PITHI LEUK REASEI (RETURN OF PROSPEROUS CEREMONY)

PITHI LEUK REASEI (RETURN OF PROSPEROUS CEREMONY)

By MEY Sopheakdei

The reason why the prosperous ceremony is done is believed in the happiness in one’s life and they want their fortunes more and more prosperous. Such ceremony is the belief of Brahmanism.

Festivities: The ceremony is done at home, Four or five Buddhist monks get invited, Acha prepares the ritual objects

Celebrating: After the arrivals of the Buddhist monks in the house owner, relatives and friends greet and salute the monk and offer them soft drinks. Once everyone sits in proper positions, Acha begins to burn incense sticks and candles and pay respect to the triple Gems. When Acha has finished, he gives the basin of water to the monk to sprinkle all the member of the family, relatives, and friends, sitting and saluting quietly around, with the magic water while reciting a protective prayer. Apart from this, there is a folk relevant to the above ceremony and it is narrated below:

Long, long time ago, there was a king ruling a kingdom with tenfold of qualifications. Because the king was so old and had no children, the people throughout the kingdom were so worried that they brought together to ask for a royal boy for a successor to the king. Agreeing with the people, he ordered the queen to make an offering to the angels to have a wish for a child. Such a festivity made the angels so excited that they blessed the king and queen what they had prayed. Not sooner, a baby boy was delivered and congratulated by the people throughout the kingdom.

When the royal boy grew up, he chose 500 servants who are the same age to take care of him. Moreover, he never cared about their royal wealth but studies. He was not allowed to go to the flowing stream near by the royal palace, because the royal fortune teller said, “if you want the kingdom to stay away from any disaster, don’t allow the royal boy to visit the bank of the stream. The prediction is that the royal boy will have danger to death, eaten up by Neakta’s croc (guardian spirit) living in the stream at the age of fifteen and other disasters. To prevent these, you must have a ceremony by inviting four or seven Buddhist monks to preach and have a return prosperous ceremony. After hearing such worrying prediction, the king ordered 100 soldiers to keep watches the royal boy, dying to visit the beautiful stream.

One year was just like a century for the royal boy when he was 15. One day, a birthday party organized for the king and while the people in the palace were overjoyed the dance and drinking, the royal boy ran out toward the flowing stream and untied a boat at the bank of the stream, got on the boat and allowed it to be carry along the current because he did not know how to row. Knowing that the royal boy was missing, the soldiers were panic-stricken, but they exactly know that they royal boy must have gone to the stream. By the time the soldiers reached the back of the stream, the boy’s boat had been floating far from the bank. However, they were very happy to see the boy in safety and thought the boy was away from the danger and suddenly, the guardian spirit’s crocodile appeared in the stream near the boy’s boat, which made the soldiers stupefied. Some soldiers tried to shout and throw the stones at eh croc while the others knocked the sticks to frighten the croc but these were useless. In the end, the crock turned over the boat, bit and went into the water.

Once the king and queen got the news, they went to the scene. They were stupefied and crying. They made a prayer to the angels and other guardian spirits and promised to offer things as the one done before, but what they did useless. Then the soldiers accompanied the king and queen back to the palace. Arriving in the palace, the king ordered the soldiers to scatter the water in the stream in order to bring the boy’s body for the funeral service. The soldiers burnt the torches and built a dike. They did until the stream ran out of water and then they caught the croc and cut open the crocodile’s belly to get the body of the boy for the funeral service.

Such a belief makes the Cambodian people believe that whenever they are told they have bad luck, they must invite Buddhist monks to have a ceremony called the return of prosperous ceremony in order to get rid of that bad luck.