ROI ET CULTURE, LOUD AND PROUD

The Boon Pha Wet festival highlights Isan heritage through music and dance performances

- JOHN CLEWLEY

World Beat was out and about in Isan recently for a visit to the annual Boon Pha Wet Festival in Roi Et.

The 35th Boon Pha Wet was held in Saket Nakhon Park from March 7-9 and the three-day event was packed with merit-making ceremonies and Buddhist sermons, a massed dance performance, processions, traditional and modern molam stages, a light and sound show and other cultural shows.

Boon Pha Wet is part of the Heet Sip Song, or 12 monthly merit-making events in Isan. The tradition is rooted in the Buddhist Jataka Tale of Phra Maha (Prince) Vessantara. Still practised in many villages, the three-day event begins with a gathering on day one to prepare and on day two, a procession is held to welcome Phra Vessantara back to the city (or village) after he was banished. On day three, a merit-making ceremony is held for which a thousand balls of rice are made — a number determined by the 1,000 Pali-language verses that make up the prince's story.

On the first day of the festival, a ceremony was held by the Chi River. After official proclamations, governor Chatchawan Benjasiriwong dipped into the river to recover three sacred items, one of which was the Phra Upakut icon. The icon, representing a powerful supernatural monk, is revered and once recovered was paraded in a procession that slowly moved to the park nearby.