Open Collections

Thai Spirit House on left side 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 an overview of the left-middle side of the temple, featuring a spirit house, "San Phra Phum" or "San Jao" (ศาลพระภูมิ, "house of the guardian spirit") placed infront of a tiled mosaic depicting spotted deer, likely the chital deer, in front of mountains. Image 01 shows an overview of the setting. Image 02 shows a close-up of the ornaments on the beam above the altar, with the Chinese characters: 萬事如意 "everything shall proceed according to one's wishes." There are animals, potentially boars, in the middle of the two inscriptions. Image 03 shows a close-up of the altar and the altar-stand, with figures on the inside. The number "163" is at the base of the spirit house patio. Image 04 shows a close-up of the characters on the beam on the right side of the altar, reading 萬事如意 "everything shall proceed according to one's wishes" vertically and 平安是福 "peace is happiness" horizontally. Image 05 shows a close up of the beams farther right, reading vertically 平平安安 "peace," on the rightmost black beam, and 萬事如意 on the vertical red beam and 長命百岁(歲) "wishes for long life" horizontally on the red rounded beams. Interestingly, the "sui" (歲) on these beams are written in simplified chinese. Image 06 shows the New Year's banner reading 財運享通萬事成 "Enjoying great wealth and nicely and fully completing all one's objectives." This banner has a companion banner on the other side of the temple, but with a different inscription. 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

10.14288/1.0440927

Non UBC

Faculty; Graduate; Undergraduate

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