Into the Burmese Supernatural

The story, both in history and legend, occurs around 1100 AD and concerns two kingdoms: Bagan and Thanton. Bagan, in the north, was an ethnic Burmese kingdom; Thanton was an ethnic Mon kingdom. Thanton was already Buddhist, but the people of Bagan worshiped only the nats. One day a hermit in Thanton found a box washed ashore with two boys inside, apparently saved from a shipwreck. He raised them as his own children. When they were teenagers they came across the body of a hermit who had become a zagwi. The hermit told the boys, named Byat Wi and Byat Ta, about the power one could have from eating the body and told them that they should bring it to the king of Thanton the next day. That evening the boys could no longer resist the smell and decided to eat just a piece. Of course they ate the whole thing. Suddenly they could jump above the trees and could toss the hermit's monastery back and forth. Soon they became marauders, robbing and pillaging. One night they entered the capitol city of Thanton and went about robbing. Then, on a whim, Byat Wi decided to raid the home of the governor of the city. The first room he entered was the room of the governor's daughter. They fell in love on the spot and soon Byat Wi was visiting her every night. The governor learned about the affair, but there was little he could do. So he went to a magician who told him to hang the undergarments of a woman over the window where Byat Wi entered. He did, and as soon as Byat Wi passed through the window he lost his power. The king sentenced him to death. The king had his body buried under the throne room and had his blood poured around the city wall so that as a nat he would be forced to protect the city. Byat Ta, his brother, escaped and fled to Bagan where he became a strong and popular soldier in the army.

Up to now most of this has been legend. This paragraph, however, is confirmed history. The king of Bagan was King Anawrahta, who had united all the ethnic Burmese kingdoms under his rule. He had learned of Buddhism from a missionary and converted to the religion. At the time Thanton was Buddhist and many great Buddhist scholars and books were kept there. King Anawrahta wrote to the king of Thanton and requested that copies of the books and some scholars be sent to Bagan. The king of Thanton responded that the Burmese people were too uncivilized and boorish for Buddhism. King Anawrahta was known for having a temper and that statement sure set him off. So he decided to add Thanton to his empire.

Now we drift back into legend. When the army of Bagan approached the capitol of Thanton, they found that some invisible force was preventing them from reaching the city. So one night Byat Ta went to the city wall where he found his brother's nat. His brother told him that because his body was under the palace and his blood was around the perimeter of the city, he had to defend it. But there was one gap where the blood had been poured, about the width of a sitting hen, too small for an attack. Byat Ta and his men snuck one by one into the poorly defended city (it was assumed Byat Wi's nat would defend it) and exhumed his brother's body, giving it a proper burial away from the city. With that Byat Wi's nat was free and the city fell quickly.

As you can see, the story of King Anawrahta is intertwined with the stories of the nats. Perhaps that's because he tried to outlaw them completely but failed. After Thanton was defeated and Buddhist scholars and books were brought to Began, he tried to ban nat worship and replace it entirely with Buddhism. He even made it illegal to visit Mt. Popa. The people continued to worship the nats in secret and he soon realized that banning the nats was making Buddhism unpopular. So he declared that there would be only 37 nats and he himself carried images of the nats to Mt. Popa, lifting the ban of pilgrimages there. The 37 nats became known as the "inside nats." But other nats continued to be worshiped. These became known as the "outside nats."

Most of the inside nats were all known to be real people, either royalty or connected to royalty in some way, though their stories were often embellished. Some were princes who loved alcohol and opium too much; others were people who died at the hands of kings and had stories as simple as the prince who died when his swing broke. Only one king ever became a nat, King Tabinsweethi who ruled in the early 1500s. The Portuguese mercenaries he had hired turned against him and had him killed. The outside nats are very diverse. Some are Muslim, some Indian, one even English. An English soldier who was treacherously killed by the Japanese during World War 2 is now treated as any other nat. A few aren't even human. The city of Bago was once the capitol of Myanmar and previously the Mon kingdom. One day a 3-year old prince got lost and was found by a buffalo. The female buffalo raised the child for years until he was found by some soldiers. When he was returned to the palace, the buffalo followed him, finally ramming through the palace gates where she was killed by the guards. She is now the nat known as "Bago-madaw."

The cult of the nats has its own sort of "priesthood," though it's highly decentralized. The priests and priestess are, believe it or not, the spouses of the nats. Every so often someone claims to have had dreams in which the nats appeared to them and offered to marry them. Traditional Burmese marriages are carried out and the spouses become known as a "nat-kadaw." Most nats have regular festival days in which people come with offerings and ask for favors. On other occasions, such as the start of a new business, a person or family can hold its own nat festival, known as a "Nat-Pwe." The nat-kadaw of the nat being honored presides over it. The nats love color and everyone dresses brightly. There is a great deal of music, singing, dancing, and drinking, except for certain nats who abhor alcohol. The story of the nat being honored is acted out and each nat has some kind of dance preformed by the nat-kadaw. The nat-kadaw can become possessed by the nat. Each nat has a food it prefers and a food it hates, so the nat's favorite food is served to the nat-kadaw while he or she is possessed.

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