Cambodia stops to watch royal oxen predict the future

Phnom Penh - Cambodians celebrated Royal Ploughing Day Saturday, with thousands watching with baited breath to see what foods two royal oxen would choose in a colourful ceremony designed to predict the future of the new farming season.

The result was mixed as the two fractious beasts, bedecked in red head cloths and golden silk rugs, turned their noses up at the majority of the seven golden dishes laid out before them, signaling a lean if mostly peaceful year ahead for the overwhelmingly agricultural country.

Six oxen ceremonially ploughed a field located adjacent to the Royal Palace, watched intently by thousands of Cambodians and some of the most important people in the land in a ceremony presided over by King Norodom Sihamoni and carried live by every national television station.

Two chocolate brown oxen were finally brought forward to choose from a feast including fresh grass, wine, water, corn, rice and sesame, but one refused to eat altogether and the other ate just 45 percent of a dish of corn before turning his back on the proceedings.

If they had eaten the grass or drunk the wine, Cambodia would have braced itself for war, chaos and turmoil. However their refusal to touch the water signals scarce rains for the coming rice season, according to palace Brahman priests present for the ceremony.

Corn growers will enjoy an average season, but the untouched dish of rice sends an ominous sign of tough and mostly dry times ahead for a nation which relies heavily on paddy rice as its staple crop, soothsayers predicted.

The ancient ceremony is held annually and signals the end of the dry season and the time to begin preparing the fields for the rains which herald the new rice season.

It was reintroduced by former king Norodom Sihanouk after his return from exile in 1993 as part of an effort to return Cambodia to its cultural history after years of civil war and the destruction of so many ancient traditions under the brutal 1975 to 1979 Khmer Rouge regime.