The very first rite that is performed in association with swidden cultivation is the rite called ka lau hy’, or the “divining of swiddens”. This is the simplest of all the rites performed in the agricultural cycle and it is held after the head of the household has decided on a number of potential swidden locations (as described in Chapter V, pp. 266–7). Divination is meant to establish the most favourable and, hence, the final choice of a swidden site. To do this, the ritual owner of the swidden-to-be has to go to each potential swidden location and, there, collect a handful of soil which is then wrapped up in banana leaf, the ubiquitous wrapping material of the Palokhi Karen. The samples of soil are then taken back to the house where a pair of chicken humeri (from chickens which have been eaten on previous occasions) are tied to each bundle of soil.

When all the households which intend to swidden in the year have collected all their samples of soil, the headman Tamu’ then decides on a day most convenient for all when the divination of these chicken bones may be carried out. The divination is performed by Tamu’, often with the assistance of the elders in the village.

On the day decided by Tamu’, the various households present their bundles of soil with their accompanying chicken bones to him in the open space before his house. As with most if not all occasions of this nature, divination by the headman is an informal affair. He receives the bundles of soil and both he and the head of the household, or the ritual owner, unwrap the bundles placing the chicken bones on the samples of soil. Tamu’ then picks up a pair of bones and scrapes away the dust, soot, grime and any left over flesh from them. Next, he cuts four fine slivers of bamboo about the length of toothpicks. Taking these one at a time, he searches out tiny holes in the humeri near their extremeties. These holes are the points of insertion of tendons in the bone and blood vessels leading to the marrow. The slivers of bamboo are inserted into these holes and examined for their orientation relative to the horizontal and vertical axes of the bones when they are held upright perpendicular to the ground. The principal criterion for a favourable outcome in this method of divination is symmetry in the orientation of the bamboo slivers along both axes.^[4] If the outcome of this augury is favourable, this means that the site from which the sample of soil was collected may be swiddened without danger or mishap to the members because it is believed that the localised spirits which inhabit the area can be persuaded to leave.^[5] There is also a general belief that the swidden will be farmed successfully. Even if divination of the first bundle of soil results in positive prognostications, Tamu’ will nonetheless proceed to divine the other bones presented along with the other soil samples. If more than one location is suitable for swiddening, then the household can make a free choice as to which site it wishes to cultivate. On the other hand, if divination shows that not one of the sites is suitable for cultivation, then the household must proceed to seek out further alternative sites and repeat the procedure of divination on a future date with the headman all over again.

Once a household has a site determined as suitable for swiddening purposes, the ritual owner must then go to the site to claim it for the purposes of cultivation. This is done in the following way. The bundle of soil and the chicken bones, along with the slivers of bamboo, are taken to the place where the soil was obtained and the bundle is then placed in the fork of a branch of any tree in the area. The bundle may not be placed on the group or returned to the earth. The Palokhi Karen do not have a ready explanation for this practice but its symbolism is clear. The act of not returning the soil to the earth or ground represents symbolically the appropriation of the land for agricultural purposes. The prayer that is said when the bundle of soil and bones is thus deposited in the tree suggests that this is indeed the significance of this practice (see below), pointing to a concordance in the expressive meanings of the verbal and non-verbal aspects of this ritual. There is, as I argue later, also another aspect, namely, a high-low opposition implicit in this performance the significance of which is the imposition of a certain order along with the appropriation of land for cultivation. The soil samples and chicken bones with unfavourable portents, however, are thrown in the bush around the village. Although the soil samples are not returned to their original locations, there is nevertheless a certain symmetry in the symbolism of the disposal of these samples. The bush is not part of the settlement; it is a place where the Palokhi Karen defecate and where the detritus of their domestic lives are disposed including, as we have seen, the cooking vessels and utensils of divorced spouses.

The prayer which is said when the soil samples and bones are deposited in the tree is addressed to the spirits which are believed to inhabit the locality. The following is an example of the prayers said when the site is claimed for cultivation.

The theme of this prayer (as with other similar prayers) is dispossession and appropriation. The spirits that inhabit the locality are told to leave and the ritual owner claims the land for agricultural purposes.

The expropriation of land from the spirits may be seen in the simple declarative sentences of intentionality which form part of the prayer. It is also expressed in certain tropological features of the prayer which also reveal other associated ideas. The contrast between “fallow swidden” (chghi) and “clearing” (tatoethae’), for example, is not merely one between regenerated forest and clearing; as their dyadic complements show, the contrast is also one between forest and a clearing that is a circular space. The underlying images of these contrasting metaphors are the disorder of naturally growing vegetation and a clearing marked by a regular, geometric shape which, in the order of things, is the product of human agency.

This contrast itself draws upon a more general distinction between forest and settlement akin to that made by the Northern Thai (Davis [1984:81–3]). It is also found in the Palokhi Karen belief that calamity would befall the village if wild animals (such as barking deer), which enter the village, are killed within the boundaries of the settlement.^[7] The killing of such animals is described by the term tahaghau, that is, “destructive”. The term, as we have seen, is used to explain the prohibition on “crooked” unions. The consequences of such “destructive” acts in both cases are that the land becomes “hot” and crops will be “destroyed”. Although the Palokhi Karen themselves translate tahaghau by the Northern Thai term khoet or “taboo”, it is clear that these consequences represent the infertility of land.

The forest and settlement, therefore, are important categories in Palokhi Karen thought. They establish a certain cognitive order in the lived-in world of the Palokhi Karen. The domains they represent also imply certain forms of appropriate behaviour and conduct; any inappropriate behaviour or action which transgresses the boundaries of these categorial domains results in “hot” land and the destruction of crops — the ultimate sanction that the community and its members can face.

Dispossession is also to be seen in that part of the prayer where the local spirits are told to “Go where the waters bend” in the “Land of Black Silver”. These expressions reveal further conceptual associations which cohere with the distinction between forest and settlement. The meaning of these cryptic references rests on certain cosmological beliefs. According to one informant, the Land of Black Silver is a reference to the after-world inhabited by spirits (as against souls) of the dead. It is a world that is an inverted version of the here-and-now world of the living.^[8] The Land of Black Silver, thus, contains an implicit contrast with the world of the living where silver is not black, that is, untarnished. In the larger context of the ritual, however, this elliptical cosmological reference cannot be restricted merely to drawing out this implicit dichotomy or else it would be meaningless. Its significance, therefore, must lie in the only possible (but unarticulated) distinction suggested by other features of the prayer, namely, the contrast between forest and settlement, wild and domesticated, and the non-living and the living contained in the implied dichotomy: that is, human activity in “non-human” (spirit) areas within the kau. In other words, the cultivation of the forest is conceived of in terms of a process produced by human agency in an environment which is not regarded as an area of human activity.

The meaning of “where the waters bend” is more obscure and I was unable to elicit any exegesis for this phrase other than that this is where spirits may be found. I would venture the suggestion, nonetheless, that it contains an implicit contrast paralleling that between “crooked” (ke’) and “straight” (lo) which have much the same metaphorical connotations in Palokhi Karen as do the English terms.^[9] It would be consistent with the other distinctions made in the prayer.

The appropriation of land, on the other hand, is unequivocally stated in the prayer in which the ritual owner explicitly says that he intends to cultivate the area. It is significant that cultivating a swidden is said to be doing all that is “good” and “pure” while the spirits themselves are declared to be “lords of that which is not good, that which is not pure”. The dyadic pair formed by the terms “good” and “pure” stands for “auspicious” conditions which, elsewhere as we have seen in the Head Rite, are obtained from the Lord of the Water, Lord of the Land. There are, thus, two senses in which “auspicious” conditions prevail with the appropriation of land from the local spirits. First, the departure of the spirits presents such conditions since the spirits are themselves “inauspicious”. Second, the clearing and cultivation of forest represent conditions of an order which are one and the same as those obtained from the Lord of the Water, Lord of the Land. The creation of these conditions in the latter sense is reiterated consistently in agricultural ritual texts. Its recurrence in the next rite (the rite of clearing of swiddens) indicates, however, that there is yet another significant aspect to these conditions.

The rite of clearing swiddens consists of a short prayer that is said by the head of the household as he first slashes the vegetation of the swidden site. It is performed on the first day of clearing by the household with the assistance of other villagers but it is an individualised performance. The outstanding feature of the rite, however, is that the ritual act is in fact a technical act accompanied by a prayer. The prayer is addressed to the Lord of the Water, Lord of the Land.

It is unmistakably clear that the rite is constituted by a perfect concordance of “performatives”, namely, the technical (“ostension”) and the verbal (“oration”) where the technical becomes ritual by virtue of the recitation of the prayer. But, there is also a dialectical relation between the two. In the prayer previously described, the clearing of the forest is seen to result is auspicious conditions. In the context of this rite, however, the creation of these conditions is dependent on the actual clearing of the forest; the technical act is thus, also the operative analogue of the verbal performance.

It will be noticed that in this rite, these conditions are derived from the Lord of the Water, Lord of the Land which is called “down” (that is, from “above”) to “bestow all that is good, that is pure” whereas in the previous prayer it is the clearing of the forest that is said to produce them. The phrase which expresses these meanings (Ma he loe’ ‘a’ ghe, ‘a’ gwa) is the same in both prayers. Although an Agent is not specified in the phrase (which is a characteristic feature of such simple declarative sentences), the Agents in both cases are identifiable by context and confirmed by native exegesis. The occurrence of the phrase in both prayers and its recitation immediately after the head of the household states that he will clear the “fallow swidden” and “swidden” in the second prayer is, however, significant: it indicates a contiguity between the process of clearing the forest and the descent of the Lord of the Water, Lord of the Land according to which auspicious conditions are effected. This contiguity reveals a deeper meaning to the clearing of forest and the presence of the Lord of the Water, Lord of the Land, namely, that the tutelary spirit is part of the process by which order is established in natural disorder through the creation of boundaries. It also suggests that the state of auspiciousness is representative of this order. Thus, although the Lord of the Water, Lord of the Land is an overlord of a naturally defined domain (kau) in which may be found human settlements and areas occupied by non-human entities or spirits, it is nevertheless identified with a human and cultural order, an integral part of which is the cultivation of land.

It is this which underlies the dichotomous attributes of the tutelary spirit of the domain and the “inauspicious spirit lords”. It also explains the particular symbolism of placing the soil samples and the “auspicious bird bones” and “auspicious chicken bones” in a tree above the ground (rather than returning them to the, as yet, unclaimed land) while the bones are nonetheless said to be “placed down” in the previous prayer.

The planting of rice in swiddens is accompanied by the first major agricultural ritual performances of the season for swidden-cultivating households consisting of three related, but separate rites. The first is the rite of planting swiddens (ly tho hy’) which is held on the first day of planting in swiddens. It is followed by the rite called “planting the (ritual) basket of the yam” (chae’ lau nwae tasae’) which is also performed on the same day. The third is held several days later, in the house, and it is called “drinking the liquor of the rice seed” (‘au si’ by chae’ khli). Unlike the rites entailed in divination and the clearing of swiddens, these three rites are not individualised performances. They are held in the presence of the labour gangs which are formed to assist the household and they involve the participation of village elders and the headman should he be present when a swidden is planted.

Planting begins early in the morning without any ritual performance. During this time, however, the head of the household or the ritual owner of the swidden plants the Old Mother Rice (By Mo Pgha). This is rice that is grown only for ritual purposes and it is never consumed. Its value is entirely symbolic and it is, in fact, rice that symbolises itself. When a household first swiddens on its own, it has to acquire rice seed. This may be obtained from a parental household or purchased from some other household. A small quantity of the seed is set aside to be the Old Mother Rice or, alternatively, some seed may be obtained from the Old Mother Rice of the parental household. The seed is planted in a small plot near the field hut in the swidden and it is harvested each year along with the principal rice crop. Thereafter, the Old Mother Rice is stored above the rice harvest in the household granary suspended from the rafters of the roof of the granary or of the house if the granary is built on the inner verandah of the house. It serves several symbolic functions but the most important is the representation of the continuity of the rice crop or the annual succession of rice from its own seed cultivated in swiddens.

The planting ritual takes place at about mid-day when the work party stops planting for the meal provided by the owners of the swidden. Food offerings consisting of rice, chicken or pork stew and chilli relishes are wrapped in banana leaves by the head of the household or his wife who then give the bundles of food to the headman and elders. The offerings are taken to any of the tree stumps that dot the swidden and the ritual officiants squat down before the tree stumps. Here, they hold up the offerings and pray to the Lord of the Water, Lord of the Land and other tutelary spirits of domains in an invocation similar, or identical, to the invocation which characterises the prayers of the Head Rite. The prayers said by the elders and headman are generally similar but variations in some details are not uncommon.

An example of the prayers said at this time is presented below. This particular prayer was recited by the head of the household (Chi’ of Hllb) who was also the ritual owner of the swidden.

The supplicant then makes a series of requests which are punctuated by invitations to the tutelary spirits to eat the food offerings. The requests are varied:

The prayer then ends with the standard formula for closing prayers addressed to the Lord of the Water, Lord of the Land and the other tutelary spirits.

When the prayers end, the food offerings are then placed on the tree stumps and the ritual officiants return to the field hut where the work party commences on the mid-day meal.

In this particular prayer, there are only a few direct references to the rice that is being planted in the swidden and the plea for a bountiful harvest is condensed in the lines in which the supplicant asks to be “the lord of swidden rice, the lord of rice granaries”. In other versions of the prayer, some of the supplicatory requests directed at the Lord of the Water, Lord of the Land and the other domain spirits are more elaborate in their references to the rice crop. There are, for instance, requests to the tutelary spirits to prevent felled trees from sliding down the slopes of swiddens and destroying the rice crop, or that a month’s work will bring rice for a year, and so on. The tutelary spirits may also be asked for a bountiful harvest in hyperbolic terms where the supplicant or ritual officiant requests that each stalk of rice be made as big as the trees of the Dipterocarp species. Requests for a successful harvest may also be expressed in terms of an invitation (or, more correctly, a declaration) where the spirits are said to “sit in the swidden” and “rise up in the granary”.

Aside from these differences in details, perhaps the most significant common feature in all prayers is the plea that the supplicants be owners (“lords”) of wealth which is described either directly (as in the prayer above) or in terms of “exchangeables”, “silver” (which is now also the term for the currency of Thailand), “bronze frog drums” and “horses and elephants” as stated in the foregoing prayer. Yet another characteristic feature of these prayers is the way in which these pleas for the “lordship” of swidden rice, granaries of rice and wealth in these various forms are framed in terms of a state, or condition, that comes into existence “again” (ke, literally, “return”). The state or condition therefore is expressed in an idiom of repetition or renewal.

For the Palokhi Karen and, indeed, most if not all Karen, the nineteenth century British Indian Empire silver rupees, silver ornaments made from these coins, elephants and bronze drums are wealth par excellence.^[12] They are also symbols of wealth. However, while several households possess silver rupees, bracelets and earrings, none possesses elephants or bronze drums. Furthermore, as I have shown in the last chapter, only a few households achieve surpluses in rice cultivation and these surpluses are generally not traded or sold as a means of accumulating wealth. Thus, self-sufficiency or surplus production in agriculture does not generate wealth in any direct sense in Palokhi. Nor is rice seen as wealth per se. These references to wealth in its various forms, therefore, are of an entirely metaphorical order. What, then, underlies the pervasive occurrence of these metaphors for wealth?

The parallel juxtaposition of these metaphors following the references to “swidden rice” and “rice granaries” indicate that there is a relationship of metonymy between these metaphors and rice in swiddens and granaries. The metaphors in this relationship are, thus, expressions for increase and a bountiful harvest. But, if these condensed metaphors and metonyms represent a rich harvest and increase, they do not imply an absolute, progressive increase through time measured in terms of the agricultural calendar. The consistent use of the aoristic term ke in the constructions containing these metaphors points to a conceptualisation of the process of increase as an on-going, continuing one that repeats and renews itself.

I suggest, however, that there is also a sociological reality reflected in these metaphors which is masked by the ritual textual form that they take. The examples of household budgets in the last chapter demonstrate that it is the households which are self-sufficient in rice and which have rice surpluses that are also able to enjoy a better material standard of living. Their incomes and expenditures are much greater than that of other households. Furthermore, their varied expenditures are on non-subsistence commodities rather than rice. Most of them are also owners of buffaloes and cattle (see Appendix G). While it is true that these households do not indulge themselves in “conspicuous consumption”, the myriad little unintended indicators of their better-off position and the size of their harvests are, on the other hand, not lost on others. This self-sufficiency in rice and the greater ability to purchase non-subsistence commodities are directly influenced by the larger domestic supplies of labour of these households. This is an economic and sociological relationship which the Palokhi Karen are by no means entirely unaware of. The easy equation, however, is that households with bountiful harvests are also those which have a greater access to non-subsistence commodities and are, therefore, “wealthy”. It is this equation, I suggest, which lends these metaphors to the particular metonymical usage in the prayer. But, it also results in a certain misrepresentation, for the Palokhi Karen are unable to exegesise the meanings of these metaphors even in relation to “swidden rice” and “rice granaries” apart from saying that they are “similar” (laugha’).

They also say that these expressions are integral to “old prayers” (thuphata loeploe) which they undoubtedly are (but see below). These metaphors as with those in other ritual texts are not deliberately, or consciously, constructed. They are used because they are traditional formulae and because they are culturally appropriate. Their employment in the prayer, therefore, must also be regarded as the product — in part or in whole — of a certain “miscognition”, in Bourdieu’s sense ([1977]; see also Acciaioli [1981]), of sociological reality. Nevertheless, it is possible that for some individuals there is a muted awareness of at least one aspect of this reality in the prayers they use. For, as the last dyadic set in the series of metaphors suggests, the generation of wealth is expressed in terms of “buying cheap and selling dear”. This is not typical of other similar prayers and it is, in fact, Chi”s own formulation.