From Nang Nak Liuye To Mae Nak Phra-Khanong

Literary anthropology regards the mythical thinking since the front-character epoch as the great tradition and the writing tradition as the little tradition respectively.The great tradition breeds and generates the little tradition,brings the cultural genes and patterns to its occurrence.Primitive belief which contained the thought of female worship was the great tradition of Indo-China Peninsula.From the secular life and religious life of Indo-China Peninsula people in the ancient times,we can see their social customs of admiring women.Women were not only the center of word and sentence making and the customs,but also the sexual orientation of gods in primitive ritual which was always leaded by women,too.Feminist cultural tradition infused the female worship into the little tradition and influenced the creation of naga stories.There were three kinds of naga images on naga stories: the symbol of aboriginal,the symbol of lord of land and water,and the symbol of religious belief.The symbol of aboriginal came from the worship of Indo-China Peninsula people to their female ancestor and the image of the first naga ancestor came from the Nang Nak Liuye in the tale of Phnom kingdom.The formation of the symbol of lord of land and water was related to the worship of female fertility.The symbol of religious belief showed that the naga was a native totem and related to female worship closely.However,with the spread of Buddhism,the indigenous naga belief was gradually absorbed and turned into a tool of promoting Buddhism.In this sense,the influence of the feminist cultural tradition gradually decreased.Feminist cultural tradition also influenced the creation of ghost stories.In primitive society,the difference between ghosts and gods were not clear.Their images were either a good god or an evil ghost,or including both.In primitive society,the ghost stories used by female rulers as a tool of moral education to restrain people’s behaviors.With the spread and development of foreign civilization and the establishment of patriarchal culture system in Indo-China Peninsula,the ghost belief had weakened gradually.The literary images of ghosts had also changed.The good god and evil ghost were still the basic images,but the humanity and the expectations from patriarchal society to female began to show in these images.The story of Mae Nak Phra-Khanong is a typical one that reflected these images,containing the taste of brutalities,love,sadness and warmth.Mae Nak as the main female protagonist in this story was portrayed as a good wife and a good mother that accorded with the expectation of patriarchal society.The story of Nang Nak Liuye and Mae Nak Phra-Khanong which born in the different times not only had connection in name,that is,the pronunciations are both naka,but also had the deep connection in the cultural connotation.Both of them were based on the mother archetype from Indo-China Peninsula people’s unconscious mind which embodied the pursuit of fertility and productivity.However,the difference of these two stories’ historical background also caused their other differences.The story of Nang Nak Liuye born in the period of Phnom kingdom when the society was deeply influenced by the great tradition of feminist culture and women had a high status.The story of Mae Nak Phra-Khanong took place during the period of Ratanakosin Era when the patriarchal cultural system had been established.The transformation from Nang Nak Liuye to Mae Nak Phra-Khanong reflected the changes in feminist culture of Indo-China Peninsula.