Narrative
The Thirty-Seven Nats
နတ်
Anonymous · 1100
Synopsis
Thirty-seven spirits, for the most part men and women who died violent deaths. The blacksmith Maung Tin De, whose strength worried the king of Tagaung, is treacherously seized and burned alive; his sister, whom the king had married, throws herself into the flames, and both become the nats of Mount Popa. Two brothers in the service of King Anawrahta are put to death for not each supplying a brick for his pagoda at Taungbyone; having become spirits, they ask the king for a territory to own.
Context
King Anawrahta, in the eleventh century, failed to ban the cult of the nats and fixed an official pantheon of thirty-seven, at the head of which he placed Śakra, a Buddhist protective deity, under the name of Thagyamin; at the Shwezigon pagoda, the nats were represented as worshippers of the Buddha. The rites are conducted through mediums, the nat kadaw, a role long handed down from mother to daughter. Richard Carnac Temple published an illustrated study of them in 1906, The Thirty-seven Nats.
Who it is for
Short legends, tied to a living cult; in French, the study by Bénédicte Brac de La Perrière on possession rituals serves as an introduction.
Prizes and reception
The Taungbyone festival, the largest festival of the nats, lasts six days every year, and Mount Popa remains their foremost place of pilgrimage.
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