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Yeay Mao or Lok Yeay Mao (, p=Yìmáo, or p=Lǎo Yìmáo, Grandma Mao) is an ancient Mythology Khmer Heroes, Kampuchea Krom Community: Yeay or Mao, visitors travel to seacoast Sihanoukville and Kampong Som province must stop to pay respect.. Link retrieved on 2nd Feb 2009. and a neak ta divinity in the local Folk religion of Buddhism and Brahmanism in Cambodia. She is venerated mainly as the guardian of coastal provinces of the country. She is venerated especially along the road from Phnom Penh to the sea port of Sihanoukville, as well as in Kampot Province, Koh Kong, and Kep Province. At the Bokor Mountain in Kampot there is a 29 meters tall monument to Yeay Mao inaugurated in 2012, while there is a young version of Yeay Mao in the Kep Beach called Beautiful Lady (ស្រីស្អាត) or Sela waits for her husband (សិលាចាំប្តី), but that belongs to the legend of Mao looking to the west for her lost husband. She is considered the protector of travelers, hunters, and fishermen. Drivers still stop at her shrine along National Road 4 near Phnom Pech Nil to pay their respects and wash their cars with water from the stream nearby, as well as the monument at Bokor. In 2023, after a surge of car accidents on the Phnom Penh- Preah Sihanouk's expressway, the government decided to build a shrine for her at Sre Ambel station for travelers to stop along and pray.
Another version says that Yeay Mao was the wife of Ta Krohom-Koh (តាក្រហមក) - literally " Grandpa Red Neck". They lived in the forest near Pech Nil Mountain (ភ្នំពេជ្រនិល). Once they went around and they met a tiger. Ta Krohom-Koh abandoned his wife and the tiger devoured her.
Since then, any traveller who passed by the place of the accident, paid respect to her spirit to avoid a similar fate.Seik Sopat y Sadang Tuo: Colección de Tradiciones Camboyanas (ប្រជុំរឿងព្រេងខ្មែរ), pp.82-83.
When they built the highway between Phnom Penh and the sea in what is today Sihanoukville, a small shrine was built at the spot. The road was finished by the French in 1876, a fact that increased the pilgrimage to the shrine. It included and Chinese believers.
The place of the veneration must be set with three statues:
If the person to whom the spirit sent strong pains because ignoring to pay veneration to her, repented, that person was healed. But if that person did not repent, he or she could die.
It was also believed that if a person presented his offering asking to hurt an enemy, the spirit used to fulfil the wish.Seik Sopat and Sadang Tuo: Collection of Cambodian Traditions (ប្រជុំរឿងព្រេងខ្មែរ), p.80.
In 1900, the French army destroyed the first shrine and the divinity came in decadence.
During the short Japanese invasion of Cambodia in 1940, the army of that country gathered the farmers of Kampot Province and Vietnamese, Chinese and Cham Cambodians, to dig trenches at the ancient sacred place. According to the legend, the workers desecrated the site, bringing the fury of the spirit. People started to suffer epidemics and many died. They explained these epidemics as the fury of Yeay Mao.Seik Sopat and Sadang Tuo: Collection of Cambodian Traditions (ប្រជុំរឿងព្រេងខ្មែរ), p.79.
In order to placate the spirit, the people started again to offer gifts to Yeay Mao and the veneration revived. After the villages near to Pech Nil Mountain, pray to the divinity asking for health and protection. If there was, for example, a theft, they pray to the spirit to punish the criminal.
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