Ting mong
a decoy or mannequin popular in Khmer folklore
Ting mong (Khmer: ទីងមោង) is a decoy or mannequin popular in Khmer folklore, traditionally with a head and no body, but more recently in the shape of a human, similar in its shape to the scarecrow, but different in its function as its purpose is not to scare crows but to fight away evil spirits and plagues.
Origin
According the Khmer ethnologist Ang Choulean, the Khmer scarecrow can be traced back to the guardian deities in the Angkorian temples. Those with a scary face and no body, can be traced back to the figure of Rahu, while others recall giants and demons of Khmer mythology.
Design
Ting mong have varying designs in the different provinces of Cambodia. They are often made of an old pot of broken clay painted with charcoal to make a scary face. They are hung on the outer fence of private houses, especially near the entrance.
In the Province of Siemreap, ting mong are often weapon-bearing scarecrows.
Since the 1990s, the design of the ting mong has evolved as villagers decorated the entrance of the village or their houses with humanoid scarecrows using second-hand clothes which were cheaper and more accessible in bulk than in the past. While the original idea was to scare the ghosts away, ghost scarers now tend to look more like human beings who emit a certain sense of humor.
In the present day, superstitious farmers erect ting tong as floral-shirted scarecrows with a plastic pot for a head and armed with a stick.
“Ting mong” enters the record as a decoy or mannequin popular in Khmer folklore. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ting, mong and decoy can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ting mong” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.