Sunday, October 31, 2004

"Pra Chao Paendin" not a God

Reading western text on the history of Thailand, the concept of Kings as Gods seems to crop up quite often. In my eagerness to digest what is said about the history, I've always tended to skip over the nagging feeling that is generated with this western interpretation of Kingship. As I've come to develop a sense of caution on the internal logic of each language, the question marks behind each concept that get translated across cultures have become bigger and bigger for me. This particular one hit me in the middle of my head, since I've had to intensively review books and articles about the history of Thailand in preparation for my paper.



We Thais highly revere our Kings, and willingly place them on top of our heads, but we've never conceptualized them as "God"! Come on, being Buddhists, we don't even believe in God, or gods. OK, so we pray to spirits, go to Indra and Brahmin shrines, but seriously, someone should make it clear, they are never related to as gods. Please, someone, dig in and explain, we don't have the concept of a sole creator who creates the universe, etc, etc., etc.



Our Kings, "Prachaopaendin" literally means "Lord of the Land". "Chao" which through lack of equivalent term in English is translated into "Lord" and then thought of as God. Going into the definition of this term "chao" needs a linguistic paper. A "Chao's" right to rule is sanctioned by what is known as "Tosapit Rajataam" or the 10 laws of Kingship. These are an expression of how centuries of rulership has been tested and what qualites of kingship are valued. Nothing in those rules says he's a god in the western sense that he is the descendant of a creator of the universe. A King's royalty and his power comes from his ability to command many qualities that allows him to rule for the benefit of the people.



I'm registering my protest against this unquestioned definition of a historical concept written in western languages that carelessly use this equation which actually comes from the western epistemology that God gives the Chruch the right to rule, and then the Church gives the right to Kings to rule. Well, that logic doesn't follow in our society. This way of looking at the history of our region through these lenses have written versions of history that somehow just doesn't seem to ring a bell.

7 comments:

P.Snitwong said...

Yes !! You're right, and I wondering who is the monkey that translated word 'God' to "Pra Chao" in Thai.
This made me thought about La Loubere who missed spelling ' Pra Jay Dee ' as ' Pra Jai Dee ' then did the stupid translated to something like 'Lord of good heart'. Jai = Heart , Dee = Good.
Oh well. He's genius !
Sorry for my sick english.

PS.

Cuauhtémoc said...

Hello, Khun P. Snitwong. Thank you for your comment, it's good to know other people's thoughts about things that bothers me enough to blog about. No need to apologize for your English, it's not our first language.

P.Snitwong said...

Tell them that there is another choice to translate,
Let'em try ....
" Monk boss of the land "
See... thier language error, No way to make a perfect Tai translation to english. ;-)

Hi. My name is Pongprom Snitwong na Ayuthaya.
I've read all of your articles, really insteresting.!
I'm researching about the lost music of all Tai now
your articles shown on my search result last week
How much you know about early Tai history or Tai music ?

thx
P.S.
prohm@samarts.com

P.Snitwong said...

Tell them that there is another choices to translate,
Let'em try ....
" Monk Boss of the land " or
" Master Monk of the Ground Sheet "..hehehe
See... the errors, No way to make a perfect Tai translation to english. :-)

Hi. My name is Pongprom Snitwong na Ayuthaya.
I've read all of your articles, really insteresting.!
I'm researching about the lost music of all Tai now
your articles shown on my search result last week
How much you know about early Tai history or Tai music ?

thx
P.S.
prohm@samarts.com

P.Snitwong said...

Ooops ! Accident clicked .. Sorry

Cuauhtémoc said...

Hello again Khun Pong,
"Monk Boss of the Land" sounds great to me. You see, this word has me speculating about how the word "pra" came into use and I also wonder how the word "chao" came into use? Do you think it's related to how the Northerners say "jao" instead of "kha" ending their speech to sound polite.

In terms of tradtional Thai music, I'm interested in the "mor lam" tradition. I think it's kind of like Isan rap. Imagine, historical rap! As a kid growing up, visiting festivals around Isan with my dad, I heard and saw some great mor lam (for non-Thai speakers, this word translates into "Dance/song doctor"). Didn't understand much of it (always sung in Isan language with lots of throat play), but since it was a live mor lam competition, there were two singers and they were definitely impoverising and creating the song as they went along telling the story about their village and the festival. Nowadays, with recordings and everything, people just repeat the popular songs. I dream that the live tradition could be revived, adding some modern musical instruments and technique so that we can enjoy hearing the creative improvisions in this tradtion.

P.Snitwong said...

I hope you can see Thai script there.

IMHO, comparing to the central Tai word's mutation.
The way Lanna people use word "Jao ( จ้าว )" is the same as "Master" .
Politely treat to everyone like thier master.
"Yes... Master" = "ใช่ จ้าว"
Also = "ใช่ นาย" in central Tai ..
or "ใช่ จ้าวข้า (นายข้า)" for higher class.
and "ใช่ พระจ้าวข้า" for highest class.
So word "พระจ้าว" is mean Highest Class Master.
But the Lanna word Jao in this case slightly changed to function as "Sir".
From time to time.
Word "พระเจ้า" was slightly changed from "พระจ้าว"
But in some case, we still use some of these old words such as "จ้าวนคร" "จ้าวโลกา" in today.

Word " เจ้า " alone is mean " You " also.
in other case.. it's also mean Holy Spirit and some case mean Dhevada.
I don't even feel comfortable to use word 'god" instead of Dhevada.

That's a good choice and good example.
Rap and Isann Mor Lam has some connection to each other as far as you can imagine.
As you're already know about Oral History.
Folk music is a part of oral history.
Only use speeches can distort the story when the time pass through. So.. they're sing. Rhyme of the song can keep the words more reliable and easier to remember.
And as you may know... we're all african,
Our ancestors in the early world carried the african heritage blood of musical gift to thier tribe.
The oldest music scale call 'Pentatonic'.
There are five tones in the scale, If you can remember, Five is the one of the most important number since ancient time,.. Pentacle for example. African might used the pentatonic scale before the earlier IFA religion existed.
Remember the tune in movie "Close encounter of the third kind" ?
That's why all early Folk music in this world use pentatonic before, Example.. Celtic and Irish in Europe, ...or every tribe in Asia (but India was learned and developed most further)... this included Native American people who are the close cousins of our asian too.
Everyone can quickly learn this scale because it is a basic skill in our blood.
Rap has the same functions as Folk music,It's human nature. There's no need much skill or music educated. in Rap's motif (smallest musical element to form melody), They will not use more than five tones. And if you check thier rhyme, you will often found that they're use the eight syllables form as their basic form.(at least 8 words in one phrase) Similar to Tai's "กลอนแปด" ...The oldest human's rhyme.
You will found the same in Chinese Folk,Monkolian Folk,Tibet,Ainu and even Navojo.
They're came from the same root.
If you compare with blues music, you will hear the same too.

PS
prohm@samarts.com