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Altars on the right back wall 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, but the most recent set of renovations occured in 2021. The following images show the right altars in front of the back wall. Image 01 shows the Thousand-armed Guanyin (千手觀音) placed atop the table, as well as other Guanyin (觀音) figures and offerings. Image 02 shows a close-up of the ceiling beams in this section, reading 大吉大利 "Good luck and great prosperity" on the vertical black beams and 一本万利 "put in a little and get a lot out; small capital, huge profit" on the rounded red beams. Image 03 shows a close-up of the thousand-armed Guanyin placed atop the table, as well as other Guanyin figures and offerings. Notably, the main thousand-armed Guanyin figure is holding pearl offerings, which is a feature unique to Thai temples. Below these figures on the shelf appears to be a golden turtle or tortoise shell and wrapped prayer mats. Image 04 shows a close-up of the portrait just above the altar. Image 05 shows the altar of Daoist protector god Supreme Emperor of the Region of Heaven, Xuanwu (玄武). This deity in particular is heavily connected to the Teochew (唐人) people, is known as Tua Lao Yah (大老爷 "Big Deity"), and is one of the highest ranking Daoist deities in the Daoist pantheon. In Thai, he is known as Chao Poh Suea, or Tiger God (เจ้าพ่อเสือ). Image 06 shows a close-up of the altar, with the Chinese behind the main altar figure reading from left to right 元天上帝 and 玄天上帝, identifying the name of the deity, Xuanwu. Image 07 shows the tiger altar just below the altar shown in Image 05 featuring incense bowls with Chinese "Golden Flower" offerings (金花) and candles. This picture in particular shows the one of the temple's instruction signs at the top right of the altar stone demarkating the correct order of devotee prayer and incense offerings. This station is the 4th station in the order of prayer around the temple, and at this station the instructions say to give 3 incense sticks (จุคที่ 4 ธูป 3 ดอก). The Chinese on the electric candles likely wishes for good fortune and auspiciousness. Metadata created and compiled by: Kira Johansen.

Bangkok (Thailand); 13.739641; 100.509704

chi; tha

Cluster 3.4: Typologies of Text-Image Relations

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0440918

Non UBC

Faculty; Graduate; Undergraduate

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