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1/9/15
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Trivambave, Tribave in Bangkok
An annual Festival called " trivambave - tribave" is being celebrated
by =Thais. Does the name sound familiar to your South Indian ears ?
Itis a Tamil Word. Here are some clues.
This festival is held for 15 days between December 14 to January 12
during our Marghazhi Month by brahmin priests. chanting verses in
praise of Hindu gods. Got it ?
IT IS THIRUPPAVAI AND THIRUVEMBAVAI.... . AND YES IT IS A THAI FESTIVAL.
Bangkok could be the only place in the world where our Thiruppavai and
Thiruvempavai is recited during the month of Marghazhi by Thai Brahmin
Priests. These Thai Brahmins are descendents of Tamil Brahmins froM
Rameshwaram, Srivilliputtur and other parts of South India who were
brought to this land as early as the 2nd century .
To understand the presence of Brahmins in Thailand you need to know a
bit of a history of Thailand.
Some of you would know that the area comprising the present Thailand,
Cambodia and Burma was once ruled by Khemers till 13th century.
Historians believe that the Khemers were either our Pallava Kings or
Leaders of local tribes who were made Kings by Pallavas. (There are
plenty of proof, by way of archeological findings, legends and stone
inscriptions to confirm the theory of Political connections between
the Palllava Kingdom of India and the Khemer Kingdom of Thailand...
That a separate topic by itself)
Khemer Kings, being Hindus, practiced either Vaishnavism or Shaivism.
The King who built Angkorwat , Surya varman, was a Vaishnavite and it
was built as a Vishnu Temple. The Khemer Kings adopted a concept
called "Devaraja Cult" which means that the King is an incarnation of
Vishnu or Shiva. They built temples for Vishnu and Shiva and
consecrated statues representing themselves as Gods and promoted
themselves as the undisputed leaders of their subjects.
The Brahmins came with the Kshathriya Kings to promote Hinduism. The
Pallava Kings brought them to act as court advisors to the kingdom as
was the practice in Mainland India. The Brahmins were also required to
perform a ritual called "Varathyasyoma" to convert a foreigner into a
Kshakthriya King whenever a local is made the King.
The Kings sometimes married in the Brahmin families and when a king
was childless, they adopted a boy from the Brahmin family. The
Brahmins , thus, performed their role of advisor, minister and priest
to the Royal family in addition to practicing Hindu rituals and
practices.
The Khemer kingdom , after 1300 years of glorious rule by the Hindu
kings, fell to the Thais in 1282 when Jayavarman , the last Khemer
King, was defeated by the Thai invasion that formed the First Thai
Kinddom -- Sukhothai. The creation of a Buddhist Thai Kingdom should
have ended Hinduism practiced by the Khemers. Surprisingly it did not.
The practice of Devaraja Cult did not die with the Khemers. Why ?
The Thais, even though Buddhists , continued the devaraja cult for two
reasons. Since they took over a land of Khemers, they did not want to
change the practices of the land and be alienated from the locals.
Secondly, the Devaraja cult suited their intentions of assuming
supremacy as it gave them instant ecognition among people. So the Thai
kings also continued the Devaraja cult and as a consequence extended
patronage to the Indian Brahmins and projected themselves as
Incarnations of Hindu Gods in addition to practicing Buddhism. (That
explains why the Royal family in Thailand practices Hindu Rituals and
practices even during the present times.)
Let us leave the Kings for a moment and continue with our study of
Brahmins. The Brahmins, in the Buddhist Thailand, thus thrived as
priests of the Royal family and performed rituals like Coronation
ceremonies,Upanayanams for the Royal family. They also performed
Housewarming ceremonies, Ploughing Ceremony, Upanayanams for the
common people and continued practicing Hindu rituals and ceremonies.
One such Brahmin ceremony of reciting Thiruppavai verses is
"Trivambhave , thripave" which is continued to be recited even in this
21st century.
Many of you may not have visited a place in Bangkok which houses three
Hindu deities-- Ganesh, Shiva and Vishnu. It is not a temple
patronized by the Indians like Dev Mandhir and Mariamman Temple. It is
a Thai temple. It is called Devasthan --(Boat Prahm ) and is situated
opposite the Dev Mandir ,right behind the Giant Swing.
Interestingly, the Giant Swing itself was the venue of a very big
Hindu ritual of "Oonjalaattam" for Shiva that was stopped due to the
occurrence of accidents. The word Boat Prahm means "Sanctuary of
Brahmins".
This is the place where the Thiruppavai Thiruvempavai festival takes
place for 15 days and all the Brahmins in Thailand come and stay in
the temple for 15 days.
The Brahmins who came from India married local women and as centuries
went by, lost their Indian identity. They speak Thai and appear like
an improved version of their frail looking brothers back home. They
are clothed in white robes in stark contrast to the Buddhist Monks.
They wear the sacred thread too (Poonool).
The ceremony they perform at the Boat Prahm is very similar to the
poojas at our Hindu temples with Theeparadhanai, blowing of the conch
shells (sangu)and "neivedhyam" . At the end of the pooja they recite
the Thiruppavai . The Thiruppavai script is written in Grantha with
parallel thai script. As they do not know the meaning of the verses
the pronunciation is completely different. As you know , the
Thiruppavai ends with the word "embavaai" in each song and only that
word could be understood. The rest of the text is ecited with total
disregard to punctuation marks and sounds different. Words are
irrelevant in matters of faith and it is a
memorable experience watching these Thai Brahmin Priests reciting the
Thiruppavai and Thiruvempavai .
The Kanchi Acharya had spoken in high regard of this practice of
reciting Thiruppavai in a Buddhist country like Thailand in
Mayavaram's Dhakshinamurthy Mutt in 1952. He has even commented that "
even though we in TamilNadu recite Thiruvembhavai , we do not perform
it as a festival but a Buddhist country thousands of miles away does
it". On the request of the Kanchi Acharya , a team of Tamil Scholars ,
came to Thailand and studied the scripts of Thiruppavai and
Thiruvempavai that are being recited in bangkok temples and have
recorded the fact that they are in Krantha . Kanchi Acharya's speech
is referred in Padma Subramaniyam's book about the influence of Indian
Bharatha naatiyam in Thai classical dance.
It might also surprise you that the Brahmin Priests recite
"Thiruvaasagam" during the coronation ceremony of the King.
If you want to see the festival you can visit the place in the
evening.The recital is in the evening around 7 p.m.
Till the last century trivembhave triphave was a national festival of
Thailand along with the Swinging Ceremony at the Giant Swing. Nowadays
only a few Thais witness the pooja and recital performed by ten to
twenty Thai Brahmins. The numbers have comedown but the spirit has not
died and it is a heart warming scene of a small group of Thai Brahmins
carrying on with their Hindu traditions. A tradition that played a
great role in shaping up the religious and philosophical base of this
country.
Image
Archaeological notes on Angkor Wat (August 2007)
Prambanan (Brahma vana), Indonesia
Last glacial maximum 18,000 C-14 years ago
Global journey of modern man for 160,000 years based on mtDNA and
chromosome evidence
Between force and persuasion :
Keynote address by Dr. Anwar Ibrahim at the Inaugural Session of the
Conference "Inter-Civilisational Dialogue in a Globalising World"
organised by the Institute of Objective Studies, New Delhi April 8,
2005
"In the veins of every one of my people flows the blood of Indian
ancestors, and the culture that we possess is steeped through and
through with Indian influences… Two thousand years ago, people from
your country came to Jawadvipa and Suvarnadvipa in the spirit of
brotherly love. They gave the initiatives to found powerful Kingdoms
such as those of Sri Vijaya, Mataram and Majapahit. We learnt to
worship the very Gods that you now worship still and we fashioned a
culture that even today is largely identical with your own. Later we
turned to Islam; but that religion too was brought by people coming
from both sides of the Indus." (Soekarno, President of India, Reported
in the Hindu, January 4, 1946; loc. cit., Y. Yagama Reddy, The
fossilized Indian Culture in toponyms and the enigmatic etymology of
the term: Southeast Asia, April 5, 2005 )
George Coedes Collection
George Coedes, 1948, Les etats hindouises d'Indochine et d'Indonesie
(Hinuised states of Indo-China and Indonesia) Trans. as The Indianized
States of South East Asia, Univ. of Hawaii Press, 1975)
Textes d'Auteurs Grecs et Latins Relatifs a l'Extreme-Orient.
(Testimonia of Greek and Latin Writers on the Lands and Peoples of the
Far East 4th c. B.C. to 14th c. A.D.). George Coedes.
From 1910 to 1979, the work of George was considered by many scholars
either as a book that was never really published or as a
bibliographical paradox. The few who had the opportunity to see a copy
had seen it in one of the few University Libraries. The few copies of
the original edition were sold mostly in Asia to the subscribers of
the "Documents Historiques et Geographiques Relatifs a l'Indochine",
established by Henri Cordier and Louis Finot, which issued this work
as volume I of the series. ISBN 0-89005-289-1. xxxii + 184pp
Images of Angkor: John McDermott
Geographic influences on two Khmer polities: Raymond Chad (2005)
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