Nat (deity)
The nats (နတ်; MLCTS: nat; IPA: [naʔ]) are god-like spirits venerated in Myanmar and neighbouring countries in conjunction with Buddhism. They are divided between the 37 Great Nats who were designated that status by King Anawrahta when he formalized the official list of nats. Most of the 37 Great Nats were human beings who met violent deaths.
There are two types of nats in Burmese Belief: nat sein (နတ်စိမ်း) which are humans that were deified after their deaths and all the other nats which are spirits of nature (spirits of water, trees etc.).
Much like
Every Burmese village has a nat kun (နတ်ကွန်း) or nat sin (နတ်စင်) which essentially serves as a shrine to the
Nat worship and Buddhism
Academic opinions vary as to whether Burmese Buddhism and Burmese spirit worship are two separate entities, or merged into a single religion.[
Nat worship and ecology
The widespread traditional belief among rural communities that there are forest guardian spirits called taw saung nats (တောစောင့်နတ်) and mountain guardian spirits called taung saung nats (တောင်စောင့်နတ်) appears to act as a deterrent against environmental destruction, up to a point. Indiscriminate felling, particularly of large trees, is generally eschewed owing to the belief that they are dwellings of tree spirits called yokkazo (ရုက္ခစိုး; tree spirit) and that such an act would bring the wrath of the nat upon the perpetrator.[3]
Popular nat festivals
The most important nat pilgrimage site in Burma is Mount Popa, an extinct volcano with numerous temples and relic sites atop a 1300 metre-tall mountain located near Bagan in central Burma. The annual festival is held on the full moon of the month of Natdaw (December) of the Burmese calendar.[4] Taungbyone, north of Mandalay in Madaya Township, is another major site with the festival held each year starting on the eleventh waxing day and including the full moon in the month Wagaung (August).[5] Yadanagu at Amarapura, held a week later in honour of Popa Medaw ("Mother of Popa"), who was the mother of the Taungbyone Min Nyinaung ("Brother Lords"), is also a popular nat festival.[2]
Nats are ascribed human characteristics, wants, and needs; they are flawed, having desires considered derogatory and immoral in mainstream Buddhism. During a nat pwè, which is a festival during which nats are propitiated, nat kadaws (နတ်ကတော် "wife of the spirit",[6] i.e. "medium, shaman") dance and embody the nats. Historically, the nat kadaw profession was hereditary and passed from mother to daughter. Until the 1980s, few nat gadaws were male. Since the 1980s, persons identified by outsiders as trans women have increasingly performed these roles.[6]
Music, often accompanied by a hsaing waing ("orchestra"), adds much to the mood of the nat pwè, and many are entranced. People come from far to take part in the festivities in various shrines called nat kun or nat naan, get drunk on palm wine and dance wildly in fits of ecstasy to the wild beat of the Hsaing waing music, possessed by the nats.[4]
Whereas nat pwès are annual events celebrating a particular member of the 37 Great Nats regarded as the tutelary spirit in a local region within a local community, with familial custodians of the place and tradition and with royal sponsorship in ancient times, hence evocative of royal rituals, there are also nat kannah pwès where individuals would have a pavilion set up in a neighbourhood and the ritual is generally linked to the entire pantheon of nats. The nat kadaws as an independent profession made their appearance in the latter half of the 19th century as spirit mediums, and nat kannahs are more of an urban phenomenon which evolved to satisfy the need of people who had migrated from the countryside to towns and cities but who wished to carry on their traditions or yo-ya of supplicating the mi hsaing hpa hsaing tutelary deities of their native place.[1]
List of official nats
King
The official pantheon is made up predominantly of those from the royal houses of
(Maung Po Tu) descent; illustrations of them show them in Burmese royal dress. Listed in proper order, they are:- Thagyamin (သိကြားမင်း)
- Min Mahagiri (မင်းမဟာဂီရိ)
- Hnamadawgyi (နှမတော်ကြီး)
- Shwe Nabay (ရွှေနံဘေး)
- Thonbanhla (သုံးပန်လှ)
- Taungoo Mingaung (တောင်ငူမင်းခေါင်)
- Mintara(မင်းတရား)
- Thandawgan (သံတော်ခံ)
- Shwe Nawrahta (ရွှေနော်ရထာ)
- Aungzwamagyi (အောင်စွာမကြီး)
- Ngazi Shin (ငါးစီးရှင်)
- Aung Pinle Hsinbyushin(အောင်ပင်လယ်ဆင်ဖြူရှင်)
- Taungmagyi (တောင်မကြီး)
- Maungminshin (မောင်မင်းရှင်)
- Shindaw (ရှင်တော်)
- Nyaunggyin (ညောင်ချင်း)
- Tabinshwehti (တပင်ရွှေထီး)
- Minye Aungdin (မင်းရဲအောင်တင်)
- Shwe Sitthin (ရွှေစစ်သင်)
- Medaw Shwezaga (မယ်တော်ရွှေစကား)
- Maung Po Tu (မောင်ဘိုးတူ)
- Yun Bayin (ယွန်းဘုရင်)
- Maung Minbyu (မောင်မင်းဖြူ)
- Mandalay Bodaw (မန္တလေးဘိုးတော်)
- Shwe Hpyin Naungdaw (ရွှေဖျင်း နောင်တော်)
- Shwe Hpyin Nyidaw (ရွှေဖျင်း ညီတော်)
- Mintha Maungshin (မင်းသား မောင်ရှင်)
- Htibyuhsaung (ထီးဖြူဆောင်း)
- Htibyuhsaung Medaw (ထီးဖြူဆောင်း မယ်တော်)
- Pareinma Shin Mingaung (ပရိမ္မရှင် မင်းခေါင်)
- Min Sithu (မင်းစည်သူ)
- Min Kyawzwa (မင်းကျော်စွာ)
- Myaukhpet Shinma (မြောက်ဘက်ရှင်မ)
- Anauk Mibaya (အနောက် မိဘုရား)
- Shingon (ရှင်ကုန်း)
- Shingwa (ရှင်ကွ)
- Shin Nemi (ရှင်နဲမိ)
See also
References
- ^ a b c Brac de la Perriere, Benedicte. "The Spirit-possession Cult in the Burmese Religion" (PDF). dhammaweb.net. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2009-03-04. Retrieved 2008-09-14.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-4128-1901-5.
- ^ Dr Sein Tu. "Traditional Myanmar Folk Beliefs and Forest and Wildlife Conservation". Perspective (January 1999). Retrieved 2008-09-13.[permanent dead link]
- ^ The Atlantic Monthly. Archivedfrom the original on 2008-09-06. Retrieved 2008-09-11.
- ^ Shwe Mann Maung. "The Taung Byone Nat Festival". Perspective (August 1997). Archived from the original on 2004-07-17. Retrieved 2008-09-11.
- ^ .
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-516838-9. Retrieved 2008-09-13.
- 'King Mae Ku: From Lan Na Monarch to Burmese Nat', in: Forbes, Andrew, and Henley, David, Ancient Chiang Mai Volume 1. Chiang Mai, Cognoscenti Books, 2012.
- Salek, Kira (May 2006). "Myanmar's River of Spirits". National Geographic Magazine. pp. 136–157.
- U Kyaw Tun; et al. (2005-01-15). "Nat in My Classroom!". Tun Institute of Learning. Archived from the original on 2012-12-03. Retrieved 2006-07-03.
- Temple, R.C. (1906). The Thirty-seven Nats-A Phase of Spirit-Worship prevailing in Burma.
- Hla Tha Mein
External links
- "Images of the 37 nats". NYPL Digital Gallery.
- Nat belief and Buddhism Photo essay by Claudia Wiens
- The Nats - Online Burma/Myanmar Library
- Friends in High Places Preview of a documentary film by Lindsey Merrison
- Nat Dance YouTube
- Mintha Theater Dance theater in Mandalay, Burma.
- Spirit of Burma 2006
- Nat Pwè recordings
- The Nat Spirits and Burmese Animism Windows on Asia, Michigan State University
- Myanmar Cyclone Brings Rise in Centuries-Old 'Nat' Worship The Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2008, video and photo slideshows
- Festival brings noise and colour to Taungbyone Zaw Win Than, The Myanmar Times Vol. 22 No. 430, August 4–10, 2008
- Myanmar Nat Pwe in Bago Flickr photos by Boonlong1
- My House Nat Can Whip Your House Nat Ethan Todras-Whitehill, Student Traveler, 2006-11-24
- An account of the Taungbyone 2010 nat pwe spirit festival at Arcane Candy Part 1 and Part 2
- Myanmar's River of Spirits Kira Salak, National Geographic. May 2006
- The Thirty Seven Nats. A Phase of Spirit-Worship prevailing in Burma | Southeast Asia Digital Library
- Counting to 37 Sir Richard Carnac Temple and the Thirty Eighth Nat By Sally Bamford 2019.