Persistence of Belief and Ritual Concerning Guardian Spirits in Current Thai-Tai Societies

Abstract

The belief in guardian or territorial spirits is a kind of indigenous belief of Tai speaking people and other ethnic groups in Southeast Asia. This paper has two objectives. The first objective is to synthesize the persistence of belief and ritual concerning guardian spirits in the present-day context of Thai society from two case studies. The first case study is the study of the village guardian spirits at Ban Mai Lung Khon, Mae Sai District, Chiangrai Province and the second is the study of the Chiangmai city guardian spirit. The two case studies reveal common findings regarding the dynamism and the syncretism of the belief in guardian spirits. The dynamistic aspect in the first case study concerns the integration of the guardian spirit belief of the Tai Lue, newcomers from Sipsongpanna who settled in Ban Mai Lung Khon, and that of the Tai Yuan, the local northern Thai people. The second case study reveals the syncretistic aspect of the integration between an indigenous belief in guardian spirits and Buddhism.

The second objective of this paper is to present an extended discussion concerning the persistence and the dynamism of guardian spirit belief in Thai and Tai societies with respect to several aspects from the observation of the author’s field experience in Tai speaking societies: guardian spirits as Tai indigenous beliefs; the current phenomena of the integration between guardian and ancestral spirits and the spirits of the local heroes in several cases in Thai-Tai societies; and the use of guardian spirit shrines as an expression of Tai ethnic identity in the social context of present-day Thailand.