practicesTattooingสักยันต์

Sak yant names its own mechanics. Sak, from a Proto-Mon-Khmer root meaning to prick, is a native Khmer word — Chuon Nath's 1967 dictionary holds that it is not a loan from Sanskrit or Pali — and yant comes from Sanskrit yantra, from yam, to hold or sustain, plus tra, instrument. The practice originated in the Khmer Empire around the ninth century, on indigenous mainland Southeast Asian animist tattooing that the cited account traces back as far as 2,500 BCE, with the designs drawn from Indian yantras. It runs today in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and parts of Burma, and the script changes with the country: Khmer in Cambodia, Khom in central Thailand, Shan or northern Thai or Tai Lu in the north, Lao Tham in Laos.

What the tattoo is said to do splits three ways in the tradition's own account: effects that benefit the bearer, such as making them more eloquent; effects that ward off evil and hardship, taken up by soldiers, police, taxi drivers and people in other jobs they judge dangerous; and effects on other people, such as invoking fear. The same designs are applied to cloth and metal and put in a house, a temple or a vehicle instead of on skin.

Elsewhere the mark is the membership. Many Copts have the cross tattooed on the inside of the right arm at the wrist as a sign of faith. Catholic Croats in Bosnia used sicanje, tattooing, for protection against conversion to Islam under Ottoman rule. Ancient Egyptians tattooed dedication to a deity, and the marks were held to carry divine protection. Among Austronesian societies tattoos were regarded as magical wards against evil spirits and illness as well as records of raids and status, and the Chimu of coastal Peru wore them for magic and medical purposes; tattoos on Chancay bodies of around 1250 CE have been studied with lasers by researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Inference — the tattoo is the limit case of everything else in this atlas. Every other charm here can be lost, pawned, inherited or buried; this one is disposed of only with the person. That is also why it is the practice most tightly governed by rules attached to the bearer rather than to the object.

Public structure only. A master applies the design with a long needle, in a rite that the tradition holds transfers spirits into the design — in the words of the cited study, spiritual tattooing functions as the bridge between the wearer and gods or wild spirits. The practice is defined by strict rules meant to maintain the tattoos' power, and the tattoo confers its powers only so long as the bearer observes those rules and taboos, such as abstaining from a certain type of food. What the master says, and which design is given to whom, are the master's, and this record stops there.

Both a living practice and a trade selling to visitors. Hollywood attention has moved the market: Angelina Jolie was tattooed by Ajahn Noo Kanpai with Old Khmer script sak yant in Thailand, and took a Bengal tiger yantra in 2004 to mark acquiring Cambodian citizenship. Buddhist images and figures used as tattoos by visitors who do not follow local rules about the respectful display of such images have caused public controversy in Buddhist countries. Both of those are arguments the traditions are having about themselves, and this atlas reports them rather than settling them.