Open Collections

Right Side 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 the right side of the Niao Shi Temple (鳥石寺). Image 01 shows an overview with fieldwork participant Saly Sirothphiphat and the temple caretaker on the left side of the frame. Image 02 and Image 03 show the golden figures along this side of the wall. The caretaker specified that templegoers should pray to different deities depending on their age, because each of the eighteen total deities (along this wall and the left side) are efficacious for different things. Image 04 shows the inscription above these figures, reading 十八羅漢, meaning "Eighteen Arhats," which refer to the original followers of the Gautama Buddha, and the Thai echoes the Chinese, ๑๘ อรหันต์. Image 05 shows the rightmost golden deity, as well as various books and pamphlets to its right. Behind the figure is the character 佛, for Buddha. Below the figure is a tray filled with various crescent-shaped wooden moons called Moon Blocks, or Jiaobei (筊杯), which templegoers can use for divination and asking various questions to the god in question. Users throw the Jiaobei a maximum of three times to receive confirmation. A confirmation divination signal is when one moon block lands face up and the other lands face down. If both moons are face down, this is a non-confirmation. In some groups, both moons facing up means the god in question is laughing at you. Next to the golden figure are Kau cim (求籤) divination sticks, called Qiu qian (求籤) or ไม้เซียมซี in Thai. Each of the sticks have a number on them which correlates to the numbers of different fortunes. To find your fortune, you must rattle the Qiu qian sticks until one falls to the ground (methods vary geographically). In some Chinese Buddhist temples, you must confirm the fortune by throwing the Jiaobei. The number sheet next to the Jiaobei refers to these fortunes, with the title in simplified characters, 幸运号码, meaning "Lucky numbers" and the Thai echoes this, เบอร์ดี้. The temple caretaker specified that in this temple, the Jiaobei are not correlated to the Kau cim divination sticks (meaning you do not have to use the Jiaobei to confirm the reading of the divination sticks), rather they are used to answer questions about health. The following photos Image 06 through Image 13 show close-ups of each of the various figures against the wall. All of the figures have the character 佛, encased by a red circle, painted behind them. Image 14 shows a close-up of the Kau cim sticks and Image 15 shows a close-up of the Jiaobei. 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

10.14288/1.0441505

Non UBC

Faculty; Graduate; Undergraduate

DSpace