amuletsPhra khrueangพระเครื่อง

said prá krêuang

also: Thai Buddha amulet · phrakhrueang · votive tablet · Phra Somdej · Benja Phakhi

amuletMainland Southeast AsiaThailand

A small pressed image of the Buddha, a revered monk, a bodhisattva or a deva — a tablet a couple of centimetres across, in plaster, metal, wood or bone, often with ash, a monk's hair or temple relics in the mix. Most are cased in clear plastic or a gold frame and worn on a chain at the neck. The Jatukham Rammathep type is round and about 5 cm across. A collector reads one with a loupe: the clay's texture, the mould's flaws, the temple it was pressed at, the monk who chanted over it.

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Thai พระ phra, the honorific for a Buddha image or a monk, + เครื่อง khrueang, a thing worn or carried — the Buddha one wears
The category name in this sense appears in the Rattanakosin period under King Rama IV, and takes in the older votive tablets, which came from India, as part of the class. cited

When

c. 1866 to now, on the earliest dated production; the votive tablets behind it are far older still carried cited

Period	Rattanakosin to the present
How the date is known	a dated example survives
Note	1866 is the earliest production this project's source dates — the Phra Somdej Wat Rakhang, c. 1866–1871. The Dvaravati, Srivijaya and Ayutthaya tablets the class grows out of are named in the source without years, so no earlier year is asserted here.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

Form	Plaque or tablet
Made of	Earth and ash · Fired clay · Copper and bronze · Wood · Bone and ivory · Hair
Goes	At the neck · On the chest, under the shirt
Made by	temples; a named monk's consecration is part of what is being bought, and the best-known series carry the maker's name — Somdej Toh, or King Bhumibol
It says	usually none; the image and the mould are the identification (Thai)
Length	50 mm
Retired	no — it is kept
Note	The one published measurement in this project's source is the Jatukham Rammathep, around 5 cm in diameter. Most types are smaller; no measurement for them was read. Materials include plaster, for which this atlas has no key.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

Blades and bullets — invulnerability charms; reported, never recommended citedsaid by Ayutthaya-period warriors, who carried tablets into battle in place of the phrajiat, the takrut or herbal charms; invulnerability is named among the amulet's functions
Another person's sorcery citedsaid by the functions Thai collectors list for the Phra Somdej: protection from black magic and the blocking of disasters
Attracting custom, luck or love — the charm that pulls rather than blocks citedsaid by the Khun Phaen type, whose main function is named as enhancing relationships, marriage and career — after the folklore hero who used a love formula
Illness — sickness in general, where no cause is named citedsaid by the Phra Kring, the rattling Medicine Buddha statuette, which Thai accounts describe as sounding the name of Bhaisajyaguru as the wearer walks
Bad luck, unspecified citedsaid by the Jatukham Rammathep's buyers in 2006 and 2007, who held that it kept its owner from danger and made its owner rich

The story

The line runs from votive tablets, which are older than the idea of an amulet. Buddhism reached what is now Thailand in the Dvaravati period and brought India's votive-tablet practice with it; Dvaravati tablets were made to perpetuate the religion, tied to doctrines like the Five Disappearances. Under Srivijaya and Mahayana influence, tablets were pressed to dedicate merit to the dead and to accumulate it towards becoming a bodhisattva. By the Ayutthaya period they were being made for protection, and warriors carried them into battle in place of the phrajiat, the takrut or a herbal charm. In the early Rattanakosin period the protective amulet took off, the class acquired the name phra khrueang, and temples used them to raise money — a monk would give an amulet as a gift in return for a donation. That transaction is the hinge of everything that follows.

The famous ones have dates, diggings and names. Phra Somdej Wat Rakhang was made around 1866 to 1871 by Somdej Toh of Wat Rakhang Khositaram, one of Thailand's most respected monks, and is called the king of amulets. Somdej Toh had found Phra Sum Kor amulets at Wat Phraboromthat Nakhonchum in 1849, while visiting relatives in Kamphaeng Phet, along with tablets explaining how they were made, and used those instructions for his own. Phra Rod came out of a partly collapsed stupa at Wat Mahawan in Lamphun in the early reign of King Chulalongkorn. Phra Nang Phaya turned up when workers dug at Wat Nang Phaya in Phitsanulok to prepare a stage for Chulalongkorn's visit. Phra Phong Suphan came out of a formal dig the Suphanburi governor ordered in 1913, after thieves had gone under the temple's great stupa and taken amulets, some of them gold. Those five — Somdej, Rod, Nang Phaya, Phong Suphan, Sum Kor — are the Benja Phakhi, valued at over 10 million baht; the source names no year for that figure, so it is given without one.

The market can move like a market. In 1987 a policeman, Khun Phantharak Rajjadej, created the Jatukham Rammathep amulet for the establishment of Nakhon Si Thammarat's city pillar; locals hold the two Srivijaya princes it names to be the city's guardians. It caught on in the early 2000s, and hard from his funeral on 5 July 2006 into mid-2007. As many as 150 series were planned for 2007, and the market for that one type reached twenty billion baht that year. In late 2007 the bubble burst, and the amulets were left lying about cheap.

A royal series is the cleanest record of how provenance is priced. King Bhumibol made the Phra Somdet Jitlada himself and awarded them from 1965 to 1970 to selected soldiers, police, officials and citizens: no more than 3,000, each with a certificate carrying the recipient's name, the date and the amulet's number. As of 2013 one was worth at least two million baht. The certificate is the price.

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How it is made and carried

Pressed from a mould: temple dirt, pollen, plaster, crushed flowers, ash, a monk's hair, sometimes a fragment of a revered monk's robe. Monks chant and bless the batch, a process that runs from a week to several years. Amulets are also placed under stupas as they are built, which is why so many come to light when a temple structure collapses. What a piece is worth rests on appearance, scarcity, maker, age and reputed power — and on whether a specialist will certify it, because forgeries are common and buyers pay for an expert eye. There are rules for wearing: above the waist, at the neck or chest, never below; not in a bedroom where sex is expected; a prayer before and after putting one on; taken off to bathe. The takrut, which carries no monk and no Buddha image, is exempt and may go in a trouser pocket.

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Now

Traded daily at Tha Phrachan beside Thammasat University in Bangkok and at markets across the country, as of the most recent published accounts this project has read. Whether that trade is devotion or dealing is argued among Thai commentators rather than between Thais and outsiders, and this atlas reports the argument without joining it.

inference