The Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi of Thailand and the Tamil

Traditions of Mārkaḻi1

Nathan McGovern
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Abstract—The Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi is a fifteen-day ceremony celebrated

annually in December and January by the Thai royal court Brahmans. In this
article, I explicate the links between the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi ceremony and
the customs of the month of Mārkaḻi in Tamil Nadu. I begin with a discussion of
the details of the ceremony that tie it to Tamil bhakti, compare it to the festivals
and traditions celebrated in the month of Mārkaḻi by devotees of Śiva and of
Viṣṇu in Tamil Nadu, and analyze the available historical evidence for the way the
Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi was celebrated in the past. I then present a model for the
way in which the festival changed over the course of its history in Siam. Finally,
I argue that the history of the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi provides evidence for the
invention of tradition and for the need to understand South Asia, Southeast Asia,
and Hinduism in their broader Southern Asian context.

Visitors to Bangkok are likely to be familiar with the “Giant Swing” (เสาชิงช้า)
which stands in front of the Buddhist temple Wat Suthat, just across the street from City
Hall. It features frequently in municipal iconography and has become symbolic of the
city in much the same way as the Eiffel Tower has for Paris or the Statue of Liberty has
for New York. Although the Giant Swing no longer serves any purpose, it once was the
site of an annual royal ceremony and festival. Ernest Young, a British employee of the
Education Department under King Chulalongkorn in the late 19th century, witnessed
these ceremonies and gave a full account of them in his Kingdom of the Yellow Robe:

The harvest-festival ceremonies are of Brahminical origin and are known to the
people under the name of ‘Lo Ching Cha’. The first word ‘Lo’ means ‘to pull’—
‘ching cha’ is a swing. …
The swing itself is like any ordinary child’s swing except for its enormous
size. The side pillars are about ninety feet high, and the seat of the swing is about
half-way between the ornamented cross-bar and the ground. A few feet in front
of the seat, on the side towards the Palace, a long bamboo-stem is fixed in the
ground, and from the top is suspended a small bag of silver coins. The men who

1
I would like to thank Vasudha Narayanan and Paul Younger for useful advice while I was writing this article,
as well as three anonymous reviewers for their critical comments and advice.

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take part in the games are usually Brahmins. They are dressed in white, and wear
conical hats. They swing towards the bag of money and endeavour to catch it with
their teeth. … When the winners have received their rewards they pass amongst
the crowd, sprinkling the spectators with consecrated water contained in bullocks’
horns. Soon afterwards the Minister returns to his home, the crowd disperses, and
thus the very ancient ceremony is brought to a close.2

Aside from some minor inaccuracies in Young’s account,3 it was in this form that
the ceremony continued to be performed until 1934, when the high-level swinging that
Young describes here was discontinued among the changes after the Revolution of 1932
that ended the absolute monarchy.4
There is in fact much more to this royal Thai ceremony, however, the swinging
being only a small part of a fifteen-day ceremony known as the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi,
most of which consists of the recitation of texts and worship of Hindu gods by the Thai
court Brahmans in their temple, Thēwa Sathān (เทวสถาน), which is located not far from
the Great Swing. These ceremonies, minus the dangerous swinging that used to lend a
true festive quality to the occasion, continue to be performed every year in the second
lunar month of the Thai calendar, which corresponds to late December and early January
in the Gregorian calendar.5 They have been described in detail, in the late 19th century
by King Chulalongkorn,6 just prior to the abolition of the swinging component by H.G.
Quaritch Wales,7 and more recently by Priyawat Kuanpoonpol.8 I myself attended all
the major components of the fifteen-day festival when it was celebrated in December
2014 and January 2015. Wales reported that the ceremonies in the Brahman temple were
sparsely attended even in his day, when the swing festival was still being celebrated,
and, needless to say, the loss of that component and the festive pomp that attended it
has driven the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi into a position of relative obscurity within the

2
Ernest Young, The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe: Being Sketches of the Domestic and Religious Rites and
Ceremonies of the Siamese, quoted in Michael Smithies, ed., Descriptions of Old Siam (Kuala Lumpur:
Oxford University Press, 1995), 249-252.
3
Although the Brahmans are involved in the ceremony, they themselves are not swingers. In addition, at
the end the swingers sprinkle water on each other, not the crowd. See H.G. Quaritch Wales, Siamese State
Ceremonies: Their History and Function (Richmond, Eng.: Curzon Press, 1992), 240-242.
4
เทวสถาน (โบสถ์พราหมณ์)-เสาชิงช้า โครงการจัดทำ�หนังสือสองศตวรรษวัดสุทัศนเทพวรารามและหนังสือ
เทวสถาน(โบสถ์พราหมณ์)-เสาชิงช้า เพื่อเฉลิมพระเกียรติพระบาทสมเด็จพระเจ้าอยู่หัว เนื่องในวโรกาสงาน​
ฉลองสิริราชสมบัติครบ 60 ปี [Thēwa Sathān (Bōt Phrām)-Great Swing Program Prepares a Book for Two
Centuries of Wat Suthatsanathēpworārām and a Book for Thēwa Sathān (Bōt Phrām)-Great Swing to Celebrate
the Greatness of His Royal Highness on the Occasion of the 60th Anniversary of His Ascension to the Throne]
(กรุงเทพฯ: ผังเมือง, 2549 [2013]), 77.
5
For an explanation of the Thai lunar calendar, see J.C. Eade, The Calendrical Systems of Mainland South-
East Asia (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), 28-29. The system used in modern Thailand is that listed in the table on
p. 29 under “Sukhohthai.”
6
พระบาทสมเด็จพระจุลจอมเกล้าเจ้าอยู่หัว, พระราชพิธีสิบสองเดือน [The Royal Ceremonies of the Twelve
Months] (กรุงเทพฯ: สำ�นักพิมพ์แสงดาว, 2556 [2013]), 106-128.
7
Wales, Ch. 20, Siamese State Ceremonies, 238-255.
8
Priyawat Kuanpoonpol, “Court Brahmans of Thailand and the Celebration of the Brahmanic New Year,”
Indo-Iranian Journal 33 (1990): 21-51.

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 The Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi of Thailand and the Tamil Traditions of MārkaḺi 125

Thai religious calendar. Nevertheless, an increased interest in “Hinduism” among Thai

people in recent decades, as well as support for the Brahman temple from the royal
family, has brought increased interest in the Brahmans’ ceremonies, and I found the
most important ceremonies in the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi to be well attended when I
observed them in 2014-2015.

Figure 1. Thēwa Sathān, Bangkok (photo by the author)

Regardless of the ebb and flow of its popularity in modern Thailand, the Trīyampawāi-
Trīppawāi is of great historical interest because it evinces a mostly forgotten link
between the ritual culture of Siam (now Thailand) and Tamil Nadu. This is clear from
the name of the Thai ceremony itself. Trīyampawāi is a corruption of Tiruvempāvai,
a collection of bhakti hymns by the Śaiva Tamil bhakti saint Māṇikkavācakar, and
Trīppawāi is a corruption of Tiruppāvai, a collection of bhakti hymns by the Vaiṣṇava
Tamil bhakti saint Āṇṭāḷ. Wales mentioned in his book Siamese State Ceremonies that
one of the Brahmanical texts he examined in the National Library in Bangkok was
composed in Tamil, but he was not aware of the contents of that text.9 Then, in 1955,
Xavier S. Thani Nayagam discovered that one of the verses used in the Thai coronation
ceremony and in the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi is actually taken from the original Tamil of
Māṇikkavācakar’s Tiruvempāvai.10 Subsequent studies of the Thai Brahmans’ recitations

9
Wales, Siamese State Ceremonies, 55.
10
S. Singaravelu, “Some Aspects of South Indian Cultural Contacts with Thailand: Historical Background,”

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Figure 2. The Great Swing, Bangkok (photo by the author)

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as well as their texts showed that in addition to various Sanskrit texts, the Thai Brahmans
are in possession of the Tiruvempāvai, the Tiruppāvai, and other Tamil bhakti texts, and
they make use of them in the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi.11 As I have demonstrated in a
previous publication,12 the lineages from which the Thai court Brahmans are derived,
or at least a substantial portion of them, probably emigrated from Tamil Nadu to Siam
several centuries ago. While the Thai Brahmans are able to pronounce their texts for the
purposes of their ceremonies, they have become fully acculturated in Thailand and no
longer speak Tamil or any other Indian languages; therefore, the full significance of their
links to the religious culture of Tamil Nadu was not fully realized until rediscovered by
modern scholarship.
In this article, I will explicate the specific links between the Thai Trīyampawāi-
Trīppawāi ceremony and the customs of the corresponding month of Mārkaḻi in Tamil
Nadu. I will argue that the differences seen between the modern Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi
and Tamil traditions evince the process by which Brahmans, although they originally
came from South Asia, adapted their traditions and rituals to the unique social and
religious culture of their new home in Southeast Asia. Early scholarship on Southeast
Asia was dominated by George Coedès’ theory of “Indianization,” whereby the presence
in Southeast Asia of Hindu gods, Brahmans, Buddhist monks, Sanskrit, Pali, and other
cultural forms associated with India were explained as the result of a process in which
Southeast Asian cultures were “Indianized.”13 Numerous scholars have since criticized
this model as denying Southeast Asians agency and have sought to advance alternative
models based on “localization.”14 This article focuses on the particular case of the
Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi ceremony to show that, in much the same way as has been
documented in India itself,15 Brahmans in Southeast Asia have been creative in adapting
their traditions to ever-changing local circumstances, thus situating them in the broader
context of Southern Asia.

Proceedings of the First International Conference-Seminar of Tamil Studies, Kuala Lumpur, April 1966, vol. 1
(Kuala Lumpur: Rajiv Printers, 1968), 21.
11
Recordings of the recitations have been studied by S. Singaravelu, “Some Aspects of South Indian Cultural
Contacts with Thailand.” The script found in the Brahmans’ texts has been studied by J.R. Marr, “Some
Manuscripts in Grantha Script in Bangkok,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University
of London 32, no. 2 (1969): 281-322. The contents of the texts have been studied by Neelakanta Sarma, Textes
Sanskrits et Tamouls de Thaïlande (Pondichery: Institut Francais d’Indologie, 1972).
12
Nathan McGovern, “Balancing the foreign and the familiar in the articulation of kingship: The royal court
Brahmans of Thailand,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 48, no. 2 (June 2017): 283-303.
13
George Coedès, The Indianized States of Southeast Asia, ed. Walter F. Vella, trans. Susan Brown Cowing
(Honolulu: East-West Center Press, 1968).
14
See, for example, Michael Vickery, Society, economics, and politics in pre-Angkor Cambodia: The 7th–8th
centuries (Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies for Unesco; Toyo Bunko, 1998), p. 59; Ian W.
Mabbett, “The ‘Indianization’ of Southeast Asia: Reflections on the historical sources,” Journal of Southeast
Asian Studies 8, 1 (1977): 143–61; O.W. Wolters, “Khmer ‘Hinduism’ in the seventh century,” in Ralph
B. Smith and William Watson, ed., Early South East Asia: Essays in archaeology, history and historical
geography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 427–43; and O.W. Wolters, History, culture, and
region in Southeast Asian perspectives, rev. ed. (Ithaca, NY: SEAP, Cornell University, 1999), 63.
15
For example, see Kunal Chakrabarti, Religious Process: The Purāṇas and the Making of a Regional
Tradition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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The bhakti traditions of the Tamil month of Mārkaḻi

As we have seen, several pieces of evidence—the name of the festival itself, the
content of the Thai Brahmans’ hymns, and historical accounts of the Thai Brahmans—
all point to the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi having roots in traditions derived from Tamil
country in South India. To my knowledge, however, there are no Tamil or other South
Asian sources that refer to the transfer of Tamil traditions or ritual personnel to the
court of Siam. Thus, in order to trace this history, we must rely on Thai sources, which
are themselves quite limited, especially for times prior to the mid-19th century. The
earliest Thai source that describes the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi in any great detail is
Chulalongkorn’s Royal Ceremonies of the Twelve Months, which was published in 1888
and thus reflects the ceremony in a modern form quite close to the way it is celebrated
today. As I have shown, however, the history of Siam written by Jeremias van Vliet in
1638 seems to indicate that the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi was brought to Siam by South
Indian Brahmans around the year 1500.16 This leaves nearly 400 years for the ceremony
to develop independently in Siam prior to King Chulalongkorn’s description of it in the
late 19th century.
Unfortunately, most sources are so sparse on details that they do little more than
confirm that the ceremony existed and was once celebrated in the first Thai lunar month
(corresponding to November-December). Many of them, moreover, date from the early
Bangkok period, not long before Chulalongkorn wrote his book. This includes the
Testimony of the People of the Old City (คำ�ให้การชาวกรุงเก่า), recorded by the Burmese
from the testimony of their Siamese war captives after the sack of Ayutthayā in 1767; the
“Palatine Law” (กฎมณเทียรบาล) of the Three Seals Law (กฎหมายตราสามดวง), compiled
during the reign of Rama I; the historical novel Nāng Nopphamāt (นางนพมาศ), probably
written in the reign of Rama II (1809-1824) or Rama III (1824-1851); the Manual of Old
Royal Ceremonies (พระราชพิธเี ก่า), written at an unknown time in the early Bangkok
period; and the versions of the Chronicle of Ayutthayā (พระราชพงศาวดารกรุงศรีอยุธยา)
composed in the early Bangkok period.17 Ayutthaya-era sources are even more sparse.
16
McGovern, “Balancing the foreign and the familiar,” 295.
17
The Testimony of the People of the Old City describes the Swing Festival but does not refer to it as the
“Trīyampawāi” and (almost certainly by mistake) places it in the third lunar month—ประชุมคำ�ให้การกรุง
ศรีอยุธยา รวม ๓ เรื่อง [Anthology of Three Testimonies about Krung Sī Ayutthayā] (กรุงเทพฯ: สำ�นักพิมพ์
แสงดาว, 2553 [2010]), 204. The “Palatine Law” lists the Trīyampawāi in the first lunar month and gives an
extremely short description of it—วินัย พงศ์ศรีเพียร, ed., กฎมณเทียรบาล ฉบับเฉลิมพระเกียรติ [Palatine
Law, Royal Anniversary Edition] (Bangkok: Thailand Research Fund, 2548 [2005]), 143, 165; Baker,
Chris, and Pasuk Phongpaichit, trans., The Palace Law of Ayutthaya and the Thammasat (Ithaca, New York:
Southeast Asia Program Publications, Cornell University, 2016), 111, 123. The Nāng Nopphamāt gives a short
description of the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi as taking place in the first lunar month—พระราชกรัณยานุสร พระ
ราชนิพนธ์ในพระบาทสมเด็จพระจุลจอมเกล้าเจ้าอยู่หัว และเรื่องนางนพมาศ [Phra Rājakaṇyānusara by His
Royal Highness King Chulalongkorn and Nāng Nopphamāt] (กรุงเทพฯ: สำ�นักพิมพ์คลังวิทยา, n.d.), 316.
On the dating of this historical novel to some time between 1817 and 1835, see Nidhi Eoseewong, Pen and
Sail: Literature and History in Early Bangkok, ed. Chris Baker and Ben Anderson (Chiang Mai: Silkworm
Books, 2005), 230. The Manual of Old Royal Ceremonies describes the Swing Festival, refers to it as the
Trīyampawāi, and places it in the first lunar month—ตำ�ราพระราชพิธีเก่า และตำ�ราทวาทศพิธี [Manual of Old
Royal Ceremonies and Manual of the Dvādaśa Ceremonies] (กรุงเทพฯ: กรมศิลปากร กระทรวงวัฒนธรรม,
2548 [2005]), 14. Finally, the early Bangkok-era versions of the Chronicle of Ayutthayā simply refer to an

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Aside from van Vliet’s account, which only refers to the Trīyampawāi obliquely by saying
that South Indian Brahmans brought traditions of swinging with them to Siam,18 there
is a similarly oblique reference to the Trīyampawāi in the Dvādaśamāsa (ทวาทศมาส).19
The one remaining Ayutthaya-era source is the Record of the Brahmans of Nakhòn Sī
Thammarāt (ตำ�นานพราหมณ์เมืองนครศรีธรรมราช), which was probably compiled in
1735.20 It is the best source for the Trīyampawāi and Trīppawāi prior to Chulalongkorn’s
1888 account, although it is not nearly as detailed as one might hope.
The Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi ceremony is today celebrated in the second lunar
month of the Thai calendar, which corresponds to December-January. By a fortuitous
accident, this corresponds to the Tamil month of Mārkaḻi, the traditions from which
the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi, I will show, clearly derive. Chulalongkorn reports that
originally the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi was held in the first Thai lunar month, which
corresponds to November-December—one month before the Tamil month of Mārkaḻi.
According to Chulalongkorn, his father King Mongkut said that the change in month had
already been made in the “old city” (Ayutthaya),21 which would mean prior to 1767.
There is, to my knowledge, no independent evidence to back up this latter assertion.
The two major Ayutthaya-era sources that discuss the Trīyampawāi—the Dvādaśamāsa
and the Record of the Brahmans of Nakhòn Sī Thammarāt—both place it in the first
lunar month.22 It is of course possible that the festival was moved after both these
sources were written, although the latter already brings us fairly close to the fall of
Ayutthaya with a likely date of composition of about 1735. The best source for practice
at the very end of the Ayutthaya era would be the Testimony of the People of the Old
City, but unfortunately this text places a description of the Swing Festival in the third
lunar month, which is almost certainly a mistake.23 The “Palatine Law” of the Three
Seals Law places the Trīyampawāi during the first lunar month.24 Likewise, the Manual
of Old Royal Ceremonies, which was probably written in the early Bangkok period (i.e.
after 1782),25 also places the Trīyampawāi in the first lunar month.26 To my knowledge,
the earliest written source that places the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi in the second lunar

assassination attempt on King Nārāi that took place at the time of the Trīyampawāi—Richard D. Cushman,
trans., The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya, ed. David K. Wyatt (Bangkok: The Siam Society, 2006), 236. (Note
that this episode is not mentioned in the Luang Prasoet version of the chronicle, which was composed in the
Ayutthaya period.)
18
Chris Baker et al., eds., Van Vliet’s Siam (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2005), 212.
19
ตรงใจ หุตางกูร, ed., อุปาทวาทศมาสโคลงดั้น: วรรณารรมเพชรน้ำ�เอกแห่งกรุงพระนครศรีอโยธยา พร้อมบท
ถอดความภาษาไทยและภาษาอังกฤษ [Upādvādaśamāsa Khlongdan: A Jewel of the Literature of Krung Phra
Nakhòn Sī Ayothayā, Together with Interpretation in Thai and English] (กรุงเทพฯ: ศูนย์มานุษยวิทยาสิรินธร,
2560 [2017]), 260-264.
20
ตำ�นานพราหมณ์เมืองนครศรีธรรมราช [Record of the Brahmans of Nakhòn Sī Thammarāt] (นครศรีธรรมราช:
ศูนย์วัฒนธรรมภาคใต้ วิทยาลัยครูนครศรีธรรมราช, 2525 [1982]).
21
พระจุลจอมเกล้าเจ้าอยู่หัว, พระราชพิธีสิบสองเดือน, 30.
22
ตรงใจ หุตางกูร, อุปาทวาทศมาสโคลงดั้น, 260; ตำ�นานพราหมณ์เมืองนครศรีธรรมราช.
23
ประชุมคำ�ให้การกรุงศรีอยุธยา รวม ๓ เรื่อง, 204.
24
วินัย, กฎมณเทียรบาล, 143; Baker and Pasuk, The Palace Law and the Thammasat, 111.
25
บาหยัน อิ่มสำ�ราญ, วรรณคดี พระราชพิธี [The Literature of Royal Ceremonies] (นครปฐม: คณะอักษร
ศาสตร์ มหาวิทยาลัยศิลปากร, 2559 [2016]), 286.
26
ตำ�ราพระราชพิธีเก่า, 14.

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month is in fact Chulalongkorn’s own book. This would suggest that the festival
was moved from the first to the second month early in the Bangkok period, probably
quite early, given that it was a distant enough memory even to Chulalongkorn’s
father that he thought it had happened in Ayutthaya. Even if Rama IV was right
that the change happened in Ayutthaya, it must have happened not long before the
fall of the city in 1767. In either case, we are talking about a mid-18th century to
early-19th century date for the change, centuries after the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi
traditions were brought to Ayutthaya, which probably occurred no later than the
early 16th century.27
Why, then, would the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi correspond to traditions of the Tamil
month of Mārkaḻi if it originally was celebrated a month earlier? The reason seems to
be that the Tamil months were “locked” to the solar calendar differently than in other
calendrical systems of the region.28 This can be seen by comparing the months of the
Tamil calendar to those of the North Indian system. The Tamil month Cittirai (against the
Gregorian calendar) comes a month after Caitra, Kārttikai comes a month after Kārttika,
Mārkaḻi comes a month after Mārgaśīrṣa, etc. This discrepancy is caused by the fact
that in the northern calendars, a solar month takes its name from the first lunar month to
begin within it, while in the Tamil calendar, a solar month takes its name from the lunar
month that is current when it begins.29 The Thai lunar months, on the other hand, appear
to have been locked to the solar calendar in the same manner as in the North Indian
system. The Ayutthaya-era Thai poem Dvādaśamāsa refers to the twelve lunar months
using both the Thai numerical system and the Sanskrit names, and these correspond in
the same way as they do today.30 Thus, the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi was originally
celebrated in the first (Thai) lunar month, which continues to this day to correspond
to Mārgaśīrṣa. This should (as in name it does) correspond to the Tamil month of
Mārkaḻi, except that all of the Tamil months were locked to the solar calendar a
month later than in other systems. When the Siamese monarchy decided to delay
the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi by a month in the eighteenth or nineteenth century, they
inadvertently ensured that it would continue to fall in the similarly delayed Tamil
month of Mārkaḻi today.
As already noted above, the Thai Brahmans are in possession of texts that include
Tamil bhakti hymns, and they chant these hymns during the rituals of the Trīyampawāi-
Trīppawāi. The name Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi itself is derived from the names
Tiruvempāvai and Tiruppāvai. Although coming from different sectarian traditions,
these two bhakti hymns are linked in Tamil consciousness and known collectively as the
pāvaippāṭṭu. Both poems take as their theme the mārkaḻi nōṉpu, or “Mārkaḻi vow,” in
which young women bathe early in the morning to ensure success in love and fertility.

27
On the history of the Thai Brahmans, see McGovern, “Balancing the foreign and the familiar,” 290-294.
28
I thank Kristina Buhrman for making this suggestion to me.
29
I thank Marco Franceschini for explaining this to me, and I thank Emanuel Francis for putting me into
contact with him.
30
See, for example, verse 141, in which the first lunar month is referred to as the month of the “jumping deer”
(มฤคจรด), a clear reference to Mārgaśīrṣa (วินัย, อุปาทวาทศมาศ, 247). Today, Mārgaśīrṣa and the first Thai
lunar month continue to correspond, with both falling in November-December.

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Norman Cutler has argued that this was a very ancient practice attested as far back as
the Sangam literature, although originally it was undertaken one month later, during
the month of Tai.31 Given their thematic association with the month of Mārkaḻi, the
Tiruvempāvai or the Tiruppāvai is sung in Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava temples, respectively,
during that month in Tamil Nadu to this day.
In addition, both Śaivas and Vaiṣṇavas in Tamil Nadu have important festival
traditions during the month of Mārkaḻi. For Śaivas, there is the Tiruvātirai, a ten-day
festival celebrated most spectacularly at Citamparam, but also at other Śaiva temples in
Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.32 Even today, the Tiruvātirai is celebrated on exactly the same
ten days that the Trīyampawāi (the initial ten days of the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi, which
are dedicated to Iśvara/Śiva) is celebrated in Thailand. During the ten days of the Tamil
festival, the Tiruvempāvai of Māṇikkavācakar is recited in the temple every evening.33
Śaiva images are paraded daily, and on the evening of the ninth day, the main image of
the Naṭarāja is paraded in a chariot. This is followed by a ritual bath of the image on the
tenth day.34 The corresponding festival for Tamil Vaiṣṇavas is the Adhyayana Utsava, a
twenty-one day festival celebrated in Śrī Raṅgam and other Śrīvaiṣṇava temples in Tamil
Nadu.35 The focus of this festival is the daily morning recitation of verses composed by
the āḻvārs, the twelve bhakti saints venerated by Tamil Vaiṣṇavas. The festival begins
on the day of the new moon, and over the course of the first ten days, 2,000 verses
from a variety of the āḻvārs are recited.36 On the eleventh day, the northern doors of Śrī
Raṅgam, known as the “Gates of Heaven” (vaikuṇṭha vācal) are opened. Over the next
ten days, the 1,102 verses of the Tiruvāymoḻi of Nammāḻvār are recited, and the festival
image of Viṣṇu is brought through the Gates of Heaven and paraded.37
While the Śaiva Tiruvātirai festival is structured specifically around the Tiruvempāvai,
the Vaiṣṇava Adhyayana Utsava is not structured around the corresponding Tiruppāvai;
instead, it focuses on the Tiruvāymoḻi. Moreover, the author of the Tiruppāvai, Āṇṭāḷ, is
sidelined during the Adhyayana Utsava; being a woman, she is the only one of the āḻvārs
whose image is not brought out to hear the recitation of the Tiruvāymoḻi.38 Nevertheless,
given its theme, the Tiruppāvai plays an important role in the more general practices of
Tamil Vaiṣṇavas during Mārkaḻi. Its thirty verses are recited daily in Śrīvaiṣṇava temples
during that month. In addition, each verse is associated with one particular day of the
month and is commented upon on that day. While the traditional Tamil dish pongal is
prepared by Tamil households on every day of Mārkaḻi (leading up to the Pongal festival

31
Norman Cutler, Consider our Vow: An English Translation of the Tiruppāvai and Tiruvempāvai (Madurai:
Muttu Patippakam, 1979), 1-11.
32
This festival has been studied most extensively by Paul Younger in The Home of Dancing Śivaṉ: The
Traditions of the Hindu Temple in Citamparam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 54-67.
33
Ibid., 58.
34
Ibid., 60-63.
35
This festival has been studied most extensively by Vasudha Narayanan in The Vernacular Veda: Revelation,
Recitation, and Ritual (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 131.
36
Ibid., 116.
37
Ibid., 118-119.
38
Ibid., 123.

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 132 Nathan McGovern

at the end of the month), on many days of the month Śrīvaiṣṇavas also prepare dishes
that are connected in some way with the Tiruppāvai.39

Tracing the history of the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi in Siam

Unfortunately, tracing the precise development of the Siamese Trīyampawāi-
Trīppawāi and its original connection to the Tamil traditions of Mārkaḻi is made difficult
by a relative lack of sources. Nevertheless, even with the limited sources at our disposal,
we can discern the rough course by which the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi developed
in Siam. Working backwards, there is one particular change that was made in recent
memory that I would argue is illustrative of how changes would have been made to
the festival incrementally over time. This is the addition of a “sending off” with the
swinging of the golden haṃsa for Brahmā on the third day of the waning moon, in the
middle of the Trīppawāi portion of the festival. This ceremony for Brahmā does not
really make sense in the context of the festival as a whole. The Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi
is clearly divided into a Śaiva portion and Vaiṣṇava portion—the ten-day Trīyampawāi
and the five-day Trīppawāi, respectively. Each begins with inviting the respective god to
Earth and ends with sending him back to heaven by swinging the golden haṃsa. There
is no corresponding portion of the festival dedicated to Brahmā for the haṃsa-swinging
ceremony now practiced. This ceremony was simply added in imitation of the haṃsa-
swinging performed for Iśvara and Nārāyaṇa, so as to give Brahmā a role, however
small, in the festival.
The reason for this addition is clear when viewed in the context of recent
developments in Thai religion. In spite of his relative lack of importance in India since
the Purāṇic period, Brahmā has become one of the most popular Hindu gods in Thailand
since the mid-20th century. A shrine to Brahmā that was built outside the Erawan Hotel
in Bangkok in the 1950s gained a reputation for granting boons, and since then shrines
to Brahmā have become ubiquitous in Thailand.40 Given the incredible popularity
of this Hindu god, the royal court Brahmans were led to incorporate him into their
repertoire in a more visible role. In addition to giving him a “sending off” ceremony in
the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi, they also erected a shrine to Brahmā in front of the Iśvara
temple, displacing a model of Mt. Kailāśa that once stood there and making Brahmā
the first god one sees upon entering the Brahmans’ temple, known as Thēwa Sathān
(เทวสถาน).41
Extrapolating from the logic of this known addition of a sending-off ceremony for
39
Vasudha Narayanan, “Śrī Vaiṣṇava Festivals and Festivals Celebrated by Śrī Vaiṣṇavas: Distinctive and
Cosmopolitan Identities,” Journal of Vaiṣṇava Studies 6-7 (1998-1999), 181-182.
40
On the Erawan Shrine and the worship of Brahmā in Thailand, see Nathan McGovern, “A Buddhist Cult
of Brahmā: Thick Description and Micro-Histories in the Study of Religion,” History of Religions 55, no. 3
(Feb. 2016): 329-360.
41
According to Kanjana Suwanwong, who has written the most extensive study of the Thai Brahmans in
Thai, both the shrine to Brahmā was built and the ceremony for sending him off was added to the Trīppawāi
during the reign of Rama IX, i.e., during the 20th century. See Kanjana Suwanwong, ‘Ways of life, rituals and
cultural identity of court Brahmins in Thai society: A case study of Bangkok Devasthan Botsbrahmana’ (MA
Thesis, Chulalongkorn University, 2539 [1996]), 87.

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Brahmā, one can speculate that some similar process led to the bifurcated structure of the
Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi as a whole. The Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi is so called because it
consists of two portions: the ten-day Trīyampawāi dedicated to Iśvara (Śiva) and the five-
day Trīppawāi dedicated to Nārāyaṇa (Viṣṇu). Of these two, the Trīyampawāi is clearly
dominant and is palely copied by the Trīppawāi, which essentially repeats the same
rituals that had been performed for Iśvara again, this time for Nārāyaṇa, but in a shorter
and simplified format. In addition, as we saw, the ten days of the Trīyampawāi coincide
exactly with the ten days of the Tamil Tiruvātirai festival celebrated at Citamparam
and other Śaiva temples in Tamil Nadu. Given that the Tiruvātirai and Trīyampawāi

Figure 3. Royal Court Brahman performing ritual at the Thēwa Sathān (from Wales, Siamese State Ceremonies, Plate V)

are celebrated over the same ten days of the year and both involve recitation of
Māṇikkavācakar’s Tiruvempāvai, it is clear that the Thai Trīyampawāi festival is directly
derived from the Tamil Tiruvātirai. The Trīppawāi that follows the Trīyampawāi, on the
other hand, bears little resemblance to the corresponding Tamil Vaiṣṇava festival, the
Adhyayana Utsava. It is not celebrated on the same dates, is not even close to the same
length, and is dedicated to Āṇṭāḷ’s Tiruppāvai rather than Nammāḻvār’s Tiruvāymoḻi.
Is it possible, then, that the Trīppawāi was simply added to the Trīyampawāi at some
point in Siam to give it a Vaiṣṇava component, in much the same way as more recently a
gratuitous sending-off ceremony was added on the third day of the waning moon to give
a role to the newly popular Brahmā?
The evidence provided by the Record of the Brahmans of Nakhòn Sī Thammarāt,
our only even quasi-detailed description of these rituals that predates Chulalongkorn’s
book, in some ways confirms, but also complicates, this supposition. The Record of

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 134 Nathan McGovern

the Brahmans of Nakhòn Sī Thammarāt, as the name suggests, does not offer direct
evidence of Brahmanical practices in Ayutthaya. Instead, it is a letter, within which are
compiled several older documents, that was sent by the Phra Garū Vijeṣṭha Horatācārya,
a Brahman official in Ayutthaya, to several local officials and the Brahman community
residing in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Ayutthaya’s most important dependent city on the
Malay Peninsula. The letter begins with a story, quite similar to that told by van Vliet
in his history of Siam, of how Brahmans first came to Siam from India,42 and the bulk
of it is taken up by royal edicts pertaining to Brahmans, clearly compiled from multiple
sources. At the end of the letter, the Ayutthaya official explains that he is sending it
because he has heard that the Brahman community and their ceremonies in Nakhon
Sri Thammarat have declined, and he urges their rehabilitation. Although the letter is
addressed to the situation in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, the Phra Garū Vijeṣṭha Horatācārya
explicitly states that it is his hope that the southern Brahmans conduct themselves like
those in the capital,43 so presumably the practices recorded in the letter at least reflect
those that were found in Ayutthaya itself.
What is interesting about this document is that it refers to both the Trīyampawāi
(spelled เตรียมปา) and the Trīppawāi (spelled ตรีปาไวย) as two distinct and completely
separate ceremonies. Neither one quite corresponds to the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi as it is
practiced today or as it is described by Chulalongkorn. The Trīyampawāi comes closest,
although there are some odd differences. According to the Record, the Trīyampawāi is
celebrated in the first lunar month, it lasts fourteen days, and it consists of the Brahmans
reciting texts and making offerings to a divine image. The bulk of the instructions are
dedicated to specifying which official will be responsible for donating the offerings on
each day, as well as what offerings should be made. The basic details of the ceremony—
the month when it is celebrated, the length, and the content—thus correspond well to
the modern Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi. Today, the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi is celebrated
in the second lunar month, but we know that that is a change from the first lunar
month, as the Record specifies. The length of the modern ceremony is fifteen days, a
discrepancy of only one day from the fourteen specified in the Record. This may be
explained by the fact that Nārāyaṇa is actually sent back to heaven on the fourteenth
day of the modern ceremony; the fifteenth day is actually a separate ceremony in which
the Brahmans perform the tonsure of children,44 most likely a late addition. Finally, the
42
ตำ�นานพราหมณ์เมืองนครศรีธรรมราช, 1-4. For a synopsis of the story in English, see David K. Wyatt,
trans., The Crystal Sands: The Chronicles of Nagara Śrī Dharrmarāja (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program,
Department of Asian Studies, Cornell University, 1975), 53-54.
43
ตำ�นานพราหมณ์เมืองนครศรีธรรมราช, 32: “ให้พราหมณ์ทั้งปวงถือกิจตาจาคิตวาริชพราหมณ์ ให้อยู่แก่สัจแก่
ศีลพรตกันให้มั่นคงเหมือนอย่างในกรุงฯ.”
44
The tonsure ceremony is derived from one of the classical Hindu saṃskāras, in which one or more tufts of
hair are left to grow on a child’s head until they are shorn off at a certain age. It used to be a common practice
among Thais, but it fell out of vogue in the early 20th century. For a description of the royal tonsure ceremony,
see Wales, Siamese State Ceremonies, 126-136. For a discussion of the tonsure ceremony in a village context,
see Penny van Esterik and John van Esterik, “Royal Style in Village Context: Translation and Interpretation of
a Thai Tonsure Text,” Asian Folklore Studies 39, no. 1 (1980): 63-78. For an account of the tonsure ceremony
after the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi as it is practiced today, see Amarjiva Lochan, “The Brahmana’s in Thai
Society: A Sociocultural Study of the Indian Legacy,” paper presented to 2nd Annual Asian Fellows Conference,
Bangkok, July 1-2, 2002, [Link]

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modern ceremony, like that described in the Record, consists on a daily basis of the
recitation of texts and offerings to divine images. Indeed, many of the offerings listed
in the Record are the same as those I observed in 2014-2015: popped rice, coconuts,
bananas, sugarcane, etc.
There are some serious discrepancies, however. First, the Record specifies that the
Trīyampawāi should be celebrated beginning on the first day of the waning moon of the
first lunar month. At fourteen days, this means that the entire ceremony takes place during
the waning moon. This is different from the modern ceremony, which begins during the
night of the sixth day of the waxing moon and makes the transition from the Trīyampawāi
to the Trīppawāi with the full moon. The description in the Record not only does not
accord with the modern timing of the ritual, but also ruins its correspondence with the
Tamil Tiruvātirai. In addition, the Record states that the offerings in the Trīyampawāi are
made to Nārāyaṇa, not Iśvara. This is consistent with the story at the beginning of the
document, which states that the king of Rāmarāja, a kingdom in India, sent Brahmans,
together with ritual implements and an image of Nārāyaṇa, to Siam because he had
discovered that the king in Ayutthaya, like himself, was an incarnation of Nārāyaṇa.
The foundational story of the Siamese Brahmans thus has a Vaiṣṇava cast to it, and the
Trīyampawāi is presented as the foremost ritual for the care of the Nārāyaṇa statue that
is sent as a gesture of friendship. Unfortunately, the story does not make much sense.
The Thai Brahmans today clearly are Śaiva in orientation. Their temple gives foremost
importance to Iśvara, whose sanctuary is the first you see when you enter the gate and
much larger than the one for Nārāyaṇa, and the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi focuses far
more attention on Iśvara than on Nārāyaṇa. In addition, the very name Trīyampawāi,
whose contents are supposedly described at this point of the Record, undoubtedly comes
from the Tiruvempāvai, a Śaiva text.
It is unfortunately impossible to fully explain these discrepancies on the basis of
existing evidence. One possibility, at least for the sectarian confusion, is that the Record
was produced by splicing together different sources awkwardly. The story at its beginning
has a strongly Vaiṣṇava theme and accordingly refers only to an image of Nārāyaṇa
being sent from India to Siam. Later on in the text, however, reference is made to an
image of and temple for Iśvara, with no clear explanation of how they came about. It is
likely that the story at the beginning of the letter, which is clearly partly legendary in any
case, obscures a more complex history involving both Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva influences.
Perhaps the redactor chose to smooth the transition from the story at the beginning of
the letter to the description of the Trīyampawāi that immediately follows it by making
the latter a festival dedicated to Nārāyaṇa. That would imply that even a high-ranking
Brahman in Ayutthaya in the early 18th century had little understanding of—or perhaps
more precisely concern for—the original significance of the Trīyampawāi. This is not
necessarily surprising, if we recognize that the Siamese court Brahmans were probably
already well acculturated by that point and most attuned to indigenous concerns, rather
than those found in the Tamil homeland of their ancestors.45
The Record of the Brahmans of Nakhòn Sī Thammarāt describes the Trīppawāi

45
See McGovern, “Balancing the foreign and the familiar,” 297-303.

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completely separately, in a different part of the text found several pages later in the
modern edition. The relevant passage describes taking images of the gods Nārāyaṇa and
Iśvara to the palace and performing a ceremony there that involves the Brahmans reciting
from their texts and hanging a haṃsa from a swing. The text does not specify precisely
what is done with the haṃsa on the swing, but there is a reference to sending the image
of Nārāyaṇa to the sea of milk (แลพราหมณ์สต ่ี นอำ�นิสงนารายน์เทวารูปโสเกษียรสมุท).46
The Trīppawāi here described is thus closely related to the “sending off” ceremonies for
Iśvara at the end of the modern Trīyampawāi and for Nārāyaṇa at the end of the modern
Trīppawāi (as well as, more recently, the extraneous sending off ceremony for Brahmā).
However, according to the text, this ceremony is not a component repeated at intervals
in the long festival celebrated in the first lunar month; instead, it is a one-off event whose
timing is determined by the sun.
The Record specifies that the Trīppawāi should be celebrated when the sun reaches
21 degrees in the sky.47 At the end of the description of the ceremony, it then says that the
sun will enter Capricorn in the zodiac the next morning (แลครัน ้ รุง่ พระอาทิตย์สงกรานต์
ไปยังมังกรราษี).48 This event is known in India as Makara Saṅkrānti, the entrance of the
sun into Capricorn (makara). In Tamil Nadu, Makara Saṅkrānti is celebrated as Pongal,
the most important festival of the year. It is celebrated from 14 January to 17 January,
right at the transition from Mārkaḻi to the following Tamil month of Tai. It is thus the
culmination of all the festivities and traditions of Mārkaḻi, and although it is a pan-Tamil
holiday, Tamil Vaiṣṇavas and Śaivas tend to celebrate it with certain twists according to
their sectarian persuasion.
Is it possible, then, that the Trīppawāi as described in the Record is derived from
Tamil Pongal traditions? The timing would certainly seem to suggest so, but the content
does not provide a clear link. The “sending off” ceremonies found in the modern
Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi, which are likely derived from the Trīppawāi described in the
Record, involve hanging a golden haṃsa from a swing, mounting divine images upon
it, and swinging it while chanting a Tamil hymn. I am not aware of any ceremony quite
like this found in India. There, one finds the Ḍolā Utsava ceremony, in which images
of gods are swung on a swing, and the Brahma Utsava ceremony, in which images of
gods are mounted on various vāhanas, including a haṃsa, and paraded. Neither of these
ceremonies, at least in modern times, is associated specifically with Pongal in Tamil
Nadu, however, nor with Makara Saṅkrānti more broadly in India.
There is separate evidence, on the other hand, that suggests that Pongal traditions
indeed were transmitted to Siam, even if they are not clearly described in the Record.
According to the “Palatine Law,” there is a royal ceremony celebrated in the second lunar
month called “Circulating the Royal Cow” (เฉวียนพระโค). It is described as involving
lavishly decorating, feeding, and parading a cow.49 According to Chulalongkorn, this
46
ตำ�นานพราหมณ์เมืองนครศรีธรรมราช, 11. I am reading “อำ�นิสง” as “อำ�นวยส่ง,” which would be a polite
way of saying “send.” I thank Nanda Raksakhom for suggesting this reading.
47
Ibid.: “ให้ออกพระธรรมณรายทำ�ทักษิณาบูชาพิธีตรีปาไวยตามองษาพระอาทิตย์ ครั้นได้ 21 เมื่อใด วันนั้นให้
เชิญพระเทวารูปเสด็จโสมณเฑียร.”
48
Ibid.
49
Baker and Pasuk, The Palace Law and the Thammasat, 111, 123; วินัย, กฎมณเทียรบาล, 143, 165.

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ceremony had been discontinued long ago, at some point during the Ayutthaya period.50
The description of the ceremony that survives sounds quite similar to the tradition
associated with Māṭṭup-poṅkal (“Bull Pongal”), the third day of the Pongal festival in
Tamil Nadu. On this day, cattle are honored by being decorated and fed special food.
There is also a plausible argument for calendrical correspondence. Māṭṭup-poṅkal is
celebrated in Tamil Nadu on the second day of Tai, the month immediately after Mārkaḻi.
As we have seen, the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi was originally celebrated in Siam in
the first lunar month, which should have corresponded at one time with Mārkaḻi. That
means that the second Thai lunar month should have corresponded at one time with Tai.
Unfortunately, there is no information as to when during the second month the Royal
Cow ceremony was observed to see whether the correspondence is any more exact.
What, then, does the evidence provided by the Record of the Brahmans of Nakhòn Sī
Thammarāt suggest for our attempted reconstruction of the history of the Trīyampawāi-
Trīppawāi festival? First, it provides strong evidence that the Trīyampawāi and the
Trīppawāi were originally a separate festival and ceremony that were merged. The
Trīyampawāi provided the basic format of fourteen days of recitations and offerings to
the gods, which was then split into two sections: ten days for Iśvara and five days for
Nārāyaṇa (with one day overlap). The Trīppawāi, on the other hand, contributed the
sending off ceremony that involves swinging a golden haṃsa, performed twice, first
for Iśvara on the tenth day and then for Nārāyaṇa on the fourteenth. In the process, the
meanings of the words Trīyampawāi and Trīppawāi shifted. Trīyampawāi no longer
referred to the entire fourteen-day festival, but only the ten-day Śaiva portion. Likewise,
Trīppawāi no longer referred to the haṃsa-swinging ceremony, but rather to the last five
days of the erstwhile Trīyampawāi festival, now dedicated to Nārāyaṇa.
Certain questions about this merger still remain. First, when and why did the merger
take place? Most likely during the early Bangkok period, i.e. after 1782. If as late as
1735, only three decades before the sack of Ayutthaya, the Trīyampawāi and Trīppawāi
were being described as separate, it is unlikely that the change took place in the old city.
It is more likely that it happened in Bangkok, when the royal court Brahmans and their
ceremonies were being reconstituted. This supposition is supported by the fact that the
“Palatine Law,” which was compiled on the basis of Ayutthaya sources, refers to the
ceremony in the first lunar month simply as the Trīyampawāi, not as the Trīyampawāi-
Trīppawāi. In addition, its brief description gives instructions on who should contribute
various offerings, much like that found in the Record, without referring to a haṃsa or
swinging.51 It is quite possible that when the ceremonies were restarted in Bangkok,
the decision was made to simplify them in part by merging the Trīyampawāi and the
Trīppawāi. A second question pertains to an earlier period: Is the Record correct in
stating that the original, pre-merger Trīyampawāi was fourteen days long and celebrated
entirely during the waning moon? If so, how does that accord with the fact that the
modern Trīyampawāi, which is celebrated beginning on the sixth night of the waxing
moon and only lasts ten days, is in far greater accord with the Tamil Tiruvātirai festival?

50
พระจุลจอมเกล้าเจ้าอยู่หัว, พระราชพิธีสิบสองเดือน, 98.
51
Baker and Pasuk, The Palace Law and the Thammasat, 111, 123; วินัย, กฎมณเทียรบาล, 143, 165.

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 138 Nathan McGovern

Unfortunately, given the fragmentary nature of our sources, it is difficult to answer these
questions.

The Swing Festival

I have so far left one question entirely unaddressed: What about the spectacular
Swing Festival with which I began this article, arguably the component for which the
Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi is best known? According to both versions of the story of how
the Brahmans came to Siam, in van Vliet’s history and in the Record of the Brahmans of
Nakhòn Sī Thammarāt, they brought a swing or swing traditions with them.52 This might
seem to imply that the Swing Festival came to Ayutthaya from India. There is, however,
no such festival that is celebrated in India today, nor is there any clear evidence that such
a festival was ever celebrated. For this reason, some Thai scholars have argued that the
Swing Festival component of the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi did not come from India at
all, but was an indigenous tradition adapted to it. Sujit Wongthes has even argued that
there may be a connection to a Karen swinging tradition, on the basis that the Thai name
for the Swing Festival (โล้ชงิ ช้า) bears a resemblance to the Karen name for the first lunar
month.53 Unfortunately, while an indigenous swinging tradition is known, it belongs to
the Akha, not the Karen, and it does not involve teams of men attempting to catch a bag
of coins with their teeth;54 it thus bears no greater resemblance to the Swing Festival of
the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi than do comparable swinging traditions in India.
In my opinion, we should take seriously the claims of the historical sources that
swinging traditions were brought by the Brahmans to Siam from India. We should note,
however, that (1) these sources do not make clear the precise nature of these swinging
traditions and that (2) the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi does not incorporate swinging only
in the now defunct Swing Festival described at the beginning of this article. There
also is the “sending off” ceremony in which the gods are sent back to heaven by
mounting them on a golden haṃsa and swinging it while chanting Tamil hymns. As
we just saw, that ceremony appears to have originally been central to the Trīppawāi
to be performed at the Makara Saṅkrānti, and now it has been incorporated into the
unified Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi to separately send off first Iśvara, then Nārāyaṇa, with
the recent creative addition of Brahmā in between. Although the specific ritual involving
a golden haṃsa does not have a known parallel, nor is the specific association with
Makara Saṅkrānti attested, the Ḍola Utsava or ceremony in which images of gods are
swung is commonplace throughout India, usually performed in the Spring.55 A Tamil

Baker, Van Vliet’s Siam, 212; ตำ�นานพราหมณ์เมืองนครศรีธรรมราช, 3-4.

52

สุจิตต์ วงษ์เทศ, “โล้ชิงช้าในภาษาไทยมาจากคำ�กะเหรี่ยง-ลาชิงช้า” [Lōchingchā in Thai Comes from the Karen

53

Word Lāchingchā], in โล้ชิงช้า: พิธีกรรมดึกดำ�บรรพ์ของสุวรรณภูมิ ไม่ใช่พิธีพราหมณ์ชมพูทวีป [Lōchingchā:

Ancient Ritual of Suvarṇabhūmi, not a Ceremony of Brahmans from Jambudvīpa] (pamphlet accompanying
lecture of the same name, Bangkok, Feb. 7, 2550 [2007]).
54
Chob Kacha-ananda, “The Akha Swinging Ceremony,” Journal of the Siam Society 59, no. 1 (1971): 119-
128.
55
For an exhaustive study of these festivals throughout India, including a comparison to the Siamese Swing
Festival, see Nirmal Kumar Bose, Culture and Society in India (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1967),
51-53, 59-82.

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 The Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi of Thailand and the Tamil Traditions of MārkaḺi 139

bhakti hymn by Campantar, which is included among the texts in the possession of the
Thai Brahmans,56 moreover refers to a ceremony involving a golden swing being part of
the annual ritual calendar of the Śaiva temple Kapālīccaram.57 It is very possible that the
concept of the Ḍola Utsava was brought to Siam by Tamil Brahmans and then adapted
and readapted to local circumstances as Siamese court rituals developed. In that case,
the Trīppawāi described in the Record would already represent a creative adaptation of
an Indian Ḍola Utsava.

Figure 4. The royal procession during the Swing Festival (from Wales, Siamese State Ceremonies, Plate XXXV)

The now-defunct Swing Festival in which teams of men attempt to catch bags of
coins with their teeth may represent another strand of the creative adaptation of the Ḍola
Utsava in Siam. Presumably this festival qua coin-catching game was celebrated in the
capital by the end of the Ayutthaya period, given that it is described as such in both the
Testimony of the People of the Old City and the Manual of Old Royal Ceremonies.58
There is reason to believe, however, that this game is an elaboration upon a simpler,
more Ḍolotsava-esque ceremony. The modern Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi includes a set
of obscure ceremonies surrounding the so-called Nāng Kradān or “Lady Boards”.
These three boards, representing Gaṅgā, Dharaṇī, and the sun and moon, respectively,
are submerged in holes in the ground just before what would have been the second
playing of the swinging game on the ninth day of the waxing moon, and then they are
56
Sarma, Textes Sanskrits et Tamouls de Thaïlande, 94-96.
57
Indira Viswanathan Peterson, Poems to Śiva: The Hymns of the Tamil Saints (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,
1989), 189. Reference to this hymn is made by Meenakshisundaram, cited in Cutler, Consider Our Vow, 28
n. 43.
58
ประชุมคำ�ให้การกรุงศรีอยุธยา, 204; ตำ�ราพระราชพิธีเก่า, 14.

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 140 Nathan McGovern

ceremonially removed and returned to their place in the Iśvara temple on the twelfth
day of the waxing moon. While the holes in which the three boards are submerged
today are found within the grounds of Thēwa Sathān, Chulalongkorn reports that in
his day they were found in the vicinity of the Giant Swing.59 Brahmans today and even
Chulalongkorn in his day are at a loss to explain the Nāng Kradān, but I would suggest
that originally the Swing Festival consisted of a simple Ḍola Utsava in which the Nāng
Kradān, and only in the late Ayutthaya period, for reasons now unknown, did the Swing
Festival as a game develop.
There are two reasons to support this conclusion. First, there is archaeological
evidence for a swing and the Nāng Kradān in Nakhon Sri Thammarat,60 but there is no
evidence that the Swing Festival qua coin-catching game was celebrated there. King
Chulalongkorn himself reports that in his day in the late 19th century, the Swing Festival
in Nakhon Sri Thammarat was celebrated in “condensed” form, with only the swinging
of boards.61 But the Record of the Brahmans of Nakhòn Sī Thammarāt from the early
18th century does not mention a swinging game either, suggesting that there was in
fact never an “uncondensed” Swing Festival in that city. Second, the earliest document
that describes the Swing Festival in Ayutthaya, the Dvādaśamāsa, refers to Brahmans
mounting boards on a swing, but says nothing about teams of men climbing on the
boards to play a game.62 Given that this document is a highly descriptive poem that uses
the changing months and their festivals as metaphors for the author’s love, it seems
unlikely that such a spectacle would be left out if it had existed. This would suggest that
the “condensed” ritual involving the mere swinging of boards in Nakhon Sri Thammarat
of which Chulalongkorn was aware was actually the original ceremony, which had been
embellished with a game at a later date in Ayutthaya.

Conclusion
Let me now summarize my conclusions about the history of the Trīyampawāi-
Trīppawāi festival in Siam. During the early Ayutthaya period, i.e. prior to the First
Burmese-Siamese War (1547-1549), Tamil Brahmans were incorporated into the
Siamese royal court. Two sources record a significant gift of Brahmans from a kingdom
in South India during the reign of a King Rāmāthibodi of Ayutthaya, most likely King

59
พระจุลจอมเกล้าเจ้าอยู่หัว, พระราชพิธีสิบสองเดือน, 121; Wales, Siamese State Ceremonies, 250-251.
60
I have seen this evidence, including a partly decomposed artifact of a Nāng Kradān, in the National Museum
in Nakhon Sri Thammarat.
61
พระจุลจอมเกล้าเจ้าอยู่หัว, พระราชพิธีสิบสองเดือน, 106: “เชื้อพราหมณ์ในเมืองนครศรีธรรมราชไม่มีสิ้นสุด
จนถึงบัดนี้ มีเทวสถาน ที่เสาชิงช้าซึ่งพราหมณ์ยังคงทำ�พิธี แต่เป็นอย่างย่อๆ ตามมีตามเกิด เช่น พิธีตรียัมพวาย
เอาแต่กระดานขึ้นแขวนเป็นสังเขปเป็นต้น.”
62
ตรงใจ, อุปาทวาทศมาสโคลงดั้น, 260-264. The editors of this edition date the Dvādaśamāsa to between 1463
and 1488 (ibid., 8), i.e. during the reign of Borommatrailōkanāt, shortly prior to the reign of Rāmāthibodi II,
when van Vliet says that Brahmans and swinging were imported from Rāmarāja. An anonymous reviewer
suggested that if the Dvādaśamāsa is indeed this old, then perhaps what van Vliet was referring to was
the more elaborate game involving people, which would have replaced the older mere swinging of boards.
While this interpretation is possible, and has to recommend it the fact that van Vliet refers to a “game” being
imported, I am reluctant to adopt it because of a lack of evidence for such a game in India.

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Rāmāthibodi II (1491-1529), although it is likely that the emigration of Tamil Brahmans

to Siam and their incorporation into the court was a protracted process rather than a
single event. The surviving evidence shows that, as a result of this process, by the late
Ayutthaya period Siamese court ritual involved elements derived from Tamil traditions
associated with the month of Mārkaḻi. Śaiva traditions were incorporated in the form of
the Trīyampawāi, named after the Tiruvempāvai and modeled after the Śaiva Tiruvātirai
festival during which it is recited. As part of this festival, a Ḍola Utsava was celebrated
with boards depicting Gaṅgā, Dharaṇī, and the sun and moon. At some point in the
Ayutthaya period, this Ḍola Utsava was modified into an elaborate game in which
teams of men mounted the swing and competed to catch a bag of coins with their teeth.
Vaiṣṇava traditions, on the other hand, were incorporated in the form of the Trīppawāi,
celebrated in the form of a Ḍola Utsava using a small golden haṃsa at the time of the Makara
Saṅkrānti, along with perhaps other Pongal rituals such as the decoration of cows.
Substantial changes took place in these rituals before King Chulalongkorn wrote his
Royal Ceremonies in the late 19th century, most of them likely as part of the reconstitution
of royal ritual that took place during the foundation of the new capital at Bangkok.
Most importantly, the Trīyampawāi and Trīppawāi were combined by duplicating the
Trīyampawāi template of daily recitation and offerings—ten days for Iśvara and five
for Nārāyaṇa—with each portion now concluded with a swinging of the golden haṃsa
taken from the old Trīppawāi. This newly formed composite festival, the Trīyampawāi-
Trīppawāi, was placed in the second lunar month (December-January) to avoid problems
posed by flooding in the first lunar month, which is when the Trīyampawāi had been
celebrated in the old city.
While this much is a historical reconstruction, the most recent changes to the
Siamese rituals derived from the Tamil traditions of Mārgaḻi are well documented in
historical evidence. Chulalongkorn himself reports that his father King Mongkut, as part
of a reform agenda, added merit-making ceremonies to the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi in
the mid-19th century to make it more “Buddhist.”63 The elaborate Swing Festival was
discontinued in 1934 in the wake of the Revolution, leaving only the vestiges of the
“Lady Board” ceremonial, the daily recitations and offerings, and the two ceremonial
swingings of the golden haṃsa, all of which were confined to the temples and grounds
of Thēwa Sathān. The rapidly spreading popularity of Brahmā in the late 20th century
then led to the construction of a Brahmā shrine in the front courtyard of Thēwa Sathān
and the addition of a third haṃsa-swinging ceremony for Brahmā the day after the
swinging for Iśvara. And thus was formed the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi as it is celebrated
to this day. Further changes can be expected in the coming decades, especially as a
wave of philo-Hinduism, made possible by the Western discourse on religion, increased
globalization, and the spark provided by the popularity of the Ērāwan Shrine to Brahmā,
continues to sweep Thai society.
There are two major observations I would like to make about the history of the
Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi in Thai court ritual. The first is that it very clearly illustrates the
invention and reinvention of tradition. Even though there are abundant clues to indicate

63
พระจุลจอมเกล้าเจ้าอยู่หัว, พระราชพิธีสิบสองเดือน, 127-128.

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 142 Nathan McGovern

that the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi has roots in Tamil traditions, the precise links can be
difficult to discern because it and its antecedents are not and, as far as I can tell, were never
celebrated in exactly the same way as in Tamil Nadu. Tamil Brahmans were inventive in
their adaptation of rituals to the Siamese context from their very first emigration to that
country, and their descendants who serve the Thai court in the present day continue to be
creative in adapting their traditions to changing circumstances. A particularly obvious
example of this is the addition in recent decades of a haṃsa-swinging ceremony to send
Brahmā back to heaven—an addition that does not really fit the logic of the existing
Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi, but which does meet the needs of a Thai populace among
whom Brahmā has become arguably the most popular “Brahmanical” god. At times
royal intervention has played a role in the transformation of the Brahmans’ traditions,
as when Rama IV added a merit-making component to the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi as
part of his Buddhist reform agenda. Often, however, the biggest changes have come as
the result of mundane practical concerns. The originally independent Trīyampawāi and
Trīppawāi rituals were likely merged into a single composite ceremony at the beginning
of the Bangkok period to simplify the ritual calendar as the royal court Brahmans were
reconstituted; at or around the same time, this reformulated festival was moved from
the first to the second month due to logistical concerns about flooding. Likewise, in
1934 after the Revolution, the Swing Festival was discontinued as an expensive and
dangerous extravagance.
The second lesson to be learned from the history of the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi is
the importance of not allowing modern geographical categories to blind us to the fact
that South and Southeast Asia have in many ways operated as a single geographical
region throughout much of history. We can see localization clearly at work in the
history of the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi. Yes, certain Tamil traditions associated with
the month of Mārkaḻi were transmitted to Siam when Tamil Brahmans emigrated there
and were integrated into the royal court. But they were the only South Asian actors
involved in the process from then on, and their influence as such was quite minimal.
They were constrained in their activities by the demands of the Siamese monarchy
and more generally by Siamese custom and culture, which was quite different from
that of Tamil country. The fact that the Thai court Brahmans have lost the ability to
understand Tamil and Sanskrit and have become fully acculturated to Thai society is
a testament to the overwhelming pressure of localization. Likewise, the unique way
in which the Trīyampawāi, Trīppawāi, and their more recent composite have been
celebrated demonstrates that from the beginning these Brahmans and their descendants
were effectively local actors, reacting and adapting to local circumstances and their
vicissitudes.
The debate over Indianization that has taken place in Southeast Asian studies is in
fact mostly an artifact of the geographical divide in the modern academy between South
Asian Studies and Southeast Asian Studies. When framed within the context of the larger
geographical unit of Southern Asia, as has been advocated by Feener and Blackburn,64

R. Michael Feener and Anne M. Blackburn, eds., Buddhist and Islamic Orders in Southern Asia: Comparative
64

Perspectives (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019), 8-9.

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there is nothing fundamentally different—except perhaps in degree—between the

process by which the Thai Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi was created and recreated over
the past five centuries and the process by which Brahman lineages spread first from
Kuru country eastward into the Gangetic plain and then southward into the Deccan,
all the while creatively adapting older traditions to new and changing circumstances.
The variegated traditions created in this process have become collectively known in
modern times as Hinduism, but it is only a set of historical accidents—the dominance
of a Pali Buddhist mini-cosmopolis in mainland Southeast Asia in the 2nd millennium,
as well as the fact that neither the British nor any of their predecessors ruled over South
and Southeast Asia as a single unit—that has led to “Hinduism” being seen as properly
South Asian as opposed to Southeast Asian.
There remains therefore an urgent need for comparative projects involving
Hinduism in South and Southeast Asia such as is represented by the Thai Trīyampawāi-
Trīppawāi festival and the Tamil traditions of Mārkaḻi. As Peter van der Veer has argued,
however, “comparison should be conceived not primarily in terms of comparing societies
or events, or institutional arrangements across societies, although this is important, but
as a reflection on our conceptual framework as well as on the history of interactions that
have constituted our object of study.”65 The framework of Southern Asia is not merely
geographical, but conceptual, allowing us to “compare” the Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi
and Tamil traditions of Mārkaḻi not as such, as discrete entities, but as a single process
in a broader context of similar processes. In an academy siloed as it is by Cold War
categories, there are lessons for specialists both of South Asia and of Southeast Asia
to be learned. For specialists of Southeast Asia, it is that that region, especially in its
religious aspects, must be understood in the broader geographical context of Southern
Asia. Localization does not set Southeast Asia apart from South Asia but situates it
alongside South Asia in a larger continuity. For specialists of South Asian religions, it
is that Southeast Asia is important to understanding the history of Hinduism, not just as
an addendum or afterthought, but as an extension of the same processes present in the
history of South Asian Hinduism.

65
Peter van der Veer, The Value of Comparison (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 28, cited in ibid., 2.

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 144 Nathan McGovern

Comparative Table of Trīyampawāi-Trīppawāi

Day Late Ayutthaya Early Bangkok (from the Today
(from the Record, Royal Ceremonies, 1888)
1735)
Month First (Nov.-Dec.) Second (Dec.-Jan.) Second (Dec.-Jan.)
Waxing 1
Waxing 2
Waxing 3
Waxing 4
Waxing 5
Waxing 6
Waxing 7 Trīyampawāi 1st Day: Trīyampawāi 1st Day:
Initial vows, Opening the Initial vows, Opening the
Door of Heaven for Iśvara, Door of Heaven for Iśvara,
Offerings and Recitations, Offerings and Recitations
Parade and Swinging
Games, King Donates Food
to Buddhist Monks*, Monks
Pray at Wat Phra Kaew*
Waxing 8 Trīyampawāi 2nd Day: Trīyampawāi 2nd Day:
Offerings and Recitations, Offerings and Recitations
Monks Pray at Wat Phra
Kaew*
Waxing 9 Trīyampawāi 3rd Day: Trīyampawāi 3rd Day:
Boards Ceremony (placing Boards Ceremony (placing
in holes), Offerings and in holes), Offerings and
Recitations, Parade and Recitations
Swinging Games, Monks
Pray at Wat Phra Kaew*
Waxing 10 Trīyampawāi 4th Day: Trīyampawāi 4th Day:
Offerings and Recitations Offerings and Recitations
Waxing 11 Trīyampawāi 5th Day: Trīyampawāi 5th Day:
Offerings and Recitations Offerings and Recitations
Waxing 12 Trīyampawāi 6th Day: Trīyampawāi 6th Day:
Boards Ceremony Boards Ceremony
(removing from holes), (removing from holes),
Offerings and Recitations Offerings and Recitations
Waxing 13 Trīyampawāi 7th Day: Trīyampawāi 7th Day:
Offerings and Recitations Offerings and Recitations
Waxing 14 Trīyampawāi 8th Day: Trīyampawāi 8th Day:
Offerings and Recitations Offerings and Recitations
Waxing 15 Trīyampawāi 9th Day: Trīyampawāi 9th Day:
Offerings and Recitations Offerings and Recitations

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Day Late Ayutthaya Early Bangkok (from the Today

(from the Record, Royal Ceremonies, 1888)
1735)
Waning 1 Trīyampawāi 1st Trīyampawāi 10th Day: Trīyampawāi 10th Day:
Day: Offerings Offerings and Recitations, Offerings and Recitations,
and Recitations Parade to Deliver Śaiva Reception of Śaiva Images
Images from the Palace, from the Palace, Haṃsa-
Haṃsa-Swinging Ceremony Swinging Ceremony to
to Send Off Iśvara, Closing Send Off Iśvara, Closing the
the Door of Heaven for Iśvara Door of Heaven for Iśvara
Trīppawāi 1st Day: Opening Trīppawāi 1st Day:
the Door of Heaven for Opening the Door of
Nārāyaṇa, Offerings and Heaven for Nārāyaṇa,
Recitations Offerings and Recitations
Waning 2 Trīyampawāi 2nd Trīppawāi 2nd Day: Trīppawāi 2nd Day:
Day: Offerings Offerings and Recitations Offerings and Recitations
and Recitations
Waning 3 Trīyampawāi 3rd Trīppawāi 3rd Day: Trīppawāi 3rd Day:
Day: Offerings Offerings and Recitations Offerings and Recitations
and Recitations Reception of Brahmā
Images from Palace,
Haṃsa-Swinging Ceremony
to Send Off Brahmā
Waning 4 Trīyampawāi 4th Trīppawāi 4th Day: Trīppawāi 4th Day:
Day: Offerings Offerings and Recitations Offerings and Recitations
and Recitations
Waning 5 Trīyampawāi 5th Trīppawāi 5th Day: Trīppawāi 5th Day:
Day: Offerings Offerings and Recitations, Offerings and Recitations,
and Recitations Buddhist Monks Give Buddhist Monks Give
Evening Prayers, Parade to Evening Prayers, Reception
Deliver Vaiṣṇava Images of Vaiṣṇava Images from
from Palace, Haṃsa- Palace, Haṃsa-Swinging
Swinging Ceremony to Ceremony to Send Off
Send Off Nārāyaṇa, Closing Nārāyaṇa, Closing the Door
the Door of Heaven for of Heaven for Nārāyaṇa
Nārāyaṇa
Waning 6 Trīyampawāi 6th Tonsure Ceremony for Tonsure Ceremony for
Day: Offerings Children, Merit-making Children, Merit-making
and Recitations Ceremony (Feeding Monks)* Ceremony (Feeding Monks)
Waning 7 Trīyampawāi 7th
Day: Offerings
and Recitations
Waning 8 Trīyampawāi 8th
Day: Offerings
and Recitations
Waning 9 Trīyampawāi 9th
Day: Offerings
and Recitations

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 146 Nathan McGovern

Day Late Ayutthaya Early Bangkok (from the Today

(from the Record, Royal Ceremonies, 1888)
1735)
Waning 10 Trīyampawāi
10th Day:
Offerings and
Recitations
Waning 11 Trīyampawāi
11th Day:
Offerings and
Recitations
Waning 12 Trīyampawāi
12th Day:
Offerings and
Recitations
Waning 13 Trīyampawāi
13th Day:
Offerings and
Recitations
Waning 14 Trīyampawāi
14th Day:
Offerings and
Recitations
Waning 15
Makara Trīppawāi:
Saṅkrānti Haṃsa-Swinging
(Jan. 14 or Ceremony
15)

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