Lak Müang
Lak Müang ( Thai หลักเมือง , RTGS Lak Mueang , pronunciation: [làk mɯaŋ] ) or “city pillar” are found in most of the provincial capitals of Thailand . Mostly they are arranged in a shrine , where one imagines the abode of the spirits who protect the city. The Lak Müang are highly venerated by the townspeople.
description
Until the reign of King Rama V (Chulalongkorn), the provincial cities ( Müang ) were relatively autonomous. Many still have a relic from those ancient times, the Lak Müang. It was established in the name of the highest political authority and combines religious practices around the guardian spirit of the city ( Chao Phor Lak Müang ) with the seat of political power.
The Lak Müang is usually in the geographical center of a (provincial) city, from here all distances are measured. Exceptions are the Lak Müang, which were replanted from their original location in front of the town hall in order to underpin the original connection between the magical city column and worldly authority, as was the case in Lampang and Petchaburi, for example . The writer and tax officer Nai Mi reports how he visited the Lak Müang of Suphanburi to ask the spirits for assistance in his work. A city pillar is always a considerable size. Above the earth it is at least one meter high up to a size of two to four meters. The material is hardwood - sandalwood or teak , but there should also be those made of brick or stone. Painting is not absolutely necessary, the bare wooden surface can often be seen, but just as often it can be painted in a deep red or gold color.
Human sacrifice
Rumors have been passed down that the construction of a Lak Müang resulted in human sacrifices . Old folks say that in both Trat and Ratchaburi two people were buried alive with the pillar. Jeremias Van Vliet , traveling in the Kingdom of Ayutthaya on behalf of the Dutch Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie from 1636 to 1640 , told of four pregnant women who were buried alive under the palisades of a city fortification. Pregnant women's ghosts seemed to be particularly combative back then, and even today it is firmly believed that they are not to be trifled with. The French Bishop Pallegoix , a discussion partner of King Rama IV. (Mongkut), reported in 1854 of similar practices in the construction of a new city gate. It seems possible that these stories have become independent over the centuries from city fortifications to city pillars.
Religious Customs
In any case, there is a general belief that a Lak Müang also has a guardian spirit, a spirit from the Chao Phor category , which indicates a male gender who can be assigned to a separate environment and who guards a special terrain. Of all the Chao Phor, the Chao Phor Lak Müang is the most powerful, but in the "ranking" it is below the Devata .
The Lak Müang is therefore treated with great respect, as there are hair-raising reports from time to time about the grim character of a Jao Phor - for example that of the lovers in Ratchaburi, who could no longer break away from the union because they were in the shrine carried out themselves. Or that of the series of traffic accidents in Nakhon Sawan in 1974 when the move to a new Lak Müang was not carried out properly. On the other hand, requests and prayers are also directed to the spirit, as is common practice at the Erawan Shrine . The support of the guardian spirits in the Lak Müang by the Chinese , who settled in the cities of Siam, is remarkable . It is possible that the Chao Pho Lak Müang reminds you of the Ch′eng-huang , the spirit of the city walls and ditches, which already protected cities from catastrophes and disasters in ancient China. In some cities, such as Suphanburi or Songkhla , the Chinese seem to approach the guardian spirit with greater seriousness than the Thai population, as large Chinese temples were built around the Lak Müang here.
In all of Thailand the city pillar is called 'Lak Müang' , sometimes also 'Lak Suea' ( pillar of the guardian spirit ). Only in Chiang Mai is the city column called Inthakin column . This name comes from the Pali word "indhakhīla", which means Indra's post . When a new city was founded, Indra measured the circumference of the city with a rope attached to the Indhakhila, which became the symbol of Mount Meru in the center of the capital.
Origins and symbolism
The Tai , who made the Khmer outpost in the middle of the wilderness the center of their new kingdom of Sukhothai , worshiped a Phi Müang , the protector of the entire region. They erected a shrine as probably one of the first buildings, which King Ram Khamhaeng mentioned on the so-called "Inscription I", the stone stele that was found by King Mongkut in the area of today's Wat Mahathat. He wrote: “The divine spirit of that mountain south of the city is the most powerful spirit in the kingdom. Whichever ruler pays him the necessary respect and makes the right sacrifices, his kingdom will flourish and live long. ”This“ mountain ”, called by him Phra Khaphung ( พระ ข พุง ,“ sublime place ”), is the four-tier pyramid from Kon Laeng ("laterite blocks"), which is located about 500 meters south of the city wall. It is very similar to the step pyramids that were built by the Chinese emperors south of the city as early as the time of the Han dynasty to worship their earth gods. The earthen altar of Hangzhou , the capital of China in the 13th century, how Kon Laeng four floors and is just 9.50 meters high. Even today the Tai-speaking Khamyang of Assam build step pyramids out of sand in front of their villages on certain traditional holidays to honor the Phi Müang.
There are various theories about the origin of the idea of a column as the seat of Phi Müang:
- The symbol of the Shiva Lingam : in the ancient Khmer Empire, the Shiva Lingam became a symbol of royal sovereignty, shrines were dedicated to it in the capital and provincial cities. After the fall of Angkor , many cities in what is now Thailand that sought autonomy and independence continued to maintain a lingam or lak in their symbolic center. The deity as a pillar is a recurring theme in Hinduism. The identification of Shiva with the pillar as " Axis Mundi " is the main meaning of the lingam. Taken literally, it is the phallus , which stands for the cosmic power of generation. It is often divided into three parts: square at the base, octagonal in the middle, round at the top. These shapes symbolize the earth (the square), the sky (the circle) and the space in between (the octagon). Some lingams, called Mukha Linga , have four faces at the top (such as in Yala and Nan) that look in the four cardinal directions and that “embody the cosmic outflow of space in the four directions from the pillar of the universe around which the whole world turns ”. (Further analogies of the Mukha Linga: the " lion pillar " of the Emperor Ashoka or the "face towers " of the Bayon .)
- The concept of a central pillar erected by the highest authority of a Müang did not arise due to external influences, but a pure “invention” of the Tai. Since the Tai have spread throughout Southeast Asia throughout history, this concept is not limited to Thailand alone. There is a Lak Müang in Luang Prabang in Laos , and Lak Müang can also be found among the Laotian Lü and in southern Yunnan . The “ White Tai ” and the “ Black Tai ”, two ethnic groups in North Vietnam , worship a fi mu'o'n (phi müang - spirit of the region) who lives in a wooden post, the lak su'a . However, here every new regent removes the post of his predecessor and plants his own.
The historian BJ Terwiel (University of Hamburg) rejects the idea of calling the city pillar “phallic”. For him, this is a Western way of thinking that is slipped onto a typically Asian object. In 1978 he conducted a survey among numerous Thai people, both academics and farm workers, men and women. None of the respondents found any common ground between Lak Müang and phallus, as in Thai culture a phallus is depicted more horizontally or at most at a 30 ° angle, for example in a rain ceremony or in a fertility shrine. Besides, the shape is different. The thought of bowing one's head in front of a phallus was also alien to all of them. The associations are rather of a vegetable nature - a lotus bud, the blossom of a banana tree or even a closed jasmine blossom.
Rattanacosine
When King Rama I (Phra Phutthayotfa Chulalok) moved his capital from Thonburi to the other bank of the Mae Nam Chao Phraya ( Chao Phraya River ), he erected the first building on April 21, 1782, the city pillar of Bangkok on the southeast corner of the today's Sanam Luang ( see also: Rattanakosin ). However, there is a legend according to which the king wanted to build the Lak Müang first on the southwest corner. But when four snakes crawled out of the pit, which was considered a very bad omen, the astrological calculations had to be carried out again. On December 5, 1853, the city pillar was therefore erected at the place where it still stands today.
A short time after the city pillar was erected in Bangkok , similar shrines began to be built in other cities, such as Songkhla , to symbolize the central power of the Siamese kings. King Rama II (Phra Phutthaloetla Naphalai) had further shrines built in Nakhon Khuean Khan (today Samut Prakan ). Under King Rama III. (Phra Nang Klao) the pillars of Chachoengsao , Chanthaburi and Battambang (now in Cambodia ) were built. However, after King Rama IV (Mongkut) had a new city pillar built in Bangkok, no more were built in the provinces.
During the Second World War and the occupation by Japanese troops, General Phibul Songkhram planned to move the capital from Bangkok to Phetchabun . He therefore had a city pillar built in Phetchabun in 1944. But the plan failed due to resistance from parliament and only the idea of Lak Müang was given new life. In the period that followed, numerous provincial capitals built such shrines. In 1992 the Ministry of Interior of Thailand issued a decree that every province should have such a shrine.
The architectural style of the shrines is quite different. The design of the shrines in the provinces with greater Chinese influence, such as in Chanthaburi, Songkhla and Samut Prakan , is reminiscent of a Chinese temple. In Chiang Rai , the city pillar is not in a shrine, but in an open space within Wat Phra That Doi Chom Thong .
See also
literature
- Clarence Aasen: Architecture of Siam. A Cultural History Interpretation. Oxford University Press, New York 1998, ISBN 983-56-0027-9 .
- Betty Gosling: Sukhothai. Its History, Culture, And Art . Asia Books (Oxford University Press), Bangkok 1991, ISBN 974-8206-85-8 .
- Oliver Raendchen: The Thai lak . Ritual and socio-political function. In: The International Conference on Tai Studies. Mahidol University, Bangkok 1998, pp. 223-239. Also in: Tai Culture , Vol. 3, No. 2 (1998), pp. 142-157.
- Adrian Snodgrass: The Symbolism Of The Stupa . Cornell Southeast Asia Program, Delhi, 1992, ISBN 81-208-0781-2 .
- Shigeharu Tanabe: Autochthony and the Inthakhin Cult of Chiang Mai. In: Civility and Savagery. Social Identity in Tai States. Curzon Press, Richmond (Surrey) 2000, pp. 294-318.
- Barend Jan Terwiel : The Origin And Meaning Of The Thai City Pillar . Journal of The Siam Society Bangkok July 1978 (Vol. 66), Part 2, online [1] (PDF, last accessed November 1, 2012; 1.90 MB).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Terwiel (1989), p. 102
- ↑ a b B.J. Terwiel: The Origin And Meaning Of The Thai City Pillar .
- ^ A b Adrian Snodgrass: The Symbolism Of The Stupa .
Web links
- Lak Muang - the Rattakosin foundation where it all started (English description of the Lak Müang of Bangkok)
- The stone stele of King Ramkhamhaeng (Inscription I) : photographed on all four sides and translated into modern Thai script as well as into English.