Open Collections

Donation Inscription on the Stone Wall 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 images show a donation inscription on the stone wall in the left wing of the Niao Shi Temple (鳥石寺). Image 01 shows a perspective of where the inscription is relative to the left entranceway. Image 02 shows a close-up. The inscription on the far right reads, 已酉年一九六九年, which would refer to the year 1969 in the sexagenary cycle (干支). The inscription to its left reads 重修建宮發起人芳 名 "the fragrant names [donors] of those who initiated the renovation of the temple", and then lists donors, all from the Zhang (張) family as follows: 張振昌，張同安，張泰茋，張玉寬，張亞？喃. The left inscription has been faded. Metadata created and compiled by: Kira Johansen

Bangkok (Thailand); 13.719533; 100.482269

chi

Cluster 3.4: Typologies of Text-Image Relations

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0441493

Non UBC

Faculty; Graduate; Undergraduate

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