Chapter 10 Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia 401rainy season retreat for monks, a practice begun in the early centuries of Indian
Buddhism and rigorously maintained ever since. Major merit-making rites
occur on Khaw Phansa (the first day of Buddhist lent), when monks gather at the
beginning of the retreat in July, and Pavarana, when they come out at the end.
During this period of piety and asceticism, while the rice is growing, weddings
are forbidden. This time of asceticism is the appropriate time for honoring the
ancestors at Bun Khaw Saak, “Merit with puffed (i.e., dead) rice.” Finally, a few
days after the monks come out, there is a major merit-making ceremony, Bun
Kathin, in which villagers of Baan Phraan Muan honor the monks by dragging
decorated palanquins and flags through the streets and giving gifts to the wat.
During the second half of the year, through the harvest and beginning of
field preparation in spring prior to the next rains, village ceremonies shift their
emphasis to celebration of life, fertility, and sexuality. Here the role of the
monks and Buddhism is muted (but not absent), while other spiritual powers
are invoked.
At the great harvest festival in February called Bun Phraawes, the main
deity is not the Buddha but a serpent spirit called Phra Uppakrut. Canonical
Buddhism does not acknowledge the existence of shadowy spirit entities like
the Naga, Phra Uppakrut, or Tapubaan, the village guardian spirit, or angels
(thewada), or spirits (phii), or for that matter, the soul (with its two components:
khwan and winjan), yet all these spirits are linked to Buddhism in practice and
sometimes in their own mythology in Baan Phraan Muan.
Thai villagers earn merit by giving food to monks in Ayutthaya.