>>"Tho" ethnos - Its customs, practices and folk laws
Ta Thi Tam
Ethnology Institute
The Tho, a Viet-Muong language group, lives mostly in Nghe An central province with a population of over 74,000.
The group, which also has other names including Nha Lang, Muong, Con Kha, Xa La Vang, Keo, Mon, Cuoi, Ho, Dan Lai, Ly Ha and Tay Poong, lives on swidden farming and wet rice cultivation, with rice and hemp as the main crops. In the Tho community, forest land is under communal ownership. The Tho usually clears land for rice cultivation for between two and four crops and then moves to another place. The group’s traditional farming method is pricking holes in the earth for sowing in which three people prick holes with a stick followed by seven others (usually women) sowing rice seeds. This method applies in the first crop while in the second crop the group throws seeds and then plows and harrow, which saves seeds but requires more tending efforts.
The Tho usually clears land before the lunar new year, completes sowing in the third or fourth lunar month and harvests in the tenth lunar month. They also grow cassava, maize, potato and especially hemp, a tree used for making hammocks and hunting and fishing nets. During spring, the breeding season of fish, the Tho catches fish with hands, baskets and nets, bringing in an important source of food. The group is good at hunting elephants and bulls, using special traps. They also gather forest products, including greens, fruits, yams and beets.
The Tho’s residential unit is village. Each village has a head who is elected annually and takes charge of collecting taxes, managing the building and repair of village shrines and conducting a ceremony to select the seed owner of the village. The seed owner is selected to clear a small plot of land, prink holes and sow seeds before villagers start a crop. The village also has a person in charge of paperwork and security of the village and a sorcerer conducting village rituals who is given some land serving these rituals. This land belongs to the village.
A Tho man wears white trousers with a rolled waistband, a long black robe and a violet-colored turban. A Tho woman wears a dress with two colorfully embroidered lines sewn from the waistband to the fringe, a white blouse with a hemmed collar and a square white headdress.
Tho young people are free to choose lovers. During festivities, a Tho man can lie talking with one or several girls. When a woman agrees to marry a man, the man asks a matchmaker to go to her family to make a proposal of engagement. After the engagement, the groom must go to the bride’s family once a month, bringing four banh chung (square sticky rice cake filled with green bean paste and pork) and a bottle of wine. If failing to do so just for a month, he is regarded as leaving her. In other festivals including lunar new year and new rice ceremony, the groom’s family must bring big offerings or a basket of sticky rice and meat and wine to the bride’s. Before the wedding day, the groom’s family, headed by the matchmaker, brings to the bride’s wedding offerings which include three pigs or a buffalo, wine, rice and money, clothes, earrings and silver jewelry for the bride; clothes or 30 square meters of cloth for her parents; and two coins for the matchmaker to conduct a ritual to expel evil spirits. The groom’s family must also take food put on trays to the bride’s. On the wedding day, the groom’s family must offer the bride’s a buffalo, 100 silver coins, six baskets of sticky rice and a pig. Dishes of a wedding party include sticky rice, pork, boiled pig insides, chopped pig bone and pork porridge. Porridge is contained in bowls while other dishes are put on banana leaves. Old men and dignitaries of the village sit together in the wedding party. Children share the meal on flat baskets placed on the ground.
The groom’s family then chooses a good date to take the bride home. To enter the bride’s house, the groom’s family must step over a rope stretched by the bride’s by solving riddles sung by the latter. If failing, they must pay some money as fine. The bride’s family collects all hats of the groom’s after they enter the house and puts these hats together with a tray of betel and areca at the gate. The groom’s family will take back the hats together with some betel and areca as a gift and may give some lucky money to the couple.
At the bride’s home, the groom must pray to the bride’s ancestors and kowtow her parents, uncles and aunts. Arriving the groom’s home, the bride and her family are offered wine and betel and areca at the foot of the stairs. Before entering the house, the bride must wash her feet in a copper basin which contains welcome coins. After washing her feet, the bride pours out the water and takes the basin and coins. The matchmaker then conducts a marriage tie ritual in the couple’s room. The ritual offerings include a pair of chickens, a tray of sticky rice, betel and areca, wine and a lamp. After this ritual, the bride prays to the family ancestors and kowtows her husband’s grandparents and parents. After that, the two families enjoy a wedding party. The wedding ceremony is often followed by responsive singing to the sounds of drums and gongs. After the wedding, the couple visits the bride’s parents to show gratitude toward them.
At mourning ceremonies, the Tho has the custom of keeping the corpse in the house during which the family prepares a meal to offer to villagers. The group puts the dead in a hollow trunk. On the way to the grave, the dead is carried with his legs at the front. The dead is buried in the direction of the water flow. The family conducts offering ceremonies for the dead three, fifty and one hundred days after the burial.
The Tho worships various deities and spirits. Some villages worship as many as 14-15 deities. The Tho conducts offering ceremonies in village shrines during festivals. Every year, every village conducts a ritual asking for gods’ permission to choose the seed owner to sow the first seed of a crop.
Although a village has different shrines, each family chooses only one for conducting ceremonies. The village’s ritual conductor of the year must carry out a formality using a coin to choose the shrine in which village rituals will be conducted next year.
In families, offerings are made to ba mu (the goddess believed to give shape to and protect babies) whenever a child gets sick. When an adult member is ill, his spirit will be also worshiped. A Tho family also worships the kitchen god when celebrating a new house during which a prestigious villager will be invited to light the first fire, praying for the family’s prosperity.-