Bahnar

The Bahnar religion is the traditional animism and polytheism of the Bahnar, a Mon-Khmer-speaking people of the Central Highlands of Vietnam, in Gia Lai and Kon Tum, with other groups reaching coastal Binh Dinh and Phu Yen. Their gods are called Yang, and a great festival of thanks to them involves the stabbing of a water buffalo.

The Jolong, one Bahnar branch, keep a new-year feast of the bamboo rat as an act of worship to the gods of nature. The rat replaced the snake as the sacred animal after the villagers noticed that it never lacks roots to eat. Bahnar warriors fought beside Sedang and Jarai troops in the Tay Son armies that rose in 1771.