Myths of Dying Communication in Buddhist Mortal Ritual: Case Study of Phu-Thai and Tai-Lue Racing

Abstract

There were two mains questions in this research which were 1) how difference of the myths of death in funeral ritual between Phu-thai and Thai-leu? 2) how they construct the meaning of death by symbolic in funeral ritual? The objective of this research was to study meaning, faith, and analyze the construct of the myths of death through funeral ritual in case of Phu-thai and Thai-leu in Thailand who are Buddhist. The participants of this qualitative research were Phu-thai and Thai-leu in the North-East of Thailand. I gathered data from 2 resources: 1) people in the community by interviewing an unofficial conversation and in-depth interview 2) documents: researches, books, papers, texts, independent studies about those 2 tribes in Thailand. Community leaders, community philosophers, and villagers were my participants. Result of this research was Phu-thai and Thai-leu attempted to bring ‘symbols’ on their believed in spirit to communicate the myths of death through ‘funeral ritual’. The symbols were defined by rules, principles, process, and method in order to make them sacred. Communicate the myths of death under original faith to inherit the tradition for keeping identity and their own self-tribe. These tribes moved to Thailand for a long time, and then Buddhist teaching became to their belief which integrated their belief in spirit and supernatural also. The myths of death to accept and understand the dying was my searching to understand their reason and how to harmonize for surviving of them in various cultures especially in Thailand. They had followed and integrated Buddhist teaching (human rules, nature of life, and truth of death) with their traditional belief. Therefore, the funeral ritual was one of the channels to keep traditional teaching of Phu-thai and Thai-leu that maintain and inherit the meaning of dying in funeral ritual until now although they got the teaching of death of Buddhism.