A young buffalo boy tied his animal’s head to a hard, muddy object sticking up from a field in the north of Phuket – and suddenly died.
On this island it’s one of the best-known of all legends. Like fables everywhere, it tells us much about the mores of its own society. Here a point very significant to Thai society – one to be remembered – coming from the special nature of the dirty, hard object sticking up from the rice field outside Talang. It happened to be the ‘ketnappa’ of a buried Buddha image, the spiral-like point rising up from the top of an image’s head.
Why did the boy die? Thais consider the head the most sacred part of the body, and the head of a Buddha image is many times holier. A lowly buffalo (considered the epitome of thick-headedness, even though Thai people treat these beasts of burden with a special affection) being tied to such a sacred object is an insult of the most gross proportions.
Andthis Buddha image is widely believed to embody an ancient spell carrying with it special spiritual powers. Today virtually every Thai visiting Phuket for the first time will make pilgrimage here. Busloads of coarsely-dressed villagers from distant provinces kneel before this image, alongside the country’s refined elite, their Mercedes Benzes waiting outside.
In the hazy centuries of Phuket’s distant past the famous young buffalo boy was buried. The father cremated his son and returned to fetch the buffalo. It too, was dead. The father washed off the mysterious hard object to which the animal was tied, and to his surprise found it resembling a Buddha’s ‘ketnappa’. Villagers reported to the ruling ‘Prince of Province’ at Ban Don on the coast.
A dig was ordered. As villagers put their tools to it, hordes of angry wasps descended, driving off anyone who attempted to disturb the ‘thing’. Still they dug, revealing the face of the Buddha cast from solid gold. But no matter what they tried, wasps and calamities drove the diggers away. Only the head could be bared. Thus, their Prince ordered a shelter built right over it.
In the mid 1700s all of Thailand came under depredations of invading Burmese armies. Phuket was attacked, and eventually occupied. Gold, naturally, was one of the Burmese passions and the Burmese general lusted for the gold Buddha.
Again, disaster befell any Burmese who attempted to dig at the image. A plague of ants arose in masses as thick as palms. Bitten, the Burmese died. But the general wouldn’t desist, and drove his men till hundreds were dead. Still, they could only get as deep as the golden image’s throat. Finally, the Burmese armies were driven out with the Buddha still buried in a field outside Talang town-ship.
When the Burmese were threatening Phuket in later years, the golden head and its protruding ‘ketnappa’ were disguised by the construction of a much larger Buddha head directly over it. This large head and shoulders is the same one we can see today in the temple of Wat Phra Thong, the ‘Golden Buddha Temple’ outside present day Talang.
Soon after the Burmese invasions, a ‘Tong Dong’ monk, one of those who wander endlessly without the comfort of a home monastery, arrived at the buried Buddha, and, feeling he could go no further, settled to build a temple over the image.
This founding abbot died, leaving a mystical riddle embodying the spell. In the form of a poem, this contained the three paradoxes involving the hierarchy of the spirits in the Phuket region and the Golden Buddha’s head.
Any future monk who wanted to remain abbot presiding over the temple of so powerful a Buddha image, he said before dying, would have to first prove sufficient enlightenment to solve this riddle.
Thereafter, thirteen monks successfully assumed the position of abbot at Wat Phra Tong. Then came a period – perhaps a low ebb in Buddhist learning – when no monk could overcome the riddle. New abbots would die, go crazy or be driven from the monastery.
Finally, in 1897, a 23-year-old foreign monk passed the mind-testing riddle. This monk became the famous Luang Por Phra Kuwittatan, and presided over the monastery for 64 years.
The influence that this buried Buddha image has over the people of Phuket and beyond is difficult to appreciate. But today one can readily visit the temple at Talang and see the image. And, if you can, ask a Thai worshipper there if he believes in the mystic history and special powers of this ancient Golden Buddha head.