Part 2
The last stage corresponds to the final day. It is not only the day of the widow or widower’s release but also the day when the pot (xlah go) is emptied and cleaned. A communal meal is held in honor of the guests at the host’s place or in the communal house. This is then followed by a rite in which each guest sprinkles water on the widower or widow as well as on the deceased’s relatives. This ceremony officially marks the definitive severance of the living’s bond with the deceased. From then on, the widower (or widow) is allowed to remarry. The funeral house is now a material shell without a soul. It will naturally decompose over the years. However, it holds great artistic and cultural interest because the palisade of stakes surrounding it features original characteristics with sculptures of animals and birds. Under the small thatched roof, one can see the weapons, clothing, and food offered to the spirit of the dead. Some funeral houses are surrounded by sculptures related to fertility or rebirth: men and women copulating, men and women displaying their exaggerated genitalia, figures in the fetal position, etc.
These crude figurines are not human beings but monkeys because they are as ugly as monkeys in the spirit world where everything is the opposite of the living world. The ridge beam of the funeral house cannot go unnoticed as it is made from a whole tree trunk carved and decorated.
For the Bahnar, the soul of the deceased continues to live as a spirit in the spirit world. Its organization is similar to that of the living world, and its sovereign is both immortal and a female genius named Brôu. The spirit world (or mang lung) is invisible to the living because it is either inside a cave, in a dark forest, or in a very distant sea. The spirits live there grouped in villages. They engage in all human activities. They experience happiness and suffering just like the living and they also die like them. However, they work their lands at night and sleep during the day. Likewise, they use a language completely opposite to that of the living: « ugly » means « beautiful, » « dull » means « sharp, » etc. Mang Lung resembles our world but is entirely reversed. When it is night here, it is day in Mang Lung. The houses there have stilts pointed upwards and the roof pointed downwards.
The lifespan of a spirit is also limited because it ends with death. The spirit then transforms after forty or fifty years into a drop of dew (dak ngop) that dissolves into the earth. This is how a closed life cycle ends: earth-man-spirit-earth. Only the sovereign-genie (Bia Brôu) takes care of overseeing the birth of new creatures by shaping children from the earth and introducing them into the wombs of pregnant women.
For the Bahnar, a life cycle is composed of two existences:
that of the world of the living and that of the world of spirits.
Regarding the hairstyle of the Bahnar, it is becoming more common to see men, influenced by contact with the Kinh and foreigners, cutting their hair shorter and shorter. Normally, the Bahnar man wraps a fabric turban and passes it through his bun. However, a woman does not wear the turban and replaces it with a cord or a beadwork headband. It is an act of declaration of love when a girl unties a young man’s turban in public or when a man offers tobacco or a chew from his pipe to a woman or girl.
The life of the Bahnar is governed by a traditional annual cycle with ten months dedicated to agricultural production and two months devoted to festivals and various village activities: weddings, house repairs or construction, clothing making, etc. In their traditional society, the concept of money holds no significant meaning. Their valuable items such as gongs, jars, buffaloes, elephants, and horses were used as barter objects in the past. Their wealth is measured by the number of gongs, jars, and slaves found in each family. The Bahnar make rice the basis of their food. It is cooked by steaming or braising. Rice and water are placed inside a large bamboo tube which is suspended over the fire. By charring the container, the rice is cooked. They use sticky rice to make a fermented drink (or rice alcohol) (rượu cần in Vietnamese). They consume this liquid using long bamboo straws. They add water when the liquid level drops. It is obvious that the drink becomes less concentrated with this addition.
The Bahnar of both sexes often pierce their earlobes to wear earrings, but they do not stretch them to wear large rings like other ethnic groups in the region. Around the age of fourteen or fifteen, they have their teeth filed down. This custom of filing teeth is declining over the years. However, tattooing is not practiced. For boys, at the age when they begin to help their father in the fields, they are required to sleep at the communal house because it is here that they receive training, weapons handling, and instruction provided by the village elders for learning life skills. They can only return to their parental home to eat or to be cared for in case of illness.
Among the Bahnar, it is observed that the married couple does not adhere to either patrilocality or matrilocality. It is a matter of convenience linked to the couple’s decision. However, there is a division of labor within the couple: the husband takes care of village affairs while the wife handles all the household chores. Among the Bahnar, one is free to choose their husband or wife. Marriage can be celebrated when each of the future spouses meets the following conditions:
1°) They are of an age to cultivate a field (15 to 16 years old). This is a prerequisite condition to feed their family because no one is willing to provide assistance, not even their parents.
2°) It is mandatory for a young girl to enter into her first marriage even if she is over thirty years old. However, she can be married either as a first-rank wife or a second-rank wife. But for a widower, a single man, or a divorced man, it is not possible to contract a second-rank marriage.
3°) There are no kinship ties between the future spouses. This is the case when parental consent is refused when the relationship is proven. In general, the participation of the parents aims to ensure that traditional principles are respected.