Abstract
In this chapter Joseba Estévez describes how upon his arrival in the village of Nam Lue one asks him to photograph wedding and ordination ceremonies so that their splendour and the status of the actors will be visible to all and sundry. Estévez observes that his outsider’s testimony of the magnificence of the rituals and the faultlessness of their performance fulfils an essential function: It provides Lanten society with an external acknowledgement without which it would remain fundamentally incomplete. As such his identity as farang is valued, a term that is, in contrast to unspecified categories of generalised ‘others’ applied in most other cases, used to designate ‘foreigners’ of ‘European’ (Frankish) origin. Lanten expect him—as a farang—to mediate their relations with the outside world, their goods and their knowledge.
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Notes
- 1.
If not indicated otherwise, all the indigenous words are Lanten/Mun.
- 2.
I am indebted to Volker Grabowsky for our fruitful discussions about this and other local ethnonyms.
- 3.
Bretschneider in Foochow et al. (1875: 8–9) for a more complete etymology and historical context for the term farang.
- 4.
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/thailand-iran-relations [visited on 01/12/2018].
- 5.
In current times, various ethnic groups may reside together in a Lanten village. When this is the case, the space, social organisation, and communal rituals are not only mutually acknowledged but also clearly differentiated.
- 6.
The Lanten term Lao is prefixed to surnames to politely address heads or elder members of clans. Hence, Lao Lee means ‘Old’ [‘venerable’] Lee.
- 7.
Such was the case with Jacques Lemoine who visited Luang Nam Tha in 2001 commissioned by UNESCO (Lemoine 2002), and in 2006–2007 as an advisor in field trips organised by the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre (TAEC) in Luang Prabang, Laos.
- 8.
Funding was obtained from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG). In addition, two projects have provided further funding from 2016. One of these projects is ‘A Digital Library of the Lanten Textual Heritage’ (2015–2019). This project is a cooperation between the National Library of Laos (Lao Ministry of Culture, Information and Tourism—MICT), the Münster University (Germany), and the Hong Kong University (HKU; China). It is funded by the Endangered Archives Programme (https://eap.bl.uk), which in turn is supported by Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin and administered by the British Library (UK). This project has two phases: EAP791 and EAP1126 with the digital object identifiers https://doi.org/10.15130/EAP791 and https://doi.org/10.15130/EAP1126. The other project ‘Lanten Oral Stories’ (2017–2019)—same partners—is a cooperation with the Lao Ministry of Education and Sports—MOES. This project is supported by a BEQUAL Innovation Fund (http://bequal-laos.org), the European Union and Australian Aid.
- 9.
Lanten women lack literacy in Chinese, the younger generation, however, can read and write the Lao language.
- 10.
The significance of the Highland–Lowland relationships in the Mainland Southeast Asian context has been addressed in numerous studies, and several local terms identify those middlemen who partake in such social networks. For instance, ‘lam’ was used among the Khmu (Halpern 1964: 94), ‘sahai’ among the Karen (Marlowe 1979: 185–186), and ‘mae kha’ identified female traders partaking in long-distance exchange networks (Walker 1999: 138). See Jonsson et al. (2016) for further discussion.
- 11.
Lacking temples, shrines, or sacrificial halls, the Lanten households are consecrated as a ‘sacred space’ with temporary specific altars constructed for each major ceremony. The altars are destroyed—burnt—at the end of the ritual, and the space—the household—is ‘desacralised’ so it can regain its usual daily functions.
- 12.
The major ritual tasks include organising frequent honouring rituals for the ancestors, the yearly village rituals to honour communal ancestors and the Deities of the ritual territory, the (usually) triennial major ritual to honour the last four–five generations of ancestors, and the primary and secondary death rituals for all the members of the household.
- 13.
The Lanten cosmovision appears to be a reflexion of the Chinese imperial cosmovision: The centre (Empire/village) is ‘civilised’, the periphery (the non-Han/the ‘forest’) is ‘barbarian/foreigner’. Both the ‘barbarians’ and the ‘forest’ were required but must be ‘civilised’.
- 14.
Kandre (1967) also addressed the Yao Mien ‘ordinations’ as means for an adult male to become a de facto member of the Mien society. Adoption of non-Mien local children was more common in the past, especially during the Laotian Civil War and the post-war period.
- 15.
This constitutes a tripartite whole, counted by multiplying the 36 parts of the body. Compare to the Lao bun su:khuan ritual, in which the person’s 32 khuan ‘souls’ become part of a quadripartite whole: ‘Thirty-two khuan come together, ninety-six khuan gather’ (Lao: sa:m si:b sò:ng ma: hao kao sip hok ma: ho:m). This different number of body parts and ‘souls’ strengthens the idea that ‘ethnic’ differences in the region are i.a. conceptualised as those between the number of components their persons are believed to embody (Platenkamp 2010a).
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Estévez, J. (2019). On Becoming a Ritual Master Among the Lanten—Yao Mun—Of Laos. In: Platenkamp, J., Schneider, A. (eds) Integrating Strangers in Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16703-5_7
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