By; Tommy Pauk
T Kayah (Karenni) HE Republic of the Union of Myanmar, formerly known as the Union of Myanmar, is composed with seven states and seven regions (divisions). Kayah State (formerly known as Karenni ) is one of the States of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. The British government recognized its independence in a treaty with Myanmar King Mindon Min on 21st of June, 1875.
The Kayah ethnic people living in this state was called Karenni(ကရင်နီ). It was renamed Kayah State in 1951 after the whole of Myanmar regaining the independence from the British in 1948. There are 135 (one hundred and thirty five) national races in the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. They have been living together since the time immemorial.
In connection with the myths of the dancing couple and the seven “Dway-Meh- Naw” in the Seven Steps Lake (ကန်ခုနစ်ဆင့်), Kayah state is metaphorically called KaNyar-Maw-Kay (ကညားမော်ကေ့) in Kayah term and Dway-Meh-Naw (ဒွေးမယ်နော်ပြည်) or Ngwe-Taung-Pyi (ငွေတောင်ပြည်) in Myanmar terms. Kayah state is known as Kandarya-waddy (ကန္တာရဝတီ) as well.
Kayah state is rich in natural resources and mineral resources particularly marble (N.B. its quality is as fine as the famous Italian marble), water resources, teak, flora and fauna. Significantly, the Law-Pe-Ta-hydro-power station (လောပီတ) produces electricity and supplies to the other states and regions in Myanmar.
Kayah people have their own indigenous dialect, language, traditions, customs, costumes and culture. They depend on agrobased farming livelihood. Animal husbandry is their customary livelihood. Their way of life and livelihood are so simple and conservative.
They are traditional believers in animism, but most of them are Christians. Nevertheless, they preserve their cultural values and traditions so their festivals are associated with culture, traditions and their beliefs as well. The identity of kayah is cherished by all national brethren indeed.
The native ethnic groups living in Kayah state (Formerly known as Kayenni ) ကယား ( ယခင် ကရင်နီ) are Kayah ကယား, Kayaw (ကယော), Gaebar (ဂေဘား), YinTele (ယင်းတလဲ), Kaw-yaw (ကော်ရော) known as( Manu-ma-naw ) (မနူမနော်) and Kayan (Padaung) ကယန်း (ပဒေါင်). Actually, the term Kayan (Padaung) ကယန်း (ပဒေါင်) tribe is collectively called for the inclusiveness of the small tribes ; Lah-thar (လထာ), Kare-doth(ကဲဒေါ့), Kagaung (ကခေါင်း), and Ka-ngan (Yinbaw) ကငန် (ယင်းဘော်).
Other ethnic groups residing in Kayah State are Bamar (ဗမာ), Intha (အင်းသား) , Pa-oh (ပအို့ဝ်) and Shan (ရှမ်း). The tribal people of Kayah State wear distinct and beautiful traditional dresses.
The estimated population in Kayah state is more than two hundred fifty thousand (250000). Kayah state is a combination of three “Sawphya” (Chieftain) districts namely Kye-Phoe-Gyi district (ကြယ်ဖိုးကြီးနယ်), Kandarrawaddy district (ကန္တာရဝတီနယ်) and Bawlakhe district (ဘော်လခဲနယ်).
When you travel in Kayah state, you will see the scenes of the traditional totem poles which are in close proximity to the Kayah villages. These poles are depicting vividly as the major feature of the Kayah state. Kae-Htoe-Boe festival (ကယားတံခွန်တိုင်ပွဲတော်) is among the most distinctive festivals in Kayah state, The Kae-Htoe-Boe (ကေ့ထျိုးဘိုးပွဲတော်) festival or Kayah-takhundine-Pwe-daw (ကယားတံခွန်တိုင်ပွဲတော်) in Myanmar term, is held in April every year. Kae-Htoe-Boe festival (ကယားတံခွန်တိုင်ပွဲတော်) is also called Trar-Ei-Loo (တျားအီလူး) Yin Baw (ယင်းဘော်) calls the festival Gan-Khumt (ဂန်းခွမ့်). Though the terms are different, all the Kayah people celebrate the Kae-Htoe-Boe festival in the same way together.
How Kae-Htoe-Boe festival is celebrated
(တံခွန်တိုင်ပွဲတော်ကျင်းပပုံ)
The kayah living in the villages have to find the tall and straight tree (traditionally teak or eugenia or Dipterocarpus tuberculatus) in the forest. Before choosing the tree, villagers have to examine or check the tree whether it is straight and free from any flaws. Besides, it cannot be infested by birds or bugs. The tree must not have vines or nests of birds such as vultures or eagles at the top either.
They believe that the tree is un-clean if the birds’ nests are found in it as they are the carnivorous. Since the tree to be used for sacred totem pole, it must be totally clean and free from dirty things.On the very day they fell the tree, they abstain from eating fermented soya beans, snakehead fish and forest animals like samba deer meat. However, they can eat the chicken or pork or fish that is in their neighborhood.
When they find the suitable tree, they fell it and bring it to the designated grounds for transforming into the Kay Htoe Boe or totem pole. Then they offer lighted candles, lighted incense sticks,
a bunch of bananas and a bunch of sugarcane to the spirits in line with their traditional belief in animism.
Next, they prepare and decorate the log. Finally, they erect it on the designated ground at the venue. The fields or grounds for erecting totem pole must be chosen in the eastern part of the certain village. As the Sun rises in the east and they regard the rising Sun as the good sign so they usually chose the site in the east in order to erect the traditional totempole. In fact, they consider the eastern part of the certain village an auspicious site for celebrating Kay Htoe Boe festival or sacred totem pole festival.
Kay Htoe Boe (ကေ့ထျိုးဘိုး) is a Kayah term. The word ‘kay’ means a state, ‘htoe’ means flourishing and accomplished, and ‘boe’ means sacred pole. The festival is celebrated with ethnic dance competition, a costume contest, and other entertainment programs. When the Kay Htoe Boe pole is erected, participants dance around the pole. This festival is celebrated by all Kayah people of Christianity, Buddhism and Animism.
The festival is held by all tribes in Kayah state together showing that they all maintain and preserve the traditional festival and solidarity of the entire Kayah ethnic tribes. In other words, Kay Htoe Boe (ကေ့ထျိုးဘိုး) festival portrays the traditional beliefs, unity, culture, identity and ethnicity. The essence or purpose of celebrating or holding this festival is to obtain blessings from the spirits that they traditionally believe.
They ask blessings for their well-being, wealth, peace and prosperity in life. Kay-Htoe-Boe, the sacred pole indicates the five precepts: (1) To be born innocent (2) To behave righteously (3) To work honestly (4) To eat justly (5) To live peacefully in harmony with all living beings.
This festival is held to venerate the eternal god and creator messengers, to give thanks for blessings during the year, to appeal for forgiveness, and pray for good harvest, good rain, plentiful crops, health of mind and body, prosperity and protection of natural disasters and pandemic or epidemic.
In addition, Kay Htoe Boe festival commemorates the belief that the creator god gave form and life to the world by planting a small post in the ground.
Kayah ethnic people read the chicken thigh bones for prediction before holding any traditional ceremonies or festivals
Kae-Htoe-Boe (ကေ့ထျိုးဘိုး) festival is also accompanied by a reading of the chicken bones to predict the year ahead. This fowl bone reading is done before holding any traditional ceremony or festivals in Kayah community.
The Kayah people use to predict their life, augury, weather condition, all the needs and wants by reading at the holes of the chicken thigh bones. They use male chicken for this reading. They take out the thigh bones of the male chicken and look at the holes in the thigh bones. The male chicken has two or three holes. Every chicken has holes in thigh bones.
According to their traditional belief, if the holes in the right thigh bone are found to be higher than the ones on the left, it is considered good for the coming year of the village and villagers’ health, harvest, weather conditions. In other words, it is a good omen.
If the holes in the right thigh bone are found to be lower than the ones on the left, it is considered bad for the coming year of the village and villagers’ health, harvest, weather conditions. In other words, it is a bad omen.It is learnt that this reading at the holes of the chicken thigh bones is done just before holding the any occasions in Kayah community.
Now, the readers have learnt that whenever they hold their traditional ceremonies or festivals, the kayah people make use of prediction for the good or bad results with the reference of reading chicken thigh bones. The description of the Kae-Htoe-Boe (ကေ့ထျိုးဘိုး) festival or sacred totem pole festival accompanied by reading of the chicken thigh bones for prediction makes the readers interested.
Credit; Khu Hla Chay
(Kye-Phoe-Gyi) (ကြယ်ဖိုးကြီးနယ်)
Reference; Wikipedia
