Spirit worship: partying with the nat kadaws

By Si Thu Lwin | Sunday, 30 March 2014

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The front of the boat is adorned with a basket full of bottles of alcohol of various brands, the back is festooned with bouquets of flowers, and the distance between them is filled with young men wearing identical, brightly coloured costumes and paddling with all their strength. They’re not going anywhere in particular – in fact, they’re going in circles – but they lean into each stroke as if they’re being judged.

A spirit medium dances to nat doe, or traditional nat music, to propitiate Phakan Ko Gyi Kyaw. (Si Thu Lwin/The Myanmar Times)A spirit medium dances to nat doe, or traditional nat music, to propitiate Phakan Ko Gyi Kyaw. (Si Thu Lwin/The Myanmar Times)

In a way, they are. Music blares from loudspeakers set up on the shores of the mighty Chindwin, where a crowd of people have assembled to watch. But the young men on the boat aren’t competing for sport; they’re doing it for two occupants of the raft they are circling around three times. It’s a tough audience. One is them is a statue – literally – while the other is a colourful flurry of distracted dancing, waving sheets of cash in one hand while drinking whisky from a bottle in the other.

Despite the contrast, to onlookers the still and the very-much-not-sober are one and the same. The figure is a spirit medium, or nat kadaw, which wears the costume of the nat, or spirit, which the statue represents and enacts the movements which the statue cannot. As the medium dances, the raft bobs too, nodding up and down in time with the waves and the weight of its two mismatched passengers, until the statue seems to be moving in time to the nat doe as well.

For residents of Ku Ni village, which straddles the Chindwin River in Pakkoku township, Magwe Region, the Pakhan Ko Gyi Kyaw Nat Festival is a chance to pay respect to a native son. One of the 37 major nats in the traditional Myanmar cosmology, Ko Gyi Kyaw is thought to have been born in Pakhan Gyi, a Bagan-era city which is also notable for being the location of a so-called “Buddha footprint” – an ornately decorated image of an oversized footprint, containing 108 Pali inscriptions.

“There is nothing to worship except Buddha,” one reveller, Mammy Noe Noe, said. “But we have always worshipped spirits according to our beliefs. If you believe strongly in Ko Gyi Kyaw and worship him, you will undoubtedly benefit in return, with extraordinary occurrences happening to you.”

Celebrated each year from every first to 15th day of the waxing of Tabounin the Myanmar lunar year – roughly equivalent to the first half of March in the Western calendar – the Pakhan Ko Gyi Kyaw Nat Festival is a boisterous tradition. Ko Gyi Kyaw was reputedly a carefree man, who enjoyed women, gambling and cockfighting, and the festival is celebrated in the same wild way, with a quintessentially Myanmar mix of reverent tradition and wild abandon.

The raft dance happens on the third day of the festival, when crowds reverently carry the statue of Ko Gyi Kyaw on a litter from his shrine down to the river for a bath.

“The day of the ceremonial bath is the happiest time for locals and it gives a lively image of Ku Ni village,” said one resident, Ko Min Zaw, as he pointed toward the statue over which young men were continuously emptying bottles of whiskey as it passed. “Look at this – what fun!”

The statue is placed on a red sheet of cloth that has been rolled out on the raft, then bathed in the river before being brought back to the shrine. But first the raft may also travel up and down the river for all to see, and this is when the nat kadaw dances most.

“This year the kadaw is very happy so he rode the royal raft five times upstream to downstream without stopping,” Mammy Noe Noe said, before he too began dancing in his formal double-length longyi to propitiate the Ko Gyi Kyaw spirit.

The bathing is only one part of the two-week-long ceremony. The next day, festival-goers gild the statue with gold at the shrine. The day after that, worshippers and other spirit mediums dance to the sounds of the nat doe around the shrine to give pleasure to Ko Gyi Kyaw. On the sixth day, villagers come from as far as Myaung township in hundreds of arch-roofed ox carts to join the festival. The eighth day is the most crowded, as it is a sabbath day, but the day after that is one of the most well-loved: the cock-fighting day, held in the nat’s cock-fighting shrine.

Other nats – Taungbyone Ko Min Gyi and Ko Min Law, each reincarnated from those who knew Ko Gyi Kyaw in life, and celebrated in their own festival at Taungbyone village north of Mandalay in August – are welcomed on the 11th waxing day. The nat’s mother is welcomed on the 13th and 14th waxing days. And then, on the 15th waxing day, the festival draws to a close, with food being offered to monks and other good deeds carried out.

While thousands of spirit believers from around the country come to participate in the festival, some say

it’s about more than just fun, and that they’ve made they journey because they’ve been told in their dreams to come and construct pagodas or other religious buildings.

“I’ve built 236 Buddhist pagodas,” said Mal Taw Gyi Mya Nan New from Shan State. “Now I am building two pagodas in the religious area of the Inle hotel zone. I’ve come here for the first time because of a dream.” He said he didn’t go to other nat festivals but had already planned to return again next year.

With the numbers of visitors growing each year, some residents said officials should use the festival as a prompt to boost local services for the well-being of locals and visitors.

“This is a big festival. So I wish the visitors to be happy conveniently in the festival. There is a small medical office but there is lack of effective medical service for visitors,” said Ko Zin Min Tun from Pakkoku, adding that the road toward Ko Gyi Kyaw’s shrine is muddy and in need of repair.

The festival does do wonders for the nearby economy. Along the road to Phakan, locals greet visitors with homemade snacks. And many residents, especially ox-cart drivers and boatmen, find themselves flush with cash due to the influx of visitors.

“We have rowed boats for the bathing ceremony for generations,” said Ko Zaw Naing from Pakhan Nge village. “I took pleasure in spending all my earnings that Ko Gyi Kyaw gave away to me today.”

Fundraising efforts, usually for repairs of religious buildings, also do well at this time. But it is a tradition to avoid celebrating other communal events at the same time as the festival is going on.

“No nearby village dares to hold a wedding ceremony during the festival because we believe that Ko Gyi Kyaw doesn’t like to hear tunes apart from nat doe,” said Ko Maung Kan from Phakan Nge village.

Musicians tighten their repertoire during the festival, turning down offers from troupes to accompany anyient pwe, or traditional comedy productions, at this time.

“We don’t dare to perform music in other celebrations,” said U Myat, a musician from Magway who has performed nat doe at the festival for the past 21 years.

“Musicians believe in this festival. Those who ignore the Ko Gyi Kaw festival will find their lives gradually becoming worse.”

Translation by Zar Zar Soe