BRASS IDOL IN A TEMPLE AT BANGKOK.
Entering this building, you see an altar, generally eight or ten shelves high, tapering to a gilded point. It contains many-sized figures of Buddha in the sitting posture, together with a gaudy display of wax candles, incense-tapers, gold and silver tinsel ornaments, offerings of fruit and flowers. Possibly some priests in yellow robes, with burning candles, are chanting monotonous liturgies; more probably, however, no priests are seen, but only people coming and going with gifts to this dead god Buddha. Step nearer. Do not fear to disturb their devotions. Instead of the decorum usual in Christian churches, the votaries are social, and even noisy—one moment prostrate before the altar, the next singing an idle song. Men smoking, women mixing freely with the crowd, neither veiled nor shy. They are the most assiduous in the religious performances, going about sprinkling the images with perfumes and offering oblations of lighted incense-rods, fresh lotus and other flowers, chaplets or artificial flowers, fruits, and clothes of various descriptions. Children three years old go through with their prostrations before the images with great composure and gravity.
Each country professing Buddhism appears to adopt its own idea as to the shape of its images. Those of Siam have an attenuated figure, comporting with our associations of the ascetic. These images have a complacent, sleepy look, the long ears resting on the shoulders, the fingers and toes of equal length. The best images are of bronze or brass, one large brass idol of Bangkok being a perfect giant in size. There are also silver and plate-gold idols, but the more numerous are a composite of plaster, resin and oil mixed with hair, and, after the figure is shaped, covered with varnish, upon which is laid a thick coat of gilding. Into the composition of the great “sleeping idol” of Bangkok were put thousands of bushels of lime, molasses, quick-silver and other materials, at a cost of several thousand dollars. These idols are not only in the temples, but everywhere—on mountain-tops and caves and in the homes of the people.
In the famous Wat P’hra Keäu (the private temple of the royal family within the palace enclosure, and connecting by a secret passage with the most private apartments of His Majesty’s harem) is perhaps the finest specimen of an altar. It is at least sixty feet high, tapering to a golden spire. The shelves are loaded with rare and costly specimens of Siamese, Chinese and European art—idols covered with plate gold, solid silver vases of beautiful workmanship, golden candlesticks, marble statuary, ivory ornaments, clocks, garments studded with precious stones; crowning all, the beautiful emerald idol flashing with a molten mass of diamonds, sapphires and other gems. This cross-legged statue of Buddha, one foot high and eight inches wide at the knees, is of great value and antiquity.
The kings and nobles of Siam spend large sums on their temples and idols. There are between one and two hundred temples in the city of Bangkok alone. Several cost one hundred thousand dollars, and it is estimated that the Wat P’hra Keäu, with its lofty gilded roof, rich carvings, fine paintings and floor paved with diamond-shaped bricks of polished brass, cost nearly a million dollars.
Such expensive temples and monstrous images are built not only to impress and awe the people, but to make a large amount of merit. Tam boon, or “merit-making,” is, after all, the sum and substance of Siamese Buddhism. The words are on the lips of young and old, rich and poor, almost every hour of the day. They are anxious to make all the merit possible, believing that their pilgrimage through the forms of animal life and the duration of their purgatorial existence in the several Buddhist hells is the result of Karma—i. e. merit and demerit. Speaking of the future, the Siamese always say, “Tam boon, tam kam”—“according to merit or demerit.”
The king makes merit when he builds a costly temple or goes on his yearly tour to distribute presents among the priests of the royal wats. The pauper makes merit when with a broom of small twigs he sweeps the dead leaves from the temple-grounds. The old man makes merit when with painful difficulty he urges his palsied limbs to the wat, and there bows in the temple before an image of Buddha till his forehead touches the floor. The housewife who takes the last mouthful of rice from her hungry husband to feed some lazy priest makes merit. The infant makes merit when the mother, holding its tiny hand in hers, guides the fingers in forming the wax taper that is used in worship.
