Tradition

Teanh Prot

ល្បែងទាញព្រ័ត្រ


Teanh prot (ល្បែងទាញព្រ័ត្រ, Lbaeng Teanh Prot) is the Khmer rope-pulling game played at Khmer New Year and at the start of the rice season.[1][2] Two teams, most often women against men, pull a rope across a center line, and the rope is cut at the end to mark the turn of the year.[3][1]

Names

Teanh means "to pull," and prot is a rope, traditionally one woven from strips of buffalo or cow hide; the English name that fits best is "rope pulling."[1] The formal name Lbaeng Teanh Prot is given in English as the Rope Pulling Game.[2] Other spellings include teanh proat and lbaengteanhprot.[4][3]

Occasions

Khmer New Year is celebrated for three days in mid-April, and teanh prot is usually played in the afternoon on the second and third days.[1] In northern Cambodia villagers traditionally play it on the last day.[5] That third day matters most. It is called thngay tras, "the day on which the ceremony ends," or thngay phdach prot, "the day on which the rope is cut."[1] The game is played alongside other New Year games such as bos angkonh, chol chhoung and lakanseng.[6][5]

The game also belongs to chlong chet, "crossing the month of Chet," a rite held soon after New Year to open the new rice season; it is also called chlong chnam.[1][5] Each community agrees on its own date every year, and some hold it on the full-moon day of the month of Chet.[1][6] The ceremony takes place in the village common building, usually near the neak ta hut, the shrine of the local guardian spirit. Villagers ask the local deities for permission to grow rice, for protection from natural disasters and for better crops. They may bring packets of rice seed to the shrine, where a rite calls the souls of the rice, and only after the ceremony may they work in their fields.[1] Rice is regarded as having a soul.[1] If the rope was cut at New Year, the game is not played again at chlong chet.[5]

Practice

At New Year the game is often played in a Buddhist monastery compound, which gives open space for games and gatherings. It may also be held in an open space in the village, in front of a house, or before the neak ta hut.[1][3] It is usually played by day, but it can also be played at night by lamp or moonlight.[7] Temple committees or village elders provide the rope before or during the celebration.[1]

Ropes are generally 15 to 50 meters (50 to 165 feet) long, and shorter ropes may be woven together. Besides hide, they have been made of forest vines, sugar-palm stems, coconut fiber, or plastic bought at the market.[1][7] Hide ropes are no longer made, although many people still know or have heard how they were made.[1] In Krang Thnung, the game used a thick rope of buffalo skin (2025).[4]

Teams usually have 10 to 50 players, divided by gender: married women on one side and married men on the other, most of them 25 to 60 years old. Mixed teams also occur, and players can range from about 8 to 60.[1][5] The women's team often has more players, because men are considered stronger; one example is eight men against ten women.[5][7] An exceptionally strong man and woman anchor the far ends, other strong players take the middle, and lighter players stand in between.[7]

One or two older people referee, usually volunteers or chosen by the teams; when there are two, one is a man and one a woman, one for each side.[1][5] A center line is drawn on the ground or marked on the rope, and each team holds its side.[1] The referee counts from one to three and may shout yak or yak or three times, with the teams answering heouy. The cries are meant to drive away malevolent spirits.[1][4] Local people also call the cry chak phumi ma, a call used to begin other shared efforts, such as moving a boat in or out of storage. Players shout ho veu three times before they pull.[7]

In some places a kong thom or kong mon gong is struck at the first pull and played through the contest.[7] At Bakong Temple, a drummer and a string player accompanied the game.[1] A team wins by pulling the other across the line. Each round lasts about five to ten minutes, and play continues round after round.[1][7] The game draws a large crowd.[5]

Winners may claim playful stakes from the losers: piggyback rides, smears of mud, rolling over their bodies, or ket, rubbing their buttocks against the losing players. These acts would be out of place at other times but are accepted at New Year and chlong chet.[5][1]

The rope-cutting

Cutting the rope, phdach prot, is the key moment of the game.[1] In the past an achar, a Buddhist officiant, cut the rope in the middle, or the two teams broke it by pulling.[5] In Krang Thnung a village elder cuts it (2025).[4] Market ropes are costly, so today the rope is often treated as broken in ritual and kept at the temple for the next year's games.[5][1] The phrase phdach prot also means the final stage of any game, race or contest.[1]

Meaning and significance

The cut rope is regarded as the passage from the old year into the new. It marks both a new cycle of twelve lunar months and a new rice season.[1][5] At chlong chet it marks the end of one rice cycle and the beginning of the next.[1] The three days of New Year are seen as a time between years, open to disorder, and teanh prot is one of the ritual games that restore order and renew the year.[5] The pull between men's and women's teams, and the teasing stakes that follow, are also read as symbols of fertility and new life, like acts in rain-calling rites in parts of Cambodia.[5][1] The cutting of the rope is linked with renewal and fertility for the coming rice season.[4]

The wider tugging tradition marks the start of the farming year, builds solidarity and gives entertainment. Although it looks like a contest, it is meant to show the value of cooperation.[3][7] The game is also regarded as exercise and as a way to strengthen unity, belonging and identity.[7] Tugging games can keep elements of farming ritual and stand for natural forces such as sun and rain.[8]

History

The game has a history of centuries in Cambodia's farming society, and it is played nationwide.[6] Many Cambodians link it with the Hindu story of the churning of the ocean of milk, in which gods and demons pull a serpent, the naga, to win amrita, the nectar of immortality.[8][4] Inscriptions and carvings show how popular the story was in ancient Cambodia.[5] Cambodian visitors to the churning bas-relief at Angkor Wat, about 50 meters (165 feet) long, see in it a scene of teanh prot. Some Cambodian reliefs show gods and demons pulling a naga rope rather than the churning itself.[5] The gates of Angkor Thom, built under King Jayavarman VII at the end of the twelfth century, show gods and demons holding nagas, and the image is read as the restoration of order after the Cham attacks of about 1177 to 1181.[5][4]

A Khmer folktale tells of gods and demons who agreed to settle a quarrel with a rope-pulling contest. Mr. Moa Mey heard it from the late monk Venerable Thong, and it was published in the Cambodian journal Kampuch Surya in 1953. It is the only written text about the game known to survive.[1][5] In the past, only married people took part, which a villager named Sokha, 55, explained as a way to keep cosmic balance.[4]

On October 14, 2013, the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts added Lbaeng Teanh Prot to Cambodia's national list of intangible cultural heritage, as entry 95 under Folk Game and Ritual.[2] Cambodia, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines nominated their tugging traditions together, and on December 2, 2015, at its 10th session in Windhoek, Namibia, the UNESCO committee inscribed Tugging Rituals and Games on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.[8][7][9][10] A UNESCO-ICHCAP publication of 2019 on the shared tradition has a chapter on teanh prot.[11]

Community

Nearly every Cambodian has played teanh prot or at least watched it.[6] It is kept by rice-growing communities around the Tonle Sap and north of Angkor Wat.[3] In 2013 its presence was recorded in six provinces (Kampong Cham, Prey Veng, Svay Rieng, Kampong Thom, Siem Reap and Banteay Meanchey) and seen at three places in Siem Reap Province during New Year.[6] Village elders lead the younger people in the game and its rites.[3] In northern Cambodia, where towns and industry have grown less, the game keeps its strong tie to rice growing. In cities it may be only a contest of strength, or it may hardly be played.[6][1]

By 2013 the game was in steady decline. Many places had stopped playing it about ten years earlier, and many temples that once held it no longer did. Young people were moving to cities for work, elders gave little encouragement, and modern dancing and other entertainment were taking its place. Little was being done to pass it on, although some villagers spoke of the need to keep it.[6][1][5] Ten years after the UNESCO listing, in 2025, the game faced the same pressures: rising costs, young people leaving the villages and time spent on screens. Some vocational teachers were bringing the game back into their classes through sport, history and community-building.[4]

On the seventh anniversary, December 2, 2022, Prime Minister Hun Sen called on Cambodians to help preserve the game as part of the nation's and the world's cultural wealth.[9] Ahead of Khmer New Year on April 14 to 16, 2026, the public was encouraged to play teanh prot and other folk games at suitable places.[12]

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27 1.28 ICHCAP, Teanh prot: general description of the game (2013)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, decision on Lbaeng Teanh Prot (October 2013), UNESCO document
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Wikipedia, Tugging rituals and games
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 Cambodgemag, Teanh Proat, the rope that unites gods, demons and Cambodia's future (December 2025)
  5. ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 5.13 5.14 5.15 5.16 5.17 5.18 ICHCAP, Teanh Prot (traditional tug-of-war) in Cambodia (2013)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 ICHCAP, Teanh prot (traditional rope pulling) in Cambodia: context and background (2013)
  7. ↑ 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 IntoCambodia.org, Tugging rituals and games
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 The Cambodia Daily, Tug-of-war game pulls its way onto UN cultural heritage list
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Phnom Penh Post, PM celebrates UNESCO anniversary of tug of war (December 2022)
  10. ↑ Khmer Times, Unesco dances with controversy
  11. ↑ ICHCAP, Tugging rituals and games (2019)
  12. ↑ Cambodianess, Khmer folk games urged ahead of New Year celebration (March 2026)
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This page was last edited on 2 October 2026, at 01:35.