Love Incessantly Flows: Mae Naak, a New Asian Opera Heroine Born out of a Thai Buddhist Narrative

Abstract

The folklore of Nak (Naak) or ‘Mae Nak Phrakhanong’ (Mother Nak of Phrakhanong District) permeates Thailand as the most popular story of a ghostly haunting. The story, originating in the nineteenth century, has been made into a plethora of versions including more than 20 film adaptations. My research focuses on the 2003 opera Mae Naak composed by Somtow Sucharitkul. The opera contains idiosyncratic traits different from other versions, which reflect Thais’ multiple feelings of horror, veneration and affection to Nak. Somtow creates a new Asian heroine in opera, who bears powerful emotions of love and desire to live, unlike the stereotype such as Madama Butterfly. The conclusion, however, does not define the emotional aspect of the story as merely the ignorance of impermanence and attachment. Instead, the narrative helps each individual to concretise and personalise the more abstract concepts of Buddhism. The opera depicts true love that continues through rebirths with her beloved in a karmic journey.

Abbreviations::

• Ap.: Apadāna
• Abhidh-s.: Abhidhammatthasaṅgaha
• D.: Dīgha-nikāya
• J-a.: Jātaka-aṭṭhakathā
• Pv.: Petavatthu.
• S.: Saṃyutta-nikāya
• Vin.: Vinaya
• Vism.: Visuddhimagga
• Pv.: Petavatthu
• Pv-a.: Petavatthu-vaṇṇanā
• Pv-a. trans.: The translation of Petavatthu-vaṇṇanā. U Ba Kyo, trans. Elucidation of the Intrinsic Meaning so named The Commentary on the Peta-Stories. (PTS, 1980)

Notes

1. Arnika Fuhrmann (2016, 167) lists twenty-three film adaptations of Mae Nak made between 1950 and 1999, while Justin McDaniel (2011, 95) notes there are more than twenty-two Thai films portraying the tale.

2. There are various oral versions about how the folkstory ends. In these versions, after the monk captures her or her soul into a piece of her frontal bone, he buries it under the tree of Wat Mahabut or tosses it into the canal beside the temple.

3. Murakami (2011, 212–213) cites the annual report for 2008 of the Department of Religious Affairs of Thailand, which states that 94.6 per cent of Thais are Buddhist.

4. Somtow uses the spelling Mae Naak, which more accurately renders the Thai long pronunciation of Nak. However, the name is generally romanized as Mae Nak. In this paper I use the latter but allow for other romanizations when citing other authors’ works.

5. Opera Siam. ‘Somtow Introduces his Opera “Mae Naak”.’ Youtube.

6. Yasodharā made a vow in front of at Kakusanda Buddha, the former Buddha before Gotama, to be reborn as Gotama’s wife in every life. (Ap. ii. 589). In addition, in the Jātaka narratives when the Bodhisatta is in a sincere relationship with a female, she is always an incarnation of Yasodharā.

7. In regard to the Vessantara Jātaka, Crosby (2014, 107; 220) analyzes the mutual support between them, whereby in the Vessantara Jātaka the Bodhisatta as agent fulfills the perfection assisted by Yasodharā as instrument, and in his final lifetime, as Buddha, assists her to obtain her ordination and enlightenment.

8. Winzeler (2016, 104–117) discusses McDaniel’s attitudes in analyzing Thai Buddhism, characterized by his avoidance of terms such as syncretism and globalization.

9. Manich renders Mak as Mark. However, in English academic research, the name Mak is more general, and I follow this convention.

10. As Tsumura (2001, 25) notes, there are different versions of what Mae Nak drops while cooking. In Somtow’s Mae Naak (2003b, 32), she drops a lime. Fuhrmann (2016, 109–110) describes it as being a lemon in Nonzee’s Nang Nak.

11. McDaniel (2011, 28–53) gives a detailed biography of Somdet To.

12. In the version of the story in which Somdet To appears, Nak is depicted as especially disturbing the practices of the monks at Wat Mahabut. Somdet To comes to solve the problem. He digs up her corpse and places a piece of bone from her forehead inside his robe. This consequently subdues her haunting (Nawigamune, 2000, 35–36).

13. Several scholars remark on Nonzee’s intention to reject comical depictions (Yomota 2013, 88–89; Fuhrmann 2016, 87; and May 186).

14. Abhidh-s. V. 27. In addition, within Buddhist cosmology, petas are generally classified lower than humans. Petas live in one of five abodes that consist of hell, animals, ghosts, humans, and deities (D. iii. 235).

Abhidh-s. V. 22.

15. Abhidh-s. V. 22.

16. Two stories deal with rebirth as determined by one’s attachment: in each story a man had done good deeds but also had been attached to a woman. Due to the mingling of two opposing karmas, he is reborn as a ghost but in a heavenly palace (vimānapeta), not in torment (Pv-a. ii; Pv-a. iv. 11). The case of Nak’s attachment to Mak is different from these stories.

17. Bhikkhu Bodhi (1999, 207) defines covetous is the ‘wish to acquire another person’s property’, which is not Nak’s case as Nak and Mak are a married couple.

18. The meditation on the impurity of the body appears in many Pāli texts. In Vin. III. 68, the Buddha gives this instruction to monks. Several meditation methods based on the post-canonical text Visuddhimagga (Vism. viii, 44–145) are currently practiced by Theravāda Buddhist instructors.

19. There are numerous studies on the issues of women in Buddhism. See Horner (1930), Kabilsingh (1991), Kajiyama (1982), and Wilson (1996).

20. ’SOMTOW.’ S.P. Somtow • Somtow Sucharitkul.

21. ’Somtow.’ Official Website of the Bangkok Opera.

22. Opera Siam. ‘Somtow introduces’ Youtube.

23. According to Carner and Rij, Puccini eagerly searched for a Japanese female performer to give his opera an exotic flavour and Japonisme. Eventually he met Sadayakko, a Japanese actress, and instructed her to sing in a high twitter (Carner 1979, 11; van Rij, 2001, 93).

24. ‘E al giorno in cui mi sposerò con vere nozze a una vera sposa... americana’ (Puccini 2003, 24).

25. ‘Con quel fare di bambola quando parla m'infiamma’ (Puccini 2003, 29).

26. ‘L'età dei giuochi...’ ‘...e dei confetti’ (Puccini 2003, 31).

27. ‘Con moti di scoiattolo i nodi allenta e scioglie!’ (Puccini 2003, 50).

28. ‘Dicon cho’oltre mare se cade in man dell’uom, ogni farfalla da uno spillo è trafitta ed in tavola infitta!’ (Carner 1979, 118). ‘Un po’di vero c’è? ... Perchè non fugga più. Io t’ho ghermita’ (Puccini 2003, 54).

29. ‘Un bel dì, vedremo levarsi un fil di fumo sull'estremo...’ (Puccini 2003, 62).

30. ‘Con onor muore chi non può serbar vita con onore’ (Puccini 2003, 112).

31. This is Thai Romanization of the Pali chant. The romanized Pali spells the verse as ‘Namo tassa bhagavato arahato.’.

32. The phrase ‘where the souls act out their karma’ is not included in the vocal score, but in the libretto (Somtow, 2003b, 37).

33. Opera Siam. ‘Somtow introduces’ Youtube.

34. Opera Siam. ‘Somtow introduces’ Youtube.

35. These expressions in the opera, which transcend two opposing ideas, also evoke Isolde’s ‘Liebestod (love death)’ in Tristan and Isolde when singing tenderly she realises the combination of universal love and death.

36. An example is the 1953 film adaptation Ugetsu by director Kenji Mizoguchi, in which the agony of the ghostly wife yearning for her husband’s return in the classical story is redirected into a sublime ‘boundless gentleness’ (Sato 1993, 163). In Ugetsu, the wife’s death reflects the idea of mujo (impermanence) (McDonald 1993, 15–16), but her love is depicted as warm and maternal as that of Amida Buddha transcending death and this world. Another example is the negative adaptation of the Noh play Dōjōji, eliminating the serpent-woman's enlightenment which is part of the original narrative. Because of theatrical emphasis, Buddhist morality forces the ‘triumphant exorcism of the woman from the temple’ at the climax of the play (Klein 1991, 293), which is similar tomany adaptations of the Mae Nak story. Another prospective avenue of research would be to trace ghost stories in East Asia in which the ghosts are almost exclusively female figures. Yomota raises this point in his study of horror film in East Asia (2013, 94–95). Zeitlin in her recent monograph The Phantom Heroine also notes this issue in Chinese ghost literature (2007, 4). Thus further research on this symbolization can offer new perspectives integrating religious studies, ethnology, literary history, and media history.