Bad Death and Malevolent Spirits among the Taï Peoples
Résumé
The adoption of Buddhism by some of the Tai- speaking peoples had on their cosmology and soteriology an impact that the present paper considers from the specific point of view of the conceptions relating to abnormal death. It emerges from the comparison between Buddhist and non-Bud- dhist Tai, that the doctrine of karma had certainly an impact on the interpretation of bad death, but that it has not deeply changed its symptoms as well as the typology of the malevolent ghosts it generates. Despite their wildness, these ghosts may be tamed and become guardian spirits of local communities, under certain conditions which are examined in the last part of the paper. [Tai, popular religion, Buddhism, malevolent spirits, ancestor worship]