“Nang Nak”. Nak was the faithful and loving wife of a soldier, who dies in childbirth while her husband is away fighting the Burmese. The husband, Nai Mak is injured but survives, due to the intervention of a powerful monk Ven. Somdet Tho, who treats him with herbs and sacred Pali protective chants. The soldier returns to his village at Pra Khanong (now part of greater Bangkok, Sukhumvit 77, Soi 7) to resume married life. Nai Mak doesn’t realize that his, wife Nang Nak is a ghost, whose psychic connection to her husband was so powerful , that her life force or spirit (winyan) does not move on to be reborn , but remains, waiting for her husband. She is a powerful ghost and creates the illusion that she and the baby are still alive. Only Nai Mak sees the illusion and lives with his wife, blissfully ignorant of her true nature. The villagers know Nang Nak is dead; but the jealous ghost kills anyone trying to warn the husband. She terrorizes anyone who tries to thwart her, including the midwife who tried to prevent her death, and who tries to warn Nai Maak of her real identity. The powerful ghost resists the villagers’ attempts to exorcise her, and kills a local shaman/exorcist (Mor Pi) who uses Brahmanic chants and yantras, which are ineffective. She terrorizes the ineffective local monk, and she punishes him by polluting the image room of his temple by leaving her dirty footprints on the ceiling.
On one level her story and its popular appeal can be ascribed to its reaffirmation of core Buddhist teachings and values. A disruptive and dangerous ghost is pacified and tamed by the power of Buddha dhamma as represented by the powerful ethical and ritual authority of the figure of Somdet To. His ritual and ethical power is established by his healing of the injured Nai Mak when he was still soldier. Somdet To also seems to know of the soldiers deep psychic connection to his wife, and that something has gone wrong, because he urges the soldier not to return home but ordain as a monk. The story also highlights the limitations of that power, as indicated by the failure of the ineffective local monk to pacify the ghost. Ven. Somdet To exhibits the higher order powers (iddhi) well as the virtue (sila) and compassion (karunna) of a monk advanced in meditative practice and ritual mastery. He is not hostile, but shows compassion to Nang Nak, as well as to Nai Mak. He acknowledges their love, allowing them to embrace for a last time. But he insists that they must both accept change and impermanence (anicca) as inevitably and be reconciled to death, as part of the natural order.
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