Open Collections

Candle Donations on the Patio of the Niao Shi Temple (鳥石寺) (ศาลเจ้า โอวเจียะ หยี่อาเนี้ยเก็ง) (Sanchao O Jia Yi Ania Keng)

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

The Niao Shi Temple (鳥石寺) (ศาลเจ้า โอวเจียะ หยี่อาเนี้ยเก็ง) (Sanchao O Jia Yi Ania Keng) is a Guanyin (觀音) temple in a quiet neighborhood in Bangkok, Thailand. According to the temple caretaker, the temple was established 200 years ago by Teochew Chinese (唐人) (ชาวเถิง) people. The temple is run by a committee whose membership is passed hereditarily, but at the time fieldwork participants visited in May 2023, there was only one surviving committee member, whom the temple caretaker deemed "too old to walk." The temple is known in the neighborhood for effecting miracles. The caretaker told participants stories of how people who wish to sell their land bring signs reading "SOLD" and leave it in the temple, and then their property is sold, after which the templegoers come back and burn the sales certificate. Some other templegoers claimed that they put the names of ill family members under Guanyin altar, and their family members miraculously recovered. It was said that the CEO of a large grocery store chain called Makro came to pray at this temple when he was a taxi driver, and as he regularly prayed, he became more and more wealthy. He now returns to the temple once a month to donate and help the caretaker renovate certain spaces. There are two regular chanting groups of roughly 60-70 people who frequent the temple. The groups are made up of both older men and women who wear white and speak Chinese. Each of these groups comes around only once a month. The temple is open from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. everyday. The following set of images show the candle donations in the patio area of the Niao Shi Temple (鳥石寺) (Image 01). Image 02 and Image 03 show close-ups of the writing on the candles, likely identifying the names of the donors. The temple caretaker said that the large candles usually take around three months of continuous burning to be completely burned down. Donors buy the candles for 2,500 baht and write their names on them. During the "Rain Retreat Festival," the temple swaps the red candles out for yellow ones. The Rain Retreat Festival is associated with the rainy season in Thailand and the period called "Buddhist Lent," roughly from July to September every year, in which monks do not leave their monasteries. The period begins from the Wan Khao Phansa (วันเข้าพรรษา) day and ends on the Wan Ok Phansa (วันออกพรรษา) day. Metadata created and compiled by: Kira Johansen

Bangkok (Thailand); 13.719533; 100.482269

chi; tha

Cluster 3.4: Typologies of Text-Image Relations

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0441492

Non UBC

Faculty; Graduate; Undergraduate

DSpace