Nat

Burmese nat devotion predates the conversion to Theravada Buddhism in Burma and was politically formalized under King Anawrahta, who endorsed an official pantheon (commonly enumerated as the 37 Great Nats) and allowed nats to be housed in Buddhist temples so adherents could continue their older cults while adopting Buddhism. Many of the canonical Great Nats are said to have been human beings who met violent deaths and were subsequently deified; other nats are resident spirits of natural features (trees, waters, mountains).

There is no single canonical physical form for nats as a class in the supplied sources; they are represented and experienced through ritual embodiment, statues, costumes, and mediumship at shrines and festivals. The 37 Great Nats are often represented at pilgrimage sites and village shrines, and during nat pwè festivals nat kadaws enact nats through dance and costume, producing variable anthropomorphic portrayals rather than a standardized iconography.

Nats are social spiritual agents with human-like wants and flaws who demand propitiation and offerings. Many are tutelary or territorial spirits tied to villages, households, lineages, trees, forests, mountains, and waters. They can possess or embody mediums (nat kadaws) during nat pwè, allowing communicative exchange; they respond to offerings and ritual negotiation and may punish transgressions (for example, wrath is believed to follow desecration of a tree or sacred site).