but at the same time not to be imposed on or trifled with.' (Richardson 1836: 706-7).

Of course maitri ['friendship'], maitricit ['friendliness'] or phrarachamaitri ['royal friendship' or 'friendly relations' (as between states)] may not be quite the same thing as 'friendship'. There remains an element of European realism in Richardson's search for friendship, which he reports after his visit to Bangkok in 1839: In conclusion I am sorry to say that I slightly suspect the cordiality of this people towards us: their professions are as warm as could be wished for but there is hollowness .. .' (Burney 191015: Vol. 4 (1) 24, original italics).

Interestingly this was part of some covering letter, which was not included in the version of

Diplomatic missions to Tai states by David Richardson and W. C. McLeod 1830-1839

his journal edited for the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1839-40. But note, however, the tentativeness and reluctance to confirm this 'suspicion'.

Envoi This paper is a report of work in progress, of how I am beginning to read this rich material. My main purpose is to begin to establish a field I am calling the ethnography of embassy or of diplomatic mission, by treating these sources critically as ethnography of various sorts: ethnography of exceptional cultural and more specifically diplomatic episodes; and by examining their own methodology and assumptions. Inevitably, in order to refer to the wider project, I have had to repeat myself at several points, quoting myself in the processwithout precise references which would have held up the narrative (see Turton 1997). I have attempted to recover as much as possible the 'lively voice' and the 'ocular witness' to use phrases of sixteenth century travel writers. And I have tried to avoid what S. S. Smith, Presbyterian Minister and Professor at Harvard in the late eighteenth century, refers to in his An essay into the causes of the variety of complexion and figure in the human species, namely the assumption that: 'ordinary travellers could not be trusted with scientific information . . . Countries are described from a single spot, manners from a single action, and men from the first man that is seen on a foreign shore.' (Smith 1788, cited in Marshall and Williams 1982: 138 note). I have very much in mind George Stocking's recommendations in the volume of his monumental series 'History of Anthropology' entitled Colonial situations: essays on the contextualization of ethnographic knowledge' (Stocking 1991) in which he emphasises the need to anthropologize the growth of western imperial power [and indeed we have also just touched on Siamese colonialism]. Stocking also advocates a methodology to explore the plurality of colonial situations and locales, the interaction of different individuals and groups within them, and the ways these conditioned ethnographic knowledge and subsequent anthropology, and forming what Talal Asad in the Afterword to

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this volume calls the 'pre-existing discourses and practices met by anthropologists . . .' , in practice a virtually infinite regressions of texts and discourses. 17 I attempt to question assumptions-whether those of primary authors or commentators-of a single powerful voice and perspective, of onesided accounts, and unidirectional and noncontradictory developments. In this, I suppose I am operating in a kind of post-colonial, and you might think revisionist spirit, trying not to generalise or make anachronistic assumptions about imperial teleology, not to elide different colonialisms or different episodes even within one colonial sequence; wherever possible restoring or attributing agency, relative autonomy, to all parties; and trying to establish the particularity of a specific pre-imperial encounter. In doing so I hope to contribute to another look at Anglo-Thai and Thai-Farang relations in the early modem era; and the development of a significantly shared discourse about the Tai world, which was to have an effective influence for a century or more.

Appendix Excerpts from the journals of Richardson and McLeod The following are examples of relatively short journal entries made while on the march. Spelling and all other details have been retained. 26th January [1837] (Thursday), Ka-tchaungLan, 3• 35' N.W., 12 miles.-Waited till nine o'clock at the last village to give the man another chance of crossing his elephant, when we started, finding it could not be accomplished; the first of the coolies came up at 12.35, but the elephants, owing to the sharp pointed rocks on the road, which distressed their feet, and the necessity of cutting a way for the howdahs through the branches and creepers for the first mile and a half, did not come in till 5.15. We met on the march to-day an old man and his family, taken at Mobie, being driven to the ferry for sale; their captor, an old Karean thooghee of about 50 years of age, was riding behind them, spear in hand. I asked if thoughts of his own children did not make him feel some compassion for these poor people; he coolly answered "Khan" (fortune),

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and pushed on his prisoners. (Richardson 1869: 108)

animals (with which the woods abound), and the clandestine trade with Kiang Tung, with which place there is constant communication. (McLeod 1869: 46)

4th February. [1837] From the Nam Takau to Ban Me Phit. Direction, N. Estimated Distance, 14 miles. Time, 4h. 22m. The route to-day may be said to have been along the valley of the Me Uu, but the ground being too low and swampy to be traversed at present, we kept along the bases of some low hills to the eastward, though occasionally obliged to cross the low muddy plains. The road, however, was generally good, and shaded by fine trees, teak and saul. We passed through the large village ofTeng Dam, containing about 70 houses entirely inhabited by Lawas, and in every respect like the village mentioned yesterday; around it there are fields, and numbers of heads of cattle grazing. We continued to pass through a country similar to the first part of the march, and arrive at the village of N6nquan, a scattered place, and said to contain about 50 houses, situated on a large plain, with the ruins of an old fort near it. The valley here increases in breadth to about eight miles, with high hills surrounding it. A pass is seen through them in the direction we take. To the village of M6ng M6n, containing about 15 houses, we passed over an extensive plain, so much cut up by elephants and cattle that our progress over it was necessarily slow; and to the village of Me Phit, which contains about 25 houses, we passed entirely over fields skirted by the Me Lau to the westward. For the convenience of water, we left the high road, passed through the village, and crossed over to the left bank of the Me Uu, where we halted. Near the village of Teng Dam quantities of the plant called by the Burmese Born rna thaing, or wild sage, from which they obtain camphor, was growing in the old clearings, but I cannot ascertain whether the Lawas make any use of it. Here arose some difficulty about elephants and provisions. They wished me to halt a day; we had come slowly enough, and I would not agree to it. This village, as well as N6nquan, is inhabited by people belonging to Zimme, Labong, and Lagong, all eager to be in advance to participate in the profits arising from hunting elephants, the sale of the flesh of wild

The Captain of the Diana was Frederick Marry at, soon to be a patron of the Oriental Translation Committee of the Royal Asiatic Society (London) and better known to English people of my generation, brought up to celebrate Empire Day, for his numerous adventure stories for young people with an imperial flavour. 2 Notwithstanding a certain cautiousness of etiquette displayed by the Siamese ambassadors, who, it is reported, brought their own food and cooks to the dinner party. 3 The event which preceded McLeod's eventual appointment is highlighted on the opening page of Anderson's English intercourse with Siam in the seventeenth century (Anderson 1890) which is a particularly imperialistic and jingoistic late nineteenth century account: ' The national aspiration of 1687 was gratified in 1824 as Mergui, on being summoned on 6th October, to surrender unconditionally, fell in an hour's time before the gallant assault of the British troops, supported by the guns of the cruisers of the Honourable East India Company.' 4 There was even a story in the village of an argument about whether to cut branches off the sacred Bo tree outside the temple to facilitate the passage of the elephants of a rachathut (ambassador or royal emissary)-though this may have been a later oneand how this led to a curse being placed on the headman by the powerful senior monk, to which the subsequent death of the headman was attributed. The village is referred to by McLeod as N6nquan. See Appendix. 5 I think of the embassy or mission as a single discursive entity, extending from the inception of the mission in London, Calcutta, or Moulmein, to postmission commentaries and publication. The whole time spent in Tai territory is like a single ceremony, containing within it other highly focused rituals of royal audience. 6 Some of the rhetorical figures appear to me to characterise the British writing about Tai societies of this time in a way that certain other figures characterise other accounts of other places at other times, for example exaggerated themes of human sacrifice, cruel

22

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Notes 1

Diplomatic missions to Tai states by David Richardson and W. C. McLeod 1830-1839

punishments, cannibalism, extreme forms of sexual practice and so on. Such themes are not entirely absent from late twentieth century eurocentric attitudes and reports on the East Asian region. There is some interesting recent secondary literature on suchlike in India and Indonesia (including Crawfurd's writing on the latter), but no reference from this to the Tai world, until my recent article. This is to some extent explainable in terms of the relative lateness of European 'interest' in this region and the mainly 'non-colonial' form this took. 7 Apart from the fact that no other Europeans are mentioned, when their watches stop-an occurrence mentioned more than once-there is no-one else who has a watch apparently. While the non-European members of the caravans might have carried a watch or clock (though most probably did not in this period), it is hard to imagine a European officer at this time without one. 8 Readings inform me that a well disciplined army unit might march 30 miles per day (48 km) over a week or so. This was achieved by King Harald's houscarls (elite bodyguard) marching south to meet the Norman invaders in England in 1066. The armies of Alexander the Great apparently could cover 30 km (18 miles) in a day. 9 Please see Turton (1997) which outlines this project in greater detail. I have inevitably been obliged to refer to and quote from this publication at several points in the present article. 10 As Georges Condominas (1965) puts it in the title of his superb autobiographical Vietnamese ethnography L 'exotique est quotidien. 11 Of course even these apparently unproblematic descriptive parts of the accounts need to be subjected in turn to critical scrutiny for presuppositions, assumptions, prejudice, and so on. 12 I invite the reader to attempt to translate this back into a vernacular Kham Muang of today. I have certainly heard myself statements of the following kind (with apologies for any inaccuracies and variation in northern pronunciation! acan hyyi, nyaang [Karen] nia bo mii sin bo mii tham, bo mii wat mii wa, bo huu buun bo huu baap, thoeng bo huu phasaa sasana anyang sak nyang hia thoe'. 13 Some of the things that Farang found unacceptable in Bangkok-such as the phrarachathan hai bia liang ['the royal gift of subsistence allowance'], for what some called dismissively 'bazaar expenses' and inadequate at that-were identical to Chinese practice. As were other customs, such as providing tea, sugar,

and fresh fruit-and for the Americans even milkwhich were appreciated. 14 Perhaps this is the earliest hiep siang in the north! This is the old Kham Muang word for gramophone or record player, literally 'sound box'. 15 I am tempted to recall that Macartney took five German musicians with him on his first mission to Beijing in 1793, as part of a nearly 100 strong mission. 16 Perhaps it was so pheun muang, a still popular form of folk opera in northern Thailand. Thai music has many admixtures from other places, and the envoys duly heard the music of various exile groups. Among these the Lao music heard at Bangkok, especially the khaen [bamboo 'reed organ', sometimes said to have inspired the European mouth organ] seems to have been the favourite. Western music naturally became a part of this hybrid musical milieu, and by 1840 Mozart could be heard on a mechanical player at royal audiences in Bangkok, just as the Thai ambassadors heard Mozart played live at Windsor Castle a few years later. 17 Historians have been somewhat too ready to obscure by generalising, for example concluding that Crawfurd was 'hostile' and 'intolerant' etc. towards 'the Thai'. This is not entirely inaccurate, and seems to correspond with Thai perceptions. But another reading, patient to judge the overall success or achievement of the mission as a whole-or at least in a more comprehensive perspective-would take greater note of the sometimes subtle and perceptive distinctions made by Crawfurd and others in his team (e.g. Finlayson, 1826) between the King and his ministers, between various ministers, between Siamese and Chinese, Mon etc., between nobles and ordinary people, between monks and others and so on.

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References Anderson, J. 1890. English intercourse with Siam in the seventeenth-century. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trtibner. Asad, Tala! 1991. Afterword: from the history of colonial anthropology to the anthropology of western hegemony. In George W. Stocking, Jr. (ed.) Colonial situations: essays on the contextualization of ethnographic knowledge (History of Anthropology 7), Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Boon, J. A. 1982. Other tribes, other scribes: symbolic anthropology in the comparative study of cultures,

Andrew Turton

histories, religions, and texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Boon, J. A. 1991. Affinities and extremes: crisscrossing the bittersweet ethnology of East Indies history, Hindu-Balinese culture, and IndoEuropean allure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bowring, Sir John. 1857 The kingdom and people of Siam, with a narrative of the mission to that country in 1855. London: John W. Parker and Son, 2 vols. Brailey, N. J. 1968. The origins of the Siamese forward movement in Western Laos, 1855-1892. PhD dissertation, University of London. Burney, H. 1910-1914. The Burney Papers. Bangkok: Vajiraiiana National Library, 5 vols. Choisy, Abbe de. 1993. Journal of a voyage to Siam 1685-1686. [Journal du voyage de Siam.] Translated and introduced Michael Smithies. Bangkok: White Lotus. Condominas, G. 1965. L'exotique est quotidien: Sar Luk, Viet-nam central. Paris: Pion. Cranmer-Byng, J. L. (ed.) 1963.An embassy to China: being the journal kept by Lord Macartney during his embassy to the Emperor Ch'ien Lung, 179394. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Crawfurd, J. 1915. The Crawfurd Papers: a collection of official records relating to the mission of Dr John Crawfurd sent to Siam by the Government of India in the year 1821. Bangkok: Vajiraiiana National Library. [reprinted 1971 London: Gregg International.] Crawfurd, J. 1967. [1828] Journal of an embassy to the courts of Siam and Cochin China. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. (Oxford in Asia Historical Reprints.) [First published 1828 London: H. Colburn.] Edwardes, M. 1972. Ralph Fitch: Elizabethan in the Indies. London: Faber and Faber. Finlayson, G. 1826. The mission to Siam, and Hue the capital ofCochin China in the years 1821-2, with a memoir of the author by Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles FRS. London: John Murray. Hall, D. G. E. 1928. Early English intercourse with Burma. London: Longmans. Hevia, J. L. 1995. Cherishing men from afar: Qing guest ritual and the Macartney embassy of 1793. Durham, North Carolina, and London: Duke University Press. Hutchinson, E. W. 1940. Adventurers in Siam in the seventeenth century. London: Royal Asiatic

Society (RAS Prize Publication 18). Langham-Carter, R.R. 1966. David Lester [sic] Richardson--diplomat and explorer. Journal of the Burma Research Society, 49 (2): 207-18. McLeod, W.C. 1869. Captain McLeod's Journal. In East India (McLeod and Richardson's Journeys). Copy of papers relating to the route of Captain W.C. McLeod from Moulmein to the frontiers of China, and to the route of Dr Richardson on his fourth mission to the Shan Provinces of Burmah, or Extracts from the same. In India Papers 18641871. London, India Office, Political Dept., 13104 (see also ibid. map and introductory matter 1-13). Marshall, P. J. and Williams, G. 1982. The great map of mankind: British perceptions of the world in the Age of Enlightenment. London: J.M. Dent. Pieris, P. E. 1903. An account of King Kirti Sri's embassy to Siam in 1672 saka (1750 A.D.). Journal ofthe Ceylon Branch ofthe Ro7alAsiatic Society 18 (54): 17-47. Pires, Tome. 1944. The Suma Oriental ofTome Pires: an account ofthe East from the Red Sea to Japan, written in Malacca and India in 1512-1515. Translated and edited by Armando Cortesiio. London: Hakluyt Society. (Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, Second Series 90.) Reid, A. 1993. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680. vol. 2, Expansion and crisis. New Haven: Yale University Press. Richardson, D. 1836. An account of some of the Petty States lying to the north of the Tenasserim Provinces, drawn up from the Journals and Reports of D. Richardson Esq., Surgeon to the Commissioner of the Tenasserim Provinces, compiled by E. A. Blundell, Commissioner. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 5 (58) October 1836: 601-25; (5Q) November 1836, 688-96; (59) 696-707. Richardson, D. 1837. The History of Labong [Lamphun] from the Native Records consulted by Dr. D. Richardson, forming an Appendix to his journals published in the preceding volume. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 6 (61): 55-7. Richardson, D. 1839-40. Journal of a Mission from the Supreme Government oflndia to the Court of Siam. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 8 (96) December 1839: 1016-36; 9 (97), 1-3; 9 (99), 219-50. Richardson, D. (trs.) 1847. The dhamathat or the laws of Menoo. Mou1mein.

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Diplomatic missions to Tai states by David Richardson and W. C. McLeod 1830-1839

Richardson, D. 1869. Dr. Richardson's Journal of a Fourth Mission to the Interior of the New Settlements in the Tenasserim Provinces, Being to the Chief of the Red Karens, to the Tso-Boa of Monay, and thence to Ava. In East India (McLeod and Richardson's Journeys). Copy of papers relating to the route of Captain W. C. McLeod from Moulmein to the frontiers of China, and to the route of Dr Richardson on his fourth mission to the Shan Provinces of Burmah, or Extracts from the same. In India Papers 1864-1871. London, India Office, Political Dept., 104-147 (see also ibid map and introductory matter l-13). Ryley, J. H. 1899. Ralph Fitch: England's pioneer to India and Burma. London: Unwin. Smith, S. S. 1788. An essay on the causes of the variety of complexion and figure in the human species. Edinburgh. Staunton, George. L. 1797. An authentic account of an embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China. 3 vols. London: G. Nichol. Thailand 1936. Thut farang samai rathanakosin. (Prachum pongsawadan 62.) [Foreign embassies in the Bangkok period.] Bangkok.

KEYWORDS-TAl, THAILAND, SIAM, GREAT BRITAIN, DIPLOMACY, 19TH CENTURY, ETHNOGRAPHY, BRITISH BURMA, TENASSERIM

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Theerawat Bhumichitr 1993. Phra Chomklao, Roi de Siam: etude de /'emergence de l'anglophilie et de lafrancophobie au Siam du XIX.e siecle. Berne: Peter Lang. Turton, A. 1997. Ethnography of embassy: anthropological readings of records of diplomatic encounters between Britain and Tai states in the early nineteenth century. South East Asia Research, 5 (2): 175-205. Van Wuysthoff, G. 1987. Le Journal de voyage de Gerrit Van Wuysthoff et de ses assistants au Laos, 1641-1642. Presente et traduit par JeanClaude Lejosne. [Second revised edition.] Metz: Centre de documentation et d'information sur le Laos. Vella, W. F. 1957. Siam under Ramalll, 1824-1851. Locust Valley, N. Y.: J. J. Augustin for the Association of Asian Studies. (Monographs of the Association for Asian Studies, 4).

THE ORIGIN OF THE SEK: IMPLICATIONS FOR TAl AND VIETNAMESE IDSTORY 1 James R. Chamberlain• Abstract Given the distribution of Sek and other Northern Tai type languages south of the Red River Delta, the hypothesis that Tai speakers originally occupied a north to south continuum which included the delta seems irrefutable. The homeland of Proto-Vietic lies far south of the Hdng plain in the interior regions of what is now Nghe An, Viet Nam, and Borikhamxay and Khammouane Provinces in Laos. Historical evidence supports the linguistic geography. In the year 535 AD two provinces, Ly (Tri) and Minh, were named in the obscure valley of the Ngan Sau, a southern tributary of the Song Ca, no doubt related to Chinese economic interest in gold. (Both the Sek and the Mene are associated with gold.) A southern extension of the same valley, along the upper portions ofthe Song Giang, is home to a Vietic group known as Sach, the Vietic pronunciation of Sek. As would be anticipated, historical events that culminated in the replacement of Tai speakers in the Delta with a Sinicized Vietic people were of a distinct south-to-north character.

Dedication In a 1958 communication to the Journal Asiatique, having pointed out that the Sek spoken in Khammouane Province was not related to the Sach of Cadiere and not related closely to Lao, but rather resembled the Tai languages spoken in Guangxi and Guangdong such as Man-CaoLan, Ts'un Lao, Nung-an, or Dioi, Andre Haudricourt remarked: The Sek are experts in irrigated agriculture; they could not have come from China across the mountains since there are no traces elsewhere in Laos; rather they are found near the ancient Cham frontier of the Chinese empire before the independence of Vietnam. One might ask whether it is a question of an old Chinese deportation to the frontiers of people from Guangdong carried out more than a millennium ago; and it would be worthwhile to see if in the annals the historians have spoken of them.

Unfortunately, since this issue was raised 40 years ago, no one has attempted a response.

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No doubt this is due to the mixing of disciplines necessary to approach the relevant information. I would therefore like to dedicate this paper to the memory and departed spirit of Andre-G. Haudricourt, a great multidisciplinarian, whom it was my honor to have known.

Introduction First noted by Haudricourt in the 1950s, the importance ofSek2 to comparative and historical Tai studies became known to the Tai studies community primarily through the efforts of Professor William J. Gedney in a series of papers and publications dating from 1965 through 1982, culminating in the publication of his extensive glossary and texts, a large volume of989 pages edited by Thomas Hudak in 1993. This impressive volume is the result of intensive field studies carried out by Gedney in the northeastern Thai province ofNakhon Phanom, a location to which many Sek speakers had been transported • P.O. Box 439, Vientinane, Lao PDR email: jimchamberlain@ hotrnail.com

27

James R. Chamberlain

by the Thai military approximately between the years of 1828 and 1860. A few of the texts incorporated into the volume, and Gedney's notes taken from older Sek speakers in Ban Atsamat, refer to original locations of Sek villages, but without much geographical precision since these are oral traditions, not based upon direct experience. Because the Sek language is particularly archaic in its preservation of consonant clusters, and since the languages most closely related to Sek are spoken primarily in Southern China, the origins of the Sek people are of great historical interest to the mainland of Southeast Asia, to the protohistory of the Tais, and to the ethnohistory of Vietnam. Therefore, in this paper I would like pursue further the issue of the origins of the Sek. The Sek language has been described variously as belonging to the Northern Branch of

Tai or to an earlier (pre-Proto Tai) broader grouping. The latter was the view of Gedney, one to which I subscribe and have illustrated in a dendrogram (Figure 1) first prepared in 1991(b). Also in 199l{c), I proposed that the Mene language ofNghe An Province in Vietnam, now also spoken in Borikhamxay Province in Laos, contains a substratum of Sek-like features, evidenced in vocabulary and in the tone system, which leads us to conclude that there was a Northern Tai (or closely related) group of languages located to the south of the Red River (HBng) delta which must have originally formed a continuum from Guangxi to Thanh Hoa. In support of the continuum theory, additional evidence has surfaced in the form of the etymology of Tai ethnonyms and from Old Chinese historical sources to bring us to a point where the interpretation of other more northerly, TAI-KADAI

KADAI KAM-TAI

Be-tai

Tai

Sek

Be

Kam~ui

Lakkia

Hlai (Li)

Ge-Chi

YangBiao

I Northern

Central Southwestern

Figure 1 The main branchings of the Tai-Kadai ethnolinguistic family3

28

Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 86, Parts 1 & 2

The origin of the Sek: implications for Tai and Vietnamese history

.... ~·'. ........., ~

~,..,,.,.

.... ... .... -....... ·~--

...~

--····-..

... ...,...,...

. .

•

t

)

...

~--1

'~

1~-r·--

....-:, 1.., ........-'l:... l

'\,. .......

,

.. ....,,..... \

-

·-·

....

Houa Phanh

,

•

lit ..

.....

ng bang

Xi eng Khwang

Map 1 Annam in the Seventeenth Century

Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 86, Parts 1 & 2

29

James R. Chamberlain

~1

~

B Song Lot> B Nokong

B Thopoibo

0 B Noton

O B He

0

30

10

20

30

Journal of the s·zam Society, Vol. 86 ' Parts 1 & 2

40

The origin of the Sek: implications for Tai and Vietnamese history

V

ETNAM

NAKAI NAM THEUN CONSERVATION

AREA

so 3

Map 2 Locations of Sek Villages in Nakai and Kbamkeut

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31

James R. Chamberlain

The locations of the Sek in Thailand have been amply recorded by Gedney and others so that it is not necessary to repeat that information here. In Laos, however, despite the efforts of Morev (1988), the most important and oldest locations have not been identified until recently in Chamberlain's ( 1996 and 1997) technical reports for development projects that have not been widely publicized. Furthermore, it is now clear that there are two distinct dialects of Sek, one in the district of Khamkeut in Borikhamxay Province, and one in the Province ofKhammouane. The dialect of Khamkeut emanates from the village of Na Kadok in the Subdistrict ofNam Veo who trace their origins to the village of Phu Quan (/fuu kwang/) located on a small western tributary of the Ngan Sau in the Dac Tho administrative unit ofHa Tinh, Nghe An Province in Vietnam Gust to the south ofVinh). According to villagers in Na Kadok, several families of Sek speakers still reside at this location. Speakers of this dialect are also found in Lak Xao Subdistrict, the villages of Ban Som Sanouk, Ban Nam Phao, and Ban Houay Toun; and in Khammouane4 Subdistrict, Ban Na Tham Kwang (or Ban Nam Hoy) [see Map 2]. The second Sek dialect, the one which is found in Thailand, comes originally from Nakai District in Khammouane Province, and is still spoken in four villages there: Ban Toeng (/ trn"IJ 1 I in Gedney Text V), the subdistrict seat on the Nam Noy; Ban Na Meo; Ban Na Moey (/sin4 naa4 m....-ry"/ in Text IV), and Ban Beuk (/ bwk4 naa4 trr3/ in Text IV5). The last three are all located on the Nam Pheo, a tributary of the Nam Noy. 6 During the time of the Siamese occupation, most of the Sek went to hide in Ban K wat Cheo, between Ban Yang and Ban Lorn across the border in Vietnam. 7 The ones who didn't were taken to Nakhon Phanom. The villagers at Na Meo say they have been living

in their present location for 286 years. [see Map2] The Brou at Koune (the last village on the Nam Pheo and the closest one to Vietnam) relate that names of former villages there were Ban Kiin and Ban Tong Haak and that the original inhabitants were Sek. (interview with Xieng Souan, age 63, at Ban Koune, 15 Feb. 1996). The Sek village of /thruu3/ mentioned in Gedney Text V in a doublet with /trn"I]/, is no doubt the place name known as Ban ThO, just across the border, next to the confluence of the Houay ThO and the Nam Amang. The adjacent mountain to the south is called 'Phu Kun Tho' on some maps (probably /phuu khuun thoo/ 'Mountain+ source+ ThO'). There is so far no positive identification of a city called /s:XJI]4/ as mentioned in Text IV. The Brou center known as Meuang Bam(= /baan tab:>/= Ban Amang) is possibly located at the junction of the Nam Amang and the Houay Taco. In Gnommarath District, the villages of Pha Thoung and Phon Khene are Sek, said to have migrated originally from Ban Toeng. Other Sek villages, such as those mentioned by Morev (1988), are found in Thakhek and Hinboun Districts. Many of these appear to be composed of Sek who after having been taken to Thailand, escaped back to Laos. The Sek ofNa Kadok live adjacent to Phou Thay, Tai Theng and Tai Moey villages to the north, and to two small villages of Makang (Vietic) to the south and west. They are active gold miners. The Sek of Ban Toeng8 live near to villages ofBrou (Katuic ), the Kri (Vietic) and the Ph6ng (Vietic), while the Nam Pheo villages are bounded to the east by the aforementioned Ban Koune (Brou), and to the west by the Ph6ng. In both cases, culturally, the Sek are wetrice agriculturists who have established elaborate irrigation systems and terraced paddies. Evidence of these paddies may also be seen at the village ofNa Vang in Nakai District. Located on the Nam Mone, this village was originally established by the Sek from Na Kadok when they were hiding from the Thai soldiers. After the soldiers departed, the Sek returned to their original village and were replaced in Na Vang by more recent Brou settlers who have maintained the terraces.

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in particular Chu, Chinese history is possible, at least from an ethnolinguistic perspective. Hopefully this will provide an ethno-historical frame into which additional data may be placed as it becomes available.

Current locations of Sek and the Sach

The Sek

The origin of the Sek: implications for Tai and Vietnamese history

Ethnic-Specific Vocationality The Sek and the Mene are famous in their respective areas for their associations with gold. The Sek at Na Kadok have extensive gold mines along the stream bed of the Nam Houay, and have been engaged in this occupation for as long as they can remember. Likewise, the Sek in Nakai, although not now currently involved with gold mining, have identified areas where they believe gold is located, and talk about the subject with great enthusiasm.

The Slich As the pronunciation of the ethnonym /thre:e:k6 DLll is rendered in Thai as Saek or in Lao as Sek, the Vietnamese pronunciation is transcribed as 'Sach.' The term in Vietnam, however, is applied to a group ofVietic speakers who inhabit the area of Vietnam that is immediately adjacent to the Tai Sek speaking area of Nakai in Laos. This cannot be accidental. The Sach are considered by many Vietnamese scholars to belong to the Cheut (Chili) branch ofViet-Muong. Others, however, consider that the so-called Cheut dialects, including Sach, belong to the Southeastern branch of Vietic (Diffloth p.c. cited in Chamberlain 1997) [see Figure 2]. Unlike the other members of this branch, the Sach are primarily lowland paddy rice cultivators. The name Sach in Vietnamese has been translated as 'division administrative equivalente au village' which according to N go, f). T. ( 1977) was a name 'recorded from the 15th c. in historical documents.' Cadiere (1905:349) translates Sach as 'liste, registre, role d'impot,' perhaps indicating villages newly registered, or subject to tribute. The latter would seem reasonable given the apparent Chinese interest in the area since early times. According to Cadiere (1905) the Sach are mainly located on the upper Song Giang (Ngu6n Nay), at the southern end of the Ngan Sau valley and the beginning of the Song Giang valley in the upper Nan and adjacent Son (Tr6c) valleys, near the sources of each watershed. But Cuisinier (1948:44) reports at least five families living on the outskirts of the Ngu6n village of Bai Dinh, along Route 15 (the extension of Route 12 in Laos) and claims that they have been replaced extensively by Ngu6n settlers in Quang Binh.

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Cadiere makes essentially the same claim, and adds that the Ngu6n seem to have originated further north in the Ha Tinh area. Cuisinier also notes a May village just 2.5 km south of Bai Dinh called Ca ay. (Bai Dinh is in fact only about 20 km from the current Sek settlements on the Nam Pheo). Thus it is reasonable to assume that the name, at least, whether Sach or Sek, was common to a specific area. Culturally, the Sach are considered as more sedentary than the other 'Cheut' groups, followed by the May. The others remain nomadic, at least in spirit, since many of them were 'sedentized' in 1954 at Cu Nhai, only a half day's walk from Gia 6c Sach (Nguy6n P.P. 1988:9). At the present time, according to Nguyen V.M. (1996:142), there are 1,426 Sach speakers spread out among 7 communes in Minh Hoa District of Quang Binh Province. These locations are close to the old Sek settlements on the Nam Pheo and the Nam Noy. The Nam Noy was in fact part of an old trail linking Laos and Vietnam called the Quy Hc;tp road. And since the Sek say they came from Vietnam originally, it must have been from this area. Whether they entered Laos first via the Quy Hqp road or via the Nam Pheo is problematical. Both appear to have been wellestablished routes.

Mene and related languages The Mene language is found spoken in many villages in Khamkeut District9 of Borikhamxay Province, and in several other villages in the District ofVieng Thong. The Mene in Laos all relate that they came originally from the area denoted by the doublet Xieng Mene-Xieng My, in Vietnam, which, due to the diligence of Dr. Frank Proschan of Indiana University (p.c.) who visited the area in 1993, we now know to be the old names for towns which appear on maps of Ngh~ An Province as Xietng Lip and Ba@n Pott respectively. The former is located at the confluence of the Nam Lip and the Nam Chou (Houay Cha Ha), near where the Cha Ha and the Nam Ngoen (Ngan) converge to form the Nam Souang (Houay Nguy~n), while the latter is located further east on the Nam Ngan. 10 From this geographical location the proximity of the Mene to Quy ...

33

James R. Chamberlain

Chiiu becomes apparent and is noteworthy because Finot's sample (1917) of the Quy ... Chiiu alphabet is a Mene type language, marked by such lexical items as /k:YYt DL2JI 1 'to hurt; be ill.' Furthermore, the users of this same alphabet in Thanh Hoa are called 'Yo' by Robequain (1929) and Robert (1941). The characters are archaic, and of unknown origin, 12 and written with brushes from top to bottom, right to left, like Chinese. Thus Mene and Yo represent a population of Tai speakers with a substratum of Northern Branch features, who at some point in their history were subjected to heavy Chinese influence. It must also be remembered that the ethnonyms associated with the Northern Branch of Tai in Guangxi and Guizhou, and which are ultimately related to ethnonyms in Chinese histories of the area, are also found in this area south of the HBng plain, in what is now Thanh Hoa, Nghe An, Borikhamxay, Khammouane, Nakhon Phanom, and Sakon Nakhon. Indeed 'Viet' falls into this category as well as may be seen in the table below: In the first two cases the names apply to ostensibly southwestern ethnolinguistic groups that emanate from Thanh Hoa and Nghe An. Indeed, Yo/Nyo is used by two linguistically different subgroups groups in Sakon Nakhon and Nakhon Phanom. Yooy, spoken in Sakon Nakhon in Thailand and in Gnommarath in Khammouane, is known only as an ethnonym in Thanh Hoa applied to a group formerly inhabiting this province (Robequain 1929). Like the Sek, the Mene are associated with gold and the gold of Xieng Lip was famous. Luppe (1934) writes: Quelques centigrammes a chaque battee, de temps aautre, Ia chance d'une pepite (on en a vu

atteignant 4 a 5 grammes, mais combien rares'). II y a deux sortes d'or: Kham Ke (ou vieux) de

couleur rougeatre et le Kham One (ou jeune) de couleur claire. Le premier vaut 4 a 5 piastres le Bac (4 grammes) et le second 3 piastres. La production locale annuelle n'atteint certe pas un kilo. Ce precieux metal est repute et des comen;:ants vienne de tres loin (Luang-Prabang) pour en acheter. II est conserve dans les tubes pris dans l'extremite d'une plume de paon et bouches a Ia eire vierge. (71-2) (After consideration, Luppe decided that exploitation was not commercially viable, at least by the French colonialists of that era.)

The homeland ofProto-Vieticl5 Given this ethnolinguistic distribution, the fact that Tai speakers originally occupied a north to south continuum which included the delta seems undeniable. So we should be able to at least offer a hypothesis for the homeland of the Vietnamese prior to their arrival in the delta. Therefore, in this section it is necessary to digress temporarily into the realm of Vietic.

Vietic 'Vietic' is the name given by La Vaughn H. Hayes ( 1982, 1992) to that branch of Austroasiatic which includes Vietnamese, Meuang, and many languages spoken in Ha Tinh and Quang Binh (in Vietnam), and Borikhamxay and Khammouane in Laos. All of the non-Vietnamese languages of this branch have been referred to collectively by such authors as Maspero (1912) and Cuisinier (1948) as 'Mttdng' (Meuang), an old Tai word meaning 'city' or 'settlement.' Cuisinier points out, however, that this term is used for these peoples primarily in Hoa Binh and Thanh Hoa, whereas

China

Vietnam

I, Yi

Yay, Dioi, Dudi Yooy

Ou, Ngo, Ngeou Au

Yue, Yueh

Vi~

Laoffhai

Nyo, Yo

M.C.

Character

*ngji!},c

?

*nguoA

K. 1284

*ji"'iit(6 family rose to power in Giao, beginning with £>6 Vi~n who had served as prefect in Nh~t-nam and Ctru-duc before being assigned to Giao-ch'i (p. 11 0). This

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39

thousand were captured and beheaded (Taylor:41 ). Han-Yue [206 BC-220 AD] During the Han, Nam Yue was divided into seven prefectures. In addition to Giao-ch'F 2 and Ctru-chan, a third province called Nh~t-nam was added beginning south of the Hoanh Sdn massive, that is south ofCtru-chan (Taylor: 30). Han settlements began to emerge. Evidence of Han-style tombs have been discovered in Giaoch'i, Ctru-chan, and northern NMt-nam along the Giang River, but nowhere else in Vietnam (Taylor: 54). The second century was beset by no less that five major rebellions against Han authority in Nh~t-nam and in Ctru-chan. This locus of discontent in the south continued into the tenth century, and marks two significant aspects of Vietnamese arrival in the Delta: south to north movement and a composition of Sinicized Vietics. More and more frequently throughout this period, attacks against Giao-ch'i were led by disenchanted Chinese expatriates with strong indigenous followings.

James R. Chamberlain

pattern of official assignment was repeated often, another example of south to north influence in Vietnam. Around 424 Lin-i reinitiated its aggression, seizing Nh~t-nam and raiding Ciru-dttc, the king established the fortress ofKhu-tUc at the mouth of the Giang. From this position he was able to raid Ciru-dttc (Taylor: 115-6). The aggression of Lin-i was finally ended by a decisive Sung military campaign that began in 446 and devastated Lin-i. However, Nh~t-nam soon fell under Lin-i authority once again by virtue of its geographical location. Following the defeat, however, the capital was moved from the its old location near modem Hu€ further south to Tnlkieu, near modem Da-ning (Taylor: 118). In summing up this period Taylor writes: It was at this time [the fifth century] that Giao's

northern border was adjusted to the modern border between China and Vietnam in recognition of the natural frontier dividing the indigenous Vietnamese political system from imperial administration. The Vietnamese were no longer a part of an amorphous frontier jurisdiction as they had been under Han and Wu, a jurisdiction based on concepts of empire rather than on the indigenous culture. By detaching Ho-p'u and establishing Ytieh Province late in the fifth century, the Chinese realized that the Vietnamese lands were too far away and too un-Chinese to rule in the usual way. Thereafter, the Vietnamese were recognized administratively in a province of their own (p. 131).

Taylor goes on to note the fixing of the southern border at Hoanh Sdn, and the imperial policy of not 'tampering with the cultural frontier.' Thus the 'Vietnamese,' who at this point in time in Giao-clii we must still regard as ethnically Tai, are described as belonging to the northern empire while descending from a southern culture, a characterization that is indeed well-suited to both the Tais in the north ofNamViet as well as to the ethnic Vietnamese in the south. In the year 535, Dttc Province was formed around the mouth of the Song Ca, out of what had been Ciru-chan Prefecture (or southern Ciruchan as it had been known since the time of

40

Chao To in the third century BC), and two additional provinces, Ly and Minh were named in the obscure valley of the Ngan Sau, a southern tributary of the Song Ca skirting the lush rainforests of the Annamite Chain. It is likely that the sudden appearance of these two hitherto unmentioned provinces in the hinterlands is related to Chinese economic interest in gold, and perhaps secondarily, rhinoceros horn and kingfisher feathers, products that were plentiful in the area until recently. Although the records are not precise, I will speculate that Ly was in the valley of the Ngan Sau, while Minh was in the adjacent upper valley of the Song Giang where a major town by that name is located. The successful rebellion of Ly Bi in 541 likewise began in the south in Dttc, and, again following the pattern of the disenchanted Chinese commander turned rebel, attacked north through Chu-dien and Ai (Taylor: 135ft). Like the others, who came before and after, the culture and system of government they espoused was still that of imperial China. Interestingly, in the struggle that followed between Liang and Ly Bi, the followers of the latter are described in the sources as 'Lao Chieftains'. When Ly Bi was finally defeated, his elder brotherLy Thien Bao raised yet another army in Dttc to attack the Liang forces to the north. He was defeated in Ai but escaped into the mountains with the 'Lao' (p. 143). This was in 547. Finally, according to later Vietnamese sources, a relative of Ly Thien Bao named Ly Ph~t Tit gained possession of western Giao in 557, ostensibly supported by the Lao of Ai, while Tri~u Quang Phvc retained the east. In 569/571 Ly Ph~t Tit defeated Quang Phvc and took control entirely (p. 153ft). The historians of Sui maintained that Ly Ph~t Tit was an ethnic Li.

Sixth Century [Sui: AD 589-618] In the Sui Dynasty, in the year 598, Ling-hu Hsi, military commander of Kuei and Giao, renamed several important areas. Tan-xudng (and points west) became Phong, Dttc became Hoan, and Hoang (on the northern coast) became Lvc (Lu). Then, in 604, Sui reorganized the administration once again, dividing all of Vietnam into three prefectures (as opposed to provinces): Giao-clii included the entire H6ng plain, Ai was converted back to Ciru-chan, and

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) The origin of the Sek: implications for Tai and Vietnamese history

Roan (formerly Due) became Nh~t-nam. (Taylor 158ft)

Tang began by reorganizing Vietnam yet again, this time into a number of small provinces under two 'central authorities' [see Map !-locations adapted from Taylor: 169]. The first administration included all of the provinces in the plains of the H6ng and the Ma, with Ai as the most important province in the basin of the Ma. The second administration was at Roan in the plain of the Song Ca. The reorganization was fixed in 679 with the formal establishment of the 'Protectorate of Annam' (Annam = 'the pacified south'). In addition to the main provinces, 'halter provinces' were established in order to pacify the many ethnarchs in the hinterlands. Kinh and Lam (Lin), at the southern border near Hoanh-sdn were named in 628 and 635 respectively. Later, in 669, the southern border was more formally acknowledged with the setting up of PhUc-lqc also in the vicinity of the Hoanh-sdn massif. It is described as having been 'appropriated by migrating "uncivilized Lao" in the sixth century. The details of this are more crucial because at some point in Vietnamese history, between the Tang Chinese sources and the later 14th century Sino-Vietnamese works, PhUc-lqc (Fu-lu) was relocated from the south to the north, to the northwest comer of the H6ng plain, a fate likewise shared by An-vien (An-yiian) and Dudng-lam (T'ang-lin). (Taylor: 172,327ft) This topic was important enough that Taylor {p. 327ft) devotes an entire appendix to its explication. He relates that according Chinese sources23 An-vien was originally a district first noted in the Sui dynasty in Nh~t-nam Prefecture (formerly Cuu-duc). In 622 An-vien was a district in Due Province which became Roan in 627. Between 639 and 669 this district was joined with Dudng-liim to become Dudng-lam Province. Finally, in 669 a district of PhUc-lqc was appended to Dudng-lam resulting in PhUclqc Province. It location appears to have been approximately at the Hoanh Sdn massif on the border with Champa. Because they were changed so frequently, it is Taylor's opinion

that in many Tang sources the terms Dudnglam and Phuc-lqc were for the most part synonymous. But in the ninth century Phuc-lqc disappears entirely and is replaced by Dudnglam. Now these same three topnyms, in Vietnamese sources referring to the period following the fall of Tang in the tenth century, are relocated. And this is of vital interest to us here, because: (1) it represents a very specific movement from a location very near to the Vietic homeland in the south to the Delta of the H6ng River in the north; (2) Because the two most important Vietnamese independence leaders, Ph1lng Hung (8th c.) and Ngo Quy~n (lOth c.) are said to have been born in Dudng-lam and PhUc-lqc respectively. Although perplexing on the surface, from a historical linguistic point of view the answer is obvious: Ph1lng Hung and Ngo Quy~n were born in the south and led the Vietnamese rebellions to their conclusions in the north. 24 Returning to Tang reorganization, it is likewise of interest here that the inland provinces of Ly and Minh, instated during the Liang dynasty, were retained (only Ly had been renamed Tri in 598). According to Taylor's map (p. 170), Tri lay north of Minh. As mentioned above, I would like to suggest that in fact Tri (Ly) encompassed the valley of the Ngan Sau, while Minh was located in the upper valley of the Giang where the toponym may still be found at Minh Hoa (or Quang Minh ?). Little is recorded from this area except for an uprising by 'refractory Lao tribesmen' in the province of Minh. And 'Lao' in this case could be none other than the Sek who must have been established there prior to the fifth or sixth centuries when Lyand Minh were created. Given the Sek ethnic-specific association with gold, and assuming there would have been little reason for the Chinese to proclaim these two inland provinces without economic motivation, I believe this hypothesis to be reasonably accurate. Also, as mentioned above, Lao and Li were consistently applied as ethnonyms for Tai-Kadai speakers. 25 Another small inland province in the area of the upper Ca was established in 635 under the name of Sdn. Located near Xieng Khwang Province in Laos, this is approximately the

Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 86, Parts 1 & 2

41

Tang-Yue [AD 618-907]

James R. Chamberlain

location of the Mene gold mining area discussed above. Di~n province was originally located just to the north of Hoan. It was incorporated into Hian about 650, but was reinstated as a province again in 764. Sdn was then made a part of Di~n.

Ai and seven other provinces were established in the basin of the Ma. Taylor regards this territory as a backwater in the center of the protectorate that was least affected by Chinese rule, and therefore 'emerged in the tenth century as the original and most persistent center of the politics of independence' (p. 173). In ethnolinguistic terms, I would rephrase this to say that Ai, especially the hinterlands, was a vacuum filled eventually by Muimg speakers, the language closest to Vietnamese, whose language and culture exhibit Tai influence as opposed to Chinese. The adjacent province of Tntdng separated Giao from Ai on the coast. On the northern coast of Giao, Lvc (Lu) province (formerly Hoang) served both as a highway and a buffer in Giao relations with Kuangtung. Taylor (p. 175) notes that in this role as interface between protectorate and empire, it was more often under the control of powers to the north. Finally, Phong (Feng) was strategically located at the junction of the Red, the Black, and the Clear. It held control over 28 'halter provinces' to the west and northwest to Yunnan, and provided protection for Giao from attacks initiated by the peoples living in these areas.

elements should unite to mount such an attack, the answer seems obvious, that the core of this movement were not aliens, they were the true ancestors of the modem Vietnamese, Sinicized Vietic coastal frontiersmen, in large numbers, moving north. The Chinese army sent to put down the Black Emperor is said to have numbered one hundred thousand. Taylor (p. 216) speculates that many of these soldiers remained, and that many were surely sent to Hoan where the rebellion began. Vietnamese traditions have not highlighted this event, although Taylor notes (p. 191) that the tombs ofhis parents and the citadel he erected are to be found near the Black Emperor's birthplace, and a temple inscription in this area reads: The Tang Empire waxed and waned; The mountains and rivers of Hoan and Dien stand firm through the ages.

Taylor (p. 191ft) reports that following a period of relative security until 705-6, Tang authority in Hoan weakened. In 722 a man named Mai Thuc Loan from a salt-producing village on the Hoan coast southeast ofHa Tinh (southern Nghe An) brought together people from thirty-two provinces, including Lin-i, Chen-la, and a hitherto unknown kingdom called Chin-lin ('gold neighbor'), altogether totaling four hundred thousand, and styling himself'the Black Emperor' he marched northward and 'seized all of Annam.' His success was short-lived and he was immediately attacked and killed by imperial forces from Kuang. While Taylor is perplexed by the nature of this event, why so many foreign

Given the Chinese historiographic underpinnings ofVietnamese history generally, the Black Emperor's lack of prominence is not surprising. We have already noted the previous pattern of south to north rebellions led by dissatisfied Chinese expatriate officials. Following a brief mention of an uprising by a military commander of Dien, the next major local hero to appear in Taylor's treatment is PhUng Hung. Since I have dealt in detail elsewhere (Chamberlain: 1991) with the close similarities between this story and that of the Lao epic of Thao Hung Thao Cheuang I will not repeat this here. But Taylor's interpretation of some of the names bears further scrutiny. After the death of Hung, it is written in the Vietnamese sources 26 that B6 Pha L~c fought against Hung's brother Hai chasing him into the mountains foreverP The Vietnamese word for 'father' which Taylor cites in his subsequent discussion of the posthumous title accorded to Hung is Bo: a conspicuous borrowing from Tai, not indigenous to Vietnamese as assumed by Taylor. It also needs to be reiterated at this point that the birthplace ofPhimg Hung was f>udng-lam, an old southern toponym moved north to Phong in the later Vietnamese histories, no doubt a factor of its being moved along with the ethnic Vietnamese rebels during the Tang.

42

Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 86, Parts 1 & 2

Vietnamese movements north

The origin of the Sek: implications for Tai and Vietnamese history

Taylor (p. 215) writes: 'All of the major rebel figures of the ninth century came from Hoan, Ai or Phong'. In 802 the Chams (Huanwang), with collusion ofHoan and Ai, annexed these provinces for seven years until in 809 they were retaken by the Tang protector general of Giao named Chou. Chou captured the son of the Cham king along with the rebel governors ofHoan and Ai, and rebuilt the citadels there as a demonstration of the authority ofTang (Taylor: 226). Dudng Thanh was the first major rebel leader of the early ninth century. He was apparently from a Chinese family who served as governors ofHoan since the early eighth century following the defeat of the Black Emperor and Dudng Thanh's family may have been members of that force. All of the major ingredients are found here: Vietic territory, Sinicizing influences, and south to north movement (Taylor: 227ft). Also in ninth century, B6 T6n Thanh and his son B6 Thii Tn1ng were anti-Tang Chinese immigrants from Ai. B6 T6n Thanh was the governor and military commander of Ai who was killed by the protector general Li Cho for siding with Lao leaders. The B6 family dated from the Ch'i and Liang dynasties (479-556) (Taylor: 240). As another indication of unrest in the south, in 835 Protector General T'ien Tsao sent a general named Tang Ch'eng-ho pacify Hoan, and in the following year yet another military governor was sent there to assist him (Taylor: 235-6). At the end of 862, Nan-chao which had been threatening Annam for some time, invaded with a force of fifty thousand men and Giao fell at the beginning of 863. Records state that one hundred and fifty thousand Tang soldiers were killed or captured by Nan-chao and an unknown number fled to the north. Probably the highest portion were local recruits and it may be assumed that the victory of Nan-chao led to a severe reduction in population in the Delta. Nan-chao was driven out by Kao P'ien in 866 (Taylor: 239ft). Of interest, in the wake of the Nan-chao war and the weakened condition ofGiao, are Taylor's remarks (p. 248) to the effect that the existence of 'two cultural currents' became clear: ( 1) the Tang-Viet Buddhist culture of Giao, militarily

Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 86, Parts 1 & 2

dependent upon Tang, and (2) the anti-Tang elements, many of whom had sided with Nanchao and fled into the mountains with the attack ofKao P'ien. 28

Tenth Century: establishment ofthe Vietnamese State in AD 965 A number of southern leaders lead the way to complete independence for Vietnam in the tenth century, including the following: Dltdng f)inh Ngh~. A general from Ai who rebelled and ruled in Giao from 931, and was killed in 937. (Taylor: 265) Ng6 Quy&l. From Budng-lam (one of the southern toponyms relocated north discussed above), the son-in-law of Budng f)inh Ngh~ who was given a military command in Ai. He took control of Giao after the assassination of his father-in-law, defeated the Chinese from Canton in 938, and died in 944. His court is described as very traditionally Chinese (Taylor: 267ft). f)inh B(} Linh. Succeeded his father who served as governor of Hoan under Budng Binh Ngh~ and Ngo Quy~n, and, following the death of the king in 963, established the independent kingdom off)ai Co Vi~t in 965. To accomplish this he relied primarily on support from his own army from Ai and an army of thirty thousand from Hoan led by his son. In good Chinese tradition he took the title of Emperor in 966 (Taylor: 275ft).

Conclusions 1. Sek is a small language with farreaching implications. In the field of comparative and historical Tai it is the key to the reconstruction of Proto-Tail Be-Tai initial consonants. For Tai and Vietnamese history, accounting for the location of Sek provokes a complete rethinking of the basic premises upon which that history has stood for many hundreds of years. The re-working of this history will entail the reinterpretation of Chinese historical records in the light of linguistic evidence from both Tai-Kadai and Austroasiatic.

43

James R. Chamberlain

2. Many questions remain unanswered. The precise dates when the ethnic Vie1namese actually replaced the Tai in the Delta are uncertain, but this must have occurred sometime between the seventh and the ninth centuries. 29 From an ethnolinguistic perspective the Vietics were originally non-sedentary inhabitants of the interior (as evidenced by their lack of an ludicbased writing system), one branch of which became heavily Sinicized (the Vietnamese) and another of which became heavily Tai infulenced (the Mudng---cf. Condominas 1980). Was Northern Tai split into two branches Ou and Yi, both of which were represented in the continuum south of the Delta? If so, as the evidence suggests, then to which group did Sek belong? And this leads to another interesting possibility that results from our suspicion that Sek is not the original ethnonym. That is, the example of Sek also gives us an example of entry from Vietnam into Laos that may also apply to Yooy, who are found only on the Nakai plateau and in adjacent areas of Gnommarath District along the foot of the lower Ak escarpment. Geographically they are the next-door neighbors of Sek. And the closest and oldest mention of this ethnonym appears in Robequain's monograph (1929) on Thanh Hoa (formerly Ciru-chiin and later Ai) where the 'Yoi' are described as the oldest, but now extinct, population. Thus one hypothesis might be that the Y ooy in Gnommarath are the Sek who became Southwestemized, whereas the Sek proper, were in fact the Y oi who remained on the east of the Cordillera, not arriving in Laos until approximately 300 years ago. To some extent this parallels the relationship of Mene and Nyo, the Nyo likewise having become Southwestemized, probably through contact with Phou Thay beginning in Nghe An. Note also that 'Mudng,' a Tai word applied to the non-Sinicized relatives of Vietnamese in Thanh Hoa

44

and Hoa Binh, is used as an ethnonym for Tai speakers in Nghe An, indicating that the Vietic Mudng must have dispersed northward from this area, after adopting a sedentary livelihood under Thay Muc1ng influence. What was the nature of this influence and what are the linguistic and cultural traces? Finally, what is the ethnolinguistic history ofPhong? Situated between the Da and the HcSng (known as the Te and the Tao to Tai speakers), it is also on the northern edge of Mudng-speaking territory. Phong was usually a willing participant of uprisings originating in Roan and Ai. It is furthermore the ethnonym of several old Khmuic groups now located in Houa Phanh; an ethnonym for Vietic groups in Nghe An and Khamkeut; an administrative term in Black Tai and Lao; the personal name of important historical figures in Nghe An, Xieng Khwang, Louang Prabang, and Sip Song Chu Tai; and it appears in the province names ofPhong ThO and Phongsaly. The true origins of this word so far remain a mystery. 3. To return to Haudricourt's original question, linguistic, historical, and cultural evidence indicates that Sek is the southernmost extension of what was at one time a continuum of Northern Branch Tai or Be-Sek speaking peoples extending from the Sino-Vietnamese frontier through the HcSng delta to the modem provinces of Thanh Hoa, Nhge An, Quimg Binh, and eventually to their present locations in Laos, in Khamkeut District (adjacent to the·Ngan Siiu valley in the former Chinese Province of Ly or Tri) and in Nakai District (adjacent to the upper Giang valley, the former Chinese Province of Minh). That is to say, it did not result from the abrupt displacement of an original population from Guangdong. Notes A version of this paper was presented as a keynote address at the International Conference on Tai Studies 1

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The origin of the Sek: implications for Tai and Vietnamese history

held by Mahidol University, July 29-31, 1998. 2 I have retained the original spelling of Sek, ( 1) because it is consistant with the romanization used in Laos, and (2) because phonetically the vowel is really lei rather than Irei which is true for the Lao language as well. 3 This scheme is somewhat outdated on the Kadai side where data has been sparse. Jerold Edmondson (p.c.) now believes that Laha, Buyang, Ain and Qabiao are closer to Kam-Tai, while Hlai, Gelao, Cunhua and Lachi are independent groups descending directly from the parent language. 4 Originally, the modern province ofBorikhamxay was part of a larger Khammouane Province, the name of which was taken from the town of Khammouane. This same Khammouane town, formerly a provincial capital, is now a subdistrict in Khamkeuth District in Borikhamxay Province. 5 lnaa ml 'southern paddy' was actually a separate village, now abandoned, about 2 km from Ban Beuk. 6 Note that all of these villages are located in Laos, not in Vietnam as implied in the Gedney materials. 7 From unpublished fieldnotes of Khammanh Siphanxay, Institute of Cultural Research, Lao PDR. 8 Ban Toeng is actually composed of two villages, the larger Ban Toeng which is located on the Nam Noy, and a smaller village called Ban Soek further away from the Nam Noy which contains a mixture of Sek and Brou households. Recently several families ofThemarou have been resettled here as well. 9 From Cham subdistrict in the northern portion of the district bodering the Vietnamese province ofNghe An, including the subdistricts of Lak Xao (Ban Phon Hong, Ban Houay Keo); Khamkeut (Ban Phon Sa-at, Ban Phon Meuang Noy); Na Heuang (Lak 10, Lak 12, Na Khi); Nam Sak (Ban Phon Ngam, Ban Sop Khi); Sop Chat (Ban Sop Chat, Ban Sop Mong, Ban Phon Keo, Ban Sene Sy, Ban Tham Bing, Ban Phiang Pone); Ka'ane (Ban Thene Kwang, Ban Pha Poun, Ban Phiang Pho, Ban Sane, Ban Kok Feuang); Phon Thoen (Keng Kwang, Ban Kato', Ban Kane Nha, Ban Keng Bit, Ban Sop Gnouang, Ban Yang Xao, Ban Tha Bak, Ban Kapap); Sop Pone (Ban Sot, Ban Tha Sala, Ban Boung Kham); and Tha Veng (Ban Phon Xay, Ban Kong Phat, Ban Xam Toey, Ban Na Khwan, Ban Phou Viang). 10 The difficulties oflocating toponyms in Vietnam is complicated by the fact that so many places have more than one name as in the case of Xieng Mene and Xieng My mentioned here. For example, the Song Ca River is also known variously as Nam Lam,

Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 86, Parts 1 & 2

Nam Pao, or Nam Noen depending on the portion of the river, the country, or the ethnicity of the people who use the name. 11 This lexeme, incidentally, appears to have a cognate in Kam-Sui, as well as a contact form in Cham (Austronesian). 12 A recent article by Houmphanh Rattanavong ( 1996) suggests that the Quy Chiiu script is descended directly from an Indic Pallava source transported to northern Vietnam in the first century AD. Since this and the following century was the beginning of a period which saw the introduction of considerable Buddhist influence from India into Giao-clii this hypothesis is plausible although the details have yet to be explicated. The presence of a large population of Indians and Central Asians in Giao-clii was wellrecorded by Chinese historians, and was especially notable during the governorship of Shih Hsieh in the latter part of the 2nd century AD, where the rise of Buddhism flourished in the waning years of the Han (cf. Taylor 80ft). The ethnic identity of the main population of Giao-clii, however, was most probably Tai or Be-Tai, rather than 'Vietnamese' in the modern sense of the term (Chamberlain 1992). 13 MC = Middle Chinese. This is the Chinese reconstructed by Karlgren (1923) and called by him Ancient Chinese spoken in the 6th c. AD as distinct from his Archaic Chinese. The character references are to the 1923 work. Unfortunately Karlgren's reconstruction of Archaic Chinese published in 1957 under the title Grammatica Serica Recensa at Goteborg, is not available to me at the time of this writing. I will leave it to those more knowlegeable in the field of Chinese linguistics to offer more definitive reconstructions. But for the time being, these may serve as illustrative. 14 Jerold Edmondson (p.c.) pointed out to me the 3way distinction in the romanized syllable Yi, between Yi (Tibeto-Burrnan); Yi (Kadai); and Yi (Tai). Tai languages invariably show the C tone for this word. 15 Phong et. al. ( 1988), however, claim that the languages in Ha Tinh and Quang Binh are collectively known as Chr.it, a word they say means 'mountain' in the Rife language of the area, that is, 'mountain people,' referring to their preferred habitat in higher altitudes near river sources. This appellation, they imply, includes Arem, Rpc, Malieng, May (Czrdi), and perhaps the more sedentary Sach, but presumably excludes the sedentary Ngu6n. Therefore, Chlrt, Nguo'n, and Nha Lang, although they are more general terms, are not widely recognized. Muimg on the other hand, aside

45

James R. Chamberlain

17 This system is based upon a modification of sets of phenomena suggested by Benjamin (!985) as applicable to the differentiation of Semang, Senoi, and Malay groups in peninsular Malasia. 18 I will use Yue to indicate the ethnonym used in the historical records, and Viet or Vietnamese to refer to the modern ethnic group and national language. It is indicative of the identity crisis faced by the Vietnamese that the two terms used to describe the main languages of the country, Vi~t and Mudt nude va con nguc1i thc1i Hl:mg Vudng, in Hi'mg Vudng dl/llg nucic, edited by Uy ban khoa hQC xa hQi 3:91-112. Hanoi, 1973. Hayes (1992) however, having carried out a detailed glottochronological analysis, dates the separation of Vietnamese and Mudng at 1255 ± 165 years, that is the twelth century at the earliest. 29 The majority of Chinese loanwords in Vietnamese are of Tang (MC) origin (Vudng 1975).

Aurousseau, Leonard. 1923. Le premiere conquete chinoise des pays annamites. Bulletin de I' Ecole :fran9aise d' Extreme-Orient XXIII. 137-264. Benjamin, Geoffrey. 1985. In the long term: three themes in Malayan Cultural Ecology. in Cultural Values and Human Ecology in Southeast Asia. eds. K. Hutterer, T. Rambo, and G. Lovelace. Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asian Studies. The University of Michigan. Number 27. Cadiere, M.L. 1905. Les Haute Vallees du SongGianh. Bulletin de I' Ecole fran9aise d' ExtremeOrientV: 349-367. Chamberlain, James R. 1991a. The efficacy of the P/ PH distinction in Tai languages. in The Ram

Khamhaeng Controversy: Collected Papers. ed. J.R.Chamberlain, The Siam Society. 1991 b. Tai-Kadai Considerations in Southern Chinese and Southeast Asian Prehistory. The High Bronze Age of Southeast Asia and South China. Hua Hin, January 14-19, 1991. 1991c. Mene: A Tai dialect originally spoken in Nghe An (Nghe Tinh), Vietnam-Preliminary linguistic observations and historical implications. Journal ofthe Siam Society79: 103-123. 1992. The Black Tai Chronicle of Muang Mouay, Part I: Mythology. Journal of Mon-Khmer Studies. XXI.I9-55. 1997. Nature and Culture in the Nakai-Nam Theun Conservation Area. (forthcoming) Chamberlain, James R., Charles Alton, Latsamay Silavong, and Bounleung Philavong. 1996. Socioeconomic and Cultural Survey: Nam Theun 2 Hydroelectric Project Area. (2 vols) CARE International/Laos. Chamberlain, James R., Charles Alton, Latsamay Silavong, Panh Phamsombath, Khammanh Siphanxay. 1997. Social Action Plan: Cultural Diversity and Socio-economic Development in the Context of Conservation. (Vol II of the Environmental and Social Action Plan for NakaiNam Theun Catchment and Corridor Areas). IUCN, Vientiane. Condominas, Georges. 1980. L 'Espace Sociale: A Propos de l'Asie du Sud-Est. Flammarion, Paris. Cuisinier, Jeanne. 1948. Les Mu 'o 'ng: geographique humaine et sociologie. Paris, Institute d'Ethnologie. Eberhard, W. 1968. The Local Cultures ofSouth and East China. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Finot, Louis. 1917. Recherches sur Ia Litterature Laotienne. Bulletin de I' Ecole fran9aise d' Extreme-Orient 17.5. Gaspardone, Emile. 1955. Champs Lo et Champs Hiong. Journal Asiatique 243: 461-77. Gedney, William J. 1993. The Saek Language: Glossary, Texts, and Translations. ed. Thomas J. Hudak. Michigan Papers on South and Southeast Asia No. 41, Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Haudricourt, Andre-G. 1958. Les Sek de Ia province du Cammon (Laos), migration thai ou deportation chinoise? Journal Asiatique 246:107-08. Hayes, La Vaughn H. 1982. The mutation of R in pre-Thavung. Mon-Khmer Studies 12: 91-122.

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References [For references to specific editions of primary sources in Chinese and Vietnamese see Aurousseau: 1923; Gaspardone: 1955; Schafer 1967; and Taylor 1983 below.]

James R. Chamberlain

_ _ . 1992. Vietic and Viet-Muong: a new subgrouping. Mon-Khmer Studies 21: 211-28. Houmphanh Rattanavong. 1996. Quy Chau's Script. Lanxang Heritage Journal! (2): 1-40. Jao Tsung-1. 1969. Wu Yueh wen-hua. BIHP Academica Sinica 41 (4): 609-36. Karlgren, Bernhard. 1923. Analytic Dictionary of Chinese and Sino-Japanese. Reprinted 1974. Dover, New York. Luppe, Albert. 1934. Muongs de Cua-Rao: Etude Monographique. Imp. d'Extreme-Orient, Hanoi. Macey, Paul. 1907. Etude ethnographique et linguistique sue les K'Katiam-Pong-Houk, dits: Thai Pong (Province du Cammon-Laos). Revue Indochinoise 5: 1411-24. Maspero, Henri. 1912. Etude sur Ia phonetique historique de Ia langue annamite: les initiates. Bulletin de 1' Ecole fran9aise d' Extreme-Orient 12 (1): 1-127. Morev, L. N. 1988. The Sek Language. Moscow: Nauka. Ngo E>uc Thjnh. 1977. (Sur Ia repartition et !'appellation administative des villages a Quang Binh avant Ia revolution d'Aout.) La campagne vietnamienne atra.vers l'histoire. Hanoi: Nha x.b. Khoa hQC xa hOi, pp 40 1-416. NguyBn Linh and Hoang Xuan Chinh. 1973. E>~t nude va con nguCii thCii Himg Vuong. in Hrmg

Vltdng dl/llg nucic, edited by Uy ban khoa hQc xa h9i 3:91-112. Hanoi. NguyBn PhU-Phong, Trfut Tri-Doi, and M. Ferlus. ** (no date) Lexique Vietnamien-Rqc-Francais. Universite de Paris VIII, Sudestasie. Placzek, James A. 1998. Southeast Asia as the cradle of Asian culture-and the place of Tai within it. First International Conference on Tai Studies, Bangkok, July 29-31. Mahidol University. Robequain, Charles. 1929. Le Thanh Hoa. Ecole fran9aise d' Extreme-Orient, Paris et Bruxelles. Robert, R. 1941. Notes sur les Tay Deng de Lang Chlinh (Thanh Hoa-Annam). Institute Indochinois pour I' Etude de l'Homme, Memoire No.1. Imp. d'Extreme-Orient, Hanoi. Schafer, Edward H. 1967. The Vermillion Bird. University of California Press, Berkely. Taylor, Keith W. 1983. The Birth of Vietnam. University of California Press, Berkeley. Vo Xuan Trang. 1987. Situation preoccupante des Rue de Binh Tri Thien. Song Huong 28, Hue. Vuong, LQc. 1975. Glimpses of the evolution of the Vietnamese language. Linguistic Essays (Vietnamese Studies 40).

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Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 86, Parts 1 & 2

KEYWORDS-HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS, SOUTHEAST ASIA, LAOS, VIET NAM, SEK, SACH, TAl

LUE ETHNICITY IN NATIONAL CONTEXT: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF TAl LUE COMMUNITIES IN THAILAND AND LAOS Paul T. Cohen* Abstract The Lue are a Tai-speaking people whose home land is the Sip Song Panna region of Yunnan, China. There are also large Lue populations in Thailand and Laos. This paper compares Lue communities in northern Laos (Muang Sing) and northern Thailand (Nan}, focusing on the relation between Lue ethnic identification and territorial cults. I seek to explain the transformation of Lue ethnic identity in terms of the way the Lue relate to the nation-state and, in particular, to discourses of national culture and development.

Michael Moerman, in his paper 'Ethnic Identity in a Complex Society: Who are the Lue?' (1965), noted that for the Lue villagers of Ban Ping of Chiang Rai province in northern Thailand, identification as Lue did not preclude them from identifying as Thai in some contexts. The point is reiterated in a more recent publication: 'But the Thai-Lue of Ban Ping have always been both Thai and Lue' (Moerman and Miller 1989: 317). This might be so but in the early 1960s identification as Thai was obviously very weak. Then, Ban Ping was physically isolated by poor roads. Contact with the Thai state was largely limited to the payment of taxes for which the Lue felt they received little or nothing in return, and central Thai officials were feared and distrusted. In response, the Lue of Ban Ping often spoke nostalgically of the 'Old Country' in Sip Song Panna in southern China in recounting legends of their migration in the mid nineteenth century from Muang Phong in that region (1967: 406; 1968: 13). Moerman concluded that at the time 'ethnic identification as a minority people can sometimes impede national identification' (1967:406). Returning to Ban Ping in the mid 1980s Moerman and Miller found the village much more diverse occupationally; villagers had extensive contacts with the outside world; the government was

perceived as a benign source of assistance (e.g., for education, employment, health services, agricultural information, and development funds). Consequently, 'villagers now more often feel themselves to be citizens of a nation rather than members of a disadvantaged minority group'. However, they add: 'Their distinctiveness is now being lost into the stream of national culture' (Moerman and Miller 1989: 317). In this paper, following Moerman and Miller's precedent, I examine Lue ethnic identification in national context, though I extend my analysis beyond Thailand to compare Tai Lue communities in Nan in northern Thailand with those in Muang Sing in northern Laos. In this comparative study I also focus on the relation between Lue ethnicity and territorial cults of guardian spirits that link the Lue to their ancestors. In Nan it cannot be said that Lue identity has been swamped by national culture. On the contrary, there has been a Lue cultural revival of a kind in some Lue villages in Nan; but it is a

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• Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia: e-mail:

Paul T. Cohen

revival linked closely with national culture, the manner in which national culture constructs Lue identity, and state intervention in rural development. In Muang Sing, by contrast, Lue ethnic consciousness is an example of what Charles Keyes (1993: 44) has termed 'localized ethnic identity', that is, a local identity that is unself-consciously 'rooted in tradition' and 'not challenged by those who seek to impose a national hegemony on peoples with different cultural heritages' (ibid.: 46). The political origin of Lue ethnicity George Condominas (1990:37-38) claims that the first phase in the evolution of Tai political systems was one in which loose 'confederations' of Tai principalities (muang) were formed as the Tai 'war chiefs' pushed westward from what is now northern Vietnam and north-eastern Laos. The second phase was a consequence of one chief imposing his authority on a group of muang, thereby creating a larger, more centralized state, for example, Lan Na centred on Chiang Mai, Lan Sang on Luang Prabang and Siam on Ayutthaya. These new, more centralized states comprised a 'kingdom of kingdoms' (Lehman 1984: 243). The Lue kingdom of Sip Song Panna represents another example of the general Tai pattern of political organization, with the Lue king (Chao Phaen Din: "Lord of the Land') ruling over a number of principalities and their princes (Chao Muang: 'Lords of the Principality') 1• According to Moerman (1965: 1223), Tai 'tribal' names (Lue, Khoen, Khon Muang, Lao, etc), are political in origin. This view gains support from the fact that the names of states (muang) and of ethnic entities 'exhibit parallel variation'. Thus, those who identify themselves as Lue can claim origin from the state of Sip Song Panna (earlier known as Muang Lue). But in other contexts these Lue may also identify as Yong, Lue Muang Phong, Lue Muang La, Lue Muang Sing, etc. that is, Lue who originate from smaller muang of the kingdom of Sip Song Panna or at least within its political orbit. The relative autonomy and localized identity of these smaller muang were arguably reinforced by the limited political sway of the king (largely restricted to the capital, Chiang Rung and

50

adjacent muang) and by the political instability caused by frequent civil wars in the nineteenth century (Tanabe 1988: 5). We can trace the political origin of Muang Sing to the founding of Chiang Khaeng in the fourteenth century by Chao Fa Dek Noi, a Lue prince from Sip Song Panna2 • Chiang Khaeng was located on the east bank of the Mekong River, near the confluence of the Luai and Mekong rivers. In c. 1858 the capital was transferred to the village of Ban Yu on the western side of the Mekong (Grabowsky and Kaspar-Sickermannn: 8). In 1885 the ruler, Chao Fa Silinor, again relocated the capital to the valley of the Sing River, some 60 kilometres southeast. Chao Fa Silinor brought about a thousand of his subjects with him but most new settlers came from the nearby principalities of southern Sip Song Panna: Muang La, Muang Phong, Muang Yuan, Muang Hun and Muang Mang. The documents of that period refer to the new capital alternatively as 'Muang Sing' and 'Chiang Khaeng' (ibid.: 10). Neither Chiang Khaeng nor Muang Sing was ever incorporated into the kingdom of Sip Song Panna. Rather they remained small, semi-autonomous Lue states that were variously peripheral sub-vassals to China, Burma and Siam via the intermediary states of Sip Song Panna, Chiang Tung, Chiang Mai, and Nan. In the late nineteenth century Muang Sing was called 'a principality under three overlords' (muang samfaifa), those being Chiang Mai and Nan (tributaries of Siam) and Chiang Tung (tributary of Burma). As a result of border negotiations between Britain and France, Muang Sing became an autonomous polity under French protection in 1896. It only came under direct French rule in 1916 following a rebellion led by Chao Ong Kham (son and successor of Chao Fa Silinor). Nevertheless Muang Sing, under French colonial rule and subsequent royalist and communist governments of independent Laos, has preserved a strong sense of local autonomy and identity as 'the secret capital of the Lue in Laos' (ibid.: 16). The cult of the guardian spirits and localized ethnic identity in Muang Sing Keyes briefly visited Muang Sing in 1991 and came to the conclusion that here Lue ethnic

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Lue ethnicity in national context

consciousness exemplifies what he calls 'localized ethnic identity' (1993: 44). He writes: 'Local identities are perpetuated by stories, myths, and legends about forbears; in the case of the Lue, such stories link them with premodem principalities known as the muang of the Lue. There is little reason for such people to reflect on what Lue means because there are few occasions when people find themselves having to be self-conscious about who they are'. He adds: 'I suspect that many of the villagers in Chiang Kham district in northern Thailand with whom Moerman worked in the late 1950s and early 1960s also called themselves Lue for similar reasons' (ibid.:46). My own research in Muang Sing reveals that the 'stories, myths and legends about forbears', which have shaped localized ethnic identity and remain unchallenged by national discourses, are closely connected with the cult of the muang guardian spirits (phi muang). The present guardian spirit cult of Muang Sing was initiated by Chao Fa Silinor. The annual ritual was held on the 13th day of the 3rd Lue month (January) in a forested area near the village of Chiang Mun less than a kilometre northwest of the walled town of Muang Sing. It comprised the sacrifice of a black buffalo to the 32 guardian spirits (phi muang) ofMuang Sing. The two main ritual officiants were the mor daeng (literally 'red doctor', referring to the red headdress) and mor luang ('great doctor'). The mor daeng was responsible for the spearing of the buffalo and the mor luang for the cutting up of the buffalo and presentation of offerings at a nearby shrine to the 32 guardian spirits. Other ritual officiants included a specialist who invoked the spirits (mor khap ), a flautist (mor pao pi) and a female medium (thi nang). Further details of the ritual need not concern us here. What is important is to emphasize is the collective nature of the ritual. First, all the villagers of Muang Sing shared the cost of the sacrificial buffalo, with contributions collected by the sub-district (taseng) headmen. Second, after offerings were presented to the 32 guardian spirits and several guest spirits the remaining meat was divided between the assembled representatives of all the taseng and villages, to be eaten together at the ritual site. It was thus at once a rite of communion with the guardian

spirits and a rite of commensality between all the villages of Muang Sing. The traditional rulers (Chao Fa Silinor and Chao Ong Kham) and subsequently the French and Lao civil authorities used to sponsor the annual cult ritual. However, the left-wing Pathet Lao withdrew this patronage in 1973. About ten years ago the district officer (chao muang) prohibited buffalo sacrifice, claiming that it was wasteful. Yet the cult has survived, relatively unchanged, despite disassociation from political authority and lack of official support. The ceremony I witnessed in 1997 was attended by several hundred devotees, many bringing with them gifts of candles to represent fellow villagers. The 32 guardian spirits of Muang Sing comprise quite recent historical figures such as Chao Fa Silinor and one of his wives, Nang Pinkaeo Lortfa, remote legendary figures such as Panya Tanhai3 or spirits of mythical beings linked to the natural landscape, such as the mermaid (ngeuak) Nang Phomkhiao. In the words of one of the cult officiants, all 32 spirits 'are ancestors whose spirits have shown beneficence towards the Tai Lue ofMuang Sing' (banphaburut thi mi bunkhun tor Tai Lue Muang Sing). This beneficence is expressed in a several ways: the building or renovation of Buddhist temples and monuments, the exercise of 'power and influence' (idthiphon) and expertise in magical spells (wetmon katha). The identification of the guardian spirits as 'ancestors' (banphaburut) raises the issue of the role of ancestors and ancestor worship among the Lue. According to one authoritative source: 'There is no evidence of an ancestor cult at any level of Lue society; the Lue (except for the sinicized nobility) place little emphasis on remembering their ancestors, and pay little attention to kinship ties beyond those of the immediate family' (LeBar et al. 1960: 209). This certainly does not apply to Muang Sing where great store is placed on ancestors in both Buddhist and non-Buddhist ceremonies. For example, a key ritual in what is widely considered the most important village-based Buddhist festival-Bun Than Tham-consists of the transference of merit (bun) to ancestors. These include recently deceased kin and more distant kin going back many generations (both

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are categories of consanguines to whom kinship is traced bilaterally). In the case of the phi muang cult, ancestry is not based on consanguinity but on the identification of the collectivity of (ancestral) spirits with the territory of Muang Sing. The fact that these ancestors are not dynastic ancestors, as in some Tai guardian spirit cults, no doubt makes the severance of the cult from political authority easier and allows the ancestors to be identified purely with locality. Furthermore, each of the 32 guardian spirits is identified with a particular feature of the natural landscape within the Muang Sing valley: Doi Heua, a hill at the northern end of the valley; an area called Pak Bong at the southeastern extremity of the valley (near the main route leading to the Mekhong River via Muang Long and Chiang Kok); a lowland forested area called Pa Dong Mao, near the southern most Lue village of Yang Piang; and Doi Chiangteum to the south-east, site of the sacred Muang Sing reliquary (That Chiangteum) and overlooking the Nam Sing River and main route to Luang Nam Tha. Two spirits have their abodes at the western and eastern flanks of the valley near the Lue villages of Tapao and Silimun respectively. Several spirits are identified with locations near waterways within the valley. According to Gehan Wijeyewardene (1993: 163), a Tai muang is a 'river valley bounded by mountains . . . an ecological, agricultural unit in which the watershed and catchment provided the irrigation for wet-rice agriculture, and the mountain passes articulated relations with the outside world'. At the time of Chao Fa Silinor the centre of Muang Sing comprised a fortified town (wiang) surrounded by a moat and earthen walls with gateways facing the four cardinal directions. In the centre of the walled town was Silinor's palace (hor Chao Fa). The town was divided into four administrative sections: Chiang In, Chiang Cai, Chiang Yeun and Chiang Lae (where Lue officials related to the ruler resided) and was surrounded by another four administrative areas called Muang Nam, Luang Wiang, Luang Nam Kaeo, and Yang Piang. This is what Nguyen Duy Thieu (1993) refers to as the 'middle area' which was 'intercalated between the centre and the outermost area'. Topographically the middle area 'remained in the limits of the valley bottom' and was inhabited

by Tai commoners (mostly Lue and some Tai Neua). The outermost area comprised the surrounding mountains and was inhabited by Akha and Yao highlanders who practised swidden agriculture and who were collectively called Kha (literally, 'slaves'). These were divided into administrative units called buak, each controlled by a Lue official (with the title of Chao Buak) who exacted tribute and corvee labour". It can be argued that the collectivity of guardian spirits and their abodes (enumerated in invocation and in sacred texts) provides a kind of spiritual map or sacral topography , which has the cadastral function of setting the physical limits to the Lue-inhabited political core of the muang. It also serves to mark the boundaries of Lue as an ethnic group both different from and superior to neighbouring highlanders. A French report on Muang Sing of early this century comments on the 'proclivity of the Lue to surrender themselves to pomp and pageantry as long as it gave them the "illusion of being a great people" or at least being at the top of an ethnic hierarchy which placed the montagnards at the bottom' (Gunn 1989: 62). The villages of the Muang Sing valley have their own local cults centred on 'pillars of the village' (lak ban or cai ban) and village guardian spirits (phi ban). The timing of the annual propitiation of these local spirits varies from village to village and is not integrated with the annual ritual of the cult of muang guardian spirits 5• Furthermore, at the time of the propitiation of the village spirits the village is ritually sealed off from the outside world for periods of up to three days. It seems to me that a principal function of the phi muang cult is to create, through its collective rituals, a sense of local loyalty that transcends village autonomy and particularism.

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The Lue diaspora

The Lue population of Sip Song Panna has been estimated as almost a quarter of a million (225,488) (Hsieh 1989: 62). Estimates for the total Lue population of Laos vary from about 100,000 to 125,0006• Moerman gives a figure of 50,000 Lue for Thailand (1968: 4) but this obviously does not include the Lue-Y ong

Lue ethnicity in national context

population of Lamphun Province which probably numbers between 240,000-320,0007 • There is also a sizeable Lue population in Burma to the west of the Mekong (e.g. in Muang Yong and Chiang Tung), though I have been unable to discover any figures for this region. While estimates for the Lue population outside the homeland of Sip Song Panna are rather imprecise it is reasonable to conclude that there are many more Lue outside Sip Song Panna than inside. Some of this is due simply to the redrawing of borders in the nineteenth century (e.g. loss of Muang U and Muang U Tai to French colonial Laos) but the Lue diaspora can be largely attributed to migration. The reasons for this exodus are many and varied. In Laos migration reached as far south as Luang Prabang with the establishment of the Lue village of Ban Phanom. Here the original settlers accompanied wives offered as tribute (tawaai) by Sip Song Panna princes to the Lao king Fa Ngum in the fourteenth century 8 • However, most Lue migration from Sip Song Panna into L~os has occurred during the last two centuries, some to escape marauding Haw armies, some enticed by the prospect of unoccupied fertile land, and others to escape the turmoil of civil wars. Lue migration into northern Thailand began on a large scale in the early nineteenth century as a result of military and forced resettlement campaigns carried out by Prince Kawila. Two centuries of Burmese rule had left the Chiang Mai valley devastated and virtually depopulated. Kawila, backed by his suzerain, the Siamese king (Rama 1), initiated a policy known as 'putting vegetables into baskets, putting people into towns' (kep phak sai sa kep khon sai muang) in order to rebuild Chiang Mai and re-establish it as the political and cultural centre of Lan Na. To achieve this he launched numerous military raids to the west and north against Red Karen, Shan, Khoen, and Lue villages and towns to resettle war captives in Chiang Mai, Lamphun, and Lampang. According to Volker Grabowsky (1999: 21, 22), the largest influx of manpower to Lan Na was a result of the conquest of the small Lue kingdom of Muang Yong, which surrendered in 1805, and 10,000 people from here were resettled in Lamphun. In 1807/8 further attacks were made against various muang in Sip Song Panna and many Lue families from

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here were resettled in Lampang9 and Chiang Mai. Nan similarly suffered under the yoke of Burmese domination and towards the end of the eighteenth century it was devastated and depopulated. The repopulation of Nan appears to have begun in the early 1790s. In 1790, 585 families from Muang Yong avoided deportation to Burma by fleeing to Nan (ibid.: 24). In 1812, 6,000 war captives from Muang La, Muang Phong (in Sip Song Panna) and from Luang Phu Kha (northern Laos) were resettled in Nan (ibid.: 25) 10 • However, Grabowsky suggests that Nan's resettlement policy was based less on military force and more on voluntary resettlement and notes that after the late 1830s numerous Lue fled anarchy and civil war in Sip Song Panna and sought refuge in Nan. Such voluntary migration accounts for the Lue settlement of the Thawangpha b~in in Nan. For example, in 1836 or 1837 a civil war developed between two aristocratic factions over precious elephants from Laos. One group from Muang La (in southern Sip Song Panna) fled the turmoil, sought sanctuary in Nan and established three villages in the Thawangpha basin (Nong Bua, Ton Hang and Don Mun) (ibid.: 26; see also Pachoen 1984: 9-12). As a result of these migrations there are now some 50 Lue villages in Nan province (Ratanaporn 1996: 6). Whether or not Lue migration has been forced or voluntary, historical 'memories' of migration are for many Lue in diaspora an important component of localized ethnic consciousness 11 • These 'memories' also comprise recollections of the locality from which the Lue migrated and of the guardian spirits of that locality. Furthermore, these memories are preserved through various forms of representation: naming the new settlement after the original, resettlement in an area that is geographically and ecologically similar to the homeland, and recreation of the local guardian spirits 12 •

The transformation of the cult of guardian spirits and Lue ethnicity in Nan Diasporic representation is less complete in the case of the three Lue villages of the Thawangpha

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Paul T. Cohen

basin in Nan. Thus the village ofNong Bua was named after a local swamp, not the village of origin in Muang La. However, the cult of the 32 guardian spirits of Muang La has been represented, albeit with modifications. In Muang La the annual ritual of 'sealing off the muang' (pithi kam muang) and of worshipping the 32 guardian spirits of Muang La used to take place over a period of 96 days, that is, three days for each of the spirits whose shrines were situated in different locations. Later, all the guardian spirits came to be worshipped collectively (though each with its own shrine) in the same place under a large banyan tree just outside the city gate. The three main officiants at this ritual were the Mor Muang (literally, 'doctor of the kingdom'), Chao Muang (ruler) and thi nang thewada (female medium) and the major offerings comprised a black pig, a white buffalo and a black buffalo (Thai-Yunnan Newsletter 1988: 2-3). Today a similar ritual (also called pithi kam muang) is performed in Nong Bua village, though only every three years. For three days the village is ritually sealed off. In the past only Lue people were permitted to attend and no one was allowed to enter or leave the village (Ratanapom 1996: 14). Nowadays, outsiders, including tourists, may attend with the payment of a fine. In Nong Bua the same types of ritual officiants known by the same names (mor muang, Chao Muang, thi nang) participate; the Chao Muang is said to be a direct descendant of the Muang La ruler and has always lived in Don Mun village. As in Muang La there are 32 guardian spirits. The Lue of Thawangpha worship these guardian spirits as 'ancestor spirits' (Baba 1996: 31). The pre-eminent spirit, Chao Luang Muang La, is at once the guardian spirit of Nong Bua village and of the three Lue villages as a whole. The shrines of the other 31 spirits are spread out over the three villages and 5 are located in non-Lue villages. Only 21 of the 32 spirits are included in the kam muang ritual (Baba 1993: 10-11). One major recent innovation was the building, in 1984, of a statue of Chao Luang Muang La near his spirit shrine at Nong Bua. It is said that the statue is a replica of a drawing made by a famous monk (Ajan Montri) from Phrae, based on a vision he had of Chao Luang Muang La 13 • The statue was built as a memorial

(anusawari) to Chao Luang Muang La, considered 'a fearless fighter of great skill' and an ancestor (banphaburut) of the Lue of Nong Bua, Ton Hang and Don Mun (Pachoen 1984: 37). According to Yuji Baba, the statue also 'commemorates their migration from Muang La in Sipsong Panna' (1993: 3). The leader of the Lue migrants from Sip Song Panna was a descendant of the ruler of Muang La and was called Chao Luang Anuphap. He resided in Don Mun village and a line of male descendants who have continued to live in this village inherited his title of 'Chao Muang'. In the nineteenth century it appears Chao Luang Anuphap was responsible for looking after nearby royal land and granaries of the Nan ruler (Baba 1996: 29) and presumably also were his early successors. It seems, at his time, the role of the Lue Chao Muang was one of real political power, possibly as a vassal Chao Muang to the Nan ruler (Chao Fa). Although Nong Bua villagers claim their village to be the oldest in the area, it is more likely that Don Mun was settled first and that Chao Luang Anuphap was the first to reclaim land through the construction of a dam and an irrigation canal (Baba 1993: 7). During the centralization of the Siamese state under King Chulalongkom at the beginning of this century, and ensuing changes in provincial administration, the three Lue villages were incorporated into a single sub-district (tambon) with Don Mun as the centre. But later Ton Hang became the centre of a separate subdistrict, which also included Nong Bua. As a result, the political power of Don Mun and that of the Chao Muang there waned and thereafter the Chao Muang came to play only a ritual role (1996: 29). Nong Bua villagers reclaimed a swamp near their village, by flood control and draining, probably early this century. Local tradition has it that an evil spirit, who often seized girls from the village, once inhabited this swamp. The chief local guardian spirit, Chao Luang Muang La, was invited to subdue the spirit and then lotus was planted in the swamp (an event which gave the village its name of Lotus Swamp [Nong Bua]) (Baba 1993: 6; 1996: 33). Nong Bua has prospered since the expulsion of the evil spirit and the reclamation of the swamp. This prosperity was matched by

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changing political fortunes when, in 1979, the village headman became the sub-district headman. In this position he carried out road and bridge development and promoted Lue culture, as represented by the old and beautiful Lue-style Buddhist temple and local Lue weaving (Pachoen 1984: 41-4), attracting a large number of tourists to the village. Later the King of Thailand awarded the headman the prize of the best village headman in the country (Baba 1993: 7). Also crucial to the promotion of Lue culture in Nong Bua by this headman has been the annual three-day ritual of Chao Luang Muang La, elaborated by the building of the statue to Chao Luang Muang La in 1984. The statue has thus become more than a memorial to an ancestor and to Lue migration for all three Lue villages; it has also been appropriated as a symbol of the successful 'development' ofNong Bua village (Baba 1996: 35). Nong Bua has also appropriated history by presenting its own version, which places Nong Bua at centre stage of local history. This is exemplified in the publication commemorating the building of the Chao Luang Muang La statue. The third chapter provides a translation in Thai of a document in Lue script and held in Nong Bua. The publication asserts that Nong Bua was the first village settled after the migration from Muang La (Pachoen 1984: 11). But, according to Baba, the original document makes no such claim (1996: 36). It is noteworthy, too, that throughout the 54-page volume there is only occasional mention of the other two Lue villages of Don Mun and Ton Hang. Baba aptly observes that the commemorative publication 'appears to be an attempt to rewrite local history with Nong Bua as its focal point' (1996: 36). By contrast with Nong Bua, Don Mun village has suffered political and economic misfortunethe loss of political power of the Chao Muang and relative poverty compared to Nong Bua. This has been accompanied by rivalry between the two villages, especially since Nong Bua's push towards 'development' after 1979. Don Mun villagers have not accepted their plight as ineluctable destiny but have sought redress through ritual action and assertion of Lue cultural identity. An astrologer told a young man from Don Mun village, who was working in Bangkok, that the wandering soul of Chao

Luang Anuphap needed a place to live and this was the cause of the economic failure of the village. Consequently in May 1991 a spirit shrine was built for Chao Luang Anuphap in the centre of the village. According to Baba, the shrine was built not only as a ritual means to alleviate poverty but also as 'a concrete symbol of their own historical memories' (of migration) and thus as a claim for 'cultural independence' from Nong Bua village (ibid.: 36). In 1993 a ritual was held for Chao Luang Anuphap during the three-day ritual for Chao Luang Muang La in Nong Bua. Nevertheless, the Chao Muang from Don Mun and fellow villagers continued their customary participation in the Nong Bua ritual. However, in December 1996 Don Mun withdrew altogether from the triennial ritual of Chao Luang Muang La at Nong Bua and held a separate three-day festival at Don Mun. On the morning of the second day of the festival, at the edge of the village, animals (including a buffalo) were sacrificed to Chao Luang Muang La and to twelve of the lesser guardian spirits located in Don Mun. In the late morning offerings were presented at the shrine of Chao Luang Anuphap. Later, back at the ceremonial site at the edge of the village, a troupe of local village girls, adorned immaculately in Lue-style dress and woven shoulder sashes, performed 'Lue' dances in front of a large village audience, though the dances were not recognizably Lue at alP 4 • Immediately following the dancing performance the attention of the audience was drawn to the large shrine of Chao Luang Muang La, indicated clearly in large letters in Thai script above the shrine entrance. Inside was seated a female medium (thi nang) and a mor muang clothed in red. The medium was soon possessed by the spirit of Chao Luang Muang La who, it was explained to me, had by-passed Nong Bua village! Here was a ritual performance aimed at appropriating the beneficent power of Chao Luang Muang La in an effort to tum the scales of fortune for the village 15 • It was also arguably an appropriation (or re-appropriation) of Chao Luang Muang La as a guardian spirit, since, as the villagers of Don Mun claim, until about a hundred years ago, the ritual of Chao Luang Muang La was held at Don Mun. The spirit possession seance was followed by Lue songs (khap Lue) sung by

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King Chulalongkorn initiated the process of administrative centralization in response to the threat of annexation of peripheral regions of the Siamese kingdom by colonial powers. Another component of national integration was the emergence of a policy that considered as 'Thai' anyone who spoke a Tai language. By the 1930s the government was energetically engaged in the promotion and codification of national culture, culminating in 1939 in the change of the name of the country from Siam to Thailand. Significantly, the promotion of national culture and economic nationalism became intertwined, with some of the Cultural Mandates issued in the period 1939-1940 designed 'to encourage the prosperity and well-being of Thai as against Chinese or ethnic minorities' (Reynolds 1991: 5-6). 'Development' thus became a subdiscourse within the broader, encompassing discourse of national culture. However, it was not until about the mid 1960s that development at the rural level was actively promoted with the setting up of villagelevel farmers groups, credit associations, community development groups, housewives and women's groups, etc. The process of state intervention in rural development was accelerated after the student uprising of 1973 which pressured the state to pay more attention to rural poverty and other rural problems. Accompanying these state-controlled rural development programs has been a development discourse that emphasizes 'development' and 'progress' and 'participation' (within groups and projects initiated and controlled by the state). State-led rural development programs are markedly oriented towards the village as an administrative unit, with requisite local leaders in official roles. Competitions between villages (kan prakuat muban) are encouraged (e.g. competitions to select most progressive headman, housewife pageants, etc.) and, according to Philip Hirsch (1993: 332), these can be seen as 'disciplinary mechanisms in support of the official discourse of village'.

Underpinning this discourse is the assumption of access to state resources and improved rural welfare. The end result of this process of state intervention is a radical shift from a situation in which 'village and state are geographically and institutionally separate' to one in which the state has become 'part of the village' (Hirsch 1989: 35, 54). Consistent with my point above concerning the integrity of economic development and national culture, Hirsch also notes (1990: 13) that development discourse in Thailand is not just about achieving economic prosperity but also about cultural development. Cultural development encompasses moral and spiritual development with the idealization of civic virtues such as diligence, punctuality, tidiness and honesty. It is noteworthy that the Lue of northern Thailand are especially renowned for their diligence (khayan) and textile weaving serves to enhance this reputation. Textiles are also strongly considered a culturally appropriate form of development for women and for this reason have been promoted by the royal family (especially by Queen Sirikit) as well as by government departments (e.g. Community Development). Textile production enables women to combine income earning with other domestic activities. In Nong Bua the weaving of Lue textiles had lapsed for a long time but was revived by a local woman in 1977. Notably the subsequent development of a viable local weaving industry in the village owed much to assistance and promotion by the District Officer, the Governor of Nan, The Siam Society and, from late 1979 to early 1980, the Department for the Promotion of Weaving sent instructors to Nong Bua to train local women. Later, two women's groups (klum satri), comprising almost a hundred households, were set up to undertake weaving on a cooperative basis (Pachoen 1984: 43). Now, a cooperative store in Nong Bua displays a large variety of Lue weaving for direct sale to tourists or wholesale to buyers supplying the tourist market elsewhere. However, Lue textiles are more than commodities for sale; they are an important part of contemporary Lue ceremonial and symbolic life. For example, at the 1996 rituals for Chao Luang Muang at Nong Bua and Don Mun,

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several elderly women and by a soul-calling (su khwan) ceremony.

Lue identity in the context of Thai national culture and development

Lue ethnicity in national context

described above, ornate and colourful Lue textiles featured prominently in the attire of the young female dancers and other local women present. Also, at Nong Bua, Lue textiles ostentatiously bedecked the many stands surrounding the ceremonial site in the village square. The revival of Lue textiles in these Lue villages in Nan highlights the issue of the contemporary construction of Lue ethnicity in relation to the Thai nation and national culture in Thailand. I would argue that contemporary Lue ethnic identification in Thailand is, in part, a reflection of the way national culture constructs Lue identity. According to Keyes, from the viewpoint of the contemporary Thai elites who promote national culture, 'the Lue are of interest primarily as representatives of one variant of northern Thai culture'. This perspective is pronounced in the case of Lue textiles,which Keyes considers 'a consequence of appropriation of non-Siamese Tai traditions' as part of the heritage of the Thai' (n.d.: 16, 17). The revival of Lue-style weaving in the villages of Nong Bua and Don Mun, with the assistance of a host of government institutions, is a reflection of this process of appropriation, of elite Thai perceptions of where the Lue fit in national culture and what elements can be profiled and commoditized, and of the Lue response to these perceptions. The intrusion of national culture into the local Lue world is also well illustrated in the case of the cult of the guardian spirits. The triennial cult ritual and the statue of Chao Luang Muang La serve to legitimize Nong Bua village as 'winner of the competition for rural development' (Baba 1993: 9). The re-invented, life-like nature of the statue-quite at variance with traditional representation of Lue guardian spirits-makes it an acceptable icon of national culture and development, as it is consistent with modern Thai trend of building statues of national heroes (e.g. modernizing kings such as Chulalongkorn). At the same time, the statue is symbolic of the beneficent supernatural power of Chao Luang Muang La that can be tapped in a quite magical way by the local communityl 6• This polysemous symbolism allows local Lue identity to be meaningful within a national context.

In both Muang Sing and Nan localized ethnic identity has a political origin centred on small principalities (muang) and their guardian spirit cults. In the case of the diasporic Lue of Thawangpha district in Nan, historical memories of migration linked them with their homeland and its guardian spirits who are also considered to be ancestors. Memories of migration are not a feature of local identity in Muang Sing. The early Lue settlers of Muang Sing in the nineteenth century originated from many Lue muang in Burma and southern Sip Song Panna. However, Muang Sing is the fons et origo of localized ethnic identity. This identity has its roots in the relative autonomy of Muang Sing as a political entity, in the power and prestige of the founding ruler of the principality, Chao Fa Silinor, and in the cult of guardian spirits he initiated. These guardian spirits were also considered ancestors of the local Lue and were closely identified with the natural landscape of Muang Sing. I suggest that Lue ethnic identity served to

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Furthermore, as Thawangpha Lue villages have become increasingly part of the Thai state and the state part of the village, the supra-village cult of Chao Luang Muang La has eventually collapsed and has fragmented into separate village cults under the pressure of administrative changes and state development programs that encourage inter-village competition. However, the competition between Nong Bua and Don Mun villages has not been waged purely on economic grounds. Ever since the spirit of Chao Luang Muang La expelled the evil swamp spirit, allowing Nong Bua to reclaim the swamp and prosper, economic competition has also been expressed in ritual action (statue, shrines, separate cults, spirit possession, etc.). Again there has been increasing rivalry between the two villages to become the paragons of Lue culture, in a sense to out-Lue each other. In this intensified competition it is apparent that economic and ritual action and the promotion of local Lue culture have coalesced and together have been subsumed by the hegemonic ideologies of national culture and development. Lue ethnic identity in Muang Sing and Nan: a comparison

Paul T. Cohen

reinforce claims of political autonomy (in relation to neighbouring kingdoms) and establish superiority and control over neighbouring hill people. In Nan I suspect that a sense of superiority and separateness as Lue may have been initially in the nineteenth century directed at other Tai lowland settlers and as a means of justifying a special relationship and privileges with the ruler (Chao Fa) of Nan. In Muang Sing localized ethnic identity has persisted relatively unchanged. One reason for this is that Muang Sing, since inception, has been able to maintain its political integrity. At the present time it forms a separate district (also called muang), in the modem socialist state of Lao PDR, which approximates to Muang Sing at the beginning of this century. The present district of Muang Sing still has significant political and economic autonomy. It is administered largely by local Lue officials-a consequence, in part, of the fact that Laos is legally a multi-ethnic state that proclaims the equality of all ethnic groups in the country. Furthermore, poor communications and an under-resourced state mean that there is minimal 'development' and state intervention in the district. The cult of the muang guardian spirits has survived too, albeit in a modified form that has disconnected it from political authority but not from locality. Thus it continues to be an expression of the unity and autonomy of Muang Sing (in relation to the state and tribal neighbours) and of local Lue identity unselfconsciously rooted in tradition. The Lue of Muang Sing do have a national identity as Lao-many Lue fought in the national struggle on the side of the Pathet Lao and many also identify with certain national festivals such as that for the the New Year)-but national culture does not encroach significantly on their local identity. By contrast, the Lue villages ofThawangpha District in Nan no longer comprise a single political or administrative entity. Also, an intrusive Thai state has reduced much of the economic autonomy of the Lue, forcing them to quite consciously re-invent their local identity within the wider hegemonic discourses of national culture and development. As such, over the past twenty years or so, 'localized ethnic identity' has been transformed into a more

contrived ethnic variant of an over-arching Thai national culture. State intervention in rural areas in Thailand in the name of development has tended to foster inter-village competition and, in relation to the Lue villages of Nong Bua and Don Mun, this has been exacerbated by local historical contingencies. As a consequence, Lue local identity has been turned inwards through intense rivalry between Lue villages, a rivalry that is expressed in the coalescence of economic, ritual and cultural action.

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Acknowledgements I would like to thank Yuji Baba, Volker Grabowsky, Chris Lyttleton and the JSS reviewer for their helpful comments on a draft of this paper. I would also like to acknowledge the financial support of the Australian Research Council which made field research possible. Between late 1995 and early 1998 I made five fields trips to Muang Sing ranging from a few days to six weeks. In Lao PDR the research on which this paper is based was supported by the Institute of Research on Culture and Society (Ministry of Information and Culture) and, in particular, I thank the Director, Houmphanh Rattanavong, as well as Khamphaeng Thipmountaly, who assisted me in the field, for their valuable assistance. Research in Nan Province, northern Thailand, was based on two brief visits, of two days each, in December 1995 and December 1996.

Notes 1 The chao muang' s village or town tends to be the political capital of his muang, and duplicates on a smaller scale the court and its bureaucracy as found in Chiengrung (LeBar et al. 1960: 211). The number of muang varied over time; in 1780 there were some 20 muang, in 1950 more than 30 (Chiang cited in LeBar et al.1960: 211). Peculiar to Lue political organisation was the system of 12 panna (literally 'twelve thousand rice fields'). Hsieh (1989: 106) notes: 'Although the panna was a larger organization than the meeng (muang) . . . there was no formal government for each panna. Some Chao meeng were called Chao panna. However•. they were like coordinators whose responsibility was to collect

Lue ethnicity in national context

tribute within particular panna and submit them to the king. In general, a Chao panna did not have the authority to command princes of other meeng'. Sip Song Panna was established as a state at the end of the twelth century AD. It became formally a vassal state of China in the late fourteenth century. From the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century Sip Song Panna also paid tribute to kings of Burma. This type of dual tributary relationship enabled Sip Song Panna to maintain a high degree of autonomy with minimal interference from her suzerain powers. It was only permanently incorporated into the Chinese state in the late nineteenth century as a consequence of boundary treaties between China, Britain and France. Sip Song Panna (Xishuangbanna) is presently an Autonomous Prefecture of Yunnan Province, PRC. 2 The historical legend of Chao Fa Dek Noi is well known in Muang Sing and was recounted to me a number of times by Lue elders there. The story is also recounted in Saengthong Photibupha's recent Pawatsat Muang Siang Khaeng (1998). The Lue king of Chiang Rung, Sawaennifa, had a son, Chao Inpan (later called Chao Fa Dek Noi). As a boy Chao Inpan was inquisitive and intelligent. He was also gregarious and liked to play with other children (dek noi). This group of children, under Chao Inpan's leadership, stole an ox and a buffalo in the rice fields. The people saw this as an inauspicious portent for the country and they petitioned the king to intervene. As punishment the king exiled his son and sent him on a large raft down the Mekong with five pairs of servants and seven pairs of slaves. As they drifted down the Mekong Chao Inpan ordered his followers to found settlements along the way. Eventually the prince had a dream that he should establish his own settlement near a large rock in the river with the shape of a white tiger chasing a golden deer. As there were few of his followers left by this stage of the journey they would have to summon up courage (khaengcai). Hence the new settlement was named Muang Chiang Khaeng. 3 Panya Tanhai is also the paramount guardian spirit of the Chiangteum reliquary at Muang Sing. The annual reliquary festival (Bun That) attracts large numbers of Lue devotees from Muang Sing, northern Laos and Sip Song Panna. In the mythical history of the reliquary, recounted in the chronicle Tham Tamnan That Luang Chiangteum Muang Sing, Panya Tanhai is honoured as a devout Buddhist ruler responsible for the initial construction of the reliquary. 4 Today the conscription of Akha labour has been replaced by the extensive use by Lue of Akha wage

labour for wet-rice cultivation. 5 For an analysis of similar village territorial cults in Sip Song Panna see Tanabe (1988). 6 Keyes (1993: 37) gives a figure of 103,000 based on the 1985 Institute of Ethnology estimate. Chazee (1995: 48) gives an estimate of 125,000. 7 Pers.comm. Volker Grabowsky. 8 According to the headman of Ban Phanom (Kaentha Phaisomat) whom I interviewed in November 1995. He claimed that these settlers and their descendants specialized in the production of handicrafts and the performance of Lue dances for the royal court at Luang Prabang only a few kilometres away. 9 For details of Lue settlement in Lampang, see Prachan Rakphong (1987: 9-11). 10 Ratanaporn ( 1996: 5) also mentions refugees from Chiang Khaeng. 11 See Tanabe (1984: 101) on forced resettlement of Tai Khoen from Chiang Tung as a basis of ethnic consciousness and 'historical memory of ethnic oppression' in resettled Khoen communities near Chiang Mai and as a basis of later rebellion (1889). Tanabe notes: 'Among the the Khoen peasants at least, old songs and verses recollecting life in the original villages in the Chiang Tung area and the sufferings of the Khoen people down to the present were chanted at village assemblies before the uprising'. 12 An apt example of such multi-faceted representation is that of the Lue migrants from Muang Yong noted above. Oral tradition has it that the ruler of Muang Yong was promised fertile land near Chiang Mai but this had already been settled by other war captives. So he was asked to clear wasteland around Lamphun. The ruler was delighted because the geographical and ecological environment was similar to that of Muang Yong and he decided to settle there. 'He named his chief village 'Waing Yong', whereas smaller settlements nearby were named after former satellite muang of Y ong. The villages of Yu and Luai were built on opposite sides of the Kuang River, corresponding exactly to the original locations of Muang Yu and Muang Luai. Furthermore, the four guardian spirits ofMuang Yong (each represented by a stone-cut white elephant) were also 'resettled' along with the population and located at the main monastery of Wiang Yong (Grabowsky 1999: 33, 45). 13 Pers. comm. Yuji Baba. 14 The dances bore little resemblance to Lue dances I have seen in Sip Song Panna and Muang Sing. My

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Baba, Yuji. 1993. The Ritual of the Guardian Spirit of the Tai-Lue and its Social Background: A Case Study of Nan Province in Northern Thailand. Paper presented at 5th International Conference on Thai Studies, S.O.A.S., London. Baba, Yuji 1996. Migration and Spirit Cult: The Case Study on Tai-Lue Villages in Nan Province, Northern Thailand. Paper presented at 6th International Conference on Thai Studies, Chiang Mai, 14-17 October. Chazee, L. 1995. Atlas des Ethnies et Sous-Ethnies du Laos. Bangkok: privately published. Condominas, G. 1990. From Lawa to Mon, from Saa' to Thai. Historical and Anthropological Aspects of Southeast Asian Social Spaces. Canberra: Research School of Pacific Studies, ANU. Evans, G. n.d.Immobile Memories: Statues in Thailand and Laos. Forthcoming in Cultural

Crisis and Social Memory: The Politics of the Past in the Thai World, (eds) Charles F. Keyes and Shigeharu Tanabe. Grabowsky, V. 1999. Forced Resettlement Campaigns in Northern Thailand During the Early Bangkok Period (forthcoming). Grabowsky, V. and Kaspar-Sickermann n.d. On the History of Muang Sing (manuscript) Gunn, G. C. 1989. Rebellion in Northern Laos: The Revolts of the Lu and the Chinese Republicans (1914-1916), Journal of the Siam Society, 77(1): 61-65. Hirsch, P. 1989. The State in the Village: Interpreting Rural Development in Thailand, Development and Change 20: 35-56. Hirsch, P. 1990. Development Dilemmas in Rural Thailand. Singapore: Oxford University Press. Hirsch, P. 1993. What is the Thai Village?. In National Identity and its Defenders: Thailand, 1939-1989. (ed.) C.J. Reynolds, Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books. Southeast Asia, No.25, pp.323-340. Hsieh, Shih-Chung 1989. Ethnic-Political Adaptation and Ethnic Change of the Sipsong Panna Dai: An Ethnohistorical Analysis. PhD dissertation. University of Washington. Keyes, C. F. 1993. Who are the Lue? Revisited Ethnic Identity in Lao, Thailand, and China. Paper presented at Seminar on State of Knowledge of Thai Culture, Bangkok, 10-13 September. LeBar, F. M., G. C. Hickey, J. K.Musgrave. 1960. Ethnic Groups ofMainland Southeast Asia ..New Haven: Human Relations Area Files Press. Lehman, F. 1984. Freedom from Bondage in Traditional Burma and Thailand, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 14(2): 233-44. Moerman, M. 1965. Ethnic Identification in a Complex Civilization: Who are the Lue?, American Anthropologist, 67:1215-30. Moerman, M. 1967. A Minority and its Government: The Thai-Lue of Northern Thailand. In Southeast Asian Tribes, Minorities, and Nations. (ed.) Peter Kunstadter, Princeton New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Moerman, M. 1968. Agricultural Change and Peasant Choice in a Thai Village. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press. Moerman, M. and P. L. Miller. 1989. Changes in a Village's Relations with its Environment. In Culture and Environment in Thailand: A Symposium of the Siam Society. Bangkok: The Siam Society.

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wife, who is Thai and who was also in the audience at Don Mun, claims the dances were standard northern and central Thai. 15 Yuji Baba, in a personal communication, informs me that he heard another version of this story, namely that the medium at Don Mun was possessed by the sister of Chao Luang Muang La, Chiang Lan, and that it was she who by-passed Nong Bua village, even though most of her devotees live in Nong Bua. Clearly both versions confirm that Don Mun villagers were engaged in competitive ritual action to attract the supernatural support of ancestral spirits. 16 Tambiah highlights this ambiguity in his use of the concept 'indexical symbol' in his study of Buddha images and amulets in Thailand. Indexical symbols are 'symbols that are associated with the represented object by a conventional semantic rule, and they are simultaneously also indexes in existential, pragmatic relation to the objects they represent' (1984: 4). Grant Evans (n.d.: 14) also uses this concept as a means of comprehending recent 'statue mania' in Thailand in which public statues of national heroes have become the focus of popular religious cults. For example, the equestrian statue of King Chulalongkorn in Bangkok reflects a nationalist project and stands for modernity, progress, and prosperity. At the same time, every Tuesday crowds gather at the statue 'because many people believe that it can work miracles for problems of everyday life and especially for business matters'.

References

Lue ethnicity in national context

Nguyen Duy Thieu 1993. Relationships between the Tai-Lua and Other Minorities in the SocioPolitical Systems ofMuang Xinh (Northern Laos). Paper presented at 5th International Conference on Thai Studies, S.O.A.S., London. Pachoen Cinsit 1984. Anusorn Thai Lue: Thiraleuk Ngan Chalong Anusawari Chao Luang Muang La (Thai Lue Memories: Commemorative Volume for the Chao Luang Muang La Monument Festival). Nan: Daen Thai. Prachan Rakphong 1987. Kanseuksa Muban Thai Lue nai Cangwat Lampang (A Study of Tai-Lue Villages in Lampang Province). Social Science Society of Thailand. Reynolds, C. 1991. Introduction: National Identity and its Defenders. In National Identity and its Defenders: Thailand, I939-I989. (ed.) C.J. Reynolds, pp. 1-34. Ratanaporn Sethakul 1996. From Sipsong Panna to Lan Na: the Lu in Nan Province. Paper presented at the 14th Conference of the International Association of Historians of Asia, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 20-24 May. Saengthong Photibupha 1998. Pawatsat Muang Siang Khaeng (The History ofMuang Chiang Khaeng). Vientiane: Preservation of Lao Manuscripts

KEYWORDS-LUE, TAl, THAILAND, LAOS, ETHNICITY, SPIRIT CULTS, NATIONAL CULTURE, DEVELOPMENT.

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Programme. Tambiah, S. J. 1984. The Buddhist Saints ofthe Forest and the Cult of Amulets. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tanabe, Shigeharu 1984. Ideological Practice in Peasant Rebellions: Siam at the Turn of the the Twentieth Century. In History and Peasant Consciousness in South East Asia. (ed.) Andrew Turton and Shigeharu Tanabe. Senri Ethnological Studies No.l3, Osaka, National Museum of Ethnology. Tanabe, Shigeharu 1988.Spirits and Ideological Discourse: the Tai Lue Guardian Cults in Yunnan, Sojourn, 3(1):1-25. Thai-Yunnan Project Newsletter!, June 1988. The Muang Spirits of Muang La (excerpt from Boonchuai Srisawad's Thai Sipsongpanna, Vol. 1, translated by Cholthira Satyawadhna). Wijeyewardene, G. 1993. The Frontiers of Thailand. In National Identity and its Defenders: Thailand, 1939-1989. (ed.) C. J. Reynolds, pp.157-90.

COUDEE MAGIQUE, EAU LUSTRALE ET BATON ENCHANTE: RITES ET CROYANCES DANS LA CONSTRUCTION DE L'HABITAT TRADITIONNEL DES JAWI (PATANI, THAILANDE DU SUD) Pierre Le Roux• Resume Dans Ia region de Patani, les habitants, musulmans d'origine malaise, construisaient naguere de magnifiques maisons de bois sur pilotis, de differents styles et que I' on trouve encore en nombre, selon des mesures augurales, des rites propitiatoires et une orientation appropries, dans le strict respect de croyances populaires. Cet appareil rituel est reproduit et pro Ionge dans I'habitat modeme de beton, acier et verre'.

En 1785, le souverain siamois Rama 1er conquit le su1tanat malais de PatanF au terme d'une campagne victorieuse contre p1usieurs Etats, en particulier le royaume mon de Ligor (actuelle province thai'landaise de N akhon Sri Thammarat). Patani fut annexe par le royaume bouddhique siamois mais, devenu vassal, conserva dans les faits une independance presque totale. C' est a compter de Ia signature du Traite Anglo-Siamois de 1909, que Patani, royaume musulman, fut considere, au moins par le Siam et les pays voisins sinon par les habitants du sultanat, comme faisant partie du Siam bouddhiste qui allait devenir bientot le 'Pays des Tha!s' ou Thai1ande (Kokbua SuwannathatPian 1988) (Figure 1). D'un point de vue politique cette annexion a ete l'une des causes principales d'une guerilla larvee pendant des annees et jusqu' a Ia fin de Ia decennie 1980 (Bruneau 1987, Forbes 1989, Nantawan Haernindra 1976, Surin Pitsuwan 1985). De 1'origine culturellement malaise de Patani, il subsiste encore bien des traces .. Parmi ces rappels culturellement signifiants de I' anteriorite du sultanat sur I' autorite siamoise, il faut noter I' existence de kayu atah ning 3 'ce bois-au-dessus'' espar a fonction symbolique glisse dans Ia charpente des maisons,

ou encore Ia canonnade festive des 'canons' de bambou charges au carbure de calcium, bede kaba ', pour Ia commemoration annuelle des ceh~bres canons geants du sultanat, emportes par les Siamois apres le sac de Ia ville, au XVIII• siecle, et deposes a Bangkok devant I' ancien ministere de Ia Guerre (LeRoux 1998a etc). Cet attachement aleur histoire, les habitants de Patani I' expriment egalement via des elements heterogenes et syncretiques issus de Ia fusion des deux cultures: malaise musulmane et animiste, tres influencee par l'hindouisme, et siamoise bouddhique egalement melee de paganisme dans sa version populaire et rurale, ainsi que le montre le mythe fondateur jawi de I' elephant blanc aux defenses noires4. De Ia somme de ces elements emerge l'ethnonyme de cette population, a majorite rurale, dont les individus se reconnaissent a Ia fois comme des Jawi5 c'est-a-dire des Malais d' origine, et non des Malaysiens, et comme des Thai"landais ou 'ressortissants de Tha!lande', et non pas des Siamois. Ce demier terme equivaut en effet localement, dans toutes Ies categories

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63

' Ethnologue, docteur de l'EHESS, membre de l'IRSEA, CNRS-Universite de Provence (Marseille, France).

Pierre Le Roux

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m

Alre de moindre concentration des habitants d'origine malaise (autres Malais de Thanande)

(Malaisie) Figure 1 Carte de situation de Ia region habitee par les Jawi. Provinces thai1andaises de Pattani, Yala et Narathiwat, equivalent a peu pres au territoire de I' ancien sultanat de Patani.

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Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 86, Parts 1 & 2

Coudee magique, eau lustrale er baron enchante

Figure 2 Les cinq elements du bonheur d' un Jaw i : Ia mai son, Ia tourterelle, le kriss, Ia bague d'agate, et l' epo use. District de Sai Buri, province de Pattani, 1991 (c li che P. LeRoux) .

de population , a bouddhiste (de confession bouddhique). Les Jawi constituent une entite culturelle originale, differenciable de celle des Malais habitant Ia Malaisie, longtemps, et jusqu' a tres recemment, demeuree par Ia force des chases et des aleas de l'histoire un conservatoire culture! du Monde malais peninsulaire (LeRoux 1997a & b; LeRoux & Azip Samuyama 1997). Depuis le debut des annees 90 surtout, ils paraissent en voie d' assimilation a Ia societe thallandaise, co nseq uenc e parmi d'autres d'une forte croissance economique regionale.

Le Jawi, en tant qu'individu , nage dans un univers sympathique. La vie quotidienne est impregnee de magie et, dans cette societe oLI nature et surnature sont indissociables, l' individu vit en permanence a Ia fois protege et menace par les entites spirituell es issues de divers pantheons (indien, musulman, bouddhique, siamois, mon, animiste). Cette relation complexe entre nature martelle et surnature immortelle est laissee a I' appreciation et a Ia competence

mediatrice d 'ex perts eclaires, les bohmo , (guerisseurs) qui sont aussi, en tant que medecins des esprits, les maltres des rites (LeRoux 1997a, W ilkinson 1932). Ce sont eux que les villageois consu ltent, non seu lement de fa~on curative lorsqu'une personne est malade, mais encore preventivement, afin d'eviter la confrontation directe et imprevue, done dangereuse, avec le divin, d' oLI qu'il provienne, en se le conciliant. Dans cette societe rurale les rites sont essentiels, ou plutot le respect des rites, atoutes les etapes de la vie, tant lors d, un emmenagement qu' a plus forte raison Iars d'une construction neuve. Dans leur definition ideale du bonheur, les Jawi enoncent une liste de cinq e lements indispensables : une maison Q'umoh) , une tourterelle Geopelia striataL. (burong ttite), un kriss (kereh), une bague d' agate (chic/u!ng aki'), et une epouse (ttino ). La maison, au sens large, est ainsi pensee par les Jawi comme un element majeur de Ia stabi li te et du bonheur social et c 'es t pourquoi !'e nsemble des rites de construction est loin d'etre mineur ou anecdoctique (Figure 2). Ces ingredients sont, bien slir, idealises: une jeune femme 'a Ia demarche gracieuse de I' elephant' 6 , un kriss

Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 86, Parts l & 2

65

La maison ideale ou l'ideal social ?

Pierre Le Roux

Pour les Jawi, et pour les Malais en general, les humains ne sont pas les seuls etres a posseder une essence vitale. Les animaux, certains vegetaux et mineraux, ainsi que certaines chases, en particulier le bateau et la maison, en detiennent aussi. D'ailleurs, pour les Jawi les animaux et les arbres sont reputes avoir eu la faculte de la parole, aux temps originels. Le terme malais qui exprime cette 'essence' vitale, semangat, a souvent ete traduit par arne (Annandale 1901, 1909; Cuisinier 1951; Wilkinson 1906; Winstedt 1916). II serait sans doute plus juste de parler de 'force' vitale. Le concept jawi de semanga' est difficile a apprehender parce qu'il renvoie a plusieurs notions mais aussi a plusieurs cultures. Plusieurs notions parce qu'il induit ala fois une vie, une puissance, un esprit et un etre. Plusieurs cultures parce qu'il renvoie aux notions d'ame, de spiritualite et d'existence dans les mondes indien, musulman, et bouddhique. Sans doute, au lieu de traduire semanga' par 'arne', terme possedant une forte connotation culturelle dans notre langue, ne serait-ce que dans son acception religieuse, pourrait-on assez justement lui preferer un terme a Ia fois plus confus parce que mal defini et plus precis par tout ce qu'il induit implicitement : lemana des Austronesiens. Un autre terme malayo-polynesien, tapu, a ete emprunte avec bonheur et est d'un usage pratique, car sans equivalent dans notre culture, sous la forme tabou. Quoi qu' il en soit, pour le common des Jawi, en particulier la majorite paysanne, 1' etre humain est seul a posseder trois 'ames' differentes :

nyawoh (du sanskrit), roh (de l'arabe) et semanga' (terme austronesien). Le premier terme, nyawoh, correspond au souffle regulateur et ordonnateur de la vie qui apparait au terme du sixieme mois du stade fretal, et qui, apres la disparition du corps, et s' il demeure sur terre en tant qu'unite definie, se transforme en fantome. L'expression ame' nyawoh 'prendre l'ame' signifie litteralement 'tuer'. Le second terme, roh, designe le souffle au sens propre qui constitue une sorte de 'corps astral' et distingue l'homme de l'animal. C'est cette 'arne' qui est plus particulierement prise en compte par les officiants religieux (les trois 'ames' se confondent cependant lors d'un deces: elles s'echappent simultanement). Le demier terme, semanga', qui recouvre les croyances malaises les plus anciennes est le plus difficilement defini par les Jawi: l'expression ame' semanga' 'prendre l'ame' signifie non pas 'tuer' mais bien 'charmer, ensorceler, enchanter, envofiter'. Pour le common des Jawi, le principe vital semanga', et celui d'une maison n'y echappe pas, ne doit etre ni effraye ni menace et encore moins desequilibre. Pour eviter cela, il faut suivre des consignes 'ordinaires' comme l'interdit de s' exprimer bruyamment, de fa~on intempestive, celui de se deplacer lourdement au sein de la maison en faisant vibrer la moindre latte, et il faut respecter des consignes 'extraordinaires', lors d'evenements exceptionnels comme un orage, une naissance, une alliance, un deces, etc. Par exemple, pour eviter que la foudre ne tombe sur la maison lors des violents orages de la mousson du sud-ouest, les Jawi glissent la lame d'une arme blanche, celle d'un kriss (Figure 3) ou a defaut d'un simple coupe-coupe, entre les interstices du plancher, au chambranle de la porte principale, afin de detoumer les coups et de dissuader l'eclair de violenter le batiment. Chez d'autres peoples malais, tels que les habitants de Selangor rencontres par William Skeat a Ia fin du XIX• siecle, le peril des orages etait detoume par les habitants en lan~ant quelques poignees de sel (sacrificiel) dans le foyer. Les petillements et etincelles resultants etaient comme le vaccin des eclairs et du tonnerre qu'ils evoquaient. Lors d'une naissance, pour eviter notamment que la maison -