Phu Yen currently has nearly 20,000 Cham people living mainly in Dong Xuan, Son Hoa, and Song Hinh districts. They maintain many of their ethnic customs and practices in their daily lives.
Unique identity
Along the banks of the Ba River in Son Hoa and Song Hinh districts, the Cham people live in the largest numbers, with nearly 2/3 of the total Cham people in the province. Along the rivers, streams, and valleys surrounded by mountains and forests, places with water for daily use, rice fields, and bowl-shaped hills for growing crops are where they choose to live. The Cham people often live according to their clans, so each hamlet has only about 5-7 stilt houses, and hamlets with large clans have about 30 houses.
If the Cham people in Dong Xuan district have a cultural interweaving with the Ba Na people, the Cham people in Son Hoa and Song Hinh districts have a strong cultural interweaving and exchange with the Ede people. The most noticeable marks are in their costumes, houses, gong performances, etc.
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| Cham women's costumes. Photo: LE KHA |
The traditional costumes of the Cham people are all woven by themselves. Men wear loincloths, women wear nen. The loincloths and nen are all patterned, some are worth as much as a cow. Ms. Kpa Ho Khiem, President of the Women's Union of Ca Lui Commune (Son Hoa District) said: "The Cham people grow cotton, spin yarn and weave fabric for their own use. The spinning loom is very rudimentary, it takes them 15-30 days to spin a string (about 500 grams of yarn). The time to weave loincloths and nen is 1-3 months because they mainly weave during the off-season."
The Cham people grow rice and corn to fill their stomachs, and warm and nice clothes are secondary. Each stilt house has 2-3 fireplaces for the whole family to keep warm in the winter.
Each village has its own self-governing regime. Village representatives are elected by the people. They are prestigious village elders with a lot of experience in farming and animal husbandry, and understand and correctly apply the Cham people's customary laws.
Preserving many customs and rituals
Mr. Oi Thu in Xuan Lanh commune (Dong Xuan district) said: "In the village, there are shamans and sorcerers who perform the worship rituals of the village and families every time they organize buffalo stabbing festivals, mountain opening ceremonies, field worship ceremonies, housewarming ceremonies, birthday celebrations for grown-up children, and worship ceremonies to ask the gods to bless the village with peace."
The custom of offering cattle, buffalo, and chicken (called chrai in Cham), animals that cause disaster, illness, and family disharmony... is for the shaman to use gloves, squeeze chicken eggs, and stretch a string to catch and kill any animal that is hit. The Cham also have a custom of offering (poghơh-borcang) to condemn those who speak harshly and often curse their relatives and villagers, that is, offering to shut the mouths of bad people.
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| Cham people's house. Photo: LE KHA |
The Cham believe that humans and all things have souls and are ruled by gods. However, they limit their worship to only the gods who keep the peace of the family and community, such as the god of rain, the god of wind, the god of land, the god of rivers and streams, and the god of mountains and forests.
Mr. Ma Mang in Phuoc Tan commune (Son Hoa district) said: “The Cham people have the custom of stabbing a buffalo and turning it around to pay their debt to the gods, because the homeowner prays to the gods to bless them with good health, to avoid disasters, to have a prosperous business, and to love and care for each other as a family… The offerings to the gods include a male buffalo, a pig, a chicken and “choe” wine”. When a family or village organizes a buffalo stabbing ceremony, the local residents and neighboring villagers come to share the homeowner’s wishes. They play gongs until the jungle fowl crows in the morning before stopping. They drink “choe” wine until the sun rises above the mountain top before stopping.
Due to cultural interweaving, the wedding customs of the Cham people are basically the same as those of the Ede people. The wedding is held on both sides, with many pigs, chickens, cows, and rice wine being slaughtered to celebrate the man getting married and the woman getting married. In addition to the material things provided by the family, relatives and acquaintances from other villages also bring cows along with a set of 5 gongs to join in the fun. Later, the person receiving the cow must attend the ceremony again, and it must be equal to or larger than the animal received.
The Cham people also have a grave abandonment ceremony. After the burial, if the family can afford it, they will hold the grave abandonment ceremony within 30 days; if they have not prepared all the offerings, they will hold this ceremony every 1-3 years. For the Cham people, the grave abandonment ceremony is a very important spiritual ritual for the dead and the living.
According to the Cham people, the Creator (called Mo Pinh) is the supreme deity who created humans and gave birth to all things on earth. Whether humans live long or die young is decided by Mo Pinh. She also decides the wealth and poverty, happiness and suffering of humans. The Cham people believe that Mo Pinh also created the sky and the earth. Therefore, in worship rituals, they abstain from calling Mo Pinh but instead call her Yang Troi (god of heaven).
In their religious life, the Cham people fear the most is the brother god. This god often teases the god of thunder, causing people to be sick, ill, and encounter disasters. The characteristics of the brother god are that he sometimes laughs, sometimes cries, sometimes is sober, sometimes is drunk, often wanders alone on wild hills, in deep forests or during times of wind, rain, thunder and lightning.
“The Cham people’s customary law prohibits villagers and people from other places from defecating, releasing dead animals, or unsanitary objects into rivers and streams. Anyone who does these things will be swept away by the river god. No one dares to touch the ancient trees and primeval forests at the source of water, or near the place of residence, because those products are from heaven. Anyone who touches them will bring shame to the whole family and clan,” said village elder Oi Muk in Kit hamlet, Song Hinh commune (Song Hinh district).
Social life is increasingly developing, there is an exchange between regions, the Cham people in Phu Yen approach new cultural life so they have eliminated customs that are no longer suitable. They preserve and promote cultural values imbued with the identity of their people.
Mr. So Minh Chien, Party Secretary Chairman of People's Committee of Phuoc Tan commune (Son Hoa district) |
TRAN LE KHA
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