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Entranceway Inscriptions of Ancient Guanyin Temple (Guanyin gumiao 觀音古廟) (ศาลเจ้ากวนอิม San Tchaw Kuan Im)

From the Ground Up: Buddhism & East Asian Religions (FROGBEAR Project)

The Ancient Guanyin Temple (觀音古廟) (ศาลเจ้ากวนอิม San Tchaw Kuan Im) is a Buddhist temple in Bangkok, Thailand. This one room neighborhood temple was constructed during the reign of King Rama V, roughly from 1853-1910, as specified by the temple caretaker. The caretaker said that the temple was bombed during the Japanese invasion of Thailand in 1941, but was later rebuilt. The temple regularly hosts chanting groups, the majority of whom were specified to be Teochew Chinese (唐人). The caretaker stated that the temple has no state support, but does regularly pay money to a Chinese foundation. It is not known to what extent the temple has been renovated, nor how often. Image 01 shows a frontview of the temple entranceway. Image 02 and Image 03 show inscriptions either side of the doorway. The right inscription in Image 02 reads 清光緒歲次戊子年吉旦主 (indicating the year 1888 and a reference to the first day of the month) and the left inscription in Image 03 reads 福建 長樂百溪頭弟子陳朝孫敬 "offered by disciple Chen Chaosun, head of the Baixi village in the Changle district of Fujian." Notably, the temple caretaker specified that these inscriptions were only recently uncovered (roughly 2 years ago in 2021) during the recent renovation and were previously covered by wooden beams. Image 04 shows position of stone stamps in seal script underneath the central plaque, with Image 05 shows the right stone seal and Image 06 shows left stone seal. The seals mirror each other. Metadata created and compiled by: Kira Johansen.

Bangkok (Thailand); 13.739641; 100.509704

chi

Cluster 3.4: Typologies of Text-Image Relations

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0440912

Non UBC

Faculty; Graduate; Undergraduate

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