Vua Khú

Vua Khú is the lord of the khú, the serpent- or dragon-spirits that inhabit the deep pools and rivers of the Mường country. In the tiered Mường cosmos he rules the watery world below, counterpart to Vua Trời above. The khú are feared as bringers of drowning and sickness who may seize a person's soul, and the Vua Khú stands at their head; propitiatory offerings and the intervention of the ritual specialist keep his subjects at bay. He belongs to the religious cosmology recorded in Mường ethnography rather than to a single narrative episode, and sources treat khú both as a class of water-monsters and, in the person of their king, as a distinct power of the underworld.

Domains

• water
• peril

Powers

• rules the khú serpents of the deep

Epithets

• Bua Khú — King of the water-serpentsJeanne Cuisinier, Les Mường (Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie, 1948) (secondary)

Sources

• The khú are dangerous water-serpents or dragon-spirits of Mường belief; their king, Vua Khú, rules the watery underworld beneath the earthly Mường world and is held responsible for drownings and river perils.: Jeanne Cuisinier, Les Mường: géographie humaine et sociologie (Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie, 1948) (secondary); Nguyễn Từ Chi, Người Mường ở Hòa Bình (Hà Nội: Hội Khoa học Lịch sử Việt Nam, 1996) (secondary)