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Nha Rong – heart, soul and history of Bana people

Published: 26/01/2009 05:00

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Ancient books contend that Nha Rong – a community long-house built on stilts – is viewed as the soul of an ethnic village in the Central Highlands.



Every night, children join their parents in the Nha Rong to gather around a cooking-fire and listen to recitals of epic tales of legendary heroes or parables containing life’s important lessons that have been passed from generation to generation.

It also provides a location for the whole village to hold meetings, led by the village’s patriarchs, to have discussions and to make final decisions regarding every matter of communal importance.

Traditional festivals and sacred rituals are also held at the village’s Nha Rong, which also provides a suitable place to receive and bid farewell to honoured guests. All single young men – the defenders of the village, sleep there each night.

A fine example of a Nha Rong, which is spacious, meticulous and typical of the Central Highlands, can be seen in Hanoi at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology. According to the Museum’s Deputy Director, Luu Hung, the model is an accurate reproduction of the oldest existing Nha Rong in the Central Highlands , constructed in the first half of the 20 th century in Kon Rbang village, Vinh Quang commune, in Kon Tum province.

The museum’s research group encountered difficulties in deciding which model would be the best representation as the traditional characteristics of most of the country’s Nha Rong have been lost and nowadays, many villages do not have a Nha Rong. According to a survey conducted in 1999, only one third of the 625 investigated villages in Kon Tum province had a Nha Rong.

Hung said that a typical Nha Rong possesses a multiform structure and a particular beauty in its design. A large Nha Rong will often have a floorspace of up to 90 sq.m and a height of 20 m.

A Nha Rong used to stand proudly in the centre of every ethnic village, acting as a symbol of the strength of the community. The bigger the house, the wealthier the village.
Notably, the construction of a Nha Rong would not include any iron nails or pins. The only materials used as a fastener would be rattan to attach the massive thatched roof to the building’s wooden frame.

The rafters would be decorated with patterns depicting religious scenes, legendary stories of ancient heroes, animals and other symbols of village life.

A Nha Rong is considered a holy building, where a village’s sacred relics would be preserved. They were constructed by skillful craftsmen and their construction would have to observe strict ritual demands.

“It deserves to be honoured as a pearl of the Central Highlands culture and preserved as a valuable architectural and art heritage,” Hung said.

Five years ago, masters from Kon Rbang village, including the village’s patriarch, visited Hanoi to create a model of a Bana Nha Rong for the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology.
At the same time, for the first time since 1975, Kon Rbang village launched a master apprenticeship course for young craftsmen, who studied the traditional construction methods used to build Nha Rong, drawing upon the experiences and techniques that have been passed down from the previous generations of masters.

The project to build the Nha Rong model in Hanoi provided an opportunity for the village’s patriarchs to teach the younger generation how to construct Nha Rong.

A wind of change subsequently blew through Kon Rbang village, where the local residents started to remove the corrugated iron roofs from their Nha Rong and replaced them with the dried grasses that traditionally formed the roof of these sacred hearts of the community, giving them a greater sense of their people’s history and helping them to keep in touch with the lives of their ancestors.

VietNamNet/VNA

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