Dec 22, 2018
Tay House, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology
Tay House
This house was built in 1967 and originally
belonged to Mr.Dao The Dien’s family in Tham Roc village, Thai Nguyen province.
It was reconstructed at the museum in 1999 by twelve Tay people from the
region.
According to traditional techniques, wood
and bamboo are soaked in water and mud for at least 3 to 6 months to protect
against woodworm. The house at the Museum is covered with 6,000 palm leaves. It
sits on 1.8m high stilts and its surface area is more than 100m2. The walls and
the shutters are patterned with bamboo laths that are naturally dyed in black
with a mixture of soot and brown tuber juice. These flower and diamond-shaped
patterns are widely used in Tay textiles and basketry.
The space under the house is for domestic
animals, firewood, tools, implements, and mill and mortar for pounding rice.
Children play and older people rest in the shade.
The family kitchen god is worshipped in a
simple shelter erected at the entrance of the house.
Interior spaces
The house interior is symbolically divided
by two crossed axes
interior, interior and exterior
parts. The upper space along the patterned wall is separated by a partition:
the outer for men; the space for the mistress in front of other female members’
room is at the interior end. The Tay follow a patriarchal tradition and worship
three generations of their ancestors. The altar locates at the interior part.
It is forbidden to worship impure offerings like buffalo or dog meat. Women is
periods and mothers-to-be are not allowed to come close to the altar.
The inferior part is for pantry and food
preparation. The bedroom of the daughter-in-law is in the inside inferior
space.
The space around the house and above the
ground side is for the head the household and important guest; the lower for
daughters, stepdaughters and their guests. The outdoor space between the wall
and the fireplace is for sons, step-sons and their guests. The space inside is
for the hostess and her guests. It is forbidden to spit in the hearth as the
Tay believe that this is where the Kitchen God who take care of the house
resides.
Room of the newlywed
This room is always at the house’s
“bottom”, separated by plaited bamboo partitions. Inside the room, there is a
wooden
and personal items, and a woven
tools. It is the private space of the young daughter-in-law where
she receives her sisters and friends. In the past she gave birth in this room.
According to tradition, neither her father-in-law nor her husband’s older
brothers may enter this room.
On the wedding day, after a ceremony in
front of the altar to present her to her husband’s ancestors, the bride is
accompanied to her room by an elderly woman who is the epitome of virtue:
having lead a good life and having a husband, and many sons and daughters. This
woman prepares the ‘marriage bed’ on which the bride spends her first night
with a bridesmaid. The second night is her wedding night which she spends with
her husband.
This daughter-in-law is the first person to
get up early each morning to prepare breakfast and warm water for here
parents-in-law.
Cotu tomb house, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology
Cotu tomb house
This was made by Mr.Briu Nga (aged 36, Cotu
people) in Alieng village, Quang Nam province. Its model was similar to the
tomb house that he made for his father-in-law in 1996. The tomb house was
brought to the Museum in December 2005.
This kind of tomb house is for rich and
high-ranking people, and is made for the second funeral. On this occasion, the
coffin is excavated and put on a big tree trunk which is elaborately carved. A
bier carrying the corpse to the graveyard and aa shelf for offerings are also
presented in this tomb house.
Sculptures of water buffalo heads represent
a buffalo sacrifice in the funeral and are also symbols of property. Other
figures such as varan, dragon, tring birds, fern leaves, moc leaves or
sadly-sitting people are traditional decorations in Cotu tomb houses.
Jarai tomb house, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology
Jarai tomb house
It was built in 1998 by five Jarai Arap men
from Mrong Ngo village, Chu Pa district, Gia Lai province.
Thirty dead people can be buried in this
large tomb house in the village. The decorated sculptures are carved from tree
trunks using axes, chisels, and knives. Statues of men and women showing off
their secret parts and pregnant women symbolize fertility and birth. The wooden
roof is covered with plaited bamboo planks on which designs are painted natural
red pigments. Figures on the roof depict activities of the tomb abandoning
ritual.
It is thought that the tomb house is for
the dead in the afterlife. Broken dishes, bottles, cups, trays, and wooden tool
models are put inside the tomb to provide necessities to the deceased in their
other world. After the ritual, the bomb falls into oblivion.
Bahnar Communal House, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology
Bahnar Communal House
Role of the communal house
The communal house has a significant
meaning in villages. It is the largest and the most spectacular architecture,
showing power and talent of the community.
Traditionally, the communal house was used
for social and ceremonial activities. It was a place for guests to be received,
for men to be together during their free time for the elderly to transmit
knowledge to younger generations, for old villagers to deal with village
affairs, and for villagers to deal with village affairs, and for villagers to
concentrate togerter in community events. Collective rituals were also held at
the communal house. In the past , the youth were on duty here to prepare for
fights or to defend the village. Young bachelors and widowers also spent nights
in the communal house. Women did not usually enter this house.
Heads of sacrificed buffalos and hunted
animals are often hung in the communal house. These are trophies and pride of
the community. Other ritual objects and protecting talismans of the villages
are also preserved in the communal house.
Ede House, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology
Ede House
Ede long house
The Ede long house is 42.5 meters long and
6 meters wide and sits on one meter high stilts. It was reconstructed at the
Museum in 2000 by 16 Ede Kpa people in two and a half months. It was originally
built in 1967 and belonged to Mrs. HDish Eban’s family in Ky village, Buon Ma
Thuot city, Dak Lak province in the Central Highlands.
The house is oriented in a north-south
direction according to Ede tradition. The north side is the front with the main
entrance. The south end was where families lived. As a house of a powerful
family, it was built with big columns and beams, on which many decorations were
carefully carved. It original staircase, over one meter wide, was carved from
one large wooden board.
Traditionally, extended matrilineal
families lived in long houses. The more people who lived in a house, the longer
it was. Some houses were 200m long. In the 1970s three were still houses 50m to
60m in length. Since the 1980s, extended families have split into nuclear ones
that live in smaller house.
Guest room
This space, called gah, occupied more than
half the area of the house. Its architectural features, columns, and girders
were carefully 5haped and decorated with designs incised and carved on the wood
surface. The room was decorated and arranged with furniture and benches made
from solid wood. The presence of other utensils, drums, gongs, jars, and large
copper pots showed the economic status of the house owner.
This space was for receiving guests,
holding meetings, and performing family rituals. For big events and banquets
people played gongs and drums and drank wine together, sipping through tubes
from a common jar. Singe, widowed, and divorced men of the family slept in this
room following matriarchal traditions. There was a separate room for female
guests at the end of this guest room.
Private space
The ok was a private space for bedrooms,
food preparation and storage. It was separated from the guest room by a
partition.
Traditionally each extended matriarchal
family, including two or three generations with common ancestors, lived in one
long house. They worked together and shared common property, which was managed
by the grandmother or her oldest daughter. Each family was a single economic and
social unit. Couples had their own rooms where they slept with their young
children, their heads facing east. They kept personal possessions, mostly
clothing, in these rooms. They could light cigarettes and warm themselves in
winter by the cooking fire inside their room.
In this long house, 16 people of Mrs. HDiah
Eban’s family lived together forming three small, semi-inde-pendent homes, each
with their own kitchens in the common corridor. Space for the matriarch was at
the end of the house. Other rooms were for her daughter’s families.
Viet house, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology
Viet house
Viet house
Originally this house belonged to a wealthy
family who lived in the early 20th century in Tho Loc commun, Tho
Xuan district, Thanh Hoa province. Mrs Hoi’s family’s main house, built in
1906, had 5 rooms including a living room where they received guests,
worshipped ancestors, and the head of the household’s space. This room was
passed down to Mrs Hoi’s eldest son, then to her grandson and great-eldest son.
The ancestor’s altar was carved with stylized flowers, dragons, and phoenixes.
Chinese characters are engraved on the walls and along the beams and lintels.
This house was enlarged in1933 adding 5
rooms that were used for teaching and for Mrs. Hoi’s bedroom. The detached
structure, built in 1937, was built for a great-grandson. The entire family
shared the kitchen and dining room.
Because of strong typhoons is the region and a
regulation that forbid houses from being higher than the village’s communal
house, these houses maintained a low profile. In the village, the main house was
oriented to face south; at the Museum, due to lack of space, it faces north.
Cham house, Vietnam Museum of Ethnology
Cham house
House of the head of the household
Traditionally, only aristocratic families
and religious dignitaries had this kind of house. Being the largest house made
of valuable wood and decorated with carving, it is considered as a “fabulouse
horse”. The roof has two layers. The thick lower layer is made from a mixture
of mud and straw, protecting the house from heat and the risk of fire.
The front hallway is where the women weave.
The large common room is for receiving guests. Precious family property
including ornaments and silk textiles are stored in a wooden trunk. The bedroom
is linked with the common room by a narrow door. Behind the bedroom is a small
room to store copper pots and trays, plates and bowls, old jars, gongs, and
drums. Only the housewife and her first daughter are allowed to arrange, take
out, and put back family property in the trunk or in the store room. They
choose lucky and good days to do these tasks.
Adjacent house
Built alongside the customary house, it is
the home of the eldest daughter’s family after her younger sister’s wedding.
The customary house where they used to live is given to her younger sister’s
family.
The room at the centre of the house is the
common room where the unmarried and guests sleep. The corridor facing the
courtyard is where women weave. The couple’s room is behind the common room.
People have to go through the common room to enter the couple’s room. Two mats
are spread on the bed; the reverse side of the lower mat is on the upside,
facing the reverse side of the upper mat. Two jars at the foot of the wall in
the room contain rice. Candles and two bronze boxes for betel and areca nuts
are kept in a basket. Every night before going to bed, the hostess wipes the
mat, lights a candle, replaces old betel quid by new ones, and parys her
ancestors for protection.
Customary house
Traditionally, this house is situated in
the northeast direction of the family house compound as it is thought that this
place signifies fertility and growth. It is particularly important as all
rituals of the Cham qreat matriarchal family are performed here. This is the
only house in which no rafter structure, tenon joints, or nails are used.
In the Cham conception, the customary house
symbolizes the human body. The first common room represents the head; it is use
for receiving guest and ceremonies. The center room symbolizing the chest is
for weddings and then becomes the bedroom of the newlweds. The door to go to
the next house, sang mayau, is the nose, and the door directed to the kitchen
is the mouth. The ridge is the backbone; the rafters are ribs; the battens are
knuckles; and the grass on the roof is hair.
The upper house
Traditionally, this house faces east in the
direction of the sun and gods. Its entrance cannot be opposite to the sun and
gods. Its entrance cannot be opposite to the sang mayau house’s door. The Cham
think that doors facing each other are similar to human mouths quarrelling. It
will affect the family’s peacefulness.
This house is for dignitaries or people over 50.
They are respected as it is considered that they have completed their secular
life. The large room is a space for the householder and his guests. The bedroom
is reserved for his wife where she prays before going to bed at nights. It is
arranged in the same way as the bedrooms of other surrounding houses.
Kitchen
It is the first house built in the family
house compound. Traditionally, it is located in the northwest of the house
compound and includes two spaces for the family and storage.
In the kitchen there are three stones
arranged like the tripod used in cooking. The Cham consider these stones as
signs of life and the place where the kitchen God resides. Arranging these
three stones and worshipping the kitchen God is done by women at least once
every three months or when the family children are sick. They make offerings of
betel, tea, three sticky rice plates and three bowls of sweet soup. The side of
the fireplace in which firewood is put must be directed towards the kitchen
entrance. This entrance is opposite to the sang ye house’s door that is on the
other side of the central house. This door symbolizes a human mouth.
Feb 4, 2018
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