tion, the fever recurring at regular intervals. This kind of chronic
malaria was locally referred to as ‘the fever the in-laws despise’,
for its victims can eat well enough but they can’t do any work
because the fever is so debilitating. In such cases, not only the
in-laws but also everyone else became fed up. No effective reme-
dies for malaria existed then; so those who caught it had to just
let it run its course. I myself quite often suffered from such chas-
tening fevers, and I too had let them run their course as we had
no medicines to treat malaria in those days. Ãcariya Mun used to
say that most of the dhutanga monks he knew during that period
had been infected with malaria, including himself and many of
his disciples. Some even died of it. Listening to those accounts,
one couldn’t help feeling a profound sympathy for him and his
monks: he nearly died before gaining the necessary understand-
ing to teach the way of Dhamma to his disciples, so they too could
practice following his example.
Local Customs and Beliefs
Earlier, before Ãcariya Mun and Ãcariya Sao began wandering
through the region to enlighten people about the nature of moral
virtue and to explain the consequences of their actions and beliefs,
the worship of spirits and ghosts had become endemic in the North-
east and a common aspect of everyday village life. Whether it was
planting the rice, putting in a garden, building a house, or making
a shed, an auspicious day, month, and year had to be determined
for the start of every endeavor. Before any type of work could