Laos White Elephant Settles in After Long March
Posted on 30. Nov, 2023 by Paul Sochaczewski in Curious Travel
This article is adapted from a chapter in:
Curious Encounters of the Human Kind — Southeast Asia
True Asian Tales of Folly, Greed, Ambition and Dreams
Explorer’s Eye Press. Geneva. 2016.
ISBN: 978-2-940573-12-7 Paperback
ISBN: 978-2-940573-14-1 Kindle — e-book
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Boun Somsy, with a painting of his white elephant that was liberated by the power-hungry wife of the country’s first president.
Laos White Elephant Settles in After Long March
Communist leaders use the animal to co-opt the power and prestige of Buddhist kings, depriving village farmer his shot at glory.
BAN SAMING, Laos
Capturing a rare white elephant usually brings luck and fame, and it did for Boun Somsy, at least for a while.
Then, as sometimes happens, a couple of wannabe-royals stepped in and rained on his parade.
This is a tale of prophetic (and sensual) dreams, an unexpected windfall, how an areligious communist government usurped a potent Buddhist religious symbol, and, as is so often the case, nature conservation.
* * *
In December 1983 a poor farmer named Boun Somsy had a dream in which a beautiful woman, “dressed like a god,” came to his simple house and told him to “go find a diamond.” In his village of elephant hunters 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the southern Laotian city of Pakse, Boun interpreted her cryptic instructions as telling him to “go catch a white elephant.”
The problem was that Boun, then 39, had never caught any elephant, which is a bit like telling a couch potato to go run a marathon.
Nevertheless, Boun instructed his wife to refrain from combing and oiling her hair, which would have made his hunting ropes slippery. The elephant-hunters slept rough in the forest in a simple shelter. On the fifth night of the hunt for the Lao equivalent of the Holy Grail, Boun had another dream. Same beautiful woman, similar message. “I will give you this mansion,” she said, gesturing towards her estate. The next morning Boun spotted, and captured a juvenile female elephant. On bringing the dirty animal back to the village and giving it a good scrub, he saw that it was “the color of old bamboo,” a rare and holy white elephant.
Devotees, some from distant villages, came to pay homage to his white elephant, leaving behind offerings and some much-needed cash.
News of his special elephant spread and a Cambodian elephant trader offered him ten “normal” elephants for the white pachyderm. But before Boun could close the deal a government official named Sali knocked on the door of his village house with the Laotian equivalent of “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”
Sali and four white elephant adjudicators (surely the most arcane of Asian job descriptions) inspected the animal and gave Boun the good news that he would have the honor of donating the auspicious beast to the citizens of the fledgling People’s Republic of Laos. In olden days the animal would have been offered to the king, but Prince Souvanna Phouma, the nation’s top-ranking royal, had been deposed as prime minister by Kaysone Phomvihane in 1975, making commoners Kaysone and his wife Thongvinh de facto royalty in the social hierarchy.
Boun was instructed to ride the people’s elephant to the capital of Vientiane, a journey north that took 29 days.
He was offered no compensation, nor public gratitude.
* * *
Why did Kaysone Phomvihane and his ethnic-Vietnamese wife Thongvinh wanted the white elephant?
The white elephant is seen as a religious miracle, a descendant of the holy white elephant which Queen Maya dreamt entered her body nine months before Prince Siddharta, who was to become Buddha, was born. The white elephant historically represents the power of the Buddhist kings of the region, and the kings of neighboring Burma, Thailand and Cambodia fought a series of wars between 1549 and 1769 dedicated, in part, to stealing each other’s white elephants. Kaysone Phomvihane (whose name derives from a Pali word describing the four sublime states of mind achieved by a Buddhist monk), the first prime minister, and later president, of communist Laos, simply wanted to be viewed as a fair, righteous and powerful king.
Or, more likely, observers suggest, his wife Thongvinh Phomvihane wanted to be viewed as a fair, righteous and all-powerful queen.
* * *
Through a well-placed Laotian friend I was given a rare interview with semi-reclusive Madame Thongvinh. Her husband Kaysone Phomvihane was a Pathet Lao, a native Lao who was Vietnam-supported. He was a revolutionary hero, and today his self-satisfied and well-fed portrait appears on the country’s currency, and an eight-million dollar museum has been built in his honor. To use an American simile, meeting Madame Thongvinh was like getting an interview with Martha Washington.
Looking like a frail seventy-something woman who had just woken from a nap, she was guarded and reticent. She wore a worn housedress. We sat in her comfortable but simple house on the outskirts of Vientiane. She spoke neither French nor English, and my friend translated. After pleasantries on my part, greeted with stoic silence and the reluctant offering of a glass of water on hers, I asked about her white elephant.
“Why do you want to know?” she grunted, followed by a sailor-quality belch that threatened to wilt the plastic flowers in her living room, where most of the wall space was taken up by photos of her and her husband during their glory days, alongside one dramatic photo of her white elephant.
I explained my long interest in white elephants and desire to know more about white elephants in Lao culture.
“Why do you want to know?”
I tried another tack; implying that the white elephant represented powerful leaders, and asked whether that was the reason her husband wanted the elephant.
“Where are you from?”
“America.”
Her face seemed to freeze.
Her industrial-sized belch seemed even more vigorous.
The only moment of softness came when she explained how she loves animals and how she and her elephant are “soul partners” — when she is ill the elephant also feels ill, and vice versa. She told of her dreams that whenever she travelled overseas the white elephant would be flying alongside her plane, protecting her.
I showed her the photo of Boun, the villager who captured her elephant. Madame Thongvinh snorted, said the elephant was sick while she was in Boun’s care, and threw the photo back on my pile of papers, as if it was dirty.
Why was she so rude and unhelpful?
Pick a reason. She was tired and grumpy. She was not used to speaking with a foreigner. She doesn’t like Americans. She was protective of the white elephant, which she considers “her property.” She was afraid I would make fun of the richly-symbolic animal. She had lost her power, position and legacy and the white elephant was the only symbol she had left of the good old days.
* * *
We had been given permission by the district authorities to visit her white elephant and the next morning drove to a nature reserve in Phialat, an hour and a half northwest of Vientiane. En route, my Laotian friend called ahead to arrange lunch, and was told that our white elephant viewing privileges had been revoked by Madame Thongvinh.
We went anyway and met one of the vets who oversees the care of the animal.
He confirmed that the animal was indeed the personal property of Madame Thongvinh, and that her word in the district, her birthplace, was law. No, we couldn’t see the elephant. Yes, the animal was healthy. Yes, Madame Thongvinh visits about twice a year; she is the only visitor. Yes, she and the elephant have a special relationship. Yes, she instructs that when the elephant is moved from one part of the buffer zone next to the national park to another it is “camouflaged” with dark paint. No, we couldn’t slip into the forest and search for it ourselves.
Laos’s other white elephant, a male named Chayamongkhol (King of Elephants), died in 2010 at the Laos Zoo, making Madame Thongvinh’s white elephant, which she’s named Keo (Precious), the country’s only such creature, the property of a woman who holds on to the idea that the animal will do for her what it has done for Buddhist rulers for centuries — show that she is a legitimate and semi-divine leader. Perhaps the white elephant can compensate for her indignation at being kicked out of her executive position in the Communist Party for excessive corruption (allegedly smuggling heroin to Vietnam). Perhaps the animal can give a feeble old woman who has been side-lined by the younger generation (few people in Vientiane know or care about her) one last glimmer of self-respect.
And Madame Thongvinh’s elephant might be the last one for a while. While an aerial photo of a wild white elephant, spotted in 1998 by a helicopter pilot, circulated in Lao conservation circles a few years ago, that animal has not been seen since. And the elephant population in Laos, which describes itself as Lan Xang — Land of a Million Elephants (and which had Airavata, the archetypal white elephant, on its flag during the royalist period of 1952-1975), continues to crash. The IUCN Red List estimates that there are only some 400 wild elephants left in the country, and the number is decreasing.
* * *
And Boun, the man who had a dream and captured the animal?
After his epic long elephant march to Vientiane to “donate” the elephant to the prime minister and his wife, Boun returned to his village broke and empty handed. A few years later another government official came to his home with a gift, the only compensation or thanks he ever received. It is a painting on thin wood, about half as tall as he is, showing Boun’s daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter sitting on the white elephant that he captured through a mystical dream.