Unseen Events of The Highlanders

1
The Funeral Ritual of the Red Lahu
Death, a mysterious destination, has been unavoidable and faced by all human beings, be they millionaires, the poor, the great army commanders, the coward, the philosopher, or the fool. Everybody finihses his role in this world with death, an undeniable truth of life.

Nonetheless, there is hardly a person who really comprehends the essence of this truth. Currently, human beings in each grouq, social entity, race or culture still provide different answers, and organize a variety of rituals passes away, people in one culture may treat the dead with a peaceful, simple and economical ritual, whereas others may treat the dead with a luxurious and extravagant ritual. Similarly, one culture may treat the dead with sensational events and fun, while people in another culture may be in deep grief. All there are the response of human beings to the query they still cannot adequately understand.

The funeral ritual of the Red Lahu presented here is one of the approaches the writer experienced while living in the Lahu community in the mountainous and remote area along the Thai-Burmese border, as a teacher and researcher of the Lahu culture.

unseen events of the highlanders

The Red Lahu: who are they?
Red Lahu is a sud-ethnic group of Lahu. Thai people call them Musur, while they call themselves Lahu. Thee thnic group of Lahu is divided into several sud-ethnicities more than any other tribal group in Thailand. Each ethnic group has its own distinct culture while sharing the core culture with other ethnic group in common. The funeral of each sud-ethnic group is trivially different in specific details. For instance, when a Red Lahu person has died normally, the corpse will be buried. On the othew hand, if the person had an abnormal death, the corpse will be burned. The Kulao Lahu, however, always burn the dead body, with the exception of an infant corpse. Similarly, the Sae Lae Lahu, always cremate the corpse no matter how the person has died.
The death of Red Lahu: Should the dead body be burned or buried? It seems that dead and living creatures cannot be separated. Death is an end road for everybody. The Red Lahu classify death into two categories: good death and bad death. In Lahu language, death is termed as Sayway. A good death is referred to the end of someon"s life because of aging or sickness without having any blood coming out of the dead body. A bad death is referred to the end of someone"s life because of being killed by someone or by an accident, such as a car accident, or falling from a cliff or a tree.
In customary practice, the body of the person who had a good death or normal death would be buried, while the body ofthe person who had a bad death or died because of an accident or killing would be burned. A sample case is depicted by the death of a boy in Yapanae village. This boy, the son of the village headman, was actually one of my students. He rode a motorcycle and lost his life because of an accident in February 1993. He was lost from the village during the Lahu"s the New Year Festival. Nobody knew where he was. Pujong, the spiritual leader in the village killed a chicken for an oracle prophecy and told the people that he went to another village. They waited for him for two days. when there was no sing that he would come back, the village headman asked a group of young men to search for him. After searching for nine days, one of the men in the team found his body in the lalang bush on the road side to Mae Hongson, about 3 kilometers from Pang Mapah District Office. The people in the village, including the writer, cremated his body with grief. He was a very nice kid and always fetched water and firewood for me, even when . I did not request it. The 1993 New Year Celebration in Yapanae village was quiet and mournful, not as hilarious as in the previous years.