Royal Ploughing Ceremony
Not yet ratedNo RatingsThe beginning of the rice-growing season is celebrated every year with an ancient royal rite in which oxen plough through ceremonial ground while rice seed is sown. After ploughing, the oxen are offered various plates of food and a prediction of how bountiful the growing season will be is based on what the oxen eat.
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Saturday 05/01/10
to Monday 05/31/10
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Although these ceremonies take place throughout villages in Cambodia, the main ceremony takes place in Veal Preahmein Square, near the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh.
The free ceremony, which always takes place in May (the month of the Khmer calendar that marks the start of the rainy season), dates back to the Sukhothai period--1257-1350 AD. In the Khmer language it is called "Preah Reach Pithi Chrot Preah Neangkol". The Royal Ploughing Ceremony is like many in Cambodia where rituals are used to predict future outcomes. Farmers wait every year for the predictions at the Royal Ploughing Ceremony (which they observe with strong belief).
Royal oxen adorned in beautiful, colored silks are led to ceremonial grounds while a master of ceremonies (King Meakh) performs the ceremony by circling around a field three times while being followed by a woman (Queen Me Hour) who plants seeds. The oxen are then released from their harnesses and led to seven golden trays each containing different items (usually rice, sesame seeds, grass, water, wine, corn, and beans). The amount of trays the oxen eat from, and which ones they eat from determine the predictions (ex: if the oxen sniffed the tray of water and turned away from the tray of wine the prediction would be that farmers would not suffer any serious floods).
Contributed by jessica_ledford
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