Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on transcription
- 1 Introduction and manifesto
- Part I The arahant and the Path of Meditation
- Part II The hagiography of a Buddhist saint: text and context; the politics of sectarianism
- Part III The cult of amulets: the objectification and transmission of charisma
- 14 The cult of images and amulets
- 15 An enumeration of historic and popular amulets
- 16 The “likeness” of the image to the original Buddha: the case of the Siṅhala Buddha
- 17 The process of sacralizing images and amulets: the transfer of power by monks
- 18 Amulets blessed by contemporary forest saints
- 19 Saints on cosmic mountains
- Part IV Conceptual and theoretical clarifications
- Notes
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
15 - An enumeration of historic and popular amulets
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on transcription
- 1 Introduction and manifesto
- Part I The arahant and the Path of Meditation
- Part II The hagiography of a Buddhist saint: text and context; the politics of sectarianism
- Part III The cult of amulets: the objectification and transmission of charisma
- 14 The cult of images and amulets
- 15 An enumeration of historic and popular amulets
- 16 The “likeness” of the image to the original Buddha: the case of the Siṅhala Buddha
- 17 The process of sacralizing images and amulets: the transfer of power by monks
- 18 Amulets blessed by contemporary forest saints
- 19 Saints on cosmic mountains
- Part IV Conceptual and theoretical clarifications
- Notes
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Summary
There are, as I have said before, many kinds of amulets and sacralized objects that are the focus of devout attention. There are small Buddha images; there are medallions or coins (rīan) with imprints of the seated Buddha, of the figures of famous monks, and of famous kings and deities. There are clay tablets with similar imprints. Finally, there are images of birds, animals, and special human beings (other than those mentioned above).
These amulets comprise a highly diverse congeries in their age and time of making, their markings, the circumstances of their manufacture, and their spatial distribution throughout the country. If there is a single attribute that applies to them all, it is that they are “sedimentations of power,” but this scarcely aggregates them into a closed set capable of systematic classification. The Thai do not have a single system of categories that exhaustively label and classify amulets, but they have names for each individual amulet, and some named amulets fall into larger classes.
In this book we are primarily concerned with the amulets that are currently being sacralized by famous forest saints and meditation masters. But because these amulets belong to a larger tradition and universe of amulets, it is necessary to have a fair idea of the major classes or types of amulets that circulate in Thailand, even if this enumeration is incomplete and the classes in part a construct of the author.
- Type
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- Information
- The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets , pp. 208 - 229Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1984