Ma Da

The Vietnamese spirit of one who has drowned in still or slow water and remains held in the place of drowning until another takes the place. The mechanism is recorded as *thế mạng*, substitution. The spirit is described in older accounts as the figure of the drowned, the body bloated by water, hair like the weeds of the place of dying. She is heard before she is seen. The voice carries from the place of drowning, calling the fisherman by name. The records hold the voice itself as the means of substitution, the call drawing the living toward the place where the dead must be replaced.

Sources locate the figure most commonly along the Mekong delta and the smaller rivers of the central highlands. The chain of substitution is recorded as continuing for generations in rivers where the counter-rite has lapsed. The counter-rite, where it survives, is the work of the thầy cúng, the ritual officiant, who offers the spirit a paper figure or a straw effigy in place of the living, releasing the ma da from the obligation to take a substitute.