The New Year Festival in the Cultural History of Chiang Mai: Importance and Changes

Abstract

The New Year festival, or Songkran, is considered the most prominent festival in Chiang Mai, the former capital of the kingdom of Lan Na in Thailand’s Upper North. The festival, held over three days in mid-April, marks the earth’s entry into a new solar year. The authors seek to reconstruct the origins of the Songkran festival in Chiang Mai and its historical evolution by analyzing a variety of Northern Thai sources as well as missionary reports from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Special attention is given to the transformation of the state-sponsored dam hua ritual of the Lan Na kings into a ceremony under the auspices of the Thai state.