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Chanting Bookcase 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 are close-ups of the bookcase on the left side of the temple containing the temple's chanting books. No one the fieldwork participants conversed with spoke Mandarin Chinese or any Chinese dialect, even though the chanting books are printed in Chinese characters. One of the people walking by told participants that most older people in the area speak Teochew (แต้จิ๋ว pronounced Tae-jew). This is reflected in the phonetic reading of Chinese characters in the chanting books. For example, the character 生 (sheng) which would be pronounced with first tone in Mandarin Chinese, is accompanied by red Thai writing เซง (seng) which is the Teochew pronunciation of the same word. Image 01 shows a declaration from the Thai government taped on the bookcase doors. The rest of the images are the labels for each of the book shelves. Because the titles are abbreviations, not all formal titles of the scriptures of each chanting book can be gleaned. Where further information is available, this is noted in the following descriptions. The thai writing in these images are translations of the Chinese sūtra names. Image 02 reads, 現在千菩薩經 meaning "The sūtra of the 1000 Bodhisattvas of the present age." Image 03 reads, 慈悲地藏 "Merciful Kṣitigarbha [Bodhisattva scripture]" on the left and 地藏本願 "[the scripture of] the original vows of Kṣitagarbha [Bodhisattva]," or the longer title as "Kṣitigarbha Bodhisattva Pūrvapraṇidhāna Sūtra" (地藏菩薩本願經) (สูตรโปรดของพระเจ้ากษิติการ์บฺโวทยาสาสน์) on the right. Image 06 reads, 北斗 "Northern Dipper [scripture]." Image 09 reads, 藥師經 "Medicine Buddha sūtra" (ปาฏิหาริย์ พุทธเจ้าของยา). Image 10 reads, 金剛 "Diamond [sutra]" (สูตรเพชรเชตติกะปรจญฺญาปารมิตา). Image 11 reads, 千佛, "A Thousand Buddhas." For a specific look at one of the chanting books, see the other database entry on Guanyin gumiao chanting sutras, titled "Chanting Book in Ancient Guanyin Temple (Guanyin gumiao 觀音古廟)." Metadata created and compiled by: Kira Johansen and Saly Sirothphiphat.

Bangkok (Thailand); 13.739641; 100.509704

chi; tha

Cluster 3.4: Typologies of Text-Image Relations

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0440929

Non UBC

Faculty; Graduate; Undergraduate

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