You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
RE: Vegetarians and piercings in Phuket
What a cool, and also bizarre, festival.
I'd love to know more about the connection between celebrating vegetarianism and poking a skewer through your cheek...
There must be so much more to the origins of this ritual. What's it about? Do you know?
Oh, and welcome to Steem. You should come and hang out with the #naturalmedicine crew ;-)
It's a commemoration of a merit making where a community was delivered from a terrible plague. The re-enactment of suffering increases the merit made by eating "jay" (vegetarian) for the ritual 9 days to honour the Buddha. It's one of those quirky things where the animist heart of real Thailand is dressed up as Buddhism and vegetarianism.
And it's bizarre that the word "jay" is similar and likely anciently related to the word "Jain" in India. There are slight variations of this word in Vietnam and Laos as well. However, in Cambodian "jay" means to talk down to and humiliate someone, and to say you are vegetarian, you say "I am one who is becoming a monk" in Khmer, even though monks in Cambodia aren't vegetarian. It's actually really hard to explain vegetarianism in Khmer. It requires at least 4 or 5 sentences. It would be nice to just be able to say "jay" and get the job done.
@justinparke Yes well I reckon it all comes from the same source at some point. Jains, Thai and Chinese vegetarians don't use onion and garlic as well. Yes as you know I had some troubles finding veg food in Cambodia and if it wasn't for you and your kind family I would have practically starved haha.
Thanks your for your comment . Well yes indeed but the festival is actually based on the Chinese community here from SE China that speak Hokkien. I've heard different stories as to the reason behind the tradition with one being the tin mines which were full of Chinese immigrants suffered from dysentery spread by the Chinese opera which was traveling around performing at the different labour camps. To show penace, the Opera members became vegetarian for 9 days. This can help explain the self mutilation and piercings perhaps. The events are based around the Chinese temples here in Phuket.
https://steemit.com/@metametheus thanks for your comment. Yes its quite a unique festival. Actually I enjoy watching the people become possessed by ghosts the most. I find the piercings to be quite shocking at first but I've seen the festival so many times I've become accustomed to it. A bit of self mutilation to pay for your sins so to speak from a western point of view. I recommend you to check it out next year. They also have it in Bangkok, Hat yai, and Trang but the largest is in Phuket. https://steemit.com/trending/naturalmedicine sounds nice I'm always interested to learn more. Thanks for the invite :)