Hymn for the Elephants' Feast

Abstract:"Hymn for the Elephants' Feast" may be the oldest surviving rhymed poem in Khmer. The archaic language, transitional between Old and Middle Khmer, suggests it was based on now-lost ritual texts of the Angkorian kings. Across the region, "Hymn for the Elephants' Feast" and similar poems would have once been recited in conjunction with royal rituals to capture wild elephants from the forest. Such elephants were essential to Southeast Asian monarchs, not only for labor and for battle but also as palladia that symbolized the potency of a king's reign. The process of rounding up elephants in the jungle was orchestrated as an elaborate Brahmanical rite, accompanied by chants and offerings to various Hindu deities.This chant was intended to be recited at the beginning of such rituals. The first deity invoked, Ganesha, is celebrated as a remover of obstacles, and so is afforded the first spot. Son of Shiva and Parvati, Ganesha is distinguished by his human body and elephant head. According to one Indian narrative, referenced obliquely in the Khmer poem, Ganesha's ordinary human head was destroyed by Saturn, a planet and deity known for his destructive gaze. Most of the stanzas of "Hymn for the Elephants' Feast" are devoted to Vanaspati, literally "Lord of Trees," or brah brai in Khmer. Vanaspati is the Hindu god of the whole plant kingdom, a personification of Nature Himself. The text briefly invokes another deity, Devakarman, a powerful elephant god who serves as the symbolic leader of the flesh-and-blood elephants rounded up during the ritual. The feast of offerings to Devakarman and his pachyderm troops is regarded as a gift to Vanaspati, the ultimate ruler of the jungles where the elephants live.Very little is known about Khun Thepkrawi (a court title meaning "divine poet"), the author or editor to whom most manuscripts ascribe this text. He was said to come from the northern Siamese city of Sukhothai, which flourished as an independent kingdom in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries before its absorption into Ayutthaya. The structure of Khun Thepkravi's version of "Hymn for the Elephants' Feast" alternates between portions in Brahma's Song meter and others in the Narration meter. The English translation uses these changes in meter as a basis for dividing the poem into discrete sections.Given the difficulties and uncertainties in the text and its transmission, the translation is necessarily speculative in some passages. The deep Brahmanical erudition and keen poetic sense of the author are readily apparent, however. tw