Mother of Waters

Thai Lao · deity · Theravada Buddhist mythic time; pan Tai folk cult · deity

Mae Khongkha, the 'Mother of Waters', personifies the rivers, canals, and floods on which Tai agrarian life depends. Her name is the Thai form of Ganga, the Indic river goddess, naturalized — like the earth mother Mae Thorani and the rice mother Mae Phosop, with whom she completes the classic triad of Thai-Lao 'mother' deities — into a Buddhist folk religion of maternal providers. She is honored above all at the festival of floating lights on the twelfth-month full moon, when krathong floats of banana leaf, candle, incense, and coins are set adrift to thank her for water given to fields and households and to beg her pardon for a year of using and fouling her element; along the Mekong the fire-boat and floating-lights rites carry the same address to the waters. Boatmen, farmers, and householders continue to invoke her before drawing on rivers and canals, making hers one of the most widespread living cults of the tradition.

Domains

rivers and waters
purification

Powers

to preside over rivers, canals, and all flowing waters
to accept thanks and grant pardon for the use and fouling of the waters

Epithets

พระแม่คงคา

Sources

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