The dewatau sotapan: a Mon prototype of the 37 nats

Abstract

In the literature which has grown up around the Burmese tradition of the 37 nats two omissions have been generally conspicuous. Much has been placed on record regarding the cults of individual members of this pantheon; yet what constitutes the corporate cult of the 37 remains obscure. In casting around for a unifying principle, writers on the subject have made much of the secular status of the persons who became nats and the manner of their deaths. It has escaped comment that most of the details recorded belong not so much tomythology as to hagiography, and concern the earthly careers of those who were deified rather than their nature and powers as gods.1