Erawan Shrine
The Erawan Shrine ( Thai ศาล ท้าว มหาพรหม โรงแรม เอราวัณ , RTGS : San Thao Maha Phrom Rongraem Erawan , shrine of the god Brahma at Erawan Hotel ', shortly ศาล พระ พรหม San Phra Phrom ) is a shrine , of the Hindu God Brahma consecrated is. It is located in the Pathum Wan district of the Thai capital Bangkok , at the Ratchaprasong intersection of Phloen Chit and Ratchadamri Streets.
history
During the construction of the Erawan Hotel in 1956, numerous accidents occurred, workers died on the construction site, and a ship carrying marble for the hotel sank at sea. The superstitious workers refused to work, they feared angry spirits from the construction work. Rear Admiral Luang Suwicharnpat, an expert on astrology , was asked for advice and a solution to the problem. He stated that the foundation stone of the hotel had been laid on an unpromising day. He decided, since the name of the new hotel had already been determined, that a shrine was to be built and consecrated to the deity Brahma and that a ghost house was to be built on the hotel grounds. The north-western corner of the property was chosen as the location. When the shrine was completed and inaugurated on November 9, 1956 (the year 2499 according to the Buddhist era ), the series of accidents stopped and the hotel could be completed in a short time. In 1987 the Erawan Hotel was demolished and the Grand Hyatt Erawan Hotel was built in its place in 1991 .
The statue and the shrine
The deity Brahma is the god of creation. It is said that he created both himself and the world, heaven and people. In Thailand he is respectfully called Thao Maha Phrom or Phra Phrom for short . The statue of the god was made by Jitr Pimkowit on behalf of the Fine Arts Department (a sub-department of the Ministry of Education) from gilded plaster, it faces north. She sits on a roughly 1.5 m high rectangular base in a relaxed pose, called Lalitasana : one leg bent, the other hanging loosely down. The Erawan Brahma has four heads with four faces that look in all four directions. The faces all have slightly different facial expressions, but they are all saumya (friendly and amiable) and toshmya (pleased and satisfied). The eyes are open, which means that God is watchful. Every face has a pointy beard. Each head is covered with a crown (mukut) decorated with lotus leaves . There is an additional crown in the middle. Traditionally, the god is represented with four hands, but this statue has eight hands. Each hand holds an object with symbolic meaning:
- right side
- Brahma Danda , the staff that can represent the light, but also a weapon that stands for great strength.
- Chakra , the wheel of time, symbolizes the rotation of the world. It represents the air.
- Kalasha , the sacred vessel filled with holy water. Buddhists believe this vase contains the immortality elixir Amrita .
- Jnana Mudra - This hand does not hold an object, but rather forms a gesture. It is usually depicted with the thumb and index finger touching and forming a circle. Here the hand is only held at chest height, the palm facing inwards. This gesture symbolizes wisdom and teaching.
- Left side
- Darpana , the mirror with three rod-like protrusions. In him one sees the universal soul ( Atman ) .
- The conch shell can make a terrible noise that makes all enemies tremble.
- The Vedas , the holy book of knowledge.
- Akshamala , a rosary-like necklace, is used to count the ages. It has 108 very large pearls.
The Erawan Brahma also has a sacred cord wrapped around the upper body that extends from the left shoulder to the right hip. This cord is worn by brahmins , but it is also the mark of a Hindu god.
A simple pavilion arches above the statue, built in typical Thai style and covered with a mosaic of colorful mirrors.
The statue and shrine are renovated every two years as the wax candles and incense sticks leave an oily coating over time.
The shrine is not assigned to a monastery, there is no priest on the premises. The cleaning and maintenance work is done by laypeople. The statue is not given a ceremonial bath (except for Songkran ). Every morning the whole complex is hosed down with water in a rather unceremonious way.
Type of worship
This shrine has gained international fame over the years. He is known for the fact that one can ask for money, love, professional success but also health and enlightenment from the Erawan Brahma. If one is granted the wish, one revisits the shrine to keep his promise. For larger requests, a dance troupe is available, which performs dances to the sounds of a traditional Thai orchestra in order to please the god. This kind of worship is so deeply interwoven with Thai life that you can almost speak of customs instead of superstition.
According to the instruction of the brahmin expert, the best time to worship God is seven to eight in the morning and seven to eight in the evening. The best time to ask a favor is in the evening before Tao Mahaphrom retreats to heaven to rest. In addition, November 9th as the opening day is a special “holiday”. When making a request, certain sacrifices have to be made: seven krathongs (small containers made of banana leaves), in which there should be flowers with seven colors, seven kratongs with sugar cane cubes, each decorated with a rose, seven wax candles, two green coconuts , above and trimmed at the bottom, a hand of bananas and seven incense sticks . Depending on the extent of the request, seven garlands made of jasmine or other fragrant flowers can be offered. Penniless supplicants simply offer the god a wai (Thai greeting or reverence by placing both palms of the hands together and holding them in front of the face or chest). The request to the god should be made with a certain fixed formula, the translation of which is something like this: “I make this sacrifice to the god Brahma, the Lord of Heaven. May he be happy, may he in his infinite goodness make me happy too. May he bless me with progress and prosperity. May he give me a long life ... ”Then the individual wish can be expressed.
According to custom, the supplicant should, as soon as his wish has been fulfilled, perform a traditional Thai dance to the god. An orchestra with traditional musical instruments and a dance troupe are available for this purpose. There are a total of four dance troupes with up to eight dancers, which can be rented for a certain donation throughout the day. The dancers earn their living from dancing, but part of the donation will be given to the "Erawan Hotel Brahma Shrine Fund".
In front of the shrine along Phloenchit Street there are 27 stalls selling flowers, garlands and teak elephants of various sizes. These stalls have to pay a small monthly rent that is used to clean the shrine. The wooden elephants offered as sacrifices to the god are not taken back by the sellers to be sold again, but are sold by the administration of the shrine in regular auctions. The proceeds go to the "Erawan Hotel Brahma Shrine Fund".
The “Erawan Hotel Brahma Shrine Fund” often receives monetary donations from the supplicants after their wishes have been fulfilled. By 2002, 550 million baht had been raised in donations since the shrine opened . This money will benefit 300 hospitals across the country.
effect
The Erawan Shrine is the setting in the detective novel House of Spirits by US author Christopher G. Moore , which is about stolen antiques and drugs.
Attacks on the shrine
Attack in March 2006
In the early morning of March 21, 2006 at around half past one, the statue of Erawan Brahma was destroyed with a hammer by an allegedly mentally disturbed Thai Muslim . The 27-year-old, whose name is given as Thanakorn Phakdipon, was killed by two angry passers-by just minutes later. The police charged the two passers-by with murder. They were released on bail the following day from police custody.
The remains of the statue were covered with a white cloth. Officials complained about the expected decline in tourist numbers, as many tourists come here to see Phra Phrom. Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra ordered a conference to coordinate the process of restoring the popular shrine. Allegedly a new statue should have been made in two months at the latest.
On Sunday, May 21, 2006, the restored statue was put back in its original place in a big ceremony. In a festively decorated parade, Thao Maha Phrom was picked up by the workshop of the Fine Arts Department at 7.29 in the morning, and past Lak Mueang , Wat Phra Kaeo and Bot Phram , the Brahmin temple at the "giant swing" , to the Ratchaprasong intersection where she arrived around 11am. On the way the statue was hung with garlands of yellow marigold flowers (calendula) and jasmine by the numerous believers at the roadside . According to newspaper reports, more than 1,000 people are said to have attended the subsequent celebration despite pouring rain. Four Brahmins first performed a purification ceremony before the statue was unveiled in its shrine at the previously calculated time at 11:39 a.m.
Bomb attack in August 2015
On August 17, 2015, another attack occurred at the shrine. The attack occurred at 7 p.m. local time and killed 20 people with the detonation of one or possibly several bombs. At least 125 other people were injured. Among the victims were tourists and locals. According to the Thai police, six Thais, five Malaysians, four Chinese, two Hong Kong residents (including one British citizen ), one Indonesian and one Singaporean were among the dead .
The bomb was deposited on a bench by a low fence around the shrine. Other suspicious packages were seized in the immediate vicinity.
The shrine was released two days after the attack. The authorities are using a phantom to find a man who has been filmed by a surveillance camera. The police see a connection to a failed attack on a pier near the Saphan Taksin Skytrain station , in which a pipe bomb of the same type was used the day after the attack on the shrine. It is assumed that the man in the phantom did not act alone, so two more men are being sought, but no usable images are available. The authorities initially offered a reward of one million baht for catching the perpetrators, but this was increased to three million baht (the equivalent of 75,000 euros) on August 21.
On September 26, 2015, a police spokesman stated that two men arrested on August 29 and September 1 are believed to be directly linked to the bombing. A man, whose name and nationality are controversial, after being arrested with a Turkish passport believed to be forged, has been identified by police as who allegedly dropped the bomb at the shrine. The police also cited one of the man's confessions. He is said to have worn a wig during the attack. He was arrested on August 29 in a suburb of Bangkok, and numerous forged Turkish passports were discovered in his apartment in addition to explosives. The second arrested person is said to have traveled with a Chinese passport, the authenticity of which is not in doubt. He is said to have triggered the bomb with a mobile phone and said he later threw the phone into a channel. He was arrested on September 1st near the Cambodian border.
A military court, which has had jurisdiction over all explosives crime cases since an instruction following the 2014 coup, issued 16 arrest warrants against Thai citizens and foreigners accused of being linked to the attack. A police spokesman did not want to disclose any details. After the arrest, the police had already stated that neither man was responsible for the bomb attack. The man accused of being a bomber, however, is said to have started to cooperate with the police and made decisive statements. The lawyer for the man identified as the bomber said that his client was not the man in the yellow T-shirt who was looking for pictures from surveillance cameras because he was more muscular than his client, and he was not supposed to be until August 21, four days after the attack entered Thailand. However, footage from surveillance cameras is said to show the accused in Bangkok as early as the beginning of August.
On November 24, 2015, a military court in Bangkok brought charges against the two men arrested in late August / early September in connection with the attack. The two are said to have carried out the attack as revenge for police measures against a people smuggling network for Uighurs .
At a court hearing in February 2016, both defendants declared that they are Uyghurs of Chinese nationality and were innocent, revoking previous confessions. The lawyer of one of the two defendants alleged that his client was tortured between September 20 and 26, 2015 in order to extort a confession from him.
After a long and unsuccessful search for interpreters for the trial, the competent military court ordered an interpreter on November 15, 2016. Since he was a Chinese citizen, the defendants protested his selection, as he did not attach any importance to them as a Chinese due to their ethnicity, but the court found the interpreter suitable and started the trial. The two defendants have to answer for a total of ten counts, including violations of gun possession, planned killing and illegal entry. The process is expected to end in late 2017 or early 2018.
literature
- Charles Keyes: The Destruction of a Shrine to Brahma in Bangkok and the Fall of Thaksin Shinawatra. The Occult and the Thai Coup in Thailand of September 2006. Asia Research Institute Working Paper Series, No. 80, December 2006.
- TC Majupuria: Erawan Shrine & Brahma Worship in Thailand. Tecpress Service, Bangkok 1993 (no ISBN)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.tourismthailand.org/content/detail.aspx?GroupID=0&OrderBy=&id=128 ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ At least 15 dead in the bomb attack in Bangkok . Retrieved August 17, 2015.
- ↑ tagesschau.de: Reporting on the Bangkok bomb attack in August 2015 from August 18, 2015 ( memento from August 19, 2015 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on August 18, 2015
- ↑ Severe explosion shakes business center in Thailand. focus.de, August 17, 2015, accessed on August 17, 2015 .
- ↑ Deadly bomb blast rocks central Bangkok . Retrieved August 17, 2015.
- ↑ At least 20 killed, over 100 injured by biggest attack in: The Nation , August 18, 2015, accessed August 18, 2015
- ↑ City bomb horror in: Bangkok Post , August 18, 2015, accessed August 18.
- ↑ Bangkok bomb: Thailand says identity of shrine attackers 'much clearer' in: The Guardian , August 18, 2015, accessed August 18, 2015.
- ↑ Udo Schmidt feeling of insecurity ( memento from August 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on: Tagesschau online, August 19, 2015, accessed on August 19, 2015
- ↑ Oliver Holmes Bangkok bombing: two more men in CCTV footage being treated as suspects in: The Guardian, August 19, 2015, accessed August 19, 2015
- ↑ Bt10 million in reward offered in: The Nation, August 22, 2015, accessed August 22, 2015
- ↑ Police: Karadag planted bomb in: Bangkok Post, September 26, 2015, accessed September 26, 2015
- ↑ Arrest warrants sought for 16 from military court in: The Nation, September 26, 2015, accessed September 26, 2015
- ↑ Two prime suspects re-enact crimes in: Bangkok Post, September 26, 2015, accessed September 26, 2015
- ↑ Suspect 'confesses' he planted shrine bomb in: The Nation, September 25, 2015, accessed September 26, 2015
- ^ Bomb suspect set to lose passport in: The Nation, September 28, 2015, accessed September 28, 2015
- ↑ Bangkok bombing: court indicts Bilal Mohammad and Mieraili Yusufu in: The Guardian, November 24, 2015, accessed November 24, 2015
- ↑ Thai police say Uighur trafficking ring behind Bangkok bombing in: The Guardian, September 15, 2015, accessed November 24, 2015
- ↑ Jitraporn Senwong, Khanathit Srihirundaj, Suspects claim innocence in court over Erawan bombing , in: The Nation, February 17, 2016, accessed February 17, 2016
- ↑ Trial of Erawan suspects begins as translator appointed , on: Bangkok Post, November 15, 2016, accessed November 18, 2016
Coordinates: 13 ° 44 ′ 39 ″ N , 100 ° 32 ′ 25 ″ E