_HOLIDAYS IN SIAM._
Siamese holidays are very different from those of Europe and America.
They have no Christmas, for, as a nation, they know nothing about
Christ. Their New Year holidays, strange to say, are not celebrated in
the first month of the year, but in the fifth, which corresponds to
our March or April. On one of the three days that they then observe
the doors of the temples are thrown open, and the people――women and
children especially――dressed in their best attire, enter, and, bowing
down before the idol, make offerings of flowers. The more wealthy have
prayers and preaching at their own houses, when they feast the priests
and make presents to them. During these days all are allowed to
gamble, and men, women and children engage in games of chance with all
their hearts. On New Year’s Day we, in Christian lands, pray our
heavenly Father to watch over and bless us and our friends through the
year. In this heathen land the king has companies of priests on the
tops of the walls around the city proper going through certain
ceremonies in concert to drive away evil spirits, and on one of these
nights large and small guns are fired for this purpose from the top of
the walls every twenty minutes till morning.
Soon after New Year’s Day, and again some six months later, the
Siamese princes, lords and nobles, and all among the people who hold
any office, however small, take the oath of allegiance. They assemble
at the royal palace and drink the “water of vengeance” and sprinkle it
upon their foreheads. Do you ask, “What is the water of vengeance?” It
is water in which have been dipped swords, daggers, spears and other
instruments by which the king executes vengeance on those who rebel
against him. By drinking of it they express their willingness to be
punished with these instruments if found disloyal. The priests are
excused from this service by virtue of the sanctity of their office,
but they meet in the royal temple on that day and perform appropriate
religious services. Some of this water is sent to the residences of
the governors in the distant provinces, and the neighboring people
assemble there to drink it.
Soon after the ceremony of taking the oath of allegiance the Siamese
have for four days a kind of _second New Year_, the time for which is
fixed by the sun instead of the moon. The priests are invited to meet
at the palace for a royal festival, and the people too feast the
priests and one another and play at their games of chance. The women
bring water, and bathe first the idols, and then their grandparents
and other aged relatives, by pouring water freely upon them.
They observe three days of their sixth month with very great
veneration as the anniversaries of the birth, the attaining to
divinity and the death of Buddha. These three days are a great time
for “making merit,” which they think they do by giving to the poor, by
making offerings to the priests and to the idols and by listening to
prayers and preaching. All classes, young and old, high and low, rich
and poor, go to the temple-grounds and make little conical mounds of
sand a foot or two high, surmounted with flowers and small flags of
all colors.
At the beginning of seed-time, generally in May, the time being fixed
by astrologers, they have their _Raknah_ holiday, when the minister of
agriculture is for the day regarded as king, because he, as the king’s
substitute, holds the plough, breaks up the ground and plants the
first rice of the year. He is escorted by a public procession to some
field, and there the priests, after superstitious ceremonies, decorate
a pair of oxen with flowers and fasten them to a plough, which is also
trimmed with flowers. The minister then holds the plough while the
oxen drag it over the ground for about an hour. Four elderly women
from the king’s household scatter rice over the ploughed part of the
field, and leave it there uncovered. The oxen are then liberated, and
four kinds of the grain that the people most prize are placed before
them. Whichever kind they eat much of the people think will be scarce;
that of which they eat little or none they think will be abundant
throughout the year, and they plant accordingly.
They have two holidays every year for _swinging_, when the minister of
agriculture is carried by a long procession to a place where there is
a high swing between two tall poles. A brick platform covered with
white muslin and tastefully curtained has been prepared for him.
Attended by four Brahman priests, two on his right hand and two on his
left, he ascends this platform and stands on one foot till three games
of swinging are ended, which generally occupy two hours. If he
ventures to touch his foot once to the floor during the games, it is
said the Brahmans are allowed to take all his property from him. The
game is to catch in the mouth a purse of money that is suspended
within reach of the swinger. When the games are over the swingers
sprinkle on all about them water that has been made holy by the
priests. This is the Brahmanical mode of calling down blessings on the
people of the land. About noon the minister is escorted home by a
procession similar to the one that took him there. These ceremonies
and games are repeated on the second day. Princes and officers of
government and dense crowds of the people are present to witness them.
The Siamese observe a season that may be called the Buddhist Lent,
when for three months the priests must not go so far away from their
temples as not to be able to return at night. All classes anticipate
this season, and provide for them such food as parched rice and corn,
also natural and artificial flowers, silvered and gilded trees, and
other articles to make their dormitories pleasant and inviting. The
day these gifts are presented is called the _Kow Wasah_ holiday. Some
of the gifts the priests offer to the idol; others they present to
their elders and to aged priests in the same temple with themselves.
When the Buddhist Lent is ended and the priests are allowed to come
out of the temples and travel where they please, the _Auk Wasah_
holidays are observed. In anticipation of their coming out, as of
their going in, the laity, from the highest to the lowest, prepare
clothing suitable for their wanderings. The kings have numerous
priests’ robes made of white cotton shirting dyed yellow, which is the
sacred color. The people prepare gifts according to their means. The
first three evenings there is a grand display of fireworks on the
river in front of the palaces, His Majesty honoring the occasion with
his presence. The river is alive with joyous, pleasure-seeking people
hastening to the scene. Offerings consisting of little skiffs and
rafts of banana-stalks are seen upon the river. On these are temples,
pagodas and transparencies of birds and beasts, all brightly
illuminated with wax candles. They are sent off one at a time, and
float down with the tide, beautifully illuminating the river. The
people make their own family offerings on these evenings an hour or
two before the king comes out from the palace; the floats may be seen
all over the city in the river and canals near their homes. When these
floats have all been disposed of, the king applies a match to
fireworks that have been arranged in boats near, and then are seen
trees of fire, green shrubbery and a variety of flowers of
ever-changing colors, with rockets and squibs in great profusion.
A few days later commence the _Taut Katin_ ceremonies, or the annual
visitation of the kings to the sixty or seventy royal temples to
perform their devotions and make offerings to the priests. This is one
of the great events of the year――a festival season with the people.
The temples near the palace within the city-walls are first visited.
His Majesty, seated on an elegant golden chair of state sparkling with
gems, is borne on men’s shoulders and followed by princes and nobles
in costly carriages and by other vehicles loaded with presents of
various kinds. Then for some twelve days he, with all his princes,
ministers of state and high nobles, makes a business of visiting daily
some three or four of the temples that are accessible only by water,
and after this the second king makes his visits. The river presents a
very animated appearance as the boat-processions pass escorting His
Majesty. It is filled with barges, slender and graceful in their
proportions, each propelled by from forty to eighty natives, who fill
the air with their wild outcries as they simultaneously dip their long
paddles into the water and then raise them high into the air. First,
two by two, will be a score of canoe-like vessels, each perhaps fifty
feet long, with a bright crimson awning over the centre and some sixty
or seventy men in red uniform; then boats with music preceding the
stately barge that conveys His Majesty. This is perhaps one hundred
and twenty feet long, besides the gilded stern, which curves
gracefully up some fifteen or twenty feet from the water. From prow
and stern hang two graceful plumes of long white horse-hair, and
between them a small apron-like banner floats in the breeze. In the
centre of the boat reclines His Majesty on an elevated cushioned
platform, in a pavilion with an arching roof from which hang curtains
of crimson-and-gold cloth. The barge is propelled by eighty men with
long gilded paddles. Following the king will be a crowd of similar
elegant boats with the princes and nobles. These boats hover near in
clusters of sevens or fives or threes, and after them others, till
there is a train of eighty or a hundred boats, containing perhaps four
thousand men. All this is a splendid sight, but the Christian beholder
is pained by the thought that the display is to do honor to a false
religion and a false god.
[Illustration: CARRYING THE KING TO THE TEMPLE.]
While the kings are thus engaged the common people in city and country
are visiting their favorite temples and priests. Families unite, and
groups of boats may be seen filled with young men and maidens in their
gayest attire, while the air resounds with Siamese instrumental music
and the merry shouts of the boatmen as they convey their presents of
priests’ robes, fruit and flowers to the temple.
The visitation of the temples over, the _Taut Katin_ ceremonies wind
up with a repetition for three evenings of fireworks much the same as
already described.
Superstition and the worship of idols enter not only into the holidays
of the Siamese, but into everything they do. “They praise the gods of
silver and gold, of brass, iron, wood and stone, which see not, nor
hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand their breath is, and whose
are all their ways, they have not glorified;” “Happy is that people
whose God is the Lord.”