The Lanna Woman and Pa Sin Tin Jok

[PeteC]

Many photos at link

https://www.thaienquirer.com/18429/the- ... n-tin-jok/

Embodied in every intricate weave of the pa sin is the history of the Lanna women, from the matriarchal grip they had on society to their eventual descent into the passivity of patriarchal modernity.

Every Pa Sin Tin Jok has its own story. Throughout the changes in Lanna’s history, it has steadfastly remained a creative and exquisite expression of these people’s identity and heritage. Every pattern represents a diversity of motifs behind Lanna culture and the pa sin is one of the reasons why the ancient northern kingdom is celebrated for its beauty in art and culture.

The pa sin (tube skirt), or Pa Sin Tin Jok, is a traditional skirt worn by Tai Yuan, or khon mueang women of Northern Thailand and in the Kingdom of Lanna. It is characterized by three parts: the hua sin (head of the skirt at the waist), tong sin (the main body of the pa sin), and the teen jok or teen sin (the foot of the skirt).

Without much freedom and autonomy over their own lives with the men standing at the head of each household and community, it is ironic that the pa sin has become synonymous with the Kingdom of Lanna when it is the women who were the weavers.

But it hadn’t always been this way for the Lanna women.

The history and life of the Lanna woman

Typically termed chang tao lhung (the back of the elephant’s feet), a Lanna woman’s life was governed by the power of men. Lanna women must learn, since childhood, that the direction of her life and family were to be guided by the authority of men, considered ช้างเท้าหน้า chang tao nhar (the front of the elephant’s feet) and leader of the family.

She must cook, clean, care, and serve her family with no objection while her husband leaves to find work and income outside. She must obey, and never go to bed before he does. In some cases, women will have to prostrate at their husbands’ feet in order to ask for forgiveness. In some localities that are more strict, she will use her hair bun to wipe her husband’s feet as well. The husband will also lie in bed with his head higher and not at the same level nor below the woman.

Lanna’s traditions also forbade women from entering its main Buddhist ordination halls. While those temples were open to the public, only the men were allowed inside. Women, on the other hand, were only allowed to pay their respects outside and were not even allowed to step on the shadows of the temple’s pagodas.

Women were also prohibited to enter areas such sacred wells and from holding/touching Buddha images, statues, scriptures, palm leaves, and all kinds of charms – as these items were considered higher in the hierarchy and therefore not appropriate for a woman to lay her hands on.

The only significant contribution a Lanna woman could offer to the temples was through her weaving.

These practices and principles would then be passed down to the daughters to carry on this sacred Lanna Buddhist tradition. The woman must learn and accept her place, they would preach to her, that being born as a woman in this life meant you haven’t earned enough merit to become a man; you can only pray for better luck in your next lifetime.

In fact, some remnants of these traditions still remain. Signs forbidding women from doing such matters can still be seen and practised in some temples today. For instance, one of Lanna’s oldest and famous temples, the Silver Temple or Wat Srisuphan, forbids women of all backgrounds from entering its active ordination hall.

This, to some extent, doesn’t sound too unfamiliar to the patriarchal ways found in most parts of Asia.

But in reality, that hasn’t always been the case in northern Thailand.

“Sixty years ago, the people of Chiang Mai [Lanna people] were considered stupid, its women pretty and their jobs fitting for prostitutes,” observed Dr Vithi Phanichphant, an acclaimed historian and authority figure in northern Thai culture and the professor emeritus of Thai Art at Chiang Mai University. “But it wasn’t always like that. Before, there were no surnames – the men actually belonged to the women.”

The original culture of the people in the north, explained the former professor, were actually based on the matriarchy.

“These whole sticky rice eaters [communities] – in Chiang Mai, Lampang, Lamphun, Shan states and even Laos – their social system was based on a matriarchal society which means that the owner [and head] of the house was a woman.”

The true head of the tribe

Long before Buddhism came into Lanna, the Tais living in present-day northern Thailand had their own folk religion – Animism, or Satsana Phi (religion of spirits).

Within the Satsana Phi belief system, supernatural deities or gods can sometimes be the tutelary gods of buildings, territories, places and creatures. The deities worshipped are those of their ancestral spirits or other supernatural forces.

In ancient Satsana Phi, women would always be the ones leading the rituals as they are the ones with the will and inheritance of the ancestral spirit passed down from mother to daughter. The man would, therefore, have to marry into the woman’s family and worship his bride’s ancestors as well.

By no means will he have attained or ever reach the status as the head of the household, as the groom belonged to the bride. This, in itself, suggests the power women previously had over the men.

“As for the children, the relatives of their mother’s side would be more important than the relatives on their father’s side,” Dr Vithi added. “Sometimes, they don’t even know the father’s side at all. This is sometimes still being practised [in the north] today.”

It’s still in the language and tradition

If observed carefully, one would recognize that as Thai/Thai descendants and speakers, the dominant narrative has always referred to women.

When one refers to the leader, protagonist, or the main character of a group, place, or object in Thai, it would always begin with the female associated term Mae (mother) to precede its name. For instance, the mae nam (river), mae lhek (metal). The commander in chief and generals of armies and garrisons, who are male, would even be called mae tap.

Grooms, in Thai, are referred to as jao bao, while the brides jao sao. Bao (บ่าว), in Thai, also means servant and is used in conjunction with commoners and peasants. That is not a coincidence.

In ancient Tai Yuan (northern Thai people) marriage traditions, the men would have to live with the women’s family, while the owner of the house was the women, and usually, the grandmothers would be the head of the households.

The tradition would require men to queue up in front of the woman’s house and try to impress her with various offerings and performances to gain the woman’s approval. Eventually, the women of the household would ultimately decide if any of them was really worthy of being chosen.

If not convinced, the woman would signal the man out and search for another groom, or bao, to be her servant.

“If they get along well, the guy will bring his entourage (khan mak procession) to offer the jao sao more gifts and ask for her hand in marriage,” said Dr Vithi. “But the new husband is not allowed to stay beyond the storage room until the woman gets pregnant, and then he will have to collect wood and such to build a nice bamboo hut for her to give birth to the child.”

When married, the husband would have to move into his wife’s home. There, he would be stripped of his independence – whatever the ladies said, the men had to follow.

Throughout their marriage, the husband would have to serve and find income for the wife as she performs other important duties such as trading, cooking, ploughing, and most importantly: weaving.

“You can get married anywhere now. Before, you could only get married here, at this kind of house – the lady’s house,” observed Dr Vithi.

Ironically enough, the khan mak procession is still a widely held engagement ceremony throughout Thailand today, but few truly know of the real origin and meaning of this tradition.

“This is a ceremony that celebrates a matriarchal society,” he said. “The men had to show off that they had things to offer – money, food, appliances so that the girl would approve. The bride would also have pratuu ngern and pratuu thong (golden and silver gates) for the jao baos to buy their way in. It is typical of a matriarchal society.”

When did it all change?

The patriarchal structures of Lanna started making way during the initial spread of Buddhism which was a male-dominated culture.

“It started to change when Buddhism came into the area,” explained Dr Vithi

Not long after, the patriarchy started arriving from all directions.

First, it was from the rule of Bangkok which started during the reign of Rama V, then the western missionaries that came to northern Thailand, in which western civilisation and modernisation were pushed into Lanna from both sides. Another strong influence came from the Chinese who came to trade or migrated south, and along with them, brought a patriarchal system of culture.

“And the Lanna people wanted to modernise ourselves, to be seen as more civilised and modern,” observed Dr Vithi. “It was both a trend and an order from Siam for the women to cover their topless selves and start wearing tops and bras. They had and wanted to submit to that to seem civilised and felt ashamed of themselves”

Lanna’s once strong female-dominated culture eventually eroded, reaching close to the point that women had almost no autonomy or freedom at all.

However, as the former professor observed, it may have also been the culture’s own undoing.

“We [Lanna] were not a colony, we colonised ourselves,” said Dr Vithi. “We saw that those in the patriarchal society were more civilised and modern and also wanted to be that way. The general consensus of such societies was that the women had to be docile, which was very in contrast with how Lanna women actually were.”

Demythologising the Lanna woman

Originally, Lanna women were never pressured into submission, marriage or required to become a certain way, observed Dr Vithi. They encountered no problems with repression and were in complete control of their decisions and their own lives.

“People tend to look at Lanna women as riabroy (mild-mannered) and mae sri ruean (housewife), but in fact, they were gah gun (brazen) and naughty and liked to order their husbands around,” he said.

Lanna women had personality, were smart, knew how to have fun and also behave accordingly, with the latter traits a part of Chiang Mai’s caravan culture, where the women were smarter and more equipped to entertain guests than men.

“The riabroy part is how the central region saw Lanna women,” said Dr Vithi.

A clear example of the typical rebellious and bold Lanna woman would be the most famous Lanna lady herself: Princess Dara Rasmi.

Considered uncivilised, an outsider, and undermined as less for being Laos, the princess consort to King Rama V never succumbed to the pressures imposed by the Siamese court or its traditions.

Princess Dara Rasmi refused to cut her hair, continued to chew betel nuts, and most importantly, wore pa sin everywhere she went, despite that being frowned on and looked down upon.

Every outfit she wore, and especially the ones of her seen in various famous photographs, was the princess’s political statement – to say that she was not of Siam.

“Her pa sin was even from Mandalay, not Lanna,” added the former professor. “She would wear those tube skirts with the teen jok underneath and never submitted to assimilating into Siam. This both embarrassed and infuriated the Siamese, especially those in the palace.”

Some remnants remain

Fortunately, traces of Lanna’s original, matriarchal ways are still practised today.

A trance dance that traces back to the culture, fon phii (ฟ้อนผี) or the spirit/ghost dance, celebrated annually during the Buddhist Oopa, would have the women dress up, dance, drink and behave as men for seven to eight hours. The ceremony is to suggest that the women aren’t females all the time, and can also dress, act and become possessed by male spirits. This is still practised in parts of Chiang Mai, with many in Lampang, Phrae, Naan, and Phayao.

Many mural paintings in temples in the north would also depict the real behavior and personality of the Lanna woman, where they could be seen bickering, fighting, and having a great time.

“Everything has changed now, but at least it’s good to know what we were like in the past – in our homes, daily living lives, which were based on the matriarchy,” said Dr Vithi. “And we should be proud we were this way.”

Another key characteristic of Tai speaking people is how quickly they are able to adjust and modernise themselves, which can serve as a double-edged sword, the former professor observed. This is because those changes usually happened without looking back or considering its nuances and repercussions.

Because, contrary to popular belief, northern Thailand, in reality, didn’t begin with the patriarchy and patrons of men.

“If we want to modernise ourselves, we should at least know how we were like in the past, it’s important we learn about it,” Dr Vithi said. “Women had to glun oke glun jai (hold back) to be this idealised modern girl, but in fact, women have always been equal to the men – if not more powerful.”