There is an old saying that the ancient Cambodian people had belief and often old their descendants not to grow Check Chvea (a kind of Large Banana Tree) adjacent to the end pieces of house roofs because it was believed that this might bring bad luck to the house owner. This belief was derived from the following story:
Long, long time ago, there lived a poor family who were farmers. One day during a drought, there was no water or rain for farming. The man, then, decided to leave his wife to work as laborer in a far-away village.
After the husband left, there was an epidemic of cholera in the village where his wife lived. This outbreak made the villagers very frightened. At the beginning, only small animals were infected with the disease, but later on, it spread out to the big animals and then to human beings, killing a series of them. No ' one was able to help other ones.
Each house was so quiet. In the night, only the sound of dogs howling was heard and the gentle light of kerosene lamps was seen in sparse places, causing everyone to have goose dimples on their skin, just to think of it. In some villages where the disease had not yet been spread to people and animals, the villagers n those remote areas were scared to earn their living as usual. They were very upset and quiet, only whispered to the each other, not dared to talk loudly or to think of where the incident happened.
One day while the disease was spreading out fiercely, there was a generous person coming to invite a Buddhist monk to recite a protective prayer at his home. When it was the time to take the monks, he came to get a senior monk and two ordinary monks.
When the monks arrived at his home, there were many guests. The three monks were invited to come onto the house and sat on good seats, and then they were traditionally offered drinks, tea, sugars and cigarettes. After that, the people did recitation as a respect for the three jewels (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha) and then it was the monks' turn to recite a protective prayer. But the layman said, 'Would you please not recite Dharma of Karanei to frighten the spiritual evil; rather, skip to recite the Dharma of Viropake right away in order to save time?' The monks started to recite the protective prayer from the beginning, as requested by the layman, skipping the Dhamla of Karanei and moving to Dharma of Viropake.
Suddenly the monks noticed that all generous people were pleased and laughed happily. "They have asked us not to recite Dharma of Karanei and requested us to move right to Dharma of Viropake, but why they turned laughing, it is very odds" doubted the senior monk on the first seat. He was very ashamed and worried that he would be criticized of this mistake, so he went back to Dhanna of Karanei.
No sooner had the monks recited few words than all the generous people suddenly left one by one until the place was empty. Then the candle flame went out immediately. The house where the monks were staying became the thickest dense of bamboo, whereas the cigarettes, tea, and sugar turned out to be charcoal, sand and chopped wood. At that moment, the monks realized that the ghosts had transformed themselves as humans to invite them. Until the laymen and laywomen at the pagoda knew this, the three monks had 110 food to cat for nearly three days.
Therefore, it has been said that the Dharma of Karanei makes ghost very scared, while Dharma of Viropake makes them happy. When the villages are attacked by the diseases such as cholera, plague and so on, the villagers always invite monks to recite the protective prayer and request them to recite Dharma of Karanei seven to eight times, and not to recite Dhanna of Viropake, since there was a story narrated above. Besides, people in the ancient time believed that when they needed to go somewhere in the night and if they had goose dimples, they had to recite Dharma of Karanei, believing that the ghost would not haunt, but rather the ghost would be afraid of Dharma Karanei very much.
Talking about the man who went to work as laborer, after he earned enough money, he returned home. On the halfway home, he was told, "You can 't go to your village now, since the people there are infected with cholera and many of them have died. We don't know whether your children and your wife are still alive or not, because now no one is encouraged to go to the village." Because the man missed his wife and children, he stubbornly walked to his home. He hastened back to his home in that night.
When he arrived near his house, he saw the dim light in every house; he was very happy and came up with the feeling of anger towards the villagers who had told him a lie. But he felt a slight doubtful on the way home for the unusual quietness, he suggested that there might be something happening to the villagers. Reaching the fence of his house, he called for his wife. At the moment, he saw his wife coming to welcome him warmly as usual; there seemed nothing to be suspicious.
That woman hurried to set a fire to cook rice for her husband, but told her husband not to enter the bedroom, asking him to sleep outside. The husband suspected his wife's strange behavior, since he saw her eyes became big, came out in a reddish way and moved up and down and the unpleasant smell of corpses came from the bedroom. He was curious to see something in the bedroom because his wife banned him from entry. Thinking of everything, he always sat noting at his wife's behaviors. Few minutes later, he saw her sticking her tongue out to pick up the ladle dropping down to the ground. Seeing this, he realized that she must be ghost pretending to be a human and therefore he remembered what the people had told him on the way home.
The man crept into the bedroom and suddenly saw the decaying flesh of the corpses of his wife and children. He went out and sought the way to escape from the ghost. "Please cook the rice quickly,' he said to her, 'I am very hungry; I go to urinate for a moment." Then, he poked a small hole in a clay pot in order to pour the water onto the palm tree leaves. It sounded as if the man was urinating. Then he ran as fast as he could towards a pagoda where lived a monk, who was good at magically repressing the evils.
The ghost, hearing her husband urinating too long, then walked to see him. As soon as she saw her husband passing through, she chased him very fast, almost reaching him. when the husband turned back and saw his wife chasing him quickly, he thought that he could not escape from the ghost, so he climbed up a Bay Mat tree (Blumea balsamifera) - a kind of tree believed to be effective in protecting people from ghost haunting - nearby him. The ghost dare not go near Bay Mat tree. She walked round it and called out her husband to come down. The man thought that the ghost might be afraid of Bay Mat tree, so she did not come near. He pruned a branch of the Bay Mat tree, carried it on his shoulder and walked towards a pagoda.
Due to the effect of Bay Mat branch, the ghost was afraid to go near the husband, but she still walked after him. When the man arrived at the pagoda, he went to stay in the middle of the crowd of the monks who were reciting and preaching the eight virtues in the temple and told the monks what had happened to him. At that moment, the master of Buddhist monks who was good at using incantations let the man stay in his building and actively cast a spell around it to prevent the ghost from entering.
The ghost would never went anywhere far from that building. Even though she could not follow her husband into the building because of the incantations, she walked back and forth, exploring any way to reach her husband. Near the master 's building was a large banana tree (Chek Chvea) with its branch bowing into its window.
Very powerful though was his spell, it could not be stronger than the large banana tree. The spell could have its power only where the branch could not reach the building, but the place touched by the branch was the only way for the ghost to enter the building.
The ghost climbed up the large banana tree and went trough its branch into the building and cruelly broke her husband 's neck to death right at that moment.
Because there was such narrative, the ancient Cambodian people generally believed it and banned their descendents from growing the large banana trees adjacent to the end pieces of house roofs because it could bring bad luck to them. As for the Bay Mat trees, they have become a good medicine to prevent the evils or ghosts up to now.
- The END -
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