{ "count": 130, "nodes": [ { "schema": 1, "id": "ainu-anchi-piri", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Ainu anchi-piri", "local": "アンチピリ", "local_lang": "Ainu", "said": "anchi-piri — the obsidian cut; a woman's mouth, widening for years" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "cut", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1600, "to": 1900, "circa": true, "label": "Prohibited under Japanese rule; the last tattooed women died in the twentieth century" }, "practice": { "method": "cut", "ink": "indigo", "placement": [ "face", "arms", "hands" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "JP", "RU" ], "first_record": 1800, "break": [ 1900, 2026 ], "suppressed_by": "prohibited under Japanese administration in the nineteenth century", "note": "Begun between five and thirteen, enlarged until marriage." }, "text": { "what": "Hokkaido and Sakhalin: a woman's mouth ringed with indigo, begun in childhood and widened until she was ready to marry.", "story": "The Ainu word *anchi-piri* carries the tool inside it — obsidian, and a cut. Ink came from the indigo plant. The mark was made by women on women, on the mouth, the forearms and the backs of the hands, and it grew with its owner: a small mark at five to thirteen, widened over years, finished when she married.\n\nThe Japanese state prohibited it. What happened next is the same everywhere on this site: the practice stops, the women who have it grow old, and the only pictures left are the ones outsiders took." }, "text_th": { "what": "ฮกไกโดและซาฮาลิน รอบปากผู้หญิงด้วยสีคราม เริ่มตั้งแต่เด็กและขยายขึ้นจนถึงวัยแต่งงาน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "cut", "as": "The method — a cut rubbed with pigment, not a puncture.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "irezumi", "as": "The other Japanese tradition, and the one the word usually means.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Ainu people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ainu_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-ainu-people", "s:wp-irezumi" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-ainu-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "women", "ban" ], "images": [ { "file": "ainu-anchi-piri/ainu-anchi-piri-ainu-woman-from-a-book-published-in-1931-p-81.png", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Ainu woman (from a book Published in 1931) P.81.png", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/59/Ainu_woman_%28from_a_book_Published_in_1931%29_P.81.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAinu_woman_%28from_a_book_Published_in_1931%29_P.81.png", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Unknown authorUnknown author", "credit": "新光社 編「世界地理風俗大系. 別巻〔第3〕」1931年発行\n\nhttps://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1876894", "alt": "入れ墨を入れたアイヌの女性（1931年出版の本より）", "date": "1931", "primary": true, "sha256": "7600424b09ceaf0d3ceab655e7a43751241e5d0097ae278ef29d5092eeaf7a0d" }, { "file": "ainu-anchi-piri/ainu-anchi-piri-the-races-of-man-figure-49-ia-deniofmanoutlinraces00rich.png", "source": "commons", "title": "File:The races of man, figure 49 (IA deniofmanoutlinraces00rich).png", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/The_races_of_man%2C_figure_49_%28IA_deniofmanoutlinraces00rich%29.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThe_races_of_man%2C_figure_49_%28IA_deniofmanoutlinraces00rich%29.png", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Joseph Deniker", "credit": "The races of man: an outline of anthropology and ethnography (1906)", "alt": "Caption: \"Fig. 49 - Ainu woman tattooed round the lips.\"", "date": "2011-10-19", "primary": false, "sha256": "d0fbf54e87ac8fb59e1d8f88182238a8b6e39c938df0a2c4206f9762732f4405" } ], "geo": { "lat": 43.3, "lon": 142.8, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "irezumi", "type": "tradition", "name": "Irezumi", "as": "The other tradition in the same islands, which the word also covers." }, { "from": "indigo", "type": "ink", "name": "Indigo", "as": "Where it goes." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "amazigh-marks", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Amazigh marks", "local": "ⵜⴰⵎⴰⵣⵉⵖⵜ", "local_lang": "Tamazight", "aliases": [ "Berber tattoos", "siyala" ], "said": "Chin, forehead, hands and ankles, in lines and diamonds" }, "region": [ "north-africa" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": -1000, "to": 1980, "circa": true, "label": "Largely ended in the twentieth century under religious discouragement" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "face", "chin", "hands", "arms", "legs" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "MA", "DZ", "TN", "LY" ], "first_record": 1900, "break": [ 1980, 2026 ], "suppressed_by": "religious discouragement and urbanisation", "note": "Marks read as protective and as a statement of group; the meanings were rarely written down by the women who wore them." }, "text": { "what": "North Africa: women's chin, forehead and hand marks, in a geometric vocabulary shared with weaving and pottery.", "story": "The motifs are the same motifs that appear on textiles and on painted pottery, which is the pattern seen in the Philippines too: the tattoo is not a separate art but the same design language put on a person.\n\n*Inference —* a great deal of what is published about the meanings of these marks is collected from outside and late. This record says what the marks look like and where they go, and holds off on what each one meant." }, "text_th": { "what": "แอฟริกาเหนือ ลายบนคาง หน้าผาก และมือของผู้หญิง ใช้ชุดลายเรขาคณิตเดียวกับผ้าทอและเครื่องปั้น" }, "links": [ { "label": "Berbers", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berbers" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-berbers" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "tradition" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "low", "needs_verification": true, "tags": [ "women", "protective" ], "geo": { "lat": 31.5, "lon": -6.5, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "deq", "type": "tradition", "name": "Deq", "as": "The neighbouring tradition across North Africa." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "atayal-ptasan", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Atayal ptasan", "local": "ptasan", "local_lang": "Squliq Atayal", "said": "Forehead for both; a man's chin when he fathers a child; a woman's cheeks when she can weave" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1600, "to": 1930, "circa": true, "label": "Banned by the Japanese administration in 1930" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "face", "chin" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "TW" ], "first_record": 1900, "break": [ 1930, 2026 ], "suppressed_by": "banned by the Japanese colonial administration in 1930, for its link to headhunting", "note": "A qualification, not an ornament: the face says the skill has been demonstrated." }, "text": { "what": "Taiwan: a band down the forehead, and a second mark earned — by a man for taking a head, by a woman for mastering the loom.", "story": "The rule was a gate. No face marks, no marriage; no face marks, no crossing to the ancestors at death. A girl learned to weave at ten or twelve and had to master it before her cheeks were marked, which makes the tattoo a certificate of competence held on the most visible surface a person has.\n\nJapan banned it in 1930. Christianity finished the job. The marks are now on elderly faces and on the museum wall." }, "text_th": { "what": "ไต้หวัน แถบกลางหน้าผากสำหรับทุกคน และรอยที่สองที่ต้องได้มา ชายด้วยการล่าหัว หญิงด้วยการทอผ้าได้" }, "kin": [ { "to": "chin-ming", "as": "Another face, another government, thirty years apart.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Atayal people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atayal_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-atayal-people", "s:wp-taiwanese-indigenous-peoples" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-atayal-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "ban", "women", "initiation" ], "geo": { "lat": 24.2, "lon": 121.2, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "chin-ming", "type": "tradition", "name": "Chin facial tattooing", "as": "And another, banned by another government in another decade." }, { "from": "the-timing", "type": "rite", "name": "When it is done", "as": "Stacked with fatherhood and with the loom." }, { "from": "meiji-ban", "type": "story", "name": "Japan outlaws it", "as": "And who else again." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "batok", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Batok", "local": "batok", "local_lang": "Kalinga", "aliases": [ "batek", "patik", "burik", "fatek", "whatok" ], "said": "Tapped, not poked — a thorn set crosswise on a stick and struck" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": -1500, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Hafted tattoo tools at Arku Cave before 1500 BCE; still being tapped in Buscalan" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "tool": "gisi-pat-ik", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "arms", "chest", "hands", "back", "legs" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "PH" ], "first_record": -1500, "first_record_note": "chisel and serrated heads of probable hafted tattoo instruments, Arku Cave, Cagayan", "sessions": "acquired over years, a panel at a time", "note": "Men's chest work was earned by taking a head; women's arms by other measures." }, "text": { "what": "The Philippine traditions, tapped with a hafted thorn at ninety to a hundred and twenty strikes a minute.", "story": "The Spanish called the Visayans *Pintados*, the painted ones, and recorded the tattoo as dress: a naked man \"appears to be dressed in a kind of handsome armor engraved with very fine work\" — worn at home with nothing but a loincloth, because the marks were the clothes.\n\nThe method is Austronesian and it is not poking. A needle — thorn, bone, horn, bamboo — is set perpendicular to a wooden handle in an L, and a second stick taps the handle. The hand that holds the tool never pushes; it positions. Ink is soot or ash in water, oil, cane juice or pig bile, and the design is laid out first in ink with a blade of grass or a length of string.\n\nAmong Cordilleran peoples tattoos were a form of clothing in the same explicit sense: to have none was to be naked. Chest work was not applied to a man until he had taken a head — which is why copying those designs today is held to be a bad idea, and why the men who fought in the 1960s and 70s were advised by elders not to take them.", "today": "Whang-od is ninety-something and tattooing in Buscalan; her apprentices are women, which breaks the inheritance rule her own community ran on, and her community accepted it. Around her there is a revival with a problem inside it: which designs are open." }, "text_th": { "what": "ธรรมเนียมฟิลิปปินส์ ใช้หนามติดด้ามแล้ว *ตอก* ด้วยไม้อีกอัน 90–120 ครั้งต่อนาที ไม่ใช่การแทงด้วยมือ" }, "kin": [ { "to": "tap", "as": "The method, and why this site does not call it hand-poke.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "whang-od", "as": "Who is still doing it.", "rel": "person" }, { "to": "clothing", "as": "\"Dressed in a kind of handsome armor\" — the third of the three.", "rel": "finding" }, { "to": "arku-cave", "as": "The tools, dug up, older than the Roman Empire by a millennium.", "rel": "find" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Batok", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batok" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok", "s:wp-whang-od", "s:wp-kalinga-province" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "start-here", "revival", "initiation" ], "images": [ { "file": "batok/batok-mambabatok.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Mambabatok.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Mambabatok.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMambabatok.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "CharMel Creations", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "This is popularly referred as 'batok' or art of tattooing your body with tribal designs using bamboo sticks and thorns. This artform is still alive in the mountains of Kalinga.", "date": "2023-03-27", "primary": true, "sha256": "eaa1f6579cf7c20edd8a05fecbaa915ccaff0e8f3ef9290bc421fd743998f053" } ], "x_clothing": { "quote": "appears to be dressed in a kind of handsome armor engraved with very fine work… their dress at home and in their barrio is their tattoos and a bahag", "lang": "Spanish, of Visayan work", "source": "s:wp-batok", "year": 1668, "garment": "armour" }, "geo": { "lat": 17.3, "lon": 121.1, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "kalinga-cordillera", "type": "tradition", "name": "Cordilleran whatok", "as": "The wider Philippine family this sits inside." }, { "from": "konyak-naga", "type": "tradition", "name": "Konyak marks", "as": "Same structure, different island: the chest is earned." }, { "from": "tap", "type": "method", "name": "Tap", "as": "Where it is still being done daily." }, { "from": "gisi-pat-ik", "type": "tool", "name": "Gisi and pat-ik", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "gayaman", "type": "motif", "name": "The centipede", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "whang-od", "type": "person", "name": "Whang-od Oggay", "as": "The tradition." }, { "from": "clothing", "type": "story", "name": "The tattoo is clothing", "as": "Handsome armor." }, { "from": "pintados", "type": "story", "name": "The painted ones", "as": "The tradition." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "chin-ming", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Chin facial tattooing", "my": "ချင်း", "local": "Ming", "local_lang": "Chin", "aliases": [ "Ming", "Chin face tattoo" ], "said": "Lines and dots set across a woman's face, by tribe" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia", "south-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1800, "to": 1960, "circa": true, "label": "Banned in the 1960s; the last tattooed women are elderly" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "indigo", "placement": [ "face" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "specialist", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "MM" ], "first_record": 1900, "first_record_note": "the Gazetteer of Upper Burma notices it in passing, and with contempt", "break": [ 1965, 2026 ], "suppressed_by": "banned in the 1960s by Burma's Union Revolutionary Council; discouraged by Christian and Buddhist missionaries", "note": "Girls of fifteen to twenty. The design says which tribe, not which family." }, "text": { "what": "Women's faces, marked between fifteen and twenty, in a pattern that names the tribe: full-face, part-face, dots, lines, or both.", "story": "The designs differ by group and the differences are the point. M'kaan, Daai and Yin Du women are tattooed across the whole face; N'men and Matu women on certain parts of it; the Uppriu cover the face in dots; Ngagah mix vertical lines with dots; Daai set dots among vertical and horizontal lines on forehead and cheeks. Mro women wear small marks or stars on cheek, forehead or breast and tie them to fertility.\n\nThe explanation attached to the custom in almost every outside source is abduction: that a king took a beautiful Chin woman, that she disguised herself to get home, and that families marked their daughters so that no one would carry them off. The nineteenth-century British gazetteer repeats the abduction story and then adds that the anxiety \"seems hardly justified by any beauty in the women themselves.\"\n\n*Inference —* that sentence is worth leaving in. It is the clearest single demonstration on this site of what the colonial record is: the only written source for a great deal of this, and written by men who held the people they were describing in contempt. Read the fact, discount the frame.", "today": "Banned in the 1960s and discouraged by missionaries before that, the practice ended inside one generation. The women who carry it are elderly, and they are photographed constantly by visitors to the Chin hills. Whether that is documentation or a trade in faces is not a question this site settles.", "notes": "Northern and southern Chin groups differ; this record does not flatten sixty sub-groups into one design." }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "The other Burmese tradition, and the one that was not banned.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "who-wrote-it-down", "as": "The clearest case of the problem with the only sources there are.", "rel": "issue" }, { "to": "derung-face", "as": "Another women's facial tattoo with an abduction story attached to it.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "atayal-ptasan", "as": "And another, banned by another government in another decade.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Chin people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chin_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-chin-people", "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar", "s:gazetteer-1", "s:gazetteer-3" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-chin-people" }, "fields": { "text.story": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:gazetteer-3" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "women", "ban", "colonial-record" ], "images": [ { "file": "chin-ming/chin-ming-a-letu-chin-woman-with-a-tattoo-face.png", "source": "commons", "title": "File:A Letu Chin Woman with A Tattoo Face.png", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/A_Letu_Chin_Woman_with_A_Tattoo_Face.png?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AA_Letu_Chin_Woman_with_A_Tattoo_Face.png", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "AungLaytu", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "This Letu Chin Women is from Heyzawlay village, the Upper Sen Stream, Minbya township, Rakhine state.", "date": "2025-11-21", "primary": true, "sha256": "1c0b1f9657297be6954def47040553b14a681aaf174d6f90463f68183a49428e" }, { "file": "chin-ming/chin-ming-chin-women-with-face-tattoos-7479947494.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Chin women with face tattoos (7479947494).jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Chin_women_with_face_tattoos_%287479947494%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AChin_women_with_face_tattoos_%287479947494%29.jpg", "license": "CC BY 2.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/", "author": "DANIEL JULIE from Paris, France", "credit": "DSC00015/Burma/Chin State/Posing for the Photo", "alt": "Two mother tattooed accept easely the pose for my camera\nThe Chin tribe people , are one of the large ethnic minority groups in Burma. The Chin people are of Tibeto-Burman groups and they probably ca", "date": "2012-03-17 17:07", "primary": false, "sha256": "de291efbfa070177eca94101eafd4c39cd4abbecd8c8ad0f2cac7a5e39278115" } ], "geo": { "lat": 21.5, "lon": 93.6, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "atayal-ptasan", "type": "tradition", "name": "Atayal ptasan", "as": "Another face, another government, thirty years apart." }, { "from": "derung-face", "type": "tradition", "name": "Derung face marks", "as": "The same story told about another set of women." }, { "from": "chin-grid", "type": "motif", "name": "The face grids", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "chin-ban", "type": "story", "name": "The Chin ban", "as": "What was banned." }, { "from": "who-wrote-it-down", "type": "issue", "name": "Who wrote it down", "as": "Where the contempt is on the page." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "coptic-pilgrim", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "The pilgrim's cross", "local": "Copt", "local_lang": "Coptic", "aliases": [ "Jerusalem tattoo", "Razzouk" ], "said": "A cross on the wrist, given to pilgrims for seven centuries" }, "region": [ "west-asia", "north-africa" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "living" }, "when": { "from": 1300, "to": 2026, "label": "A single family has been tattooing pilgrims for about 700 years" }, "practice": { "method": "mixed", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "hands", "arms", "chest" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "kin", "status": "living", "countries": [ "IL", "PS", "EG", "ET" ], "first_record": 1300, "note": "Carved wooden stamps print the design; the marks go on by hand and, since the 1950s, by machine." }, "text": { "what": "Jerusalem and Egypt: a cross on the inside of the wrist, marking a pilgrimage — and a family that has been doing it for around seven hundred years.", "story": "The Razzouk family carries the trade from Egypt to Jerusalem and still holds the carved olive-wood blocks that print the designs onto the skin before the needle follows. Coptic Christians in Egypt wear the wrist cross as an everyday identification, not only as a souvenir of a journey.\n\n*Inference —* the wooden design blocks are the same idea as the Borneo stamp and the Burmese sample book: a hand tradition that needs a repertoire invents a way to store it outside a person's memory." }, "text_th": { "what": "เยรูซาเลมและอียิปต์ ไม้กางเขนบนข้อมือด้านใน เครื่องหมายของการจาริก และครอบครัวหนึ่งทำมาราวเจ็ดร้อยปี" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sicanje", "as": "Christian marks made by pricking, at the other end of the Mediterranean.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "iban-borneo", "as": "The same solution to the same problem: carve the design into wood.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Razzouk Tattoo", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razzouk_Tattoo" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-razzouk-tattoo", "s:wp-copts" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-razzouk-tattoo" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "protective" ], "geo": { "lat": 31.78, "lon": 35.22, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "sicanje", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sicanje", "as": "The other Christian hand-poke tradition on this site." }, { "from": "design-block", "type": "tool", "name": "The design block", "as": "The block, still in use." }, { "from": "pilgrim-cross", "type": "motif", "name": "The pilgrim's cross", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "deq", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Deq", "local": "deq", "local_lang": "Kurdish", "aliases": [ "daq", "vesm" ], "said": "From Syriac dyoqo, puncturing" }, "region": [ "west-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "thinning" }, "when": { "from": -500, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Older than the three religions of the region; now mostly on elderly faces" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-milk", "placement": [ "face", "chin", "neck", "hands", "feet", "chest" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "thinning", "countries": [ "TR", "IQ", "SY", "IR" ], "first_record": 1900, "note": "Soot mixed with breast milk is the reported ink; a V on the face could say the tribe." }, "text": { "what": "Kurdistan: marks on women's faces, hands and feet, for protection, for health, and to say which tribe.", "story": "The word comes from Syriac *dyoqo*, puncturing — another tradition that names the tattoo after the movement of the needle. A male tattooist is *deqqak*, a female one *deqqake*; the practice predates Christianity, Yazidism and Islam in the region, and rules attach to it, including who may not receive it." }, "text_th": { "what": "เคอร์ดิสถาน ลายบนใบหน้า มือ และเท้าของผู้หญิง เพื่อคุ้มครอง เพื่อสุขภาพ และเพื่อบอกเผ่า" }, "kin": [ { "to": "words", "as": "Another word for tattoo that means to puncture.", "rel": "finding" }, { "to": "amazigh-marks", "as": "The neighbouring tradition across North Africa.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Deq (tattoo)", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deq_(tattoo)" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-deq-tattoo", "s:wp-kurds" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-deq-tattoo" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "women", "protective" ], "geo": { "lat": 37.5, "lon": 42.5, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "soot-milk", "type": "ink", "name": "Soot and milk", "as": "Where it goes." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "derung-face", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Derung face marks", "local": "独龙族", "local_lang": "Chinese", "aliases": [ "Dulong" ], "said": "Marked at twelve or thirteen, in a pattern some describe as a moustache" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1800, "to": 1960, "circa": true, "label": "The last tattooed Derung women are elderly" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "face" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "CN" ], "first_record": 1900, "break": [ 1967, 2026 ], "note": "Yunnan, in the gorges of the upper Salween and Irrawaddy." }, "text": { "what": "Yunnan: Derung women marked on the face at twelve or thirteen, in a tradition now carried by a handful of elders.", "story": "The same abduction story attaches here as in the Chin hills — that the marks were meant to make a woman unattractive to raiders. *Inference —* the story turns up wherever a colonising or dominant neighbour is in the picture, and it is always told about the women of the smaller group. It may be true in some places. It is also the explanation most convenient to everyone except the women wearing the marks." }, "text_th": { "what": "ยูนนาน หญิงชาวตู้หลงถูกสักหน้าเมื่ออายุสิบสองสิบสาม ปัจจุบันเหลือผู้เฒ่าไม่กี่คน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "chin-ming", "as": "The same story told about another set of women.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Derung people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derung_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-derung-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-derung-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "low", "needs_verification": true, "tags": [ "women" ], "geo": { "lat": 27.8, "lon": 98.3, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "chin-ming", "type": "tradition", "name": "Chin facial tattooing", "as": "Another women's facial tattoo with an abduction story attached to it." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "godna", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Godna", "local": "गोदना", "local_lang": "Hindi", "aliases": [ "khoda", "godhana" ], "said": "godna — to prick" }, "region": [ "south-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "thinning" }, "when": { "from": 1700, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Carried by tattooing castes and by women of many tribal communities; thinning" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "arms", "hands", "face", "chin", "legs", "chest" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "thinning", "countries": [ "IN", "NP", "GY", "TT" ], "first_record": 1800, "note": "Women tattooing women, often for a small fee, village to village." }, "text": { "what": "Northern and central India: women's marks, pricked by women, carried out of India to the Caribbean by indentured labour.", "story": "*Godna* is the verb *to prick*, which puts it in the same family as *sak*, *kaki-*, and *deq*: the word for the tattoo is the word for what the needle does. The designs go on arms, hands, legs and face, and the practice runs through Baiga, Oraon, Birhor, Munda, Santal and many other communities, each with its own repertoire.\n\nIt travelled. The tattoo went with indentured workers to Guyana and Trinidad, which makes it one of very few traditions on this site with a diaspora that kept the marks." }, "text_th": { "what": "อินเดียเหนือและตอนกลาง ลายของผู้หญิง แทงโดยผู้หญิง และติดตามแรงงานอพยพข้ามไปถึงแคริบเบียน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "words", "as": "Another word for tattoo that means to prick.", "rel": "finding" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Godna", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godna" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-godna", "s:wp-munda-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-godna" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "women" ], "geo": { "lat": 23.5, "lon": 82.5, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "hajichi", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Hajichi", "local": "針突", "local_lang": "Okinawan", "said": "hajichi — the needle-struck marks on a woman's hands" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": 1600, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Banned by Japan in 1899; taken up again by Okinawan women in the 2010s" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "hands", "fingers", "arms" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "JP" ], "first_record": 1700, "break": [ 1899, 2015 ], "revived": 2015, "suppressed_by": "prohibited by the Japanese government in 1899 as part of the assimilation of the Ryukyus", "note": "Backs of the hands and the fingers; marks added at betrothal and marriage." }, "text": { "what": "The Ryukyu Islands: marks on the backs of women's hands, outlawed by Japan in 1899 and now being put back on.", "story": "*Hajichi* went on the hands, where nothing conceals them, and it recorded a woman's passage — first marks in girlhood, more at betrothal, the set completed at marriage. Japan prohibited it in 1899 while assimilating the Ryukyu kingdom, and enforcement was real enough that the practice went underground and then out.\n\n*Inference —* the ban's design is worth noticing. A mark on the hands cannot be covered by clothing, which makes it the easiest tattoo in the world to police and the hardest to keep quietly.", "notes": "Okinawan women, in Okinawa and in the diaspora, have been taking hajichi up again; this site has no count of how many." }, "text_th": { "what": "หมู่เกาะริวกิว ลายบนหลังมือผู้หญิง ถูกญี่ปุ่นสั่งห้ามในปี 1899 และกำลังถูกนำกลับมา" }, "kin": [ { "to": "irezumi", "as": "Banned by the same state, twenty-seven years apart.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "revival", "as": "On the revival list.", "rel": "finding" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Irezumi", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irezumi" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-irezumi", "s:wp-meiji-era" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "tradition" }, "fields": { "practice.break": { "tier": "tradition", "note": "the 1899 prohibition is widely reported; this site has not seen the instrument itself" }, "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "needs_verification": true, "tags": [ "women", "ban", "revival" ], "geo": { "lat": 26.34, "lon": 127.8, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "body", "type": "story", "name": "Where the marks go", "as": "The hands, and the 1899 prohibition." }, { "from": "meiji-ban", "type": "story", "name": "Japan outlaws it", "as": "And who else." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "hlai-marks", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Hlai women's marks", "local": "黎族", "local_lang": "Chinese", "aliases": [ "Li people tattoo" ], "said": "Face, throat and legs, by lineage" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1300, "to": 1950, "circa": true, "label": "Ended in the mid-twentieth century" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "face", "neck", "legs", "arms" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "CN" ], "first_record": 1300, "break": [ 1950, 2026 ], "note": "Hainan island; the pattern differed by lineage group." }, "text": { "what": "Hainan: Hlai women marked on face, throat, arms and legs in patterns that told one lineage from another.", "story": "Chinese records notice tattooing among non-Han peoples as far north as the Yangzi in the first millennium, which is the same body of record that the Southeast Asian traditions on this site appear in — as somebody else's custom, seen from outside." }, "text_th": { "what": "ไหหลำ หญิงชาวหลีสักหน้า คอ แขน ขา ด้วยลายที่บอกสายตระกูล" }, "links": [ { "label": "Hlai people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hlai_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-hlai-people", "s:wp-hainan", "s:wp-yantra-tattooing" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-hlai-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "low", "needs_verification": true, "tags": [ "women" ], "geo": { "lat": 19.0, "lon": 109.6, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "htoe-kwin", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Htoe kwin", "my": "ထိုးကွင်း", "local": "ထိုးကွင်း", "local_lang": "Burmese", "aliases": [ "Burmese thigh tattoo", "Lethwei leg tattoo" ], "said": "htó-kwìn — the pricked rings" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "thinning" }, "when": { "from": 1100, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Tang-dynasty notice of tattooed Pyu dancers; thinning after 1900, still done" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "tool": "hnitkwasok", "ink": "lampblack", "placement": [ "waist-to-knee", "legs", "knees", "thighs" ], "marked": "men", "marks": "specialist", "status": "thinning", "countries": [ "MM" ], "first_record": 1882, "first_record_note": "the fullest description this site can name is Shway Yoe's, 1882; the custom is far older", "suppressed_by": "no ban — colonial rule and town life, in Shway Yoe's own account and the Wikipedia summary of it", "sessions": "three to six days for the whole; three or four figures at a sitting", "note": "Boys of eight to fourteen, waist to just past the kneecap, in framed animals." }, "text": { "what": "Every up-country Burmese man wore one: a sheet of dark-blue animals from the navel to below the knee, begun in boyhood.", "story": "Shway Yoe — the pen name of Sir James George Scott, who lived in Burma and wrote the fullest account of it in English — opens the chapter flatly: a Burmese youth counts his thigh tattooing as important as his entry into a monastery, and until it is done \"there may be doubts as to his thorough manhood.\"\n\nThe finished work runs from a line level with the navel to just past the kneecap, and he reaches for a garment to describe it: not a marking of the skin so much as **\"a skin-tight pair of caleçons, fitting better than the best glove ever made.\"** The figures are tigers, cats, monkeys, elephants, *nats* and *bilus* — each one framed in an oval of letters, each frame its own setting, the gaps filled with the same tracery.\n\nThe frame is the tell. The animals are not a scene; they are a repeating field of self-contained units, which is why the whole reads at a distance as cloth rather than as a picture.\n\n*Attested —* a good *saya* carried a sample book of drawings so the boy could pick his patterns and their places before the opium went in. A tattoo studio's flash sheet, in Burma, in 1882.", "today": "Lethwei fighters — Burmese bareknuckle boxers — carry the leg work as the sport's own mark, and the Wikipedia article on tattooing in Myanmar records fighters describing the sitting, up to 24 hours across both legs, as the thing to be endured without showing it. Outside the ring it is a thinning tradition rather than a general one.", "notes": "Shway Yoe reports and then refuses a claim: that the custom began for a \"shameful reason assigned by foreign writers.\" He does not repeat the reason and says no Burman believes it. This site does the same." }, "text_th": { "what": "ชายพม่าหัวเมืองเกือบทุกคนมีลายนี้ สัตว์สีน้ำเงินเข้มเต็มผืนตั้งแต่ระดับสะดือลงไปใต้เข่า เริ่มตั้งแต่ยังเป็นเด็ก", "story": "เชวโย นามปากกาของเซอร์เจมส์ จอร์จ สก็อตต์ ผู้ใช้ชีวิตในพม่าและเขียนบันทึกภาษาอังกฤษที่ละเอียดที่สุดไว้ เปิดบทด้วยประโยคตรงๆ ว่า ชายหนุ่มพม่าถือว่าการสักต้นขาสำคัญเท่ากับการบวช และก่อนจะสักเสร็จ ความเป็นชายเต็มตัวของเขายังน่าสงสัย\n\nงานที่เสร็จแล้วกินตั้งแต่แนวสะดือถึงใต้ลูกสะบ้า และเขาเลือกใช้คำเรียกเสื้อผ้าอธิบายมัน ไม่ใช่รอยบนผิวหนังเท่ากับ **\"กางเกงรัดรูปที่เข้ารูปยิ่งกว่าถุงมือ\"** ลายเป็นเสือ แมว ลิง ช้าง นัต และบีลู แต่ละตัวมีกรอบตัวอักษรล้อมเป็นวงรี ช่องว่างถมด้วยลายเดียวกัน\n\nกรอบคือจุดสังเกต สัตว์เหล่านี้ไม่ได้ประกอบเป็นภาพเดียว แต่เป็นหน่วยซ้ำๆ เต็มผืน จึงมองไกลๆ แล้วอ่านเป็นผ้า ไม่ใช่ภาพ", "today": "นักมวยเลธเวยถือลายขาเป็นเครื่องหมายของกีฬา และบทความวิกิพีเดียบันทึกคำของนักมวยว่าการสักทั้งสองขาใช้เวลาถึง 24 ชั่วโมง และต้องทนโดยไม่แสดงออก นอกสังเวียน ธรรมเนียมนี้เหลือน้อยลงมาก" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "The same garment of skin, one border east, and far less written down.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "hnitkwasok", "as": "The two-foot brass pricker that made it.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "shan-tattooing", "as": "Who Shway Yoe says did the charm work, and did more of it.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "shway-yoe", "as": "Who wrote it down, and what that costs the record.", "rel": "person" }, { "to": "clothing", "as": "\"A skin-tight pair of caleçons\" — one of the three.", "rel": "finding" }, { "to": "vermilion", "as": "The other colour: charms, in red, which fade.", "rel": "ink" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Tattooing in Myanmar", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tattooing_in_Myanmar" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar", "s:gazetteer-2", "s:milne-shans" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text.today": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar" }, "text.story": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here", "initiation", "colonial-record" ], "images": [ { "file": "htoe-kwin/htoe-kwin-burmese-tattooing.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Burmese tattooing.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Burmese_tattooing.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABurmese_tattooing.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Philip Adolphe Klier", "credit": "Customs of the World", "alt": "Burmese tattooingEvery Burman who has any self-respect is tattooed in blue from the waist, about the top of the cloth to the knee. The figures of tigers, ogres and so forth are encircled with scroll l", "date": "1912", "primary": true, "sha256": "5af5015e2508c7af07339eef921160e53eed69fa922eb70cfc8be02591f425c0" } ], "x_clothing": { "quote": "not so much of a marking of the cuticle as of a skin-tight pair of caleçons, fitting better than the best glove ever made", "lang": "English, of Burmese work", "source": "s:shway-yoe", "year": 1882, "garment": "trousers" }, "geo": { "lat": 21.96, "lon": 96.09, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "chin-ming", "type": "tradition", "name": "Chin facial tattooing", "as": "The other Burmese tradition, and the one that was not banned." }, { "from": "sak-kha-lai", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak kha lai", "as": "The same garment of skin, one border west. The Burmese work is the better recorded of the two." }, { "from": "shan-tattooing", "type": "tradition", "name": "Shan leg tattooing", "as": "Who they learned it from, if Milne is right — and she hedges." }, { "from": "design-block", "type": "tool", "name": "The design block", "as": "The sample book, 1882." }, { "from": "hnitkwasok", "type": "tool", "name": "Hnitkwasok", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "lampblack", "type": "ink", "name": "Lampblack", "as": "What it drew." }, { "from": "cat-monkey", "type": "motif", "name": "Cats and monkeys", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "framed-animal", "type": "motif", "name": "The framed animal", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "the-pain", "type": "rite", "name": "Bearing it", "as": "Where the opium comes in." }, { "from": "the-timing", "type": "rite", "name": "When it is done", "as": "Stacked with ordination." }, { "from": "saya-chein", "type": "person", "name": "Saya Chein", "as": "His work." }, { "from": "shway-yoe", "type": "person", "name": "Shway Yoe", "as": "What he described." }, { "from": "mandalay", "type": "place", "name": "Mandalay", "as": "The tradition." }, { "from": "clothing", "type": "story", "name": "The tattoo is clothing", "as": "Caleçons." }, { "from": "legs", "type": "story", "name": "The leg-tattoo zone", "as": "The Burmese side." }, { "from": "sample-book", "type": "art", "name": "The sample book", "as": "The work it was for." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "iban-borneo", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Iban tattooing", "local": "pantang", "local_lang": "Iban", "aliases": [ "bungai terung", "entegulun" ], "said": "A journey mark, a headhunter's hands, an aubergine flower on each shoulder" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": 1850, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Described by Hose and McDougall in 1912; carried by the last headhunters into the 2000s" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "hands", "fingers", "arms", "chest", "back", "legs" ], "marked": "men", "marks": "specialist", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "MY", "ID" ], "first_record": 1912, "note": "Hand tattoos say what the man did; the shoulder flower says he left home." }, "text": { "what": "Borneo: tapped designs carved on a block and printed onto the skin, with hand marks reserved for a man who had taken a head.", "story": "The Iban mark a journey. *Bungai terung*, the aubergine flower, goes on each shoulder when a young man leaves on *bejalai* — the walkabout that makes him an adult. The *entegulun*, the hand tattoo, is not a decoration: it records that the wearer took a head. Anthony Bourdain filmed one of the last men entitled to it.\n\nThe design source is the striking part. Borneo tattooists carved patterns onto wooden blocks, inked the block, printed it onto the skin, and then tapped along the printed line — a stamp, a stencil and a tool in one, and a way of keeping a repertoire that does not depend on memory.", "notes": "Hose and McDougall, 1912, are the fullest colonial description and carry the usual freight; the Iban record their own designs now." }, "text_th": { "what": "เกาะบอร์เนียว ลายแกะบนแม่พิมพ์ไม้ ประทับลงผิวแล้วตอกตามเส้น ลายมือสงวนให้ชายที่ได้หัวศัตรูมาแล้ว" }, "kin": [ { "to": "tap", "as": "The method.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "kayan-borneo", "as": "Upriver, and mostly women's work.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Iban people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iban_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-iban-people", "s:hose-borneo-2" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-iban-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "colonial-record", "initiation" ], "geo": { "lat": 2.3, "lon": 112.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "coptic-pilgrim", "type": "tradition", "name": "The pilgrim's cross", "as": "The same solution to the same problem: carve the design into wood." }, { "from": "kayan-borneo", "type": "tradition", "name": "Kayan tattooing", "as": "Downriver, and mostly men's." }, { "from": "konyak-naga", "type": "tradition", "name": "Konyak marks", "as": "And the hands." }, { "from": "design-block", "type": "tool", "name": "The design block", "as": "The block." }, { "from": "bungai-terung", "type": "motif", "name": "The aubergine flower", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "irezumi", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Irezumi", "local": "入れ墨", "local_lang": "Japanese", "aliases": [ "tebori", "horimono" ], "said": "ire-zumi — inserting ink" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "living" }, "when": { "from": 1700, "to": 2026, "label": "Outlawed in the Meiji period, legalised in 1948, still marked as criminal" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "tool": "nomi", "ink": "nara-ink", "placement": [ "back", "chest", "arms", "legs", "whole-body" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "living", "countries": [ "JP" ], "first_record": 1700, "suppressed_by": "outlawed at the opening of the Meiji period; legalised by the occupation in 1948", "sessions": "years of weekly sittings for a full suit", "note": "Needles bound to a wooden handle with silk thread, pushed by hand at an angle." }, "text": { "what": "Japan: needles bound with silk to a wooden rod, worked by hand — *tebori*, carving by hand — over years, in a design that covers the body like a garment.", "story": "The word says the method: *irezumi*, inserting ink. Nara ink goes grey-blue under the skin. A full back piece is not a session but a relationship, and the shape it takes — shoulders, chest panels, a gap down the sternum — is a suit of clothes that can be closed over.\n\nThe Meiji government outlawed it while courting foreign opinion, and foreigners promptly came to Japan to be tattooed. The occupation legalised it in 1948. Japanese law then held for decades that tattooing needed a medical licence, until a 2020 decision ended that. The criminal association it acquired under the ban has outlived the ban by seventy years." }, "text_th": { "what": "ญี่ปุ่น เข็มมัดด้วยไหมติดด้ามไม้ ทำด้วยมือ — *เทโบริ* — ต่อเนื่องหลายปี จนลายคลุมตัวเหมือนเสื้อผ้า" }, "kin": [ { "to": "nomi", "as": "The tool.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "meiji-ban", "as": "The ban that made it criminal.", "rel": "story" }, { "to": "ainu-anchi-piri", "as": "The other tradition in the same islands, which the word also covers.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Irezumi", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irezumi" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-irezumi", "s:wp-horimono", "s:wp-yakuza" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-irezumi" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "ban", "start-here" ], "images": [ { "file": "irezumi/irezumi-roshi-ensei-lifting-a-heavy-beam.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Roshi Ensei lifting a heavy beam.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Roshi_Ensei_lifting_a_heavy_beam.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARoshi_Ensei_lifting_a_heavy_beam.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Utagawa Kuniyoshi", "credit": "http://visipix.com/search/search.php?userid=1616934267&q=%272aAuthors/K/Kuniyoshi%201797-1861%2C%20Utagawa%2C%20Japan%27&s=23&l=en&u=2&ub=1&k=1tm", "alt": "This print illustrates a wrestling match where Yan Qing the Graceful (Roshi Ensei) with all his body tattooed is lifting a heavy beam.", "date": "before 1861date QS:P,+1861-00-00T00:00:0", "primary": true, "sha256": "c0ff5177d5012fb98a84dc3b979f3f9918a6b1164a204847b9788b67ce748f19" }, { "file": "irezumi/irezumi-senkaji-chao-wringing-out-hin-loincloth.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Senkaji Chao wringing out hin loincloth.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Senkaji_Chao_wringing_out_hin_loincloth.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASenkaji_Chao_wringing_out_hin_loincloth.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "", "credit": "", "alt": "Senkaji Chao wringing out hin loincloth.jpg", "date": "", "primary": false, "sha256": "6cfdc131ebb09e127fe84b43be2b1c6ad2f9dd6e36a392f5bebd268c909207dc" } ], "geo": { "lat": 35.68, "lon": 139.69, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "ainu-anchi-piri", "type": "tradition", "name": "Ainu anchi-piri", "as": "The other Japanese tradition, and the one the word usually means." }, { "from": "hajichi", "type": "tradition", "name": "Hajichi", "as": "Banned by the same state, twenty-seven years apart." }, { "from": "nomi", "type": "tool", "name": "Nomi", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "nara-ink", "type": "ink", "name": "Nara ink", "as": "Where it goes." }, { "from": "meiji-ban", "type": "story", "name": "Japan outlaws it", "as": "What was banned." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "kakiniit", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Kakiniit", "local": "ᑲᑭᓐᓃᑦ", "local_lang": "Inuktitut", "aliases": [ "tunniit", "kakiniq" ], "said": "kakiniq — from a root meaning to pierce or prick" }, "region": [ "arctic" ], "facets": { "family": "stitch", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": -2000, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Suppressed by missionaries; revived deliberately from 2016" }, "practice": { "method": "stitch", "tool": "needle-and-sinew", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "face", "chin", "hands", "arms", "thighs", "chest" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "CA", "GL", "US" ], "first_record": 1475, "first_record_note": "the Qilakitsoq mummies of Greenland carry facial marks, dated about 1475", "break": [ 1920, 2016 ], "revived": 2016, "suppressed_by": "Christian missionaries and the residential school system", "note": "Women tattooing women. A threaded needle drawn under the skin, or a poked line." }, "text": { "what": "Inuit tattoos: women's work on women's skin, stitched with a sooted thread drawn under the skin, or poked.", "story": "The method is the rarest on this site. A needle carries a sinew thread blackened with soot and is drawn *through* the skin, leaving the pigment behind it in a line — sewing, with the line left in. The same hands did the sewing that kept people alive in a cold place.\n\nThe marks answered to Sedna, whose severed fingers became the sea animals: hand and arm tattoos refer to where her hands were cut. A woman without hand marks was refused the good afterlife; a woman without face marks went to the land of the crestfallen, where the smoke rises from her throat and her head hangs down.\n\nThen missionaries, the schools, and a century of silence. The revival is recent, documented and deliberate: Hovak Johnston's project began putting traditional marks back on Inuit women in 2016, learning the stitch from the elders who still remembered it." }, "text_th": { "what": "รอยสักของชาวอินูอิต ผู้หญิงสักให้ผู้หญิง ใช้เข็มร้อยด้ายชุบเขม่าลอดใต้ผิวหนัง หรือแทงเป็นจุด" }, "kin": [ { "to": "stitch", "as": "The method, and the only one on this site that uses thread.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "qilakitsoq", "as": "The oldest Inuit faces that survive, and they are marked.", "rel": "find" }, { "to": "revival", "as": "The clearest datable revival in the record.", "rel": "finding" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Kakiniit", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakiniit" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-kakiniit", "s:wp-inuit" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-kakiniit" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "women", "revival", "start-here" ], "images": [ { "file": "kakiniit/kakiniit-fmib-46504-tattooed-woman-of-st-lawrence-island.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:FMIB 46504 Tattooed Woman of St Lawrence Island.jpeg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/FMIB_46504_Tattooed_Woman_of_St_Lawrence_Island.jpeg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFMIB_46504_Tattooed_Woman_of_St_Lawrence_Island.jpeg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Raymond L. Newcomb", "credit": "Newcomb, Raymond Lee (1882) Our Lost Explorers : the Narrative of the Jeannette Arctic Expedition, as related by the survors, and in the records and last journals of Lieutenant De Long, Hartford", "alt": "Tattooed Woman of St. Lawrence Island\nSubject: Eskimo women--Alaska, Tattooing--Alaska\nTag: People", "date": "1882date QS:P571,+1882-00-00T00:00:00Z/9", "primary": true, "sha256": "fb53bd4bc9b40bb1d085e82c023cc5f7c5684cd4c5101a7f924a108b4200e5d4" }, { "file": "kakiniit/kakiniit-milukkattuk-36951.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Milukkattuk (36951).jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Milukkattuk_%2836951%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMilukkattuk_%2836951%29.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "Diamond Jenness", "credit": "Canadian Museum of History", "alt": "Milukkattuk, Dolphin and Union Strait Inuk woman, wife of Avrunna (36926), front view with hood down, arm and hand extended showing tattooed hand, Bernard Harbour, N.W.T. (Nunavut).", "date": "July 1916date QS:P571,+1916-07-00T00:00:", "primary": false, "sha256": "05fa13542c43543e2191191741c62d9ecffae6c7dae03b5a111fab2da8d1bf58" } ], "geo": { "lat": 66.0, "lon": -85.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "stitch", "type": "method", "name": "Stitch", "as": "The tradition that carries it." }, { "from": "needle-and-sinew", "type": "tool", "name": "Needle and sinew", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "sedna-hands", "type": "motif", "name": "Sedna's hands", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "hovak-johnston", "type": "person", "name": "Hovak Johnston", "as": "The practice." }, { "from": "revival", "type": "story", "name": "Stopped, and started again", "as": "And the best documented." }, { "from": "qilakitsoq", "type": "find", "name": "The Qilakitsoq women", "as": "The tradition." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "kalinga-cordillera", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Cordilleran whatok", "local": "whatok", "local_lang": "Kalinga", "aliases": [ "fatek", "batok" ], "said": "The best-kept of the Philippine traditions, because the mountains were never taken" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": 1200, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Mummies from the 13th century carry it; Whang-od still taps it" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "tool": "gisi-pat-ik", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "arms", "chest", "hands", "back" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "PH" ], "first_record": 1200, "note": "Chest work for a man who had taken a head; arm work for everyone else." }, "text": { "what": "The Cordillera mountains of northern Luzon, where Spanish rule never reached and the tattooing was never interrupted.", "story": "Cordilleran mummies in cave and hanging-coffin burials carry tattoos going back to the thirteenth century, individualised, covering an adult woman's arms and an adult man's whole body — and the coffins carry the patterns carved on the outside.\n\nHeadhunting chest work went first, when headhunting stopped. Arm and decorative work lasted longer. Elders among the Bontoc and Kalinga still carry it; among the Kankanaey, Apayao and Ibaloi it is believed gone." }, "text_th": { "what": "เทือกเขาคอร์ดิลเยราทางเหนือของลูซอน ที่สเปนไปไม่ถึง และการสักไม่เคยถูกตัดขาด" }, "kin": [ { "to": "batok", "as": "The wider Philippine family this sits inside.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "whang-od", "as": "The practitioner everyone has heard of.", "rel": "person" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Kalinga people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalinga_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok", "s:wp-kalinga-people", "s:wp-bontoc-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "revival" ], "x_clothing": { "quote": "Having no tattoos was formerly equated to being naked.", "lang": "English, of Cordilleran practice", "source": "s:wp-batok", "year": 2020, "garment": "clothes" }, "geo": { "lat": 17.38, "lon": 121.1, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "pintados", "type": "story", "name": "The painted ones", "as": "The mountains, where it did not happen." }, { "from": "cordilleran-mummies", "type": "find", "name": "The Cordilleran mummies", "as": "The tradition." }, { "from": "whose-designs", "type": "issue", "name": "Whose designs", "as": "Where the rule is stated plainly." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "kayan-borneo", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Kayan tattooing", "local": "tedak", "local_lang": "Kayan", "said": "Women's forearms and thighs, worked over years" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "thinning" }, "when": { "from": 1850, "to": 2000, "circa": true, "label": "Hose and McDougall describe the full sequence in 1912" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "arms", "hands", "thighs", "feet" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "thinning", "countries": [ "MY", "ID" ], "first_record": 1912, "note": "Tattooed by women, for women, over several years and several sittings." }, "text": { "what": "Upriver Borneo, where the tattooists were women and the work went on a woman's forearms, thighs and feet across years.", "story": "Hose and McDougall set down the sequence, the fees and the taboos in 1912 — which is why a practice that thinned out is describable at all, and also why the description is an outsider's. The Kayan of Borneo are not the Kayan of Myanmar; the names collide and the peoples do not." }, "text_th": { "what": "บอร์เนียวตอนใน ช่างสักเป็นผู้หญิง สักให้ผู้หญิง ที่แขน ต้นขา และเท้า ใช้เวลาหลายปี" }, "kin": [ { "to": "iban-borneo", "as": "Downriver, and mostly men's.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Kayan people (Borneo)", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayan_people_(Borneo)" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-kayan-people-borneo", "s:hose-borneo-2" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:hose-borneo-2" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "women", "colonial-record" ], "geo": { "lat": 2.8, "lon": 114.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "iban-borneo", "type": "tradition", "name": "Iban tattooing", "as": "Upriver, and mostly women's work." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "konyak-naga", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Konyak marks", "local": "Konyak", "local_lang": "Konyak", "said": "Face and chest, earned in the headhunting years" }, "region": [ "south-asia", "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1800, "to": 1970, "circa": true, "label": "Ended with headhunting and conversion; the marked men are the last generation" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "face", "chest", "arms" ], "marked": "men", "marks": "specialist", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "IN", "MM" ], "first_record": 1900, "break": [ 1970, 2026 ], "suppressed_by": "the end of headhunting, colonial administration and Christian conversion", "note": "A face mark that recorded an act, which is why it could not outlive the act." }, "text": { "what": "Nagaland and across the Myanmar border: chest and face marks a man received for taking a head.", "story": "*Inference —* a tattoo that certifies an act ends when the act ends. The Konyak marks, the Cordilleran chest work and the Iban hand tattoo are three unrelated traditions with the same structural weakness, and all three stopped within decades of headhunting being suppressed. A tattoo for beauty or for protection can survive a change of government. A tattoo that is a record cannot." }, "text_th": { "what": "นาคาแลนด์และข้ามพรมแดนพม่า ลายอกและใบหน้าที่ชายได้รับเมื่อได้หัวศัตรู" }, "kin": [ { "to": "batok", "as": "Same structure, different island: the chest is earned.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "iban-borneo", "as": "And the hands.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Konyak Naga", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konyak_Naga" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-konyak-naga", "s:wp-naga-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-konyak-naga" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "initiation" ], "geo": { "lat": 26.4, "lon": 94.9, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "marquesan-patutiki", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Patutiki", "local": "patu tiki", "local_lang": "Marquesan", "said": "To strike the image" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": 1500, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Suppressed by mission and administration; documented by Handy in 1922, revived since the 1980s" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "whole-body", "face", "legs", "hands" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "PF" ], "first_record": 1922, "break": [ 1900, 1980 ], "revived": 1980, "suppressed_by": "French administration and Catholic mission", "note": "The densest body coverage recorded anywhere in the Pacific." }, "text": { "what": "The Marquesas: coverage so complete that Willowdean Handy's 1922 survey had to be drawn panel by panel to record it.", "story": "Handy's *Tattooing in the Marquesas* is a Bishop Museum bulletin, out of copyright, and it is a catalogue of motifs recorded when very few marked people were left. The name says the method: *patu tiki*, to strike the image." }, "text_th": { "what": "หมู่เกาะมาร์เคซัส ลายคลุมตัวหนาแน่นที่สุดเท่าที่บันทึกไว้ในแปซิฟิก" }, "links": [ { "label": "Marquesas Islands", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquesas_Islands" } ], "sources": [ "s:handy-marquesas", "s:wp-marquesas-islands" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:handy-marquesas" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "revival", "colonial-record" ], "geo": { "lat": -9.8, "lon": -139.05, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "mentawai-titi", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Mentawai titi", "local": "titi", "local_lang": "Mentawai", "said": "Lines following the body, put on across a life" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "thinning" }, "when": { "from": 1850, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Still carried by elders on Siberut" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "arms", "chest", "back", "legs", "hands" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "thinning", "countries": [ "ID" ], "first_record": 1900, "note": "Put on in stages through a life rather than in one commitment." }, "text": { "what": "The Mentawai islands, west of Sumatra: long lines laid along arms, chest and legs, added to at each stage of a life.", "story": "*Inference —* the Mentawai case is the clearest example of a pattern this site keeps meeting: a tradition is called dying for a century and is still there, thinner, with the elders carrying it and the state having spent decades discouraging it." }, "text_th": { "what": "หมู่เกาะเมินตาไว ตะวันตกของสุมาตรา เส้นยาวตามแขน อก และขา เพิ่มทีละช่วงของชีวิต" }, "links": [ { "label": "Mentawai people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentawai_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-mentawai-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-mentawai-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "low", "needs_verification": true, "tags": [ "initiation" ], "images": [ { "file": "mentawai-titi/mentawai-titi-sikerei-full-body-portrait-traditional-tattoos-waterfall.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Sikerei-full-body-portrait-traditional-tattoos-waterfall.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Sikerei-full-body-portrait-traditional-tattoos-waterfall.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASikerei-full-body-portrait-traditional-tattoos-waterfall.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "Andrian salis", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Portrait of a Sikerei (Mentawai shaman) displaying traditional full-body tattoos, Siberut Island.", "date": "2026-08-22", "primary": true, "sha256": "5dd17071a6ff5cb65af75022cad19772bb44b096d06c0d7e1647682baae560cc" }, { "file": "mentawai-titi/mentawai-titi-tato-mentawai.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Tato mentawai.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Tato_mentawai.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATato_mentawai.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "Adhmi", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Sikerei sedang membuat tato mentawai", "date": "2021-12-20 19:59:11", "primary": false, "sha256": "1d68622c04c6defe4d4709d89bcdd528c8878e7e2282250190a5ad712a159f76" } ], "geo": { "lat": -1.4, "lon": 99.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sak-kha-lai", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Sak kha lai", "th": "สักขาลาย", "rtgs": "sak kha lai", "local": "ᩈᩢ᩠ᨠᨡᩣᩃᩣ᩠ᨿ", "local_lang": "Northern Thai (Tai Tham script)", "aliases": [ "lao phung dam", "ลาวพุงดำ", "the black-bellied Lao", "Lanna leg tattoo" ], "said": "sàk khǎa laai — to tattoo the legs in patterns" }, "region": [ "lanna", "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1500, "to": 1930, "circa": true, "label": "Mural evidence from the 1800s; gone within a generation of electric light", "label_th": "หลักฐานจิตรกรรมจากคริสต์ศตวรรษที่ 19 หายไปภายในชั่วอายุคนหลังไฟฟ้าเข้าหมู่บ้าน" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "tool": "lek-char", "ink": "lampblack", "placement": [ "waist-to-knee", "waist-to-ankle", "belly", "back", "arms", "fingers" ], "marked": "men", "marks": "specialist", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "TH", "MM" ], "first_record": 1800, "first_record_note": "temple murals; the written description this site quotes was set down much later, from elders", "suppressed_by": "nobody banned it — the volume this site quotes blames electric light and the end of the night courtship it lit up", "sessions": "days for one pattern; months or years for a whole body", "note": "Northern Thai men, waist to knee or waist to ankle, in patterns dense enough that a mural paints them as trousers." }, "text": { "what": "The Lanna leg tattoo: waist to knee, sometimes to the ankle, dense enough that the murals paint it as a pair of black trousers.", "story": "A Lanna volume held in the wichaa.net manuscript corpus puts it plainly: temple murals show northern Thai men tattooed *จนดูเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงสีดำ* — \"until it looked as if they wore black trousers.\" Elders quoted in the same passage give the extent: the legs in patterns from the waist down to the ankles, the torso front and back, the arms, even the fingers; some as far as the neck and the crown of the head.\n\nThe enforcement was talk. A man who did not tattoo his legs and torso \"would be gossiped about as being like a woman — lacking the endurance to bear the needle\"; if he had no marks he might as well put on a *sin*, the woman's wrapped skirt. The work went to a master in the community and the fee had a Lanna name of its own, **khan tang** (ขันตั้ง), where central Thai says *khan khru*.\n\n*Inference —* the tradition is described here in the past tense by its own inheritors, not by an outside authority, and nothing in the passage names a law. What it names is electric light: the old night courtship ended, the reason a young man needed to be looked at ended with it, and the marks went out of use within about a generation.", "today": "Sak kha lai is not what a visitor to Chiang Mai is offered. What is offered is **sak yant** — the same needle, a different job. The leg tattoo covered a man; the yant marks him with a formula.", "notes": "This site treats sak kha lai and sak yant as two traditions on one hand, not one tradition with two names. That separation is the client's correction, and it is the same separation the Burmese record makes between the thigh work and the charms." }, "text_th": { "what": "สักขาลาย ของล้านนา จากบั้นเอวลงไปถึงเข่า บางคนถึงข้อเท้า แน่นจนจิตรกรรมฝาผนังวาดออกมาเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงดำ", "story": "หนังสือล้านนาเล่มหนึ่งในคลังเอกสารของ wichaa.net เขียนไว้ตรงๆ ว่า จิตรกรรมฝาผนังแสดงให้เห็นชายชาวล้านนาสักยันต์ลงบนร่างกาย *จนดูเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงสีดำ* ผู้เฒ่าในข้อความเดียวกันบอกขอบเขตไว้ว่า สักขาลายตั้งแต่บั้นเอวลงมาจนถึงข้อเท้า สักลำตัวทั้งหน้าและหลัง สักแขน แม้แต่นิ้วมือ บางคนถึงคอและกลางกระหม่อม\n\nสิ่งที่บังคับคือคำนินทา ชายที่ไม่สักขาและลำตัวจะถูกว่าเป็นผู้หญิงที่ไม่มีน้ำอดน้ำทนต่อเข็ม ถ้าไม่มีรอยสักเลยก็ให้ไปนุ่งซิ่นเสีย งานนี้ต้องไปหาครูบาอาจารย์ในชุมชน และค่าครูมีชื่อล้านนาของตัวเองว่า **ขันตั้ง** ซึ่งภาคกลางเรียกขันครู\n\n*อนุมาน —* ข้อความนี้เล่าธรรมเนียมของตัวเองด้วยกาลอดีต ไม่ใช่คนนอกเป็นคนเล่า และไม่มีกฎหมายข้อใดถูกเอ่ยถึง สิ่งที่ถูกเอ่ยถึงคือไฟฟ้า ประเพณีแอ่วสาวยามค่ำจบลง เหตุผลที่ชายหนุ่มต้องถูกมองก็จบตาม และรอยสักเลิกใช้ภายในราวชั่วอายุคน", "today": "สักขาลายไม่ใช่สิ่งที่นักเดินทางในเชียงใหม่จะได้รับการเสนอ สิ่งที่เสนอคือ **สักยันต์** เข็มเดียวกัน คนละงาน ลายขาคลุมทั้งตัวคน ส่วนยันต์ทำเครื่องหมายด้วยสูตร" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "The same garment of skin, one border west. The Burmese work is the better recorded of the two.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "shan-tattooing", "as": "And the same again to the north, where the tattooers of charms came from.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "The other job the same needle does, and the one still being done.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "khan-tang", "as": "The fee, in the Lanna word for it.", "rel": "rite" }, { "to": "clothing", "as": "One of the three traditions whose own sources call the tattoo clothing.", "rel": "finding" }, { "to": "lek-char", "as": "The instrument.", "rel": "tool" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Lan Na", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lan_Na" } ], "sources": [ "s:ms6968", "s:corpus", "s:thwp-ล-านนา", "s:milne-shans" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "fields": { "text.story": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "practice.suppressed_by": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "text.notes": { "tier": "inference", "note": "this project's separation of the two traditions" }, "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here", "script", "initiation" ], "images": [ { "file": "sak-kha-lai/sak-kha-lai-2013-wat-phumin-mural-02.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:2013 Wat Phumin mural 02.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/2013_Wat_Phumin_mural_02.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A2013_Wat_Phumin_mural_02.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 3.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "author": "Takeaway", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Murals of Wat Phumin", "date": "2013-12-11 09:38:31", "primary": true, "sha256": "b2cd08a5f7ef9ab3db421f5cdfaf0d6d987cf7b24833fc6c7bed7f019abc8fe1" }, { "file": "sak-kha-lai/sak-kha-lai-peinture-murale-wat-phumin2-nan.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Peinture murale Wat Phumin2, Nan.JPG", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Peinture_murale_Wat_Phumin2%2C_Nan.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APeinture_murale_Wat_Phumin2%2C_Nan.JPG", "license": "CC BY-SA 3.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "author": "Ellnik", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Peinture_murale_Wat_Phumin2,_Nan.JPG", "date": "11 may", "primary": false, "sha256": "006ec453a4d1505e37bbc54eef740d6dc291ae8a17c8a06780c9fafc95402e1e" } ], "x_clothing": { "quote": "จนดูเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงสีดำ — until it looked as if they wore black trousers", "lang": "Northern Thai", "source": "s:ms6968", "year": 2010, "garment": "trousers" }, "geo": { "lat": 18.79, "lon": 99.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "htoe-kwin", "type": "tradition", "name": "Htoe kwin", "as": "The same garment of skin, one border east, and far less written down." }, { "from": "sak-yant", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak yant", "as": "The other job of the same needle, and the one that stopped." }, { "from": "shan-tattooing", "type": "tradition", "name": "Shan leg tattooing", "as": "The same work on the Thai side of the line." }, { "from": "lek-char", "type": "tool", "name": "Lek char", "as": "What it made." }, { "from": "khan-tang", "type": "rite", "name": "Khan tang", "as": "The tradition that names it this way." }, { "from": "chiang-mai", "type": "place", "name": "Chiang Mai", "as": "What was ordinary here." }, { "from": "wat-phumin", "type": "place", "name": "Wat Phumin", "as": "What it shows." }, { "from": "clothing", "type": "story", "name": "The tattoo is clothing", "as": "Black trousers." }, { "from": "coverage", "type": "story", "name": "Who gets written about", "as": "The tradition with no article at all." }, { "from": "legs", "type": "story", "name": "The leg-tattoo zone", "as": "The Thai side." }, { "from": "revival", "type": "story", "name": "Stopped, and started again", "as": "And the one with nobody left to ask." }, { "from": "murals", "type": "art", "name": "The murals", "as": "What it shows." }, { "from": "wichaa", "type": "org", "name": "wichaa.net", "as": "What the corpus was asked about." }, { "from": "who-wrote-it-down", "type": "issue", "name": "Who wrote it down", "as": "And the counter-case." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sak-yant", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Sak yant", "th": "สักยันต์", "rtgs": "sak yant", "local": "សាក់យ័ន្ត", "local_lang": "Khmer", "aliases": [ "yantra tattooing", "สักยันต์" ], "said": "sàk yan — to prick a diagram" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia", "lanna" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "living" }, "when": { "from": 1400, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Living, and the one tradition on this site a visitor can walk into" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "tool": "khem-sak", "ink": "lampblack", "placement": [ "back", "chest", "arms", "neck", "legs" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "living", "countries": [ "TH", "KH", "LA", "MM" ], "first_record": 1600, "first_record_note": "the designs are older than any dated description this site can name", "sessions": "one design in a sitting; an ajarn or a monk, not a shop", "note": "A formula in letters and figures, laid on the skin, held by rules the bearer keeps afterwards." }, "text": { "what": "Letters, numbers and figures arranged into a diagram — *yant* — and pricked into skin with a long needle.", "story": "*Sak* is the verb: to prick. The Khmer root *cɔkʔ* means the same, and the Khmer dictionary keeps the word native rather than borrowed from Sanskrit. *Yant* is the diagram — the same word as Sanskrit *yantra*, the same family as the yantra drawn on cloth, on brass, on paper.\n\nThe Lanna volume explains why it moved to skin at all, and the reason is logistics: a yant on paper or metal is left at home. A yant on the body is carried. Everything else — which formula, which animal, which direction the letters run — follows from that one decision.\n\nTwo corrections this site carries, both from the client and both checkable. **Most sak yant is not done at Wat Bang Phra.** That temple is what the film crews know; the ordinary route is an ajarn or a monk near where you live. And **Khom is not \"what a yant is written in.\"** Khom script is the central Thai convention. In the north the letters are northern Thai — *tua mueang*, the Tai Tham script — or Shan, or Tai Lue.", "today": "Chiang Mai has working masters, and one operation there publishes the lineage of every one of them — who taught whom, which temple, how many years in the robe and how many out. That published lineage is the closest thing this site has to a family tree for a living hand tradition.", "notes": "The designs themselves are indexed on wichaa.net at /yant: 36 named designs across 63 plates, entered by what each one is for." }, "text_th": { "what": "ตัวอักษร ตัวเลข และรูปสัตว์ จัดเป็นแผนผัง — ยันต์ — แล้วแทงลงผิวหนังด้วยเข็มยาว", "story": "*สัก* คือคำกริยา แปลว่าแทง รากคำเขมร *cɔkʔ* ก็แปลอย่างเดียวกัน และพจนานุกรมเขมรถือว่าเป็นคำพื้นเมือง ไม่ได้ยืมจากสันสกฤต ส่วน *ยันต์* คือแผนผัง คำเดียวกับ yantra ในสันสกฤต ตระกูลเดียวกับยันต์ที่เขียนบนผ้า ทองเหลือง และกระดาษ\n\nหนังสือล้านนาอธิบายว่าทำไมจึงย้ายมาอยู่บนผิวหนัง เหตุผลคือการพกพา ยันต์บนกระดาษหรือแผ่นโลหะถูกลืมไว้ที่บ้านได้ ยันต์บนตัวไปด้วยเสมอ\n\nข้อแก้สองข้อที่เว็บนี้ถือไว้ **สักยันต์ส่วนใหญ่ไม่ได้ทำที่วัดบางพระ** วัดนั้นคือวัดที่กองถ่ายรู้จัก ทางปกติคืออาจารย์หรือพระใกล้บ้าน และ **ขอมไม่ใช่ \"อักษรที่ยันต์ต้องเขียน\"** อักษรขอมเป็นธรรมเนียมภาคกลาง ทางเหนือใช้ตัวเมือง อักษรไทใหญ่ หรือไทลื้อ", "today": "เชียงใหม่มีอาจารย์ที่ยังทำงานอยู่ และมีสำนักหนึ่งเผยแพร่สายครูของทุกคนไว้ ใครเรียนกับใคร วัดไหน บวชกี่พรรษาและสึกมากี่ปี" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "The other job of the same needle, and the one that stopped.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "khem-sak", "as": "The needle itself.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "khan-tang", "as": "The fee, north and centre.", "rel": "rite" }, { "to": "kho-ham", "as": "The rules that come with it, and what happens if they are broken.", "rel": "rite" }, { "to": "sak-yant-chiang-mai", "as": "The published lineage.", "rel": "org" }, { "to": "shan-tattooing", "as": "Where Shway Yoe says the charm specialists came from.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Yantra tattooing", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yantra_tattooing" }, { "label": "The yant designs, indexed on wichaa.net", "url": "https://wichaa.net/yant/" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-yantra-tattooing", "s:ms6968", "s:sycm", "s:thwp-การส-กย-นต-" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-yantra-tattooing" }, "fields": { "text.story": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "text.today": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:sycm" }, "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here", "protective", "script" ], "images": [ { "file": "sak-yant/sak-yant-sak-yant-gow-yord.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Sak-yant-gow-yord.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Sak-yant-gow-yord.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASak-yant-gow-yord.jpg", "license": "CC BY 3.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/", "author": "Mikhailovich", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Typical \"sak yant gow yord\" tattoo for use on Wikipedia's Yantra tattooing article", "date": "2011-02-26", "primary": true, "sha256": "f9a3631953f9b4f14fb58e0ff3255f12316ad551a37e2685fa6fd06509c1c1e4" }, { "file": "sak-yant/sak-yant-sak-yant-chiang-mai.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Sak Yant Chiang Mai.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Sak_Yant_Chiang_Mai.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASak_Yant_Chiang_Mai.jpg", "license": "CC BY 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/", "author": "Immanuelle", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Sak Yant Chiang Mai", "date": "2024-08-26 23:58:50", "primary": false, "sha256": "7bda912fb9ccae7bab713ff3b204aad1df8e5fba20a9c56759576913beabc95b" }, { "file": "sak-yant/sak-yant-thai-tattoos-1.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Thai tattoos 1.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Thai_tattoos_1.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThai_tattoos_1.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Love Krittaya", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Thai tattoos (สักยันต์)", "date": "2004-08-28 12:28:45", "primary": false, "sha256": "599860b0f644ccedf9cb337c0e3faa1b8a6d1421324cf63fe7947b8d1aa3459c" } ], "geo": { "lat": 14.5, "lon": 100.6, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "sak-kha-lai", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak kha lai", "as": "The other job the same needle does, and the one still being done." }, { "from": "shan-tattooing", "type": "tradition", "name": "Shan leg tattooing", "as": "What the Shan specialists were carrying when they crossed." }, { "from": "khem-sak", "type": "tool", "name": "Khem sak", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "hanuman", "type": "motif", "name": "Hanuman", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "mystic-square", "type": "motif", "name": "The lettered square", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "khan-tang", "type": "rite", "name": "Khan tang", "as": "And the living one that still collects it." }, { "from": "kho-ham", "type": "rite", "name": "The rules", "as": "Where the rules attach." }, { "from": "ajarn-dang-sak", "type": "person", "name": "Ajarn Dang and Ajarn Sak", "as": "The practice." }, { "from": "chiang-mai", "type": "place", "name": "Chiang Mai", "as": "What is still done here." }, { "from": "stencils", "type": "art", "name": "The stencil book", "as": "The tradition." }, { "from": "sak-yant-chiang-mai", "type": "org", "name": "Sak Yant Chiang Mai", "as": "The tradition." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "shan-tattooing", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Shan leg tattooing", "th": "การสักของไทใหญ่", "local": "တႆး", "local_lang": "Shan", "aliases": [ "Tai Yai tattooing" ], "said": "Both legs, waist to knee, and further than the Burmese" }, "region": [ "lanna", "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "thinning" }, "when": { "from": 1300, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Chinese annals notice Shans tattooing their foreheads; Milne describes the leg work in 1910" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "lampblack", "tool": "hnitkwasok", "placement": [ "waist-to-knee", "waist-to-ankle", "back", "arms", "face" ], "marked": "men", "marks": "specialist", "status": "thinning", "countries": [ "MM", "TH", "CN" ], "first_record": 1910, "first_record_note": "Leslie Milne, Shans at Home; the Gazetteer carries an older Chinese notice", "sessions": "begun at twelve to fourteen", "note": "A Shan boy counted as a child until he was tattooed." }, "text": { "what": "The same leg work as the Burmese, carried further — to the ankles, up the back, and on the specialists who tattooed everybody else's charms.", "story": "Leslie Milne lived among the northern Shan and published *Shans at Home* in 1910. Her sentence on status is the whole of it: **a Shan boy is a child until he is tattooed.** Plucky boys start at twelve, most wait until fourteen. The rule is both legs, waist to knee, the thighs completely covered in dark blue — and often on to the ankles. Backs come later, in blue or more often red, and without symmetry: a grid of lettered squares under one shoulder blade, small circles or beasts on the other side.\n\nShway Yoe, writing thirty years earlier, says the Shans tattoo more extensively than the Burmese, with rays running up from the waistline to the chest and nearly to the nape, and that the retainers of a *sawbwa* — a Shan chief — might be marked everywhere but the palms and the soles.\n\nThe second thing he says is the one that matters for the whole region: **the men who tattoo charms and cabalistic figures are mostly Shans.** They are credited with the special skill, they mutter the spells over the medicine, and they are held in some awe for it. The Lanna volume agrees from the other side of the border: this fashion was widespread among the Burmese and the Tai Yai, who tattoo yantras no less than the Lanna do.", "today": "Tai Yai communities span the Myanmar–Thailand border, including Mae Hong Son. This site has no count of who is still tattooed and does not guess at one." }, "text_th": { "what": "งานสักขาแบบเดียวกับพม่า แต่ไปไกลกว่า ถึงข้อเท้า ขึ้นหลัง และอยู่บนตัวช่างผู้สักเครื่องรางให้คนอื่นทั้งภูมิภาค", "story": "เลสลี มิลน์ อยู่กับชาวไทใหญ่ทางเหนือและพิมพ์ *Shans at Home* ในปี 1910 ประโยคเรื่องสถานะของเธอคือทั้งหมดของเรื่อง **เด็กชายไทใหญ่ยังเป็นเด็กจนกว่าจะได้สัก** คนใจกล้าเริ่มตอนสิบสอง ส่วนใหญ่รอถึงสิบสี่ กติกาคือสองขา ตั้งแต่เอวถึงเข่า ต้นขาเต็มไปด้วยลายสีน้ำเงินเข้ม และบ่อยครั้งลงไปถึงข้อเท้า\n\nเชวโยซึ่งเขียนก่อนหน้านั้นสามสิบปีบอกว่าไทใหญ่สักมากกว่าพม่า มีรัศมีพุ่งจากแนวเอวขึ้นหน้าอกและเกือบถึงท้ายทอย และบริวารของเจ้าฟ้าอาจถูกสักทุกส่วนยกเว้นฝ่ามือกับฝ่าเท้า\n\nสิ่งที่เขาพูดต่อสำคัญต่อทั้งภูมิภาค **ช่างที่สักยันต์และอักขระส่วนใหญ่เป็นไทใหญ่** เอกสารล้านนาก็พูดตรงกันจากอีกฝั่งของพรมแดน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "Who they learned it from, if Milne is right — and she hedges.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "The same work on the Thai side of the line.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "What the Shan specialists were carrying when they crossed.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "milne-shans", "as": "Who wrote it down, and stayed long enough to quote the boys' friends.", "rel": "person" }, { "to": "legs", "as": "The zone this belongs to, and where its border runs.", "rel": "finding" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Shan people", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shan_people" } ], "sources": [ "s:milne-shans", "s:shway-yoe", "s:gazetteer-2", "s:ms6968" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:milne-shans" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "colonial-record", "initiation" ], "images": [ { "file": "shan-tattooing/shan-tattooing-shan-man-in-gaung-baung.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Shan man in gaung baung.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Shan_man_in_gaung_baung.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AShan_man_in_gaung_baung.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 2.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/", "author": "Damien Halleux Radermecker from Brussels, Belgium", "credit": "Shan Colors", "alt": "Shan man in Myanmar wearing a gaung baung (turban)", "date": "2010-02-03 14:32", "primary": true, "sha256": "43cc1a453125e2f824ddf36907c2d158d21a0da1aac8b3cc9f9373aacb93e5bb" } ], "geo": { "lat": 21.29, "lon": 99.6, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "htoe-kwin", "type": "tradition", "name": "Htoe kwin", "as": "Who Shway Yoe says did the charm work, and did more of it." }, { "from": "sak-kha-lai", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak kha lai", "as": "And the same again to the north, where the tattooers of charms came from." }, { "from": "sak-yant", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak yant", "as": "Where Shway Yoe says the charm specialists came from." }, { "from": "the-pain", "type": "rite", "name": "Bearing it", "as": "Where the friends do." }, { "from": "ajarn-dang-sak", "type": "person", "name": "Ajarn Dang and Ajarn Sak", "as": "The line they name." }, { "from": "milne-shans", "type": "person", "name": "Leslie Milne", "as": "What she described." }, { "from": "kengtung", "type": "place", "name": "Kengtung", "as": "The tradition." }, { "from": "legs", "type": "story", "name": "The leg-tattoo zone", "as": "The middle." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sicanje", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Sicanje", "local": "sicanje", "local_lang": "Croatian", "aliases": [ "bocanje", "bockanje" ], "said": "sicanje — pricking; crosses and circles on the forearms and chest" }, "region": [ "europe" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "dormant" }, "when": { "from": 1500, "to": 1945, "circa": true, "label": "Died out after the Second World War; the designs are being used again by machine" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "soot-honey", "placement": [ "arms", "hands", "chest" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "dormant", "countries": [ "BA", "HR" ], "first_record": 1894, "first_record_note": "Leopold Glück's 1894 paper in Vienna; Ćiro Truhelka illustrated the designs in the same decade", "break": [ 1945, 2026 ], "note": "Catholic Croats in central Bosnia; the marks went on girls, and sometimes boys, around puberty." }, "text": { "what": "Bosnia: Catholic girls' forearms and hands marked with crosses, circles and fences, pricked with soot and honey.", "story": "Two nineteenth-century observers recorded it — the archaeologist Ćiro Truhelka, who drew the designs, and a doctor, Leopold Glück, who published a paper in Vienna in 1894 titled *The Tattooing of Skin Among the Catholics of Bosnia and Herzegovina*.\n\nThe custom went out after the Second World War. What survives is the design vocabulary, now being applied by machine by tattooists in Croatia and Bosnia — a revival of the pattern without the practice, which is a distinct thing and this site counts it separately." }, "text_th": { "what": "บอสเนีย เด็กหญิงคาทอลิกถูกสักไม้กางเขนและวงกลมที่แขนและมือ ด้วยเขม่าผสมน้ำผึ้ง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "coptic-pilgrim", "as": "The other Christian hand-poke tradition on this site.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "who-wrote-it-down", "as": "Recorded by a doctor and an archaeologist, which is the usual pair.", "rel": "issue" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Sicanje", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicanje" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-sicanje", "s:wp-croats-of-bosnia-and-herzegovina" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-sicanje" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "women", "colonial-record" ], "images": [ { "file": "sicanje/sicanje-bh-croats-tattoo.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:BH Croats, Tattoo.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/BH_Croats%2C_Tattoo.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABH_Croats%2C_Tattoo.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Mostarac", "credit": "https://www.croatianhistory.net/gif/tattoo1.jpg", "alt": "Tattoos of Cross on Croatian women in Bosnia and Herzegovina were defence from Ottoman Turks", "date": "starije od 70 godina / older then 70 yea", "primary": true, "sha256": "d7a6f855b9fa0cf0e5047c0f7c23fe50d46537af5312f343f32901d407ee9b22" }, { "file": "sicanje/sicanje-frau-aus-dem-lasvatale.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Frau aus dem Lasvatale.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Frau_aus_dem_Lasvatale.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFrau_aus_dem_Lasvatale.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "R. Kofzmann", "credit": "III: Band; Mann und Weib in ihren Beziehungen zur Kultur der Gegenwart. page 455.", "alt": "nach \"Mitteilungen aus Bosnien und der Herzegowina\"\nFrau aus dem Lasvatale.", "date": "1910", "primary": false, "sha256": "42fb74b361b6e519212578e01914f94789367bd0440eafad774abe376ce118a0" } ], "geo": { "lat": 44.0, "lon": 17.7, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "coptic-pilgrim", "type": "tradition", "name": "The pilgrim's cross", "as": "Christian marks made by pricking, at the other end of the Mediterranean." }, { "from": "soot-honey", "type": "ink", "name": "Soot and honey", "as": "Where it goes." }, { "from": "truhelka-gluck", "type": "person", "name": "Truhelka and Glück", "as": "What they recorded." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "stick-and-poke", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Stick and poke", "aliases": [ "hand-poke", "handpoke", "prison tattoo" ], "said": "A needle, a thread of pigment, and no machine" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "poke", "status": "living" }, "when": { "from": 1970, "to": 2026, "label": "The contemporary hand-poke scene, and its prison ancestor" }, "practice": { "method": "poke", "ink": "pen-ink", "placement": [ "arms", "hands", "legs", "chest" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "either", "status": "living", "countries": [ "US", "GB", "DE", "FR", "JP", "TH", "AU", "CA" ], "first_record": 1970, "note": "A sewing needle with thread wound round it, or a professional cartridge held in a stabiliser pen." }, "text": { "what": "The one everybody has seen: a needle, ink, no machine — punk kitchens, prisons, and now studios that do nothing else.", "story": "Two lineages meet here and they are not the same thing. One is improvised: a sewing needle or a safety pin, ballpoint ink, done by a friend, associated with prisons and with people too young to be tattooed legally. The other is professional hand-poke, done with medical needles in a studio, which is now a standing style with its own practitioners.\n\n*Inference —* this site lists it as a tradition because it is one, and because the same word covers both ends of it. The difference between the two is not the method; it is whether the needle is sterile and whether the person holding it has been taught." }, "text_th": { "what": "แบบที่ทุกคนเคยเห็น เข็ม หมึก ไม่มีเครื่อง ทั้งในครัวพังก์ ในเรือนจำ และในร้านที่ทำแต่แบบนี้" }, "kin": [ { "to": "machine", "as": "What it is defined against.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "what-counts", "as": "And the question that gets asked about it.", "rel": "issue" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Stick and poke", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stick_and_poke" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-stick-and-poke", "s:wp-prison-tattooing", "s:wp-russian-criminal-tattoos" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-stick-and-poke" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "start-here" ], "images": [ { "file": "stick-and-poke/stick-and-poke-404-sak-yant-tattoo-16.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:404 Sak Yant Tattoo (16).jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/404_Sak_Yant_Tattoo_%2816%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A404_Sak_Yant_Tattoo_%2816%29.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "Lychiang", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "404 Sak Yant Tattoo (16)", "date": "2006-04-29 15:50:54", "primary": true, "sha256": "f2da4554196e68afdf20c6aa8d5691b4b81d6a924fcbce6a851da7c2c70255dc" } ], "geo": { "lat": 51.5, "lon": -0.12, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "pen-ink", "type": "ink", "name": "Pen ink", "as": "Where it goes." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "ta-moko", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Tā moko", "local": "tā moko", "local_lang": "Māori", "aliases": [ "moko kauae", "pūkauae" ], "said": "Carved with a chisel, leaving a groove rather than a smooth surface" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "family": "cut", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": 1500, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Men's moko stopped about 1860; women's continued; revived from 1990" }, "practice": { "method": "cut", "tool": "uhi", "ink": "awheto-ngarehu", "placement": [ "face", "chin", "thighs", "buttocks" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "specialist", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "NZ" ], "first_record": 1769, "break": [ 1907, 1990 ], "revived": 1990, "suppressed_by": "the Tohunga Suppression Act 1907, and the trade in tattooed heads before it", "note": "An albatross-bone chisel struck with a mallet; the skin is grooved, not punctured." }, "text": { "what": "New Zealand: albatross-bone chisels struck with a mallet, cutting a groove that stays visible as texture, not only as colour.", "story": "*Tā moko* is not a puncture. The *uhi* — a hafted chisel of albatross bone — is struck, and the skin keeps the furrow. That is why a moko reads in raking light and why a photograph flattens it.\n\nPigment: *awheto*, a caterpillar fungus, for the body; *ngarehu*, burnt timber, for the darker face colour; soot from burnt kauri gum mixed with fat. It was kept in carved vessels called *oko* which were buried between uses and handed down.\n\nSteel needles arrived with Europeans and were faster and safer, and the groove went. Men's moko had largely stopped by the 1860s; women kept receiving *moko kauae* into the twentieth century, and Michael King interviewed more than seventy women in the early 1970s who had been marked before the Tohunga Suppression Act of 1907. Since 1990 the practice has come back, machine mostly, chisel too, with women among the practitioners — and a Māori foreign minister and a prime-time news anchor wearing *moko kauae* on the country's screens." }, "text_th": { "what": "นิวซีแลนด์ สิ่วกระดูกนกอัลบาทรอสตอกด้วยค้อน ทิ้งร่องไว้บนผิวหนัง ไม่ใช่เพียงสี" }, "kin": [ { "to": "uhi", "as": "The chisel.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "cut", "as": "The method.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "tatau", "as": "The neighbouring Pacific tradition that taps instead of cutting.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Tā moko", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C4%81_moko" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-t-moko", "s:wp-m-ori-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-t-moko" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "revival", "women", "start-here" ], "images": [ { "file": "ta-moko/ta-moko-thigh-moko.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Thigh moko.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Thigh_moko.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThigh_moko.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Unknown authorUnknown author", "credit": "Moko; or, Maori Tattooing by Horatio Gordon Robley, 1896", "alt": "Image depicting a Māori tattoo or moko on someone’s thigh and buttock", "date": "1896-01-01", "primary": true, "sha256": "bcbe57cdcb7ef524d122d8de25a88c48db3b8754f91588b04676f2d5168be81d" }, { "file": "ta-moko/ta-moko-tohunga-ta-moko-at-work-gottfried-lindauer.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Tohunga-ta-moko at Work – Gottfried Lindauer.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Tohunga-ta-moko_at_Work_%E2%80%93_Gottfried_Lindauer.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATohunga-ta-moko_at_Work_%E2%80%93_Gottfried_Lindauer.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Gottfried Lindauer", "credit": "https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/323/the-tohunga-ta-moko-at-work", "alt": "The Tohunga-ta-moko at Work. Painting by Gottfried Lindauer of Māori tattoo (moko) being carved into a man’s face by a skilled tattooist (tohunga-tā-moko).", "date": "Unknown date", "primary": false, "sha256": "f677deb89a4db4b11dd9585f5ee54024649249bda10347be26ce65b58ae368a1" } ], "geo": { "lat": -38.5, "lon": 176.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "cut", "type": "method", "name": "Cut", "as": "The tradition built on it." }, { "from": "uhi", "type": "tool", "name": "Uhi", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "awheto-ngarehu", "type": "ink", "name": "Awheto and ngarehu", "as": "Where it goes." }, { "from": "moko-kauae", "type": "motif", "name": "Moko kauae", "as": "The tradition it belongs to." }, { "from": "tohunga-act", "type": "story", "name": "The Tohunga Suppression Act", "as": "What it caught." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "tatau", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Tatau", "local": "tatau", "local_lang": "Samoan", "aliases": [ "pe'a", "malu" ], "said": "The word English borrowed, by way of Cook's crew" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "living" }, "when": { "from": -1000, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Unbroken: the two tufuga families hold the titles still" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "tool": "au", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "waist-to-knee", "back", "thighs" ], "marked": "both", "marks": "kin", "status": "living", "countries": [ "WS", "AS", "TO", "FJ" ], "first_record": 1787, "sessions": "days, in several sittings, with assistants stretching the skin", "note": "The pe'a covers a man from mid-back to the knees; the malu is the women's." }, "text": { "what": "Samoa: a comb of bone and turtle shell, struck with a mallet, covering a man from the middle of the back to the knees.", "story": "The English word *tattoo* comes from this word. The *tufuga tā tatau* works with two assistants, the *'au toso*, who stretch the skin and wipe; the titles are hereditary in two families, the Sa Su'a of Savai'i and the Sa Tulou'ena of Upolu, and Samoan masters tattooed Tongan and Fijian chiefly families too.\n\nThe clothing logic is explicit here as well: an untattooed Samoan man is *telefua* or *telenoa* — naked. A man who starts the *pe'a* and cannot finish carries *pe'a mutu*, an unfinished tattoo, and that is a mark of shame that the finished work is designed to prevent.\n\nSamoa credits Fiji with the origin, in a song about twin sisters who swam across with a basket of tools, singing that only women should be tattooed — and arrived singing the opposite." }, "text_th": { "what": "ซามัว หวีกระดูกและกระดองเต่าตอกด้วยค้อน คลุมชายตั้งแต่กลางหลังถึงเข่า" }, "kin": [ { "to": "au", "as": "The comb.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "veiqia", "as": "Fiji, where Samoa says it came from — and where only women were marked.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "clothing", "as": "An untattooed man is called naked. In the language, not in a metaphor.", "rel": "finding" }, { "to": "cook-1769", "as": "How the word got into English.", "rel": "story" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Pe'a", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pe%CA%BBa" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-pe-a", "s:turner-samoa" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-pe-a" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "start-here", "initiation" ], "images": [ { "file": "tatau/tatau-back-view-samoan-male-tatau-photo-thomas-andrew-1890s.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Back view Samoan male tatau - photo Thomas Andrew - 1890s.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/Back_view_Samoan_male_tatau_-_photo_Thomas_Andrew_-_1890s.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABack_view_Samoan_male_tatau_-_photo_Thomas_Andrew_-_1890s.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Thomas Andrew (1855 - 1939)", "credit": "National Library of New Zealand", "alt": "Back view of Samoan male with traditional tattoo (tatau, pe'a).", "date": "circa 1890sdate QS:P,+1890-00-00T00:00:0", "primary": true, "sha256": "c9309b2095a7d0092d3962b210dfcde2df69d6143b4a97920cd35c369b72c83d" }, { "file": "tatau/tatau-samoan-malu.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Samoan Malu.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Samoan_Malu.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASamoan_Malu.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 2.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/", "author": "RunningToddler", "credit": "Bits & Bytes", "alt": "Самоанская женщина с традиционной малу", "date": "2005-11-26 18:23", "primary": false, "sha256": "4b6ef2734088b84b16eafb171afee2c777459884068ff840fd3efbe67a65012c" } ], "x_clothing": { "quote": "Untattooed Samoan males are colloquially referred to as telefua or telenoa, literally \"naked\".", "lang": "Samoan", "source": "s:wp-pe-a", "year": 2020, "garment": "clothes" }, "geo": { "lat": -13.8, "lon": -172.1, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "ta-moko", "type": "tradition", "name": "Tā moko", "as": "The neighbouring Pacific tradition that taps instead of cutting." }, { "from": "veiqia", "type": "tradition", "name": "Veiqia", "as": "Where Samoa says the tools came from." }, { "from": "au", "type": "tool", "name": "Au", "as": "What it makes." }, { "from": "the-pain", "type": "rite", "name": "Bearing it", "as": "And where stopping has a name." }, { "from": "who-holds-you", "type": "rite", "name": "Who holds you still", "as": "Where the assistants have a title." }, { "from": "sulu-ape", "type": "person", "name": "The Sulu'ape line", "as": "The practice." }, { "from": "clothing", "type": "story", "name": "The tattoo is clothing", "as": "Naked, in the ordinary word." }, { "from": "cook-1769", "type": "story", "name": "How the word got in", "as": "The word." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "veiqia", "type": "tradition", "names": { "name": "Veiqia", "local": "veiqia", "local_lang": "Fijian", "aliases": [ "weniqia" ], "said": "A woman's marks, by a woman called the dauveiqia" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "family": "tap", "status": "revived" }, "when": { "from": 1700, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "One tattooist left by 1908; revived by an artists' collective in the 2010s" }, "practice": { "method": "tap", "ink": "soot-water", "placement": [ "thighs", "waist-to-knee" ], "marked": "women", "marks": "women", "status": "revived", "countries": [ "FJ" ], "first_record": 1830, "break": [ 1910, 2015 ], "revived": 2015, "suppressed_by": "Christian missionaries from the 1830s", "note": "Older women held the expertise; the fee was tapa cloth, whale teeth or a liku skirt." }, "text": { "what": "Fiji: girls marked at puberty by older women called *dauveiqia*, paid in tapa cloth and whale teeth.", "story": "By 1908 there was one recorded practitioner left — a woman called Rabali, tattooing until about 1910. That is as close as this site gets to a date for the end of a tradition, and it comes with a name.\n\nThe revival is as precisely dated. The Veiqia Project, a collective of Fijian women artists, took the practice up from the archives and the objects in the 2010s. Samoa's own origin story sends the tatau across from Fiji, which makes the revived practice older than the one that borrowed it." }, "text_th": { "what": "ฟิจิ หญิงสาวถูกสักเมื่อเข้าวัยสาวโดยหญิงอาวุโสที่เรียกว่า dauveiqia ค่าจ้างเป็นผ้าตาปาและฟันวาฬ" }, "kin": [ { "to": "tatau", "as": "Where Samoa says the tools came from.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "revival", "as": "The best-dated stop and restart on the site.", "rel": "finding" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Veiqia", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veiqia" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-veiqia", "s:wp-fiji" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-veiqia" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "women", "revival" ], "geo": { "lat": -17.8, "lon": 178.0, "precision": "region", "source": "s:commons" }, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "tatau", "type": "tradition", "name": "Tatau", "as": "Fiji, where Samoa says it came from — and where only women were marked." }, { "from": "who-holds-you", "type": "rite", "name": "Who holds you still", "as": "And where the holders are the other women." }, { "from": "rabali", "type": "person", "name": "Rabali", "as": "The practice." }, { "from": "revival", "type": "story", "name": "Stopped, and started again", "as": "The clearest one." }, { "from": "veiqia-project", "type": "org", "name": "The Veiqia Project", "as": "The practice." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "cut", "type": "method", "names": { "name": "Cut", "th": "กรีด", "said": "An incision, and pigment rubbed into it" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "cut" }, "text": { "what": "The skin is cut or chiselled and pigment is rubbed into the cut, so the mark has a texture as well as a colour.", "story": "Māori *tā moko* is the clearest case: the *uhi*, a hafted chisel of albatross bone, is struck with a mallet and the skin keeps a groove. A moko made this way catches light. A moko made with a needle does not, which is exactly what changed when steel arrived — and why some practitioners have taken the chisel up again.\n\nThe Ainu word *anchi-piri* names obsidian and a cut. Among the Lumad and Negrito peoples of the Philippines a hafted chisel incises the skin in short dashes, and the result is partly scarification.", "notes": "Cutting shades into scarification, which is a different practice with a different point. The test used here: if pigment is put into the wound to be seen afterwards, it is on this site." }, "text_th": { "what": "กรีดหรือสกัดผิวหนังแล้วถูสีลงในรอย รอยที่ได้จึงมีทั้งสีและพื้นผิว" }, "kin": [ { "to": "ta-moko", "as": "The tradition built on it.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "uhi", "as": "The chisel.", "rel": "tool" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-t-moko", "s:wp-batok", "s:wp-scarification" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-t-moko" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "ainu-anchi-piri", "type": "tradition", "name": "Ainu anchi-piri", "as": "The method — a cut rubbed with pigment, not a puncture." }, { "from": "ta-moko", "type": "tradition", "name": "Tā moko", "as": "The method." }, { "from": "uhi", "type": "tool", "name": "Uhi", "as": "The method." }, { "from": "what-counts", "type": "issue", "name": "What counts as hand-poked", "as": "Four." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "machine", "type": "method", "names": { "name": "Machine", "th": "เครื่องสัก", "said": "1891, and the reason every other method on this page needs a name" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "none" }, "when": { "from": 1891, "to": 2026, "label": "Samuel O'Reilly's patent, and everything after it" }, "text": { "what": "An electric motor drives the needle, at speeds between fifty and three thousand insertions a minute. It is here for contrast.", "story": "Until 1891 there was no need for the phrase *hand-poked*. Every tattoo in every tradition on this site was made by hand, and the differences that mattered were between a comb and a point, a chisel and a needle.\n\n*Inference —* the machine did not only speed the work up; it renamed everything else. \"Traditional\", \"hand\", \"by hand\" are all retroactive labels, applied after a machine existed to distinguish them from. That is worth holding on to when a tradition is described as having \"resisted\" the machine: most of them had no opinion about a device that did not exist when the practice was formed." }, "text_th": { "what": "มอเตอร์ไฟฟ้าขับเข็ม เร็วตั้งแต่ห้าสิบถึงสามพันครั้งต่อนาที อยู่ที่นี่เพื่อเทียบ", "story": "ก่อนปี 1891 ไม่มีความจำเป็นต้องมีคำว่า *สักด้วยมือ* เพราะรอยสักทุกแบบในทุกธรรมเนียมบนเว็บนี้ทำด้วยมือทั้งหมด" }, "kin": [ { "to": "poke", "as": "What it replaced, and what it named.", "rel": "method" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-tattoo-machine", "s:wp-samuel-oreilly" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-tattoo-machine" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "stick-and-poke", "type": "tradition", "name": "Stick and poke", "as": "What it is defined against." }, { "from": "timeline", "type": "story", "name": "Five thousand years", "as": "The newest thing that changed everything." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "poke", "type": "method", "names": { "name": "Poke", "th": "แทง", "said": "One point, pushed in by the hand that holds it" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "text": { "what": "A point held in the hand and pushed into the skin, once per mark, with the pigment carried on or into the hole.", "story": "The hand does the work: it provides the force, the depth and the rhythm. A poked line is a row of punctures close enough to read as continuous — Shway Yoe's description of the Burmese method is exactly that, \"a series of punctures close together, forming what afterwards fades into a rough line.\"\n\nThe tool can be a thorn, a fish bone, a sewing needle, a sharpened bamboo splint or a two-foot weighted brass rod. What makes it poking is that nothing strikes the tool and nothing drives it but the hand.", "how": "Depth is the whole skill. Too shallow and the mark leaves with the skin; too deep and the pigment spreads under it and the line thickens with age." }, "text_th": { "what": "ปลายแหลมในมือ แทงลงผิวหนังทีละครั้ง โดยมีสีติดไปกับรูที่แทง", "story": "มือเป็นผู้ให้แรง ความลึก และจังหวะ เส้นที่ได้คือรอยแทงถี่ๆ ที่ชิดกันจนอ่านเป็นเส้นเดียว ตรงตามที่เชวโยบรรยายวิธีของพม่าไว้" }, "kin": [ { "to": "tap", "as": "The one it gets confused with, and the one that does the striking for you.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "what-counts", "as": "Where the line between them stops being clear.", "rel": "issue" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:wp-stick-and-poke" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "machine", "type": "method", "name": "Machine", "as": "What it replaced, and what it named." }, { "from": "tap", "type": "method", "name": "Tap", "as": "The sibling method, and the one this site is named for." }, { "from": "what-counts", "type": "issue", "name": "What counts as hand-poked", "as": "One." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "stitch", "type": "method", "names": { "name": "Stitch", "th": "ร้อยด้าย", "said": "A threaded needle drawn under the skin, leaving the pigment behind" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "stitch" }, "text": { "what": "A needle carrying a thread blackened with soot, drawn through the skin so the line of pigment stays where the thread passed.", "story": "Skin stitching is the Arctic method, and it belongs to the same set of hands and the same needle case as the sewing that made the clothing people survived in. Nothing is punctured repeatedly; the line goes in once.\n\nIt is the rarest method on this site — two traditions out of the whole map — and the one that most clearly cannot be done by machine." }, "text_th": { "what": "เข็มร้อยด้ายชุบเขม่าลอดใต้ผิวหนัง ทิ้งเส้นสีไว้ตามทางที่ด้ายผ่าน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "kakiniit", "as": "The tradition that carries it.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-kakiniit" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-kakiniit" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "kakiniit", "type": "tradition", "name": "Kakiniit", "as": "The method, and the only one on this site that uses thread." }, { "from": "needle-and-sinew", "type": "tool", "name": "Needle and sinew", "as": "The method." }, { "from": "what-counts", "type": "issue", "name": "What counts as hand-poked", "as": "Three." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "tap", "type": "method", "names": { "name": "Tap", "th": "ตอก", "said": "A comb set crosswise on a handle, struck by a second stick" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "tap" }, "text": { "what": "A needle or a comb of needles fixed at a right angle to a handle, and a second piece of wood striking the handle to drive it in.", "story": "This is the Austronesian method, and it runs from Taiwan through the Philippines and Borneo across the whole Pacific: Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, the Marquesas, Hawaii. The rate is about 90 to 120 taps a minute, which is a drum tempo, and the sound is what a tattooing session sounds like in half the traditions on this site.\n\n*Inference —* the hand that holds the comb does not push. It positions and holds the angle; the striking hand supplies the force. That division of labour is what lets a wide comb lay down a band of solid black at a speed no single point can match, and it is why the Pacific traditions cover so much more skin than the poking ones.", "notes": "This site keeps tapping separate from poking rather than folding both into \"hand-poked\". They are different tools, different rates and different results, and the traditions that use them know the difference." }, "text_th": { "what": "เข็มหรือหวีเข็มติดตั้งฉากกับด้าม แล้วใช้ไม้อีกอันตอกด้ามให้เข็มลงผิว", "story": "นี่คือวิธีของตระกูลออสโตรนีเซียน ตั้งแต่ไต้หวัน ฟิลิปปินส์ บอร์เนียว ไปจนทั่วแปซิฟิก อัตราราว 90–120 ครั้งต่อนาที" }, "kin": [ { "to": "poke", "as": "The sibling method, and the one this site is named for.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "batok", "as": "Where it is still being done daily.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok", "s:wp-pe-a" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "batok", "type": "tradition", "name": "Batok", "as": "The method, and why this site does not call it hand-poke." }, { "from": "iban-borneo", "type": "tradition", "name": "Iban tattooing", "as": "The method." }, { "from": "poke", "type": "method", "name": "Poke", "as": "The one it gets confused with, and the one that does the striking for you." }, { "from": "au", "type": "tool", "name": "Au", "as": "The method." }, { "from": "arku-cave", "type": "find", "name": "The Arku Cave tools", "as": "The method." }, { "from": "what-counts", "type": "issue", "name": "What counts as hand-poked", "as": "Two." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "au", "type": "tool", "names": { "name": "Au", "local": "'au", "local_lang": "Samoan", "aliases": [ "au sogi'aso", "sausau" ], "said": "A comb of bone or turtle shell, and the mallet that strikes it" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "family": "tap" }, "instrument": { "material": [ "bone", "turtle shell", "wood" ], "points": "a row of teeth, from a few to several dozen, in a set of combs of different widths", "worked": "tapped", "hands": 3, "held_by": "the tufuga holds the comb and the sausau; two assistants stretch the skin" }, "text": { "what": "A set of combs — wide ones for filling, narrow ones for line — each hafted at a right angle and struck with a light mallet.", "story": "The set is the point. A *tufuga* carries combs of several widths, the way a printer carries type sizes, and the *pe'a*'s solid bands come from the wide ones. The mallet is called the *sausau*. Two assistants, the *'au toso*, stretch the skin and wipe.\n\nThe tools were made of bone, turtle shell and wood; the titles that go with them are hereditary in two families." }, "text_th": { "what": "ชุดหวีเข็ม หวีกว้างไว้ถม หวีแคบไว้ตีเส้น ติดตั้งฉากกับด้ามแล้วตอกด้วยค้อนเบา" }, "kin": [ { "to": "tatau", "as": "What it makes.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "tap", "as": "The method.", "rel": "method" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-pe-a" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-pe-a" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "tatau", "type": "tradition", "name": "Tatau", "as": "The comb." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "design-block", "type": "tool", "names": { "name": "The design block", "local": "pantang", "local_lang": "Iban", "aliases": [ "carved stamp", "sample book" ], "said": "A repertoire kept outside a head" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia", "west-asia", "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "instrument": { "material": [ "wood", "paper" ], "points": "none — it carries the design, not the point", "worked": "pushed" }, "text": { "what": "Not a needle: a carved wooden block, inked and printed onto the skin, so the tattooist follows a line instead of remembering one.", "story": "Three traditions on this site solved the same problem the same way and had no contact with each other. Borneo tattooists carved designs into wooden blocks, printed them onto the skin and tapped along the print. The Razzouk family in Jerusalem still holds olive-wood blocks three hundred years old and still prints pilgrims' crosses from them. And Shway Yoe reports that a good Burmese *saya* carried **a sample book of drawings** so the boy could choose his figures and their positions before the opium went in.\n\n*Inference —* a flash sheet, a stencil and a catalogue are all the same invention, and it arrives wherever a hand tradition has more designs than one person can hold." }, "text_th": { "what": "ไม่ใช่เข็ม เป็นแม่พิมพ์ไม้แกะลาย ลงหมึกแล้วประทับบนผิว ช่างจึงเดินตามเส้น ไม่ต้องจำ" }, "kin": [ { "to": "iban-borneo", "as": "The block.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "coptic-pilgrim", "as": "The block, still in use.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "The sample book, 1882.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:wp-razzouk-tattoo", "s:wp-iban-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text.story": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "measured" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "sample-book", "type": "art", "name": "The sample book", "as": "The same invention, three times over." }, { "from": "stencils", "type": "art", "name": "The stencil book", "as": "The same idea." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "gisi-pat-ik", "type": "tool", "names": { "name": "Gisi and pat-ik", "local": "gisi", "local_lang": "Kalinga", "said": "A thorn set in a stick, and the stick that hits it" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "tap" }, "instrument": { "material": [ "citrus thorn", "bamboo", "water buffalo horn", "wood" ], "points": "one thorn, or a small bundle", "worked": "tapped", "hands": 2, "held_by": "one hand holds the hafted thorn, the other taps" }, "text": { "what": "A citrus thorn — or a bundle of them — lashed at a right angle to a short stick, tapped by a second stick.", "story": "The ink is soot and water, carried in a coconut shell or a bowl, and the design is drawn on first with a blade of grass dipped in it. The needles were also made of wood, horn, bone, ivory, metal and bamboo, depending on where you were.\n\nArchaeology backs the tool up: chisel and serrated heads of probable hafted tattoo instruments were excavated at Arku Cave in Cagayan and dated before 1500 BCE — comb-type tattoo chisels, in northern Luzon, three and a half thousand years ago." }, "text_th": { "what": "หนามส้มหรือหนามมัดรวม ผูกตั้งฉากกับไม้สั้น แล้วตอกด้วยไม้อีกอัน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "batok", "as": "What it makes.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "arku-cave", "as": "Where a set of these was dug up.", "rel": "find" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "arku-cave", "type": "find", "name": "The Arku Cave tools", "as": "The tool, still in use." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "hnitkwasok", "type": "tool", "names": { "name": "Hnitkwasok", "my": "နှစ်ခွဆောက်", "local": "hnitkwasok", "local_lang": "Burmese", "said": "The two-pronged pricker: two feet long, weighted with a brass figure" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "instrument": { "material": [ "brass", "iron" ], "length_cm": 61, "length_note": "about two feet, in Shway Yoe's account", "points": "a solid round point about four inches long, split into four by long slits at right angles, which hold the colour", "worked": "pushed", "hands": 2, "held_by": "right hand on the shaft; the left forefinger and thumb form a rest on the body" }, "text": { "what": "A brass rod about two feet long, weighted at the top with a cast figure, with a split four-way point at the other end.", "story": "Shway Yoe describes it part by part in 1882 and the design is a solved problem. The *yat*, the style, is solid with a round sharp point, split into four by long slits at right angles — the slits hold the pigment, so the tool carries its own ink. The style is about four inches and fits into a hollow pipe, which joins it to the weighted end. **The weight is at the top and the length is hollow**, so the tool has mass where mass helps and none where it would tire the hand.\n\nThe weight is cast as a bird, a *nat* or a *bilu*, and a good *saya*'s is carved elaborately. The tattooist catches the shaft in his right hand and rests the point in a fork made by the left forefinger and thumb, the left hand flat on the body — the hand becomes the guide rail.", "how": "Ink is lampblack from burnt sesame oil, mixed with water as it is wanted. The outline goes on first with a camel-hair brush." }, "text_th": { "what": "เหล็กทองเหลืองยาวราวสองฟุต ถ่วงน้ำหนักด้วยรูปหล่อที่ปลายบน และมีปลายแหลมผ่าสี่แฉกอีกด้าน", "story": "เชวโยบรรยายไว้ทีละชิ้นในปี 1882 ปลายเหล็กตันปลายกลมแหลม ผ่าเป็นสี่ด้วยร่องยาวตั้งฉากกัน ร่องนั้นอุ้มสีไว้ เครื่องมือจึงพาหมึกไปเอง ส่วนปลายยาวราวสี่นิ้วเสียบอยู่ในท่อกลวงที่ต่อไปยังปลายถ่วงน้ำหนัก น้ำหนักอยู่ด้านบน ลำตัวกลวง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "What it makes.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "lek-char", "as": "The same idea, one border east, and lighter.", "rel": "tool" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "htoe-kwin", "type": "tradition", "name": "Htoe kwin", "as": "The two-foot brass pricker that made it." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "khem-sak", "type": "tool", "names": { "name": "Khem sak", "th": "เข็มสัก", "rtgs": "khem sak", "said": "The tattooing needle: a long shaft, a fine point, two hands" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "instrument": { "material": [ "steel", "brass", "bamboo" ], "length_cm": 50, "length_note": "long enough to be steadied against the off hand", "points": "a single fine point, or a small cluster", "worked": "pushed", "hands": 2, "held_by": "one hand drives, the other guides the shaft and stretches the skin" }, "text": { "what": "The sak yant needle: a long steel or brass shaft, pushed with one hand and steered with the other.", "story": "The grip is the same one Shway Yoe drew in Burma and the same one a visitor photographs in Chiang Mai today — the driving hand, the guiding fork of finger and thumb, the skin pulled tight by an assistant or by the bearer's own posture. A single design takes a sitting.\n\nThe modern working needle is steel, single-use, and that is the part of the practice that has changed most in fifty years." }, "text_th": { "what": "เข็มสักยันต์ ก้านเหล็กหรือทองเหลืองยาว มือหนึ่งแทง อีกมือประคอง", "story": "ท่าจับเป็นท่าเดียวกับที่เชวโยบรรยายไว้ในพม่า และเป็นท่าเดียวกับที่นักเดินทางถ่ายรูปได้ในเชียงใหม่วันนี้ มือขับเคลื่อน นิ้วชี้กับนิ้วโป้งของอีกมือเป็นแท่นรอง และผิวถูกดึงตึงไว้ ลายหนึ่งลายใช้เวลาหนึ่งครั้ง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "What it makes.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "lek-char", "as": "Its older name in the north.", "rel": "tool" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-yantra-tattooing", "s:sycm", "s:shway-yoe" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-yantra-tattooing" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "lanna" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "images": [ { "file": "khem-sak/khem-sak-needles-wat-bang-phra.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Needles Wat Bang Phra.JPG", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6c/Needles_Wat_Bang_Phra.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ANeedles_Wat_Bang_Phra.JPG", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "User:Phydoughx", "credit": "Own work by the original uploader", "alt": "Tattpoing at Wat Bang Phra temple", "date": "2006-09", "primary": true, "sha256": "699fb35cf92a1597ec342132fa3562446a274e3ae8b6c0d0a1f2842b74e3520b" } ], "kin_in": [ { "from": "sak-yant", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak yant", "as": "The needle itself." }, { "from": "lek-char", "type": "tool", "name": "Lek char", "as": "The same tool under the name the tattooers use." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "lek-char", "type": "tool", "names": { "name": "Lek char", "th": "เหล็กจาร", "rtgs": "lek chan", "said": "The iron stylus: the pen that writes on palm leaf, sharpened for skin" }, "region": [ "lanna", "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "instrument": { "material": [ "iron", "brass", "bamboo" ], "length_cm": 45, "length_note": "a working length of roughly 40–60 cm is usual; this site has measured none", "points": "a single point, or a point split to hold ink", "worked": "pushed", "hands": 2 }, "text": { "what": "The northern instrument: an iron stylus of the kind used to incise palm-leaf manuscripts, taken to skin.", "story": "The word *char* (จาร) is the verb for writing on a palm leaf with a stylus — scoring the surface and rubbing soot into the score so the letters appear. The same word, the same tool family, and in the north the same people: the men who could write the letters were the men who could put them on a body.\n\n*Inference —* that overlap explains something about the region's tattooing that a picture of a tiger does not. A Lanna yant is a written document. The tool is a pen, the surface is a person, and the fee has the same name as a teacher's fee because the transaction is a teaching one.", "notes": "Ten pages of the manuscript corpus this site counted carry the word เหล็กจาร. None of them is a tattooing manual; they are about writing." }, "text_th": { "what": "เครื่องมือของทางเหนือ เหล็กจารแบบที่ใช้เขียนใบลาน นำมาใช้กับผิวหนัง", "story": "คำว่า *จาร* คือกริยาของการเขียนใบลานด้วยเหล็กแหลม ขูดผิวใบแล้วถูเขม่าลงไปให้ตัวอักษรปรากฏ คำเดียวกัน ตระกูลเครื่องมือเดียวกัน และทางเหนือก็เป็นคนกลุ่มเดียวกัน คนที่เขียนอักษรได้คือคนที่ลงอักษรบนตัวคนได้\n\n*อนุมาน —* ความทับซ้อนนี้อธิบายการสักของภูมิภาคได้มากกว่ารูปเสือหนึ่งตัว ยันต์ล้านนาคือเอกสารที่เขียนขึ้น เครื่องมือคือปากกา พื้นผิวคือคน และค่าครูมีชื่อเดียวกับค่าครูของการเรียนหนังสือ" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "What it made.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "khem-sak", "as": "The same tool under the name the tattooers use.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "tua-mueang", "as": "The letters it was made to write.", "rel": "term" } ], "sources": [ "s:corpus", "s:ms6968", "s:thwp-อ-กษรธรรมล-านนา" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "inference" }, "fields": { "text.story": { "tier": "inference", "note": "this project's reading of the word and the overlap it implies" }, "text.notes": { "tier": "harvested", "note": "counted in the wichaa.net corpus, 4,710 transcribed pages" }, "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "lanna", "script" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "sak-kha-lai", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak kha lai", "as": "The instrument." }, { "from": "hnitkwasok", "type": "tool", "name": "Hnitkwasok", "as": "The same idea, one border east, and lighter." }, { "from": "khem-sak", "type": "tool", "name": "Khem sak", "as": "Its older name in the north." }, { "from": "words", "type": "story", "name": "What the word means first", "as": "Write." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "needle-and-sinew", "type": "tool", "names": { "name": "Needle and sinew", "local": "ᑲᑭᓐᓂᖅ", "local_lang": "Inuktitut", "said": "A sewing needle, a sooted thread, and the skin sewn once" }, "region": [ "arctic" ], "facets": { "family": "stitch" }, "instrument": { "material": [ "bone", "steel", "caribou sinew" ], "points": "one needle, carrying thread", "worked": "drawn", "hands": 2 }, "text": { "what": "The same needle that sewed the clothing, threaded with sinew blackened in soot and drawn under the skin.", "story": "Skin stitching leaves the pigment on the thread's path. It is also the reason the practice belonged to women: the needle case was theirs, the skill was theirs, and sewing was the technology the household ran on.\n\nA poked method existed alongside it; the revival teaches both." }, "text_th": { "what": "เข็มเล่มเดียวกับที่เย็บเสื้อผ้า ร้อยเส้นเอ็นชุบเขม่า แล้วลอดใต้ผิวหนัง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "kakiniit", "as": "What it makes.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "stitch", "as": "The method.", "rel": "method" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-kakiniit" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-kakiniit" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "nomi", "type": "tool", "names": { "name": "Nomi", "local": "のみ", "local_lang": "Japanese", "aliases": [ "tebori rods" ], "said": "Needles bound with silk to a wooden rod" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "instrument": { "material": [ "steel", "wood", "silk thread" ], "points": "a group of needles, bound in a flat or round cluster", "worked": "pushed", "hands": 2, "held_by": "the rod rests on one hand and is pushed with the other, at a shallow angle" }, "text": { "what": "A wooden rod with a group of needles bound to the end in silk, pushed at a shallow angle rather than straight down.", "story": "*Tebori* means carving by hand. The angle is what separates it from every other poking tool on this site: the needles go in obliquely, which is how the method lays the graded blacks that Japanese work is built on.\n\nA machine can outline faster. Practitioners who keep the rod usually keep it for the shading." }, "text_th": { "what": "ก้านไม้ปลายมัดเข็มด้วยไหม แทงเฉียง ไม่ใช่แทงตรง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "irezumi", "as": "What it makes.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-irezumi", "s:wp-horimono" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-irezumi" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "irezumi", "type": "tradition", "name": "Irezumi", "as": "The tool." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "uhi", "type": "tool", "names": { "name": "Uhi", "local": "uhi", "local_lang": "Māori", "said": "An albatross-bone chisel, struck" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "family": "cut" }, "instrument": { "material": [ "albatross bone", "bone" ], "points": "a straight or toothed cutting edge", "worked": "struck", "hands": 2, "held_by": "the tohunga-tā-moko holds the uhi and the mallet" }, "text": { "what": "A chisel of albatross bone hafted to a handle and struck with a mallet, cutting a groove that the pigment fills.", "story": "Pigment lived in carved vessels called *oko*, buried between uses and passed down the generations. A feeding funnel, the *kōrere*, was used while a face was healing.\n\nSteel needles replaced the *uhi* in the late nineteenth century: faster, safer, and smooth. In 2007 it was reported back in use by some practitioners." }, "text_th": { "what": "สิ่วกระดูกนกอัลบาทรอสติดด้าม ตอกด้วยค้อน กรีดเป็นร่องให้สีลงไปอยู่" }, "kin": [ { "to": "ta-moko", "as": "What it makes.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "cut", "as": "The method.", "rel": "method" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-t-moko" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-t-moko" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "images": [ { "file": "uhi/uhi-tohunga-ta-moko-at-work-gottfried-lindauer.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Tohunga-ta-moko at Work – Gottfried Lindauer.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Tohunga-ta-moko_at_Work_%E2%80%93_Gottfried_Lindauer.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATohunga-ta-moko_at_Work_%E2%80%93_Gottfried_Lindauer.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Gottfried Lindauer", "credit": "https://www.aucklandartgallery.com/explore-art-and-ideas/artwork/323/the-tohunga-ta-moko-at-work", "alt": "The Tohunga-ta-moko at Work. Painting by Gottfried Lindauer of Māori tattoo (moko) being carved into a man’s face by a skilled tattooist (tohunga-tā-moko).", "date": "Unknown date", "primary": true, "sha256": "f677deb89a4db4b11dd9585f5ee54024649249bda10347be26ce65b58ae368a1" } ], "kin_in": [ { "from": "ta-moko", "type": "tradition", "name": "Tā moko", "as": "The chisel." }, { "from": "cut", "type": "method", "name": "Cut", "as": "The chisel." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "awheto-ngarehu", "type": "ink", "names": { "name": "Awheto and ngarehu", "local": "awheto", "local_lang": "Māori", "said": "Caterpillar fungus for the body, burnt timber for the face" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "colour": "black" }, "text": { "what": "Two pigments for two jobs: *awheto*, a caterpillar fungus, for the body; *ngarehu*, burnt timber, for the darker face colour.", "story": "Soot from burnt kauri gum, mixed with fat, was used as well. The pigment was kept in carved *oko* vessels, buried between uses and handed on." }, "kin": [ { "to": "ta-moko", "as": "Where it goes.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-t-moko" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-t-moko" } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "indigo", "type": "ink", "names": { "name": "Indigo", "th": "คราม", "said": "The plant blue: Ainu mouths, Chin faces" }, "region": [ "east-asia", "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "colour": "blue-black" }, "text": { "what": "Pigment from the indigo plant, used by the Ainu and reported for the blue lines on Chin women's faces.", "story": "Ainu and Ryukyuan tattooing both use indigo rather than soot, in islands where indigo dyeing is also the textile tradition. The same plant, the same vats, a different surface." }, "text_th": { "what": "สีจากต้นคราม ชาวไอนุใช้ และมีรายงานว่าเส้นสีน้ำเงินบนใบหน้าหญิงชาวชินก็ใช้" }, "kin": [ { "to": "ainu-anchi-piri", "as": "Where it goes.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-irezumi", "s:wp-ainu-people", "s:wp-indigo-dye", "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-irezumi" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "lampblack", "type": "ink", "names": { "name": "Lampblack", "th": "เขม่าตะเกียง", "said": "Soot off a burning oil lamp, the best from sesame oil" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "colour": "blue-black" }, "text": { "what": "Soot collected from a lamp, mixed with water as it is needed. Under the skin it reads blue-black, and it does not leave.", "story": "Shway Yoe names the grade: the best lampblack is the soot of burning sesame oil. The Burmese black recipe recorded on the Myanmar article is more elaborate — soot mixed with dried gallbladder of fish or cattle, powdered, boiled, simmered with bitter melon leaves and dried to a paste until wanted.\n\nThe two colours behaved differently and everyone noticed. Milne, on the Shan: tattooing in red sometimes fades, the blue appears to be indelible. Shway Yoe, on the Burmese: the blue dye from the lampblack never disappears, the vermilion gradually fades away.\n\n*Inference —* that difference decided what each colour was used for. Identity, manhood and the leg work went in black, for life. Charms went in red, and a charm that fades is a charm that can be renewed — which is a feature, not a fault." }, "text_th": { "what": "เขม่าจากตะเกียง ผสมน้ำเมื่อจะใช้ ใต้ผิวหนังให้สีดำอมน้ำเงิน และไม่จางไป", "story": "เชวโยระบุเกรดไว้ เขม่าที่ดีที่สุดมาจากน้ำมันงาที่เผาไหม้ สูตรดำของพม่ายังผสมดีปลาหรือดีวัวตากแห้งป่น ต้ม เคี่ยวกับใบมะระ แล้วตากเป็นก้อนไว้ใช้\n\n*อนุมาน —* ความต่างของสองสีเป็นตัวกำหนดหน้าที่ ตัวตนและความเป็นชายลงด้วยสีดำ อยู่ตลอดชีวิต ส่วนเครื่องรางลงด้วยสีแดง และเครื่องรางที่จางได้คือเครื่องรางที่ต่ออายุได้" }, "kin": [ { "to": "vermilion", "as": "The other colour, and the one that fades on purpose.", "rel": "ink" }, { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "What it drew.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar", "s:milne-shans", "s:wp-soot" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "soot-water", "type": "ink", "name": "Soot and water", "as": "The refined version." }, { "from": "vermilion", "type": "ink", "name": "Vermilion", "as": "The colour that stays." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "nara-ink", "type": "ink", "names": { "name": "Nara ink", "local": "墨", "local_lang": "Japanese", "said": "The ink that goes grey-blue under skin" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "colour": "blue-black" }, "text": { "what": "The ink used in Japanese hand tattooing, which reads blue-grey under the skin rather than flat black.", "story": "It is the pigment the whole look depends on: the graded washes of a full back piece are a property of this ink worked at this angle." }, "kin": [ { "to": "irezumi", "as": "Where it goes.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-irezumi" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-irezumi" } }, "confidence": "medium", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "pen-ink", "type": "ink", "names": { "name": "Pen ink", "said": "What a kitchen tattoo is made of, and why professionals object" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "colour": "blue-black" }, "text": { "what": "Ballpoint ink, India ink or whatever is to hand — the modern improvised pigment.", "story": "It is not made to go into skin and it is the part of improvised tattooing that professionals raise first. Professional hand-poke uses tattoo ink and single-use needles; the method is the same, the supply chain is not." }, "kin": [ { "to": "stick-and-poke", "as": "Where it goes.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-stick-and-poke", "s:wp-tattoo-ink" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-stick-and-poke" } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "soot-honey", "type": "ink", "names": { "name": "Soot and honey", "local": "sicanje", "local_lang": "Croatian", "said": "The Bosnian mix" }, "region": [ "europe" ], "facets": { "colour": "blue-black" }, "text": { "what": "Soot, honey and sometimes saliva, pricked in with a needle.", "story": "Recorded in the 1890s by the two men who wrote the practice down — a doctor and an archaeologist." }, "kin": [ { "to": "sicanje", "as": "Where it goes.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-sicanje" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-sicanje" } }, "confidence": "medium", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "soot-milk", "type": "ink", "name": "Soot and milk", "as": "The Bosnian equivalent." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "soot-milk", "type": "ink", "names": { "name": "Soot and milk", "said": "Reported for deq: soot with breast milk" }, "region": [ "west-asia" ], "facets": { "colour": "blue-black" }, "text": { "what": "Soot mixed with breast milk, reported as the Kurdish preparation.", "story": "*Inference —* the additive in every one of these recipes is something sticky and mildly antiseptic that the household already has: milk, honey, bile, fat, oil. The carbon does the marking; the liquid decides how it handles." }, "kin": [ { "to": "deq", "as": "Where it goes.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "soot-honey", "as": "The Bosnian equivalent.", "rel": "ink" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-deq-tattoo" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "tradition" } }, "confidence": "low", "needs_verification": true, "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "soot-water", "type": "ink", "names": { "name": "Soot and water", "said": "The commonest ink on earth: something burnt, something wet" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "colour": "black" }, "text": { "what": "Ash or soot from a fire, ground and mixed with water, oil, plant juice or animal bile.", "story": "Across the whole map the base ingredient is carbon and the variable is the liquid. The Philippines: soot or ashes with water, oil, plant extracts like sugarcane juice, or pig bile. Kurdistan: soot with breast milk, reportedly. Bosnia: soot with honey, and sometimes saliva. Ötzi's marks were made from soot or fireplace ash.\n\n*Inference —* carbon is the pigment every human group already had. Any fire makes it, it does not fade, and the particle is large enough to stay where it is put. Nothing else available before industrial chemistry does all three." }, "text_th": { "what": "ขี้เถ้าหรือเขม่าจากกองไฟ บดผสมน้ำ น้ำมัน น้ำจากพืช หรือดีสัตว์" }, "kin": [ { "to": "lampblack", "as": "The refined version.", "rel": "ink" }, { "to": "otzi", "as": "The oldest example that has been analysed.", "rel": "find" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok", "s:wp-tzi", "s:wp-sicanje", "s:wp-deq-tattoo", "s:wp-carbon-black" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "measured" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "otzi", "type": "find", "name": "Ötzi", "as": "What the pigment turned out to be." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "vermilion", "type": "ink", "names": { "name": "Vermilion", "th": "ชาด", "said": "Red mercury sulphide, for charms, and it fades" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "colour": "red" }, "text": { "what": "Cinnabar red, diluted, mixed with herbs and other things, and used for charms rather than for the standing marks.", "story": "Shway Yoe: all the more important charms are reserved for other parts of the body and executed in vermilion. The *a-nu se*, the drug of tenderness, is vermilion mixed with herbs and the dried skin of the *tokay* gecko; a few dots in a triangle between the eyes are enough.\n\nIt fades — everybody says so — and a fading charm gets redone.\n\n*Attested —* the mercury in cinnabar is toxic. The sources this site quotes do not raise that, and it is not offered here as advice about anything; it is a fact about the pigment named in them." }, "text_th": { "what": "สีแดงชาด เจือจาง ผสมสมุนไพรและของอื่น ใช้กับเครื่องราง ไม่ใช่กับลายประจำตัว", "story": "เชวโยเขียนว่า เครื่องรางสำคัญกว่านั้นสงวนไว้สำหรับส่วนอื่นของร่างกายและลงด้วยสีชาด และมันจางไป เครื่องรางที่จางก็ลงใหม่" }, "kin": [ { "to": "lampblack", "as": "The colour that stays.", "rel": "ink" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:wp-cinnabar", "s:wp-vermilion", "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "protective" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "htoe-kwin", "type": "tradition", "name": "Htoe kwin", "as": "The other colour: charms, in red, which fade." }, { "from": "lampblack", "type": "ink", "name": "Lampblack", "as": "The other colour, and the one that fades on purpose." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "bungai-terung", "type": "motif", "names": { "name": "The aubergine flower" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "does": "passage" }, "mark": { "does": "*Bungai terung*, worn on each shoulder when a young Iban man leaves home on his journey.", "where": [ "chest", "arms" ], "earned": false }, "text": { "what": "*Bungai terung*, worn on each shoulder when a young Iban man leaves home on his journey.", "story": "A spiral at the centre stands for the tendril of a pumpkin plant; the mark is put on before the journey, not after it. A tattoo that anticipates rather than records." }, "text_th": { "what": "ดอกมะเขือ สวมที่ไหล่ทั้งสองข้างเมื่อชายหนุ่มอิบันออกเดินทางจากบ้าน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "iban-borneo", "as": "The tradition it belongs to.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-iban-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-iban-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "cat-monkey", "type": "motif", "names": { "name": "Cats and monkeys" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "does": "protect" }, "mark": { "does": "The two commonest figures on a Burmese thigh, named in the same breath as tigers and elephants.", "where": [ "thighs" ], "earned": false }, "text": { "what": "The two commonest figures on a Burmese thigh, named in the same breath as tigers and elephants.", "story": "The name of the animal is often written inside the figure as well, which Shway Yoe compares, drily, to a child labelling a drawing." }, "text_th": { "what": "สองรูปที่พบบ่อยที่สุดบนต้นขาชายพม่า ถูกเอ่ยพร้อมเสือและช้าง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "The tradition it belongs to.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "chin-grid", "type": "motif", "names": { "name": "The face grids" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "does": "belonging" }, "mark": { "does": "Lines, dots, and combinations of both, arranged differently by each Chin group.", "where": [ "face" ], "earned": false }, "text": { "what": "Lines, dots, and combinations of both, arranged differently by each Chin group.", "story": "Full face, part face, all dots, vertical lines with dots, stars on cheek and forehead. Sixty sub-groups, and the design is the group's name written where nobody can mistake it." }, "text_th": { "what": "เส้น จุด และการผสมกัน จัดวางต่างกันไปตามกลุ่มชาวชิน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "chin-ming", "as": "The tradition it belongs to.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-chin-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-chin-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "framed-animal", "type": "motif", "names": { "name": "The framed animal" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "does": "protect" }, "mark": { "does": "A tiger, a cat, a monkey, an elephant, a *nat* or a *bilu*, each sitting inside an oval frame of letters.", "where": [ "thighs", "legs" ], "earned": false }, "text": { "what": "A tiger, a cat, a monkey, an elephant, a *nat* or a *bilu*, each sitting inside an oval frame of letters.", "story": "Shway Yoe: each representation is surrounded by a roughly oval tracery of letters, which forms a curious and remarkably effective frame, so each animal has a setting of its own — and vacant spaces are filled the same way, the top and bottom finished with a scalloped line.\n\nSometimes the letters are said to carry a cabalistic meaning; ordinarily, he says, no more is claimed for them than beauty. The serious charms go elsewhere on the body, usually in vermilion.\n\n*Inference —* the frame is what makes the leg read as cloth. A repeating field of bounded units is a textile pattern; a scene is a picture. These traditions chose the textile." }, "text_th": { "what": "เสือ แมว ลิง ช้าง นัต หรือบีลู แต่ละตัวอยู่ในกรอบวงรีที่ทำด้วยตัวอักษร" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "The tradition it belongs to.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "gayaman", "type": "motif", "names": { "name": "The centipede" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "does": "protect" }, "mark": { "does": "The centipede, one of the standing Cordilleran figures, alongside snakes, eagles, ferns, rice grains and mountains.", "where": [ "arms", "chest" ], "earned": true }, "text": { "what": "The centipede, one of the standing Cordilleran figures, alongside snakes, eagles, ferns, rice grains and mountains.", "story": "The motifs are the motifs of the weaving and the pottery. A tattoo tradition in the Philippines is not a separate art with its own vocabulary; it is the same vocabulary applied to a person." }, "text_th": { "what": "ตะขาบ หนึ่งในรูปประจำของคอร์ดิลเยรา ควบคู่กับงู นกอินทรี เฟิร์น เมล็ดข้าว และภูเขา" }, "kin": [ { "to": "batok", "as": "The tradition it belongs to.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "hanuman", "type": "motif", "names": { "name": "Hanuman" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "does": "protect" }, "mark": { "does": "The monkey general of the Ramakien, and one of the standing figures of Thai yant work.", "where": [ "back", "chest", "arms" ], "earned": false }, "text": { "what": "The monkey general of the Ramakien, and one of the standing figures of Thai yant work.", "story": "A figure from the epic used as a protective device, in the same family as the Burmese *bilu* and the Shan animal syllables. The figures travel; the grammar around them does not." }, "text_th": { "what": "หนุมาน แม่ทัพลิงในรามเกียรติ์ หนึ่งในรูปประจำของงานยันต์ไทย" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "The tradition it belongs to.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-yantra-tattooing" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-yantra-tattooing" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "moko-kauae", "type": "motif", "names": { "name": "Moko kauae" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "does": "belonging" }, "mark": { "does": "The Māori chin marking worn by women.", "where": [ "chin", "face" ], "earned": true }, "text": { "what": "The Māori chin marking worn by women.", "story": "Michael King interviewed more than seventy women in the 1970s who had received it before 1907. Since the 1990s it has been worn by a foreign minister and a prime-time news anchor, which is a change in where the mark is allowed to be seen rather than in the mark." }, "text_th": { "what": "รอยที่คางของหญิงชาวเมารี" }, "kin": [ { "to": "ta-moko", "as": "The tradition it belongs to.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-t-moko" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-t-moko" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "images": [ { "file": "moko-kauae/moko-kauae-femme-maori-1998-3160-173.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Femme Maori 1998-3160-173.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Femme_Maori_1998-3160-173.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFemme_Maori_1998-3160-173.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Non identifié/Unknown", "credit": "Photothèque du Musée de l'Homme via French National Library URL [1]\nReference No. Cote: 1998-3160-173\nPublication: (Paris): (Photothèque du Musée de l'Homme), (1860-1879)\nDescription matérielle: 30 p", "alt": "Femme Maori (Maori Woman) with tattoo on chin", "date": "between 1860 and 1879date QS:P,+1850-00-", "primary": true, "sha256": "e77e90acdd8c056c0e7ad8baa0b11865e3a925a181d77baf0325e23e80dd59a9" } ], "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "mystic-square", "type": "motif", "names": { "name": "The lettered square" }, "region": [ "lanna" ], "facets": { "does": "protect" }, "mark": { "does": "A grid of letters or numerals, read as a formula rather than as a picture.", "where": [ "back", "chest", "arms", "legs" ], "earned": false }, "text": { "what": "A grid of letters or numerals, read as a formula rather than as a picture.", "story": "The Lanna volume notes which numerals go in: **Burmese numerals**, which the Lanna call *hora* numerals and hold to be the right ones for saiyasat rites, while the Lanna numerals — *lek nai tham* — are kept for inscribing the dhamma. Two number systems, two jobs, on one page and on one body.\n\n*Attested —* the same book says early Lanna took these beliefs from Pagan and then developed its own forms." }, "text_th": { "what": "ตารางตัวอักษรหรือตัวเลข อ่านเป็นสูตร ไม่ใช่เป็นภาพ หนังสือล้านนาระบุว่าเลขในตารางยันต์ใช้เลขพม่า ที่ล้านนาเรียกว่าเลขโหรา ส่วนเลขในธรรมใช้กับการจารพระธรรม" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "The tradition it belongs to.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:ms6968" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "lanna" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "pilgrim-cross", "type": "motif", "names": { "name": "The pilgrim's cross" }, "region": [ "west-asia" ], "facets": { "does": "belonging" }, "mark": { "does": "A small cross on the inside of the wrist, printed from a carved block and then marked in.", "where": [ "hands", "arms" ], "earned": false }, "text": { "what": "A small cross on the inside of the wrist, printed from a carved block and then marked in.", "story": "Some of the Razzouk family's blocks are three centuries old, which makes the design older than most of the tattoo machines that now apply it." }, "text_th": { "what": "ไม้กางเขนเล็กๆ บนข้อมือด้านใน ประทับจากแม่พิมพ์แกะไม้แล้วจึงลงเข็ม" }, "kin": [ { "to": "coptic-pilgrim", "as": "The tradition it belongs to.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-razzouk-tattoo" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-razzouk-tattoo" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sedna-hands", "type": "motif", "names": { "name": "Sedna's hands" }, "region": [ "arctic" ], "facets": { "does": "protect" }, "mark": { "does": "Hand and arm marks referring to where the sea goddess's fingers were cut off.", "where": [ "hands", "arms" ], "earned": false }, "text": { "what": "Hand and arm marks referring to where the sea goddess's fingers were cut off.", "story": "Sedna's severed fingers became the sea animals. A woman without hand marks was refused the good afterlife; one without face marks went to the land of the crestfallen. The marks are a passport as much as an ornament." }, "text_th": { "what": "ลายที่มือและแขน อ้างถึงตำแหน่งที่นิ้วของเทพีแห่งทะเลถูกตัด" }, "kin": [ { "to": "kakiniit", "as": "The tradition it belongs to.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-kakiniit" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-kakiniit" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "khan-tang", "type": "rite", "names": { "name": "Khan tang", "th": "ขันตั้ง", "rtgs": "khan tang", "said": "The teacher's bowl — the Lanna word, where the centre says khan khru" }, "region": [ "lanna" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "text": { "what": "The fee, set by the master, presented in a bowl: flowers, candles, incense, cloth, coins, and whatever else that master's line asks for.", "story": "The Lanna volume gives the word and the mechanism in one line: the man goes to a community master expert in yant tattooing, and there is a teacher's fee, *khan tang*, as the master sets it.\n\n*Khan* is the pedestalled bowl. *Tang* is to set up. The same word covers the offering that opens a course of study in any Lanna craft — which is the tell: **the transaction is not a purchase, it is an enrolment.** Central Thai calls the same thing *khan khru*.\n\nA price list is a different object and it exists too; a Chiang Mai operation publishes one. This site keeps the two apart rather than translating one into the other." }, "text_th": { "what": "ค่าครู ครูเป็นผู้กำหนด จัดใส่ขัน ดอกไม้ เทียน ธูป ผ้า เงิน และของอื่นตามสายครูนั้น", "story": "หนังสือล้านนาให้ทั้งคำและกลไกไว้ในบรรทัดเดียว ผู้ชายไปหาครูบาอาจารย์ผู้เชี่ยวชาญการสักยันต์ในชุมชน และมีค่าบูชาครูเรียกว่า *ขันตั้ง* ตามที่ครูกำหนด\n\n*ขัน* คือภาชนะมีเชิง *ตั้ง* คือจัดขึ้น คำเดียวกันนี้ใช้กับการขึ้นครูของงานช่างล้านนาทุกแขนง ซึ่งเป็นจุดสังเกต **นี่ไม่ใช่การซื้อ แต่เป็นการขึ้นครู** ภาคกลางเรียกสิ่งเดียวกันว่าขันครู" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "The tradition that names it this way.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "And the living one that still collects it.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:ms6968", "s:sycm" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "sak-kha-lai", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak kha lai", "as": "The fee, in the Lanna word for it." }, { "from": "sak-yant", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak yant", "as": "The fee, north and centre." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "kho-ham", "type": "rite", "names": { "name": "The rules", "th": "ข้อห้าม", "rtgs": "kho ham", "said": "What the bearer keeps afterwards, or the mark stops working" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "text": { "what": "A yant works while its bearer keeps the rules that came with it — most often a list of foods not eaten and things not done.", "story": "The condition is the structure. A tattoo that has to be maintained by conduct is a contract with a term, and it explains why these traditions can be strict about who receives what: the mark is the easy part and the keeping is the rest of it.\n\nThe same logic runs through the Burmese charms, which are renewed when they fade, and through the Fijian and Samoan fee, which is paid before the work rather than after." }, "text_th": { "what": "ยันต์ทำงานตราบที่ผู้รับถือข้อห้ามที่มากับมัน ส่วนใหญ่คือของแสลงและสิ่งที่ห้ามทำ" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "Where the rules attach.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-yantra-tattooing" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-yantra-tattooing" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "sak-yant", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak yant", "as": "The rules that come with it, and what happens if they are broken." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "the-pain", "type": "rite", "names": { "name": "Bearing it", "said": "Opium in Burma, friends shouting advice among the Shan, a straight face in the ring" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "text": { "what": "In tradition after tradition the pain is not a side effect of the mark. It is the thing being demonstrated.", "story": "Burma: the boy is put under opium, and some parents refuse it, and a few boys have died of the dose. Three or four figures at a sitting. The Shan: the friends sit round in a circle telling him not to scratch, that he is wriggling too much, that no girl will admire a spoiled pattern. Lethwei fighters: up to twenty-four hours across both legs, and the point is the straight face.\n\nSamoa: a man who starts the *pe'a* and cannot finish wears *pe'a mutu*, an unfinished tattoo, and it is a mark of shame. Lanna: a man who will not bear the needle should put on a woman's skirt.\n\n*Inference —* every tradition that uses the mark to certify endurance also needs the mark to be visible and hard to fake. That is the same reason the work is put where it cannot be hidden and takes long enough to be witnessed.", "notes": "Anaesthetic, where it was used at all, was opium. No source here describes the modern options, and this site gives no advice about any of it." }, "text_th": { "what": "ในธรรมเนียมแล้วธรรมเนียมเล่า ความเจ็บไม่ใช่ผลข้างเคียงของรอยสัก แต่คือสิ่งที่กำลังถูกพิสูจน์" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "Where the opium comes in.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "shan-tattooing", "as": "Where the friends do.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "tatau", "as": "And where stopping has a name.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:milne-shans", "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar", "s:wp-pe-a", "s:ms6968" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "initiation", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "the-needle-now", "type": "issue", "name": "The needle now", "as": "What it used to cost." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "the-timing", "type": "rite", "names": { "name": "When it is done", "said": "Before ordination, at twelve, at puberty, when the weaving is mastered" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "text": { "what": "The date is rarely free. Most traditions on this site fix the work to a passage the person is making anyway.", "story": "Bamar: the waist tattoo is done before or soon after temporary ordination as a monk — two rites of passage stacked on one season. Shan: twelve for the bold, fourteen for most. Chin: fifteen to twenty. Ainu: from five to thirteen, widened until marriage. Kalinga and Cordilleran: after the act that earns it. Atayal: a man's chin after he fathers a child.\n\n*Inference —* a mark made at a moment is a dated document. It is how these traditions record a life without writing anything down." }, "text_th": { "what": "วันเวลาไม่ค่อยเป็นอิสระ ธรรมเนียมส่วนใหญ่ผูกการสักไว้กับช่วงเปลี่ยนผ่านที่คนนั้นกำลังก้าวข้ามอยู่แล้ว" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "Stacked with ordination.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "atayal-ptasan", "as": "Stacked with fatherhood and with the loom.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar", "s:milne-shans", "s:wp-ainu-people", "s:wp-atayal-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "initiation" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "who-holds-you", "type": "rite", "names": { "name": "Who holds you still", "said": "Two assistants in Samoa, a circle of friends among the Shan, other women in Fiji" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "tap" }, "text": { "what": "Nobody is tattooed alone. The room is part of the method.", "story": "Samoa: the *'au toso*, two assistants, stretch the skin and wipe. Fiji: one older woman applies the marks and others hold the young woman still. Burma: the tattooist's own left hand is the rest for the tool, flat against the body. Shan: the friends sit in a circle for days afterwards, because the itching is worse than the work.\n\n*Inference —* the skin has to be tight or the point wanders, which makes at least one extra pair of hands a technical requirement rather than a social one. The witnesses come free with it." }, "text_th": { "what": "ไม่มีใครถูกสักคนเดียว ห้องนั้นเป็นส่วนหนึ่งของวิธี" }, "kin": [ { "to": "tatau", "as": "Where the assistants have a title.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "veiqia", "as": "And where the holders are the other women.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-pe-a", "s:wp-veiqia", "s:shway-yoe", "s:milne-shans" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-pe-a" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "ajarn-dang-sak", "type": "person", "names": { "name": "Ajarn Dang and Ajarn Sak", "th": "อาจารย์แดง และ อาจารย์เสก", "said": "Two working masters in Chiang Mai" }, "region": [ "lanna" ], "facets": { "role": "practitioner" }, "text": { "what": "Two of the Chiang Mai masters whose published profiles give a teacher, a temple, and a count of years in and out of the robe.", "story": "Ajarn Dang: thirty-three years of practice, ten of them as a monk, a fifth-generation family line, trained under Sukhawaphuthargo. Ajarn Sak: eighteen years, twelve as a monk, a line through his father and grandfather, Burmese magic and the northern Tai Yai forest tradition.\n\nThat second line matters for this site's argument. A working Chiang Mai master describes his own training as Burmese and Tai Yai — which is the same border-crossing Shway Yoe described from the other side in 1882, when he wrote that the men who tattooed charms were mostly Shans.", "notes": "Both tattooed this site's publisher. The pictures here that come from those sessions are used with permission and credited as such." }, "text_th": { "what": "สองในบรรดาครูของเชียงใหม่ ที่มีประวัติเผยแพร่ไว้ ทั้งครูผู้สอน วัด และจำนวนปีทั้งในและนอกผ้าเหลือง", "story": "อาจารย์แดง สามสิบสามปี สิบปีในผ้าเหลือง สายตระกูลรุ่นที่ห้า เรียนกับสุขวโพธาโร อาจารย์เสก สิบแปดปี สิบสองปีในผ้าเหลือง สายพ่อและปู่ วิชาพม่าและสายป่าไทใหญ่ทางเหนือ\n\nประโยคหลังสำคัญต่อข้อเสนอของเว็บนี้ ครูที่ทำงานอยู่ในเชียงใหม่วันนี้อธิบายสายวิชาของตัวเองว่าเป็นพม่าและไทใหญ่ ซึ่งเป็นการข้ามพรมแดนแบบเดียวกับที่เชวโยบันทึกไว้จากอีกฝั่งในปี 1882" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "The practice.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "shan-tattooing", "as": "The line they name.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-yant-chiang-mai", "as": "Where the profiles are published.", "rel": "org" } ], "sources": [ "s:sycm", "s:field-sycm" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:sycm" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "sak-yant-chiang-mai", "type": "org", "name": "Sak Yant Chiang Mai", "as": "Two of the masters." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "hovak-johnston", "type": "person", "names": { "name": "Hovak Johnston", "said": "Put traditional marks back on Inuit women from 2016" }, "region": [ "arctic" ], "facets": { "role": "reviver" }, "when": { "from": 2016, "to": 2026, "label": "The Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project" }, "text": { "what": "The Inuvialuk woman whose project took the kakiniit off the archive shelf and back onto skin, learning the stitch from elders.", "story": "The revival has a method as well as a date: find the women who remember, learn the stitch from them, and put the marks on people who want them — starting with the women whose grandmothers had been told to stop." }, "text_th": { "what": "หญิงชาวอินูเวียลูอิตผู้นำรอยสักดั้งเดิมออกจากชั้นเอกสารกลับมาอยู่บนผิวหนัง โดยเรียนวิธีเย็บจากผู้เฒ่า" }, "kin": [ { "to": "kakiniit", "as": "The practice.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "revival", "as": "The pattern.", "rel": "story" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-kakiniit" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "tradition" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "women", "revival" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "milne-shans", "type": "person", "names": { "name": "Leslie Milne", "said": "Shans at Home, 1910 — and she quotes the boys' friends" }, "region": [ "lanna", "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "role": "recorder" }, "when": { "from": 1860, "to": 1932, "circa": true, "label": "Shans at Home, London, 1910" }, "text": { "what": "The ethnographer who lived among the northern Shan and published the leg-tattoo account this site leans on.", "story": "Milne's book is of its period, but she stayed and she listened. The passage on tattooing carries the only direct speech this site has from inside a session: the friends sitting round the boy afterwards, telling him not to scratch, that he wriggles too much, that no girl will admire a spoiled pattern.\n\n*Inference —* that is three sentences of what people actually said, which is more than the entire administrative record of the same decade contains." }, "text_th": { "what": "นักชาติพันธุ์วิทยาที่อยู่กับชาวไทใหญ่ทางเหนือ และเขียนเรื่องลายขาที่เว็บนี้อ้างอิง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "shan-tattooing", "as": "What she described.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:milne-shans" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:milne-shans" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "colonial-record", "women" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "shan-tattooing", "type": "tradition", "name": "Shan leg tattooing", "as": "Who wrote it down, and stayed long enough to quote the boys' friends." }, { "from": "legs", "type": "story", "name": "The leg-tattoo zone", "as": "Whose sentence this turns on." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "rabali", "type": "person", "names": { "name": "Rabali", "local": "Rabali", "local_lang": "Fijian", "said": "The last recorded dauveiqia, tattooing 1908–1910" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "role": "practitioner" }, "when": { "from": 1908, "to": 1910, "label": "The last recorded working years" }, "text": { "what": "The Fijian tattooist recorded as still working between 1908 and 1910, when she was the only one left.", "story": "A tradition that ends usually ends without a date. This one has two years and a name, and that is why it sits on this site as a record rather than as a lament." }, "text_th": { "what": "ช่างสักหญิงชาวฟิจิที่มีบันทึกว่ายังทำงานระหว่างปี 1908–1910 ตอนที่เหลือเธอคนเดียว" }, "kin": [ { "to": "veiqia", "as": "The practice.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-veiqia" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-veiqia" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "women" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "saya-chein", "type": "person", "names": { "name": "Saya Chein", "said": "Fifteen figures in a little over half an hour" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "role": "practitioner" }, "when": { "from": 1870, "to": 1890, "circa": true, "label": "Working when Shway Yoe was writing" }, "text": { "what": "A Burmese tattooist named in passing in 1882 — the only working *saya* of the period this site can put a name to.", "story": "Shway Yoe: \"I have had fifteen figures done in little over half an hour. But then Saya Chein is a celebrated man.\"\n\nThat is the whole of the record. A rate, a reputation, a name, and nothing else — no dates, no village, no line of teachers. *Inference —* set that beside the Chiang Mai operation that publishes seventeen masters with their teachers, their temples and their years in the robe, and the difference is not that one tradition kept records. It is that one of them is still alive to keep them." }, "text_th": { "what": "ช่างสักพม่าที่ถูกเอ่ยชื่อผ่านๆ ในปี 1882 และเป็นช่างในยุคนั้นคนเดียวที่เว็บนี้เรียกชื่อได้" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "His work.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-yant-chiang-mai", "as": "What a recorded lineage looks like when the tradition is still running.", "rel": "org" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "colonial-record" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "shway-yoe", "type": "person", "names": { "name": "Shway Yoe", "aliases": [ "Sir James George Scott" ], "said": "A colonial officer writing under a Burmese pen name" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "role": "recorder" }, "when": { "from": 1851, "to": 1935, "label": "The Burman: His Life and Notions, 1882" }, "text": { "what": "The Scottish administrator who wrote the fullest English description of Burmese tattooing, under a Burmese pen name, in 1882.", "story": "James George Scott went to Burma as a journalist, stayed as an administrator, and published *The Burman: His Life and Notions* as \"Shway Yoe\" — a Burmese name, on a book about Burmese life, by a man who then spent decades extending British rule over the Shan States and compiling the *Gazetteer of Upper Burma* that this site also quotes.\n\nThe chapter on tattooing is the best single source on the *htoe kwin* in English. It is also written by the administration. Both of those are true at once, and this site cites the detail while naming the hand.\n\n*Inference —* the pen name is the thing to keep in view. A book that speaks as a Burman, written by the officer annexing the Shan States, is the whole problem of the colonial record in one byline." }, "text_th": { "what": "ข้าราชการชาวสก็อตผู้เขียนคำบรรยายการสักของพม่าที่ละเอียดที่สุดในภาษาอังกฤษ ภายใต้นามปากกาพม่า เมื่อปี 1882" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "What he described.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "who-wrote-it-down", "as": "And the problem with it.", "rel": "issue" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:gazetteer-1" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "colonial-record", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "htoe-kwin", "type": "tradition", "name": "Htoe kwin", "as": "Who wrote it down, and what that costs the record." }, { "from": "mandalay", "type": "place", "name": "Mandalay", "as": "The observer." }, { "from": "who-wrote-it-down", "type": "issue", "name": "Who wrote it down", "as": "The clearest case." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sulu-ape", "type": "person", "names": { "name": "The Sulu'ape line", "local": "Su'a Sulu'ape", "local_lang": "Samoan", "said": "A hereditary title, still held" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "role": "practitioner" }, "text": { "what": "The Samoan master-tattooist titles, held in two families, and carried into the present by name.", "story": "Su'a Sulu'ape Paulo II's work and life were photographed by Mark Adams; his brother Su'a Sulu'ape Petelo works at Faleasi'u on Upolu. The titles are hereditary and the *tufuga* who hold them have tattooed Tongan and Fijian chiefly families as well as Samoan ones." }, "text_th": { "what": "ตำแหน่งช่างสักชั้นครูของซามัว สืบทอดในสองตระกูล และยังมีผู้ถือตำแหน่งอยู่" }, "kin": [ { "to": "tatau", "as": "The practice.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-pe-a" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-pe-a" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "truhelka-gluck", "type": "person", "names": { "name": "Truhelka and Glück", "said": "An archaeologist who drew it and a doctor who published it, 1894" }, "region": [ "europe" ], "facets": { "role": "recorder" }, "when": { "from": 1894, "to": 1900, "label": "Vienna, 1894" }, "text": { "what": "The two men who recorded Bosnian sicanje in the 1890s: Ćiro Truhelka, who illustrated the designs, and Leopold Glück, who published the paper.", "story": "Glück's title says exactly what it is: *Die Tätowirung der Haut bei den Katholiken Bosniens und der Herzegowina*, Vienna, 1894. A doctor and an archaeologist, writing for an Austro-Hungarian readership about the people their empire had just occupied.\n\n*Inference —* that pairing recurs across this whole site. The professions that produced the record are medicine, administration and archaeology, which is why so much of it reads as measurement of a body rather than description of a practice." }, "kin": [ { "to": "sicanje", "as": "What they recorded.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "who-wrote-it-down", "as": "The pattern.", "rel": "issue" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-sicanje" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-sicanje" } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "colonial-record" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "whang-od", "type": "person", "names": { "name": "Whang-od Oggay", "local": "Whang-od", "local_lang": "Butbut Kalinga", "said": "Mambabatok, Buscalan" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "role": "practitioner" }, "when": { "from": 1917, "to": 2026, "circa": true, "label": "Tattooing since about fifteen" }, "text": { "what": "The Kalinga *mambabatok* everyone has heard of, tapping in Buscalan since she was about fifteen.", "story": "She learned from her father, and that was already an exception: only men with tattooing ancestry were supposed to learn. Her own apprentices are women, which is a second exception, and her community accepted it.\n\nShe tattooed headhunters who had earned the marks. She never married and has no children, and under the inheritance rule that would end the line — which is why the apprentices matter and why she chose them the way she did.", "notes": "Buscalan now receives a stream of visitors who come to be tattooed by her. Whether that is a living tradition or a queue is argued about by people who live there, and this site does not adjudicate it." }, "text_th": { "what": "ช่างสักกาลิงกาที่ทุกคนรู้จัก ตอกลายอยู่ที่หมู่บ้านบุสกาลันตั้งแต่อายุราวสิบห้า" }, "kin": [ { "to": "batok", "as": "The tradition.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "buscalan", "as": "The village.", "rel": "place" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Whang-od", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whang-od" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-whang-od", "s:wp-whang-od-academy" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-whang-od" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "women", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "images": [ { "file": "whang-od/whang-od-fang-od.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Fang-od.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Fang-od.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFang-od.jpg", "license": "CC BY 2.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/", "author": "daryl duhay", "credit": "https://www.flickr.com/photos/dudsduhay/8596564261/", "alt": "the last baok (tattoo) artist of kalinga", "date": "2013-03-24 12:35:30", "primary": true, "sha256": "60889605a6e767a9ff3e4b4ba2f268996383db986bf4d14837b802c3116295d1" }, { "file": "whang-od/whang-od-whang-od-tattooing.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Whang-od tattooing.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Whang-od_tattooing.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWhang-od_tattooing.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "author": "Mawg64", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Whang-od tattooing.", "date": "2016-07-28", "primary": false, "sha256": "dde3939dc10cfe1c4686181cc328460f3907c27a220ea750ca27f669ca1c8de2" } ], "kin_in": [ { "from": "batok", "type": "tradition", "name": "Batok", "as": "Who is still doing it." }, { "from": "kalinga-cordillera", "type": "tradition", "name": "Cordilleran whatok", "as": "The practitioner everyone has heard of." }, { "from": "buscalan", "type": "place", "name": "Buscalan", "as": "Who works there." }, { "from": "whose-designs", "type": "issue", "name": "Whose designs", "as": "And where it was changed, from inside." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "buscalan", "type": "place", "names": { "name": "Buscalan", "said": "Tinglayan, Kalinga, northern Luzon" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "tap" }, "text": { "what": "The village in the Kalinga highlands where batok is still tapped, and where the visitors go.", "story": "Buscalan sits in Tinglayan, in mountains the Spanish never took, which is the reason there is anything left to visit." }, "text_th": { "what": "หมู่บ้านบนที่สูงกาลิงกา ที่ยังตอกลายกันอยู่ และที่ผู้มาเยือนไป" }, "kin": [ { "to": "whang-od", "as": "Who works there.", "rel": "person" } ], "geo": { "lat": 17.3833, "lon": 121.1, "precision": "village", "source": "s:wp-tinglayan" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-tinglayan", "s:wp-kalinga-province" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-tinglayan" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "whang-od", "type": "person", "name": "Whang-od Oggay", "as": "The village." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "chiang-mai", "type": "place", "names": { "name": "Chiang Mai", "th": "เชียงใหม่", "said": "The Lanna capital, and where this site is made" }, "region": [ "lanna" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "text": { "what": "The old capital of Lanna: where the leg tattoo was ordinary, where the yant is still done, and where this site is written.", "story": "Two traditions and one city. The leg work is gone from it; the yant is not. The masters working here publish lineages that run back through Burmese and Tai Yai teaching, which is the border that this site's leg-tattoo map is drawn around.\n\nThe script on a northern yant is the northern script. That is the correction this site keeps repeating, because the central Thai convention gets written up as though it were the whole country's." }, "text_th": { "what": "เมืองหลวงเก่าของล้านนา ที่ซึ่งลายขาเคยเป็นเรื่องธรรมดา ที่ซึ่งยันต์ยังถูกสัก และที่ซึ่งเว็บนี้ถูกเขียนขึ้น" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "What was ordinary here.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "What is still done here.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "geo": { "lat": 18.7883, "lon": 98.9853, "precision": "city", "source": "s:thwp-จ-งหว-ดเช-ยงใหม-" }, "sources": [ "s:thwp-จ-งหว-ดเช-ยงใหม-", "s:wp-chiang-mai", "s:wp-lan-na" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-lan-na" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "kengtung", "type": "place", "names": { "name": "Kengtung", "my": "ကျိုင်းတုံ", "said": "Eastern Shan State — Tai Khuen country, between Chiang Mai and the Mekong" }, "region": [ "lanna", "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "text": { "what": "The eastern Shan town that sits in the middle of the leg-tattoo zone, and in the middle of the Tai world the zone is drawn on.", "story": "Kengtung's people are Tai Khuen, whose script and manuscripts belong with Lanna's rather than with Burma's. *Inference —* the leg tattoo distribution follows this cultural geography, not the modern border: Burma, the Shan States, the Tai Khuen and Tai Lue towns, and Lanna, with central Siam outside it." }, "text_th": { "what": "เมืองในรัฐฉานตะวันออก อยู่กลางเขตลายขา และกลางโลกไทที่เขตนั้นถูกวาดทับ" }, "kin": [ { "to": "legs", "as": "The zone.", "rel": "story" }, { "to": "shan-tattooing", "as": "The tradition.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "geo": { "lat": 21.2917, "lon": 99.6, "precision": "town", "source": "s:wp-kengtung" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-kengtung", "s:wp-khuen-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-kengtung" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "lanna" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "legs", "type": "story", "name": "The leg-tattoo zone", "as": "A town in the centre of it." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "mandalay", "type": "place", "names": { "name": "Mandalay", "my": "မန္တလေး", "said": "The last royal capital, and Shway Yoe's beat" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "text": { "what": "Upper Burma's capital until 1885, and the centre of the country whose men were, in Shway Yoe's account, all tattooed.", "story": "The contrast in his chapter is between town and country: the \"puny Rangoonites\" who skip the tattoo and are ashamed of it, and the *taw-tha* of the small towns and villages, not one of whom is without the dark blue tracery.\n\n*Inference —* he is describing the beginning of the end and does not know it. Colonial rule reached the towns first, and the custom went from the towns first." }, "text_th": { "what": "เมืองหลวงของพม่าตอนบนจนถึงปี 1885 และศูนย์กลางของประเทศที่ผู้ชายทุกคนมีลายสัก ในบันทึกของเชวโย" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "The tradition.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "shway-yoe", "as": "The observer.", "rel": "person" } ], "geo": { "lat": 21.9588, "lon": 96.0891, "precision": "city", "source": "s:wp-mandalay" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-mandalay", "s:shway-yoe" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "ukok", "type": "place", "names": { "name": "The Ukok Plateau", "said": "Altai, Siberia — where the ice kept a tattooed shoulder for 2,400 years" }, "region": [ "siberia" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "text": { "what": "The high plateau on the Russian–Chinese–Mongolian frontier where frozen Pazyryk burials preserved tattooed skin.", "story": "Water got into the burial chamber through a robber's shaft, froze, and sealed everything inside a block of ice under stone and permafrost. Clothing, wood, horses and skin came out of it." }, "kin": [ { "to": "ice-maiden", "as": "Who was in it.", "rel": "find" } ], "geo": { "lat": 49.3, "lon": 87.5, "precision": "region", "source": "s:wp-siberian-ice-maiden" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-siberian-ice-maiden", "s:wp-pazyryk-culture" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-siberian-ice-maiden" } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "ice-maiden", "type": "find", "name": "The Ukok woman", "as": "The place." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "wat-phumin", "type": "place", "names": { "name": "Wat Phumin", "th": "วัดภูมินทร์", "said": "Nan — the murals with the tattooed legs in them" }, "region": [ "lanna" ], "facets": { "family": "poke" }, "text": { "what": "The temple in Nan whose nineteenth-century murals show northern men with their legs and torsos marked.", "story": "The Lanna volume this site quotes says the evidence for the leg tattoo is in the murals of important temples, and promises examples. Wat Phumin is the best known of them: its wall paintings are the standard illustration of northern dress, northern faces and northern skin.\n\n*Inference —* a mural is evidence that a painter expected to see marked legs, which is not quite the same as evidence of any particular man's marks. It is strong for pattern and weak for detail, and this site treats it that way." }, "text_th": { "what": "วัดในจังหวัดน่าน จิตรกรรมฝาผนังศตวรรษที่ 19 แสดงชายเหนือที่มีลายบนขาและลำตัว", "story": "หนังสือล้านนาที่เว็บนี้อ้างบอกว่าหลักฐานของลายขาอยู่ในจิตรกรรมฝาผนังของวัดสำคัญ และสัญญาว่าจะยกตัวอย่าง วัดภูมินทร์เป็นที่รู้จักที่สุดในกลุ่มนั้น\n\n*อนุมาน —* จิตรกรรมเป็นหลักฐานว่าจิตรกรคาดว่าจะเห็นขาที่มีลาย ซึ่งไม่เท่ากับหลักฐานของลายบนขาชายคนใดคนหนึ่ง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "What it shows.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "murals", "as": "What a painting is evidence of.", "rel": "art" } ], "geo": { "lat": 18.7748, "lon": 100.7714, "precision": "building", "source": "s:thwp-ว-ดภ-ม-นทร-" }, "sources": [ "s:thwp-ว-ดภ-ม-นทร-", "s:wp-wat-phumin", "s:ms6968" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "images": [ { "file": "wat-phumin/wat-phumin-2013-wat-phumin-mural-01.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:2013 Wat Phumin mural 01.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/2013_Wat_Phumin_mural_01.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A2013_Wat_Phumin_mural_01.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 3.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "author": "Takeaway", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Murals of Wat Phumin", "date": "2013-12-11 09:38:16", "primary": true, "sha256": "6d39df1bbb4b0c8bd6a367ea5aad93253566e04d46ecb925c25e41fac22db0c7" }, { "file": "wat-phumin/wat-phumin-painting-of-the-governor-of-nan-at-phumin-temple.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Painting of the governor of Nan At Phumin Temple.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Painting_of_the_governor_of_Nan_At_Phumin_Temple.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APainting_of_the_governor_of_Nan_At_Phumin_Temple.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Painting: Nan Bua Phan (death date unknown).[1][2]", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Painting on the eastern pillar of the wall of Wat Phumin in Nan, Thailand, believed to be Chao Anantaworaritthidet, the governor of Nan at the time, but may also be King Suriyaphongpharitdet.", "date": "between 1902 and 1903date QS:P,+1902-00-", "primary": false, "sha256": "a9d5d1a28596410c9c157133fcf0a6e1ef2594cf81371f23eac665aa51fd197e" } ], "kin_in": [ { "from": "murals", "type": "art", "name": "The murals", "as": "The best-known wall." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "anchi-piri", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "anchi-piri", "local": "アンチピリ", "local_lang": "Ainu", "said": "anchi-piri" }, "etymology": { "root": "Obsidian and a cut: the word carries the tool and the wound, and no word for ink.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-ainu-people" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "means": "other" }, "text": { "what": "Obsidian and a cut: the word carries the tool and the wound, and no word for ink." }, "text_th": { "what": "หินออบซิเดียนกับรอยกรีด คำนี้พาเครื่องมือและบาดแผลมาด้วย แต่ไม่มีคำว่าหมึก" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-ainu-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-ainu-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "batok-word", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "batok", "local": "batok", "local_lang": "Visayan / Kalinga", "said": "batok" }, "etymology": { "root": "From Proto-Austronesian *beCik, tattoo, with relatives *patik, mottled, and *burik, speckled — the word for a pattern, applied to skin, cloth and pot alike.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "means": "pattern" }, "text": { "what": "From Proto-Austronesian *beCik, tattoo, with relatives *patik, mottled, and *burik, speckled — the word for a pattern, applied to skin, cloth and pot alike." }, "text_th": { "what": "จากรากออสโตรนีเซียนดั้งเดิม แปลว่าลาย ใช้กับผิวหนัง ผ้า และหม้อเหมือนกัน" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-batok" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "deq-word", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "deq", "local": "deq", "local_lang": "Kurdish", "said": "deq" }, "etymology": { "root": "From Syriac *dyoqo*, puncturing. A male tattooist is *deqqak*, a female one *deqqake*.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-deq-tattoo" }, "region": [ "west-asia" ], "facets": { "means": "prick" }, "text": { "what": "From Syriac *dyoqo*, puncturing. A male tattooist is *deqqak*, a female one *deqqake*." }, "text_th": { "what": "จากภาษาซีรีแอก dyoqo แปลว่าการเจาะ" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-deq-tattoo" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-deq-tattoo" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "godna-word", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "godna", "local": "गोदना", "local_lang": "Hindi", "said": "godna" }, "etymology": { "root": "To prick. The noun for the tattoo and the verb for the needle are the same word.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-godna" }, "region": [ "south-asia" ], "facets": { "means": "prick" }, "text": { "what": "To prick. The noun for the tattoo and the verb for the needle are the same word." }, "text_th": { "what": "แปลว่าแทง คำนามของรอยสักกับคำกริยาของเข็มเป็นคำเดียวกัน" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-godna" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-godna" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "hajichi-word", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "hajichi", "local": "針突", "local_lang": "Okinawan", "said": "hajichi" }, "etymology": { "root": "Needle-strike. Written with the characters for needle and thrust.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-irezumi" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "means": "prick" }, "text": { "what": "Needle-strike. Written with the characters for needle and thrust." }, "text_th": { "what": "แปลว่าแทงด้วยเข็ม เขียนด้วยอักษรเข็มกับการแทง" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-irezumi" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-irezumi" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "htoe-kwin-word", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "htoe kwin", "local": "ထိုးကွင်း", "local_lang": "Burmese", "said": "htoe kwin" }, "etymology": { "root": "*Htoe* is to prick or pierce; *kwin* is a ring or an enclosure. The name describes the framed rings the figures sit in.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "means": "prick" }, "text": { "what": "*Htoe* is to prick or pierce; *kwin* is a ring or an enclosure. The name describes the framed rings the figures sit in." }, "text_th": { "what": "ထိုး คือแทง ကွင်း คือวง ชื่อจึงบรรยายวงกรอบที่ลายอยู่ข้างใน" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "irezumi-word", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "irezumi", "local": "入れ墨", "local_lang": "Japanese", "said": "irezumi" }, "etymology": { "root": "Inserting ink. The word names the material and the direction of travel, and nothing about the hand.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-irezumi" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "means": "other" }, "text": { "what": "Inserting ink. The word names the material and the direction of travel, and nothing about the hand." }, "text_th": { "what": "แปลว่าใส่หมึก ชื่อบอกวัสดุและทิศทาง ไม่ได้บอกเรื่องมือ" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-irezumi" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-irezumi" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "kakiniq", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "kakiniq", "local": "ᑲᑭᓐᓂᖅ", "local_lang": "Inuktitut", "said": "kakiniq" }, "etymology": { "root": "From the Proto-Inuit-Yupik root *kaki-, to pierce or prick — the same root across Iñupiaq, Inuktitut, West Greenlandic and Tunumiit.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-kakiniit" }, "region": [ "arctic" ], "facets": { "means": "prick" }, "text": { "what": "From the Proto-Inuit-Yupik root *kaki-, to pierce or prick — the same root across Iñupiaq, Inuktitut, West Greenlandic and Tunumiit." }, "text_th": { "what": "จากรากภาษาอินูอิต–ยูปิกดั้งเดิม *kaki- แปลว่าเจาะหรือแทง" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-kakiniit" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-kakiniit" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "lao-phung-dam", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "lao phung dam", "local": "ลาวพุงดำ", "local_lang": "Thai", "said": "lao phung dam", "th": "ลาวพุงดำ" }, "etymology": { "root": "\"Black-bellied Lao\" — a central Thai name for the tattooed northerner, applied from outside and carrying a view with it.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "region": [ "lanna" ], "facets": { "means": "other" }, "text": { "what": "\"Black-bellied Lao\" — a central Thai name for the tattooed northerner, applied from outside and carrying a view with it." }, "text_th": { "what": "ชื่อที่ภาคกลางใช้เรียกคนเหนือที่สักลาย เป็นคำของคนนอก และมีสายตาติดมาด้วย" }, "sources": [ "s:ms6968" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "lanna" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "ming", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "ming", "local": "Ming", "local_lang": "Chin", "said": "ming" }, "etymology": { "root": "The Chin word for the facial marks. Banned by name in the 1960s.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-chin-people" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "means": "pattern" }, "text": { "what": "The Chin word for the facial marks. Banned by name in the 1960s." }, "text_th": { "what": "คำของชาวชินสำหรับลายบนใบหน้า ถูกสั่งห้ามโดยเอ่ยชื่อในทศวรรษ 1960" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-chin-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-chin-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "moko", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "moko", "local": "moko", "local_lang": "Māori", "said": "moko" }, "etymology": { "root": "*Tā* is to strike; *moko* is the design itself. The verb in the name is the mallet, not the point.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-t-moko" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "means": "pattern" }, "text": { "what": "*Tā* is to strike; *moko* is the design itself. The verb in the name is the mallet, not the point." }, "text_th": { "what": "tā คือตอก moko คือลาย กริยาในชื่อคือค้อน ไม่ใช่ปลายเข็ม" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-t-moko" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-t-moko" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "ptasan", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "ptasan", "local": "ptasan", "local_lang": "Squliq Atayal", "said": "ptasan" }, "etymology": { "root": "Related to the Atayal word for writing and marking — the face as a written surface.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-atayal-people" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "means": "write" }, "text": { "what": "Related to the Atayal word for writing and marking — the face as a written surface." }, "text_th": { "what": "เกี่ยวข้องกับคำว่าเขียนหรือทำเครื่องหมาย ใบหน้าคือพื้นผิวที่เขียนลงไป" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-atayal-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-atayal-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sak-kha-lai-word", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "sak kha lai", "local": "สักขาลาย", "local_lang": "Northern Thai", "said": "sak kha lai", "th": "สักขาลาย" }, "etymology": { "root": "To prick the legs in patterns — the verb, the body part and the word for pattern, in that order. No separate noun for the tattoo is needed.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "region": [ "lanna" ], "facets": { "means": "pattern" }, "text": { "what": "To prick the legs in patterns — the verb, the body part and the word for pattern, in that order. No separate noun for the tattoo is needed." }, "text_th": { "what": "สัก + ขา + ลาย คือกริยา อวัยวะ และลาย เรียงกันตามนั้น" }, "sources": [ "s:ms6968" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "lanna" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sak", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "sak", "local": "สัก", "local_lang": "Thai / Khmer", "said": "sak", "th": "สัก" }, "etymology": { "root": "To prick. The Khmer root *cɔkʔ* means the same, and the Khmer dictionary keeps it native rather than borrowed.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-yantra-tattooing" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "means": "prick" }, "text": { "what": "To prick. The Khmer root *cɔkʔ* means the same, and the Khmer dictionary keeps it native rather than borrowed." }, "text_th": { "what": "สัก แปลว่าแทง รากคำเขมรก็แปลอย่างเดียวกัน" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-yantra-tattooing" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-yantra-tattooing" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "words", "type": "story", "name": "What the word means first", "as": "Prick." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sicanje-word", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "sicanje", "local": "sicanje", "local_lang": "Croatian", "said": "sicanje" }, "etymology": { "root": "Pricking. Colloquially also *bocanje* and *bockanje*, which mean the same and sound like it.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-sicanje" }, "region": [ "europe" ], "facets": { "means": "prick" }, "text": { "what": "Pricking. Colloquially also *bocanje* and *bockanje*, which mean the same and sound like it." }, "text_th": { "what": "แปลว่าการแทง" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-sicanje" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-sicanje" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "tatau-word", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "tatau", "local": "tatau", "local_lang": "Samoan", "said": "tatau" }, "etymology": { "root": "The Polynesian word English borrowed. Cook's crew wrote it down in 1769 and it displaced every English word for the practice.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-pe-a" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "means": "strike" }, "text": { "what": "The Polynesian word English borrowed. Cook's crew wrote it down in 1769 and it displaced every English word for the practice." }, "text_th": { "what": "คำภาษาโพลินีเซียที่อังกฤษยืมไป ลูกเรือของคุกจดไว้ในปี 1769" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-pe-a", "s:wp-james-cook" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-pe-a" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "words", "type": "story", "name": "What the word means first", "as": "Strike." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "tua-mueang", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "tua mueang", "local": "ᨲᩫ᩠ᩅᨾᩮᩬᩨᨦ", "local_lang": "Northern Thai", "said": "tua mueang", "th": "ᨲᩫ᩠ᩅᨾᩮᩬᩨᨦ" }, "etymology": { "root": "The northern letters — Tai Tham script, the script of the region's manuscripts and of the yant that go on northern skin. Khom is the central convention, not the northern one.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:thwp-อ-กษรธรรมล-านนา" }, "region": [ "lanna" ], "facets": { "means": "write" }, "text": { "what": "The northern letters — Tai Tham script, the script of the region's manuscripts and of the yant that go on northern skin. Khom is the central convention, not the northern one." }, "text_th": { "what": "ตัวเมือง อักษรธรรมล้านนา อักษรของเอกสารในภูมิภาคนี้และของยันต์ที่ลงบนผิวคนเหนือ ขอมเป็นธรรมเนียมภาคกลาง ไม่ใช่ของทางเหนือ" }, "sources": [ "s:thwp-อ-กษรธรรมล-านนา", "s:wp-tai-tham-script" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:thwp-อ-กษรธรรมล-านนา" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "lanna" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "lek-char", "type": "tool", "name": "Lek char", "as": "The letters it was made to write." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "veiqia-word", "type": "term", "names": { "name": "veiqia", "local": "veiqia", "local_lang": "Fijian", "said": "veiqia" }, "etymology": { "root": "The practice and the marks, in one word — and a tattooist is a *dauveiqia*, one who does veiqia.", "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-veiqia" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "means": "other" }, "text": { "what": "The practice and the marks, in one word — and a tattooist is a *dauveiqia*, one who does veiqia." }, "text_th": { "what": "คำเดียวครอบทั้งการปฏิบัติและรอย" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-veiqia" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-veiqia" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "body", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "Where the marks go", "said": "Counted across every tradition on the site" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "era": "now" }, "text": { "what": "Each tradition here records which zones of the body it marks. Counted together, the zones sort into two kinds.", "story": "**Zones that can be covered** — thighs, back, chest, waist-to-knee — belong to traditions where the tattoo is a garment and the wearer chooses when it is seen. **Zones that cannot** — face, chin, hands, fingers — belong to traditions where the mark is an identification, and where a state that wanted the practice stopped could enforce the ban by looking at people.\n\n*Inference —* the second group is where the bans land. Chin faces, Atayal faces, Okinawan hands, Ainu mouths, Māori chins. The leg traditions were not banned; they faded. **A mark you cannot hide is easy to police, and a mark under a longyi is not worth the trouble.**", "notes": "Counted from the `placement` field on every tradition record; the chart prints how many records carried the field." }, "text_th": { "what": "แต่ละธรรมเนียมบันทึกไว้ว่าลงลายที่ส่วนใดของร่างกาย เมื่อรวมนับแล้ว ส่วนเหล่านั้นแยกได้เป็นสองแบบ", "story": "**ส่วนที่ปิดได้** ต้นขา หลัง อก เอวถึงเข่า เป็นของธรรมเนียมที่รอยสักคือเครื่องนุ่งห่ม เจ้าของเลือกได้ว่าจะให้ใครเห็นเมื่อไร **ส่วนที่ปิดไม่ได้** ใบหน้า คาง มือ นิ้ว เป็นของธรรมเนียมที่รอยคือการระบุตัวตน และรัฐที่อยากให้เลิกก็บังคับได้ด้วยการมองหน้าคน\n\n*อนุมาน —* คำสั่งห้ามลงที่กลุ่มหลังทั้งหมด **รอยที่ซ่อนไม่ได้คุมง่าย ส่วนรอยใต้ผ้าถุงไม่คุ้มจะไปยุ่ง**" }, "kin": [ { "to": "clothing", "as": "The other half of the same argument.", "rel": "story" }, { "to": "hajichi", "as": "The hands, and the 1899 prohibition.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-chin-people", "s:wp-atayal-people", "s:wp-irezumi" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "inference" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "measured" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "clothing", "type": "story", "name": "The tattoo is clothing", "as": "Which is why the body map is the argument, not the decoration." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "chin-ban", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "The Chin ban", "said": "Burma, the 1960s" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "era": "c20" }, "when": { "from": 1962, "to": 1970, "circa": true, "label": "Banned by the Union Revolutionary Council" }, "text": { "what": "Burma's socialist government banned Chin facial tattooing in the 1960s; missionaries had been discouraging it for decades already.", "story": "The practice ended inside a generation. The women who carry it were tattooed as teenagers before the ban and are now in their seventies and eighties, and they are photographed constantly.\n\n*Inference —* a ban works fastest on a mark that is made once, in youth, by a specialist. Stop the specialists for twenty years and there is nobody left who has done it." }, "text_th": { "what": "รัฐบาลสังคมนิยมพม่าสั่งห้ามการสักหน้าของชาวชินในทศวรรษ 1960 ก่อนหน้านั้นมิชชันนารีก็กีดกันมานาน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "chin-ming", "as": "What was banned.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-chin-people", "s:wp-tattooing-in-myanmar" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-chin-people" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "ban", "women" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "clothing", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "The tattoo is clothing", "said": "Three languages, three centuries, three continents, one metaphor" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "era": "now" }, "text": { "what": "Sources in Burmese, Northern Thai, Spanish and Samoan — and a Cordilleran rule recorded in English — reach for the same comparison: the tattoo is not on the body, it is what the body wears.", "story": "Shway Yoe, Burma, 1882, on the finished *htoe kwin*: the effect is \"not so much of a marking of the cuticle as of **a skin-tight pair of caleçons**, fitting better than the best glove ever made.\"\n\nA Lanna volume, northern Thailand, describing the same region's work from its own side: men tattooed their bodies **จนดูเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงสีดำ** — \"until it looked as if they wore black trousers\" — and a man with no marks should put on a woman's skirt instead.\n\nA Spanish account of the Visayans: a naked tattooed man \"appears to be **dressed in a kind of handsome armor** engraved with very fine work… their dress at home and in their barrio is their tattoos and a *bahag*.\"\n\nThe Cordillerans: having no tattoos was **equated to being naked**. The Samoans: an untattooed man is **telefua** or **telenoa** — naked, in the ordinary word, not as a figure of speech.\n\n*Inference —* this is the one comparison that survives translation everywhere on this map, and it is doing work. A garment is the thing that makes a person presentable in public; it is put on at a particular age; its absence is shameful rather than merely unusual; and it is the first thing another person reads. Every one of those is also true of the marks. **Where a tradition covers a whole zone of the body, its own sources describe that zone as dressed.**", "notes": "The count of traditions on this site whose sources use the clothing comparison is computed at build time and printed on the page rather than asserted here." }, "text_th": { "what": "แหล่งข้อมูลภาษาพม่า ภาษาเหนือ สเปน และซามัว รวมถึงกติกาของชาวคอร์ดิลเยราที่บันทึกไว้เป็นภาษาอังกฤษ เลือกคำเปรียบเดียวกัน รอยสักไม่ได้อยู่บนร่างกาย แต่เป็นสิ่งที่ร่างกายสวมอยู่", "story": "เชวโย พม่า ปี 1882 บรรยายลายขาที่เสร็จแล้วว่าไม่ใช่รอยบนหนังกำพร้าเท่ากับ **กางเกงรัดรูปที่เข้ารูปยิ่งกว่าถุงมือ**\n\nหนังสือล้านนาเล่าจากฝั่งของตัวเองว่าชายชาวล้านนาสักจน **ดูเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงสีดำ** และชายที่ไม่มีรอยสักก็ให้ไปนุ่งซิ่นเสีย\n\nบันทึกสเปนเรื่องชาววิซายันว่า ชายเปลือยที่มีรอยสัก \"ดูเหมือน **สวมเกราะงดงาม** ที่สลักลายละเอียด\"\n\nชาวคอร์ดิลเยราถือว่าการไม่มีรอยสักเท่ากับเปลือย ชาวซามัวเรียกชายที่ไม่ได้สักว่า **telefua** หรือ **telenoa** คือเปลือย ด้วยคำธรรมดา ไม่ใช่คำเปรียบ\n\n*อนุมาน —* นี่คือคำเปรียบเดียวที่ข้ามภาษาได้ทั้งแผนที่ และมันทำงานอยู่ เสื้อผ้าคือสิ่งที่ทำให้คนออกสู่ที่สาธารณะได้ สวมเมื่อถึงวัย ไม่มีแล้วน่าอาย และเป็นสิ่งแรกที่คนอื่นอ่าน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "Caleçons.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "Black trousers.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "batok", "as": "Handsome armor.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "tatau", "as": "Naked, in the ordinary word.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "body", "as": "Which is why the body map is the argument, not the decoration.", "rel": "story" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:ms6968", "s:wp-batok", "s:wp-pe-a" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text.story": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "text.what": { "tier": "inference", "note": "this project's reading across the five sources" }, "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "measured", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "batok", "type": "tradition", "name": "Batok", "as": "\"Dressed in a kind of handsome armor\" — the third of the three." }, { "from": "htoe-kwin", "type": "tradition", "name": "Htoe kwin", "as": "\"A skin-tight pair of caleçons\" — one of the three." }, { "from": "sak-kha-lai", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak kha lai", "as": "One of the three traditions whose own sources call the tattoo clothing." }, { "from": "tatau", "type": "tradition", "name": "Tatau", "as": "An untattooed man is called naked. In the language, not in a metaphor." }, { "from": "body", "type": "story", "name": "Where the marks go", "as": "The other half of the same argument." }, { "from": "pintados", "type": "story", "name": "The painted ones", "as": "\"Dressed in a kind of handsome armor.\"" } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "cook-1769", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "How the word got in", "said": "Tahiti, 1769 — tatau becomes tattoo" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "era": "colonial" }, "when": { "from": 1769, "to": 1774, "label": "Cook's first voyage, and Mai in London" }, "text": { "what": "English had no single word for the practice until Cook's crew brought one back from Polynesia.", "story": "*Tatau* went into English as *tattoo* and swallowed everything else. Every tradition on this site is now described in English with a Samoan word, including the ones that had their own perfectly good nouns: *irezumi*, *godna*, *deq*, *kakiniq*, *sak*.\n\n*Inference —* that is not only a linguistic accident. It is why the English-language record treats Pacific tattooing as the default case and everything else as a variation on it, and it is visible in the coverage count on this site: the traditions with the most language editions written about them are mostly the ones the eighteenth-century voyages reached first." }, "text_th": { "what": "ภาษาอังกฤษไม่มีคำเดียวสำหรับสิ่งนี้ จนลูกเรือของคุกนำคำกลับมาจากโพลินีเซีย" }, "kin": [ { "to": "tatau", "as": "The word.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "coverage", "as": "And what it did to the record.", "rel": "story" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-james-cook", "s:wp-pe-a", "s:wp-joseph-banks" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-pe-a" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "colonial-record" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "tatau", "type": "tradition", "name": "Tatau", "as": "How the word got into English." }, { "from": "coverage", "type": "story", "name": "Who gets written about", "as": "Why the English-language record is shaped this way." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "coverage", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "Who gets written about", "said": "Counted in Wikipedia language editions, per tradition" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "era": "now" }, "text": { "what": "Every tradition on this site that has a Wikipedia article, ranked by how many languages wrote one.", "story": "The measurement is crude and that is the point: it is a count of attention, not of importance. Each tradition here names its article, and the harvest asks the Wikimedia API how many language editions carry it.\n\n*Inference —* the shape of the answer is predictable before you run it, which is itself the finding. The traditions with the most editions are the ones eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European voyages met first and wrote up in European languages; the ones with the fewest are inland, upland, and were written about, if at all, in an administrative report.\n\nThe Lanna leg tattoo does not appear at all. Not thinly — it has no article in any language, in a project with more than three hundred language editions, for a custom that covered the legs of every man in a kingdom.", "notes": "Counted at build time. A tradition with no named article is listed as having none rather than scored as zero." }, "text_th": { "what": "ทุกธรรมเนียมบนเว็บนี้ที่มีบทความวิกิพีเดีย เรียงตามจำนวนภาษาที่เขียนถึง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "cook-1769", "as": "Why the English-language record is shaped this way.", "rel": "story" }, { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "The tradition with no article at all.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:langlinks" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "harvested" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "measured" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "cook-1769", "type": "story", "name": "How the word got in", "as": "And what it did to the record." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "exhibited", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "Exhibited", "said": "Tattooed people, shown for money, in Europe and America" }, "region": [ "europe", "the-americas" ], "facets": { "era": "colonial" }, "when": { "from": 1690, "to": 1940, "circa": true, "label": "From the first tattooed men brought to London to the last sideshows" }, "text": { "what": "For two and a half centuries, the main way a European saw a tattooed body was on a stage, with an entrance fee.", "story": "Tattooed people from the Pacific and Southeast Asia were brought to Europe and displayed; later, European and American performers had themselves covered in order to be displayed. The human zoos and the sideshow ran on the same premise and often the same circuit.\n\n*Inference —* a photograph of a tattooed person from this period is therefore rarely neutral evidence. It was made to be sold, the pose was chosen for the sale, and the caption was written by whoever was taking the money. This site uses those pictures where they are the only pictures, and says so beside them." }, "text_th": { "what": "สองศตวรรษครึ่งที่ชาวยุโรปส่วนใหญ่ได้เห็นร่างที่มีรอยสักบนเวที โดยต้องซื้อตั๋ว" }, "kin": [ { "to": "who-wrote-it-down", "as": "The same problem in another medium.", "rel": "issue" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-human-zoo", "s:wp-sideshow", "s:wp-sailor-tattoo" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-human-zoo" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "colonial-record" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "images": [ { "file": "exhibited/exhibited-ainu-woman-from-japan-with-the-department-of-anthrop-2ac11e9.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Ainu Woman from Japan with the Department of Anthropology at the 1904 World's Fair.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Ainu_Woman_from_Japan_with_the_Department_of_Anthropology_at_the_1904_World%27s_Fair.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAinu_Woman_from_Japan_with_the_Department_of_Anthropology_at_the_1904_World%27s_Fair.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Unknown authorUnknown author", "credit": "Missouri History MuseumURL: http://images.mohistory.org/image/EC6C99BB-D84E-2461-CD7C-4DD8A561AFB7/original.jpgGallery: http://collections.mohistory.org/resource/147708", "alt": "Title: Ainu Woman from Japan with the Department of Anthropology at the 1904 World's Fair.", "date": "1904", "primary": true, "sha256": "6d268a56fae7e2eccdfdf0776475dc0ba6081464ae6f9e1673040aa8a6b59479" }, { "file": "exhibited/exhibited-felice-beato-british-born-italy-study-in-tattooing-g-6b60fa3.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Felice Beato (British, born Italy - Study in Tattooing - Google Art Project.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Felice_Beato_%28British%2C_born_Italy_-_Study_in_Tattooing_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFelice_Beato_%28British%2C_born_Italy_-_Study_in_Tattooing_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Felice Beato", "credit": "owGgwatAPhilWw at Google Cultural Institute maximum zoom level", "alt": "Felice Beato (British, born Italy - Study in Tattooing - Google Art Project.jpg", "date": "about 1889", "primary": false, "sha256": "3dadfca627c59dc0c4b5267fafcda85af4290836352bb55340bffe262a1384f1" } ], "kin_in": [ { "from": "the-photographs", "type": "issue", "name": "The photographs", "as": "Where those pictures came from." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "legs", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "The leg-tattoo zone", "th": "เขตลายขา", "said": "Burma, the Shan States and Lanna — and the border is not the border" }, "region": [ "lanna", "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "era": "colonial" }, "text": { "what": "One custom, four peoples, and a boundary that runs through the middle of modern Thailand rather than along its edge.", "story": "Put the sources side by side.\n\n**Burma, 1882.** Shway Yoe: every up-country man is tattooed from the navel to below the kneecap. Not a single *taw-tha*, the sturdy man of the small towns and villages, is without it.\n\n**The Shan States, 1910.** Milne: a Shan boy is a child until he is tattooed; the rule is both legs, waist to knee, and often on to the ankles. Shway Yoe adds that the Shans go further than the Burmese — up the back, to the nape, and among a chief's retainers, everywhere but palms and soles.\n\n**Lanna.** The Lanna volume: men tattooed until it looked as if they wore black trousers, waist to ankle, torso, arms, fingers — and \"this fashion was widespread among the Burmese and the Tai Yai, who tattoo yantras no less than the Lanna.\"\n\n**Siam.** Milne, in the same paragraph where she says the Shans learned it from the Burmese: \"the Siamese, who are so closely related to them, **tattoo themselves very slightly, or not at all**.\"\n\n*Inference —* that last line is usually read as a fact about Thailand. It is a fact about **central** Thailand. Milne was comparing the Shan to Bangkok, and Lanna — which was a tributary kingdom, not a province, until 1899 — is on the other side of her comparison. The leg tattoo's territory is the Tai-Buddhist upland: Burma, the Shan States, the Tai Khuen and Tai Lue towns, and Lanna. **The edge of the zone runs through modern Thailand, roughly where Lanna ended, and the colonial record could not see it because it was reading the map by kingdoms.**\n\nThis is what the map on this page is drawing, and it is the one map on the site that no source draws for it.", "notes": "The zone is drawn from four written sources and one manuscript. It is not a survey, nobody counted tattooed men anywhere, and the outline is this project's reading rather than anyone's measurement." }, "text_th": { "what": "ธรรมเนียมเดียว สี่กลุ่มชน และเส้นแบ่งที่พาดกลางประเทศไทยปัจจุบัน ไม่ใช่ตามชายแดน", "story": "วางแหล่งข้อมูลเรียงกัน\n\n**พม่า 1882** เชวโย ชายหัวเมืองทุกคนสักตั้งแต่สะดือถึงใต้เข่า\n\n**รัฐฉาน 1910** มิลน์ เด็กชายไทใหญ่ยังเป็นเด็กจนกว่าจะได้สัก กติกาคือสองขา เอวถึงเข่า และมักลงถึงข้อเท้า\n\n**ล้านนา** หนังสือล้านนา สักจนดูเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงดำ เอวถึงข้อเท้า ลำตัว แขน นิ้วมือ และ \"ความนิยมเช่นนี้พบมากในกลุ่มชาวพม่าและชาวไทยใหญ่\"\n\n**สยาม** มิลน์ ในย่อหน้าเดียวกัน \"ชาวสยามซึ่งเป็นเครือญาติใกล้ชิด **สักน้อยมากหรือไม่สักเลย**\"\n\n*อนุมาน —* ประโยคสุดท้ายมักถูกอ่านว่าเป็นข้อเท็จจริงเรื่องประเทศไทย แต่มันเป็นข้อเท็จจริงเรื่องภาคกลาง มิลน์เทียบไทใหญ่กับบางกอก ส่วนล้านนาซึ่งเป็นประเทศราช ไม่ใช่มณฑล จนถึงปี 1899 อยู่อีกฝั่งของการเทียบนั้น **ขอบของเขตลายขาพาดกลางประเทศไทยปัจจุบัน ราวแนวที่ล้านนาสิ้นสุด และบันทึกยุคอาณานิคมมองไม่เห็น เพราะอ่านแผนที่เป็นราชอาณาจักร**" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "The Thai side.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "The Burmese side.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "shan-tattooing", "as": "The middle.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "kengtung", "as": "A town in the centre of it.", "rel": "place" }, { "to": "milne-shans", "as": "Whose sentence this turns on.", "rel": "person" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:milne-shans", "s:ms6968", "s:gazetteer-2", "s:wp-lan-na" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:milne-shans" }, "fields": { "text.story": { "tier": "inference", "note": "the zone and its boundary are this project's reading of four sources" }, "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "lanna", "measured", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "shan-tattooing", "type": "tradition", "name": "Shan leg tattooing", "as": "The zone this belongs to, and where its border runs." }, { "from": "kengtung", "type": "place", "name": "Kengtung", "as": "The zone." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "meiji-ban", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "Japan outlaws it", "said": "1872 — and legal again in 1948" }, "region": [ "east-asia" ], "facets": { "era": "colonial" }, "when": { "from": 1872, "to": 1948, "label": "Banned at the opening of Meiji; legalised under the occupation" }, "text": { "what": "Japan banned tattooing while presenting itself to the world, and foreigners immediately travelled there to be tattooed.", "story": "The ban was about image. The practice continued underground, tattooists worked on visiting sailors and princes, and the association with criminality that the ban created outlasted the ban by three generations. Osaka's mayor was still surveying city employees about their tattoos in 2012, and the courts found against him.\n\nThe Ryukyus got their own prohibition in 1899, aimed at *hajichi* on women's hands. Taiwan's Atayal were banned from facial tattooing in 1930 by the same administration.\n\n*Inference —* three bans, one state, sixty years, and each one targets the marks of a people being absorbed. The Meiji ban is usually told as a story about respectability. Seen with the other two, it is a story about who gets to look like themselves." }, "text_th": { "what": "ญี่ปุ่นห้ามการสักขณะจัดภาพลักษณ์ต่อโลก และชาวต่างชาติก็เดินทางไปสักที่นั่นทันที" }, "kin": [ { "to": "irezumi", "as": "What was banned.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "hajichi", "as": "And who else.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "atayal-ptasan", "as": "And who else again.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-irezumi", "s:wp-meiji-era", "s:wp-atayal-people" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-irezumi" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "ban", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "irezumi", "type": "tradition", "name": "Irezumi", "as": "The ban that made it criminal." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "pintados", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "The painted ones", "said": "The Spanish name for the Visayans, and what happened next" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "era": "colonial" }, "when": { "from": 1521, "to": 1700, "circa": true, "label": "Conversion, and the loss of the tradition across the lowlands" }, "text": { "what": "Spain called the Visayans *Pintados*, the painted ones, described their tattoos in detail, and converted them out of the practice within two centuries.", "story": "The Spanish accounts are careful and admiring. They describe the tattoo as clothing; they record that no tattooing was begun until a brave deed had been performed and that each further panel needed another; they note that men tattooed even their chins and around the eyes so that they appeared masked.\n\nThen the same administration's church ended it. In the lowlands the tradition is gone and the description survives. In the Cordillera, where Spain never held the mountains, the practice survives and the Spanish description does not apply.\n\n*Inference —* on this site that is the clearest natural experiment there is: one people, two zones, the same century, and the difference is entirely whether the coloniser could get there." }, "text_th": { "what": "สเปนเรียกชาววิซายันว่า Pintados คนที่ถูกระบายลาย บรรยายรอยสักไว้ละเอียด แล้วเปลี่ยนศาสนาจนธรรมเนียมหายไปในสองศตวรรษ" }, "kin": [ { "to": "batok", "as": "The tradition.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "kalinga-cordillera", "as": "The mountains, where it did not happen.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "clothing", "as": "\"Dressed in a kind of handsome armor.\"", "rel": "story" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "ban", "colonial-record" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "revival", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "Stopped, and started again", "said": "The gap, measured in years, where both ends have a date" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "era": "now" }, "text": { "what": "Several traditions here stopped and came back. Where both ends are datable, this site subtracts them and prints the gap.", "story": "Fiji: one tattooist left by 1908; an artists' collective takes it up again in the 2010s. Inuit: missionaries and the schools; a revitalisation project from 2016. Māori: the 1907 Act; the resurgence from 1990. Okinawa: the 1899 prohibition; hands being marked again now.\n\nThe gaps run to roughly a century each. *Inference —* what carries a practice across a hundred years is not a book. In every case on this list the bridge is a person: the elders Hovak Johnston learned the stitch from, the seventy women Michael King interviewed in the 1970s, the museum objects the Veiqia Project worked from, and the grandmothers.\n\nA practice with no living bearer left is a different problem, and the Lanna leg tattoo is in that category.", "notes": "Gaps are computed from the `break` field on each tradition and shown with both endpoints, so a reader can disagree with either." }, "text_th": { "what": "หลายธรรมเนียมบนเว็บนี้หยุดไปแล้วกลับมา เมื่อระบุปีได้ทั้งสองปลาย เว็บนี้ลบกันแล้วพิมพ์ช่องว่างนั้นไว้" }, "kin": [ { "to": "veiqia", "as": "The clearest one.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "kakiniit", "as": "And the best documented.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "And the one with nobody left to ask.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-veiqia", "s:wp-kakiniit", "s:wp-t-moko" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "inference" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "revival", "measured" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "hajichi", "type": "tradition", "name": "Hajichi", "as": "On the revival list." }, { "from": "kakiniit", "type": "tradition", "name": "Kakiniit", "as": "The clearest datable revival in the record." }, { "from": "veiqia", "type": "tradition", "name": "Veiqia", "as": "The best-dated stop and restart on the site." }, { "from": "hovak-johnston", "type": "person", "name": "Hovak Johnston", "as": "The pattern." }, { "from": "veiqia-project", "type": "org", "name": "The Veiqia Project", "as": "The pattern." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "timeline", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "Five thousand years", "said": "From the oldest marked skin to the newest studio" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "era": "prehistory" }, "text": { "what": "The dated points: bodies with marks on them, bans with statutes behind them, revivals with a year.", "story": "The timeline holds three kinds of date and keeps them apart. **Bodies**: Ötzi, the Gebelein mummies, the Chinchorro man, the Ukok woman, the Cordilleran mummies, the Qilakitsoq women — each with the range its laboratory gave. **Instruments**: the Arku Cave tools. **Paper**: bans, acts, patents and the revivals.\n\n*Inference —* the visible gap between the ancient bodies and the nineteenth-century paper is not a gap in the practice. It is a gap in what survives: skin needs ice, salt, sand or bog, and paper needs an administration. Between them, four thousand years of ordinary tattooing left neither." }, "text_th": { "what": "จุดที่มีวันที่ ร่างกายที่มีรอย คำสั่งห้ามที่มีกฎหมายรองรับ และการรื้อฟื้นที่ระบุปีได้" }, "kin": [ { "to": "otzi", "as": "The oldest.", "rel": "find" }, { "to": "machine", "as": "The newest thing that changed everything.", "rel": "method" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-tzi", "s:wp-gebelein-predynastic-mummies", "s:wp-chinchorro-mummies" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "inference" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "archaeology", "measured" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "gebelein", "type": "find", "name": "The Gebelein mummies", "as": "Contemporary with Ötzi, on another continent." }, { "from": "otzi", "type": "find", "name": "Ötzi", "as": "The oldest dated point on it." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "tohunga-act", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "The Tohunga Suppression Act", "said": "New Zealand, 1907" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "era": "colonial" }, "when": { "from": 1907, "to": 1962, "label": "In force until 1962" }, "text": { "what": "A New Zealand statute aimed at Māori specialists, which caught tā moko along with everything else a tohunga did.", "story": "Michael King interviewed more than seventy elderly women in the early 1970s who had received *moko kauae* before the Act. That interview list is the bridge: the practice was not remembered from books when it came back in the 1990s. It was remembered from faces." }, "text_th": { "what": "กฎหมายนิวซีแลนด์ที่มุ่งเป้าผู้เชี่ยวชาญชาวเมารี และกวาดเอาตาโมโกไปด้วย" }, "kin": [ { "to": "ta-moko", "as": "What it caught.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-t-moko" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-t-moko" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "ban" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "words", "type": "story", "names": { "name": "What the word means first", "said": "Prick, strike, write, pattern" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "era": "now" }, "text": { "what": "The word each tradition uses for the tattoo, and what it meant before it meant that.", "story": "Four families, and they line up with the method rather than with the geography.\n\n**Prick** — Thai and Khmer *sak*, Inuktitut *kaki-*, Hindi *godna*, Kurdish *deq*, Croatian *sicanje*, Burmese *htoe*, Okinawan *hajichi*. Every one of them is a poking tradition, and the word is the verb for what the needle does.\n\n**Strike** — Samoan and Polynesian *tatau*, Māori *tā*, Marquesan *patu*. Every one of them is a tapping tradition, and the word is the verb for the mallet.\n\n**Pattern** — Austronesian *batok*, *patik*, *burik*; Northern Thai *lai*. The word is the design, and it is the same word used for the pattern on a pot or a cloth.\n\n**Write** — Atayal *ptasan*; and in Lanna, the tool for tattooing is the same *lek char* stylus used to write a palm-leaf manuscript.\n\n*Inference —* a language names the tattoo after whichever part of it that culture finds most salient: the movement, the tool, the design, or the literacy. Four answers, and none of them is \"the picture\"." }, "text_th": { "what": "คำที่แต่ละธรรมเนียมใช้เรียกรอยสัก และความหมายของคำนั้นก่อนจะแปลว่ารอยสัก", "story": "สี่ตระกูล และเรียงตามวิธี ไม่ใช่ตามภูมิศาสตร์\n\n**แทง** — ไทยและเขมร *สัก* อินุกติตุต *kaki-* ฮินดี *godna* เคิร์ด *deq* โครเอเชีย *sicanje* พม่า *ထိုး* ทั้งหมดเป็นธรรมเนียมแบบแทง\n\n**ตอก** — ซามัว *tatau* เมารี *tā* มาร์เคซัส *patu* ทั้งหมดเป็นธรรมเนียมแบบตอก\n\n**ลาย** — ออสโตรนีเซียน *batok* และคำว่า *ลาย* ในภาษาเหนือ\n\n**เขียน** — อาตายัล *ptasan* และทางล้านนา เครื่องมือสักคือเหล็กจารเล่มเดียวกับที่ใช้เขียนใบลาน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak", "as": "Prick.", "rel": "term" }, { "to": "tatau-word", "as": "Strike.", "rel": "term" }, { "to": "lek-char", "as": "Write.", "rel": "tool" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-yantra-tattooing", "s:wp-kakiniit", "s:wp-batok", "s:wp-t-moko", "s:wp-deq-tattoo" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "inference" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "measured", "script" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "deq", "type": "tradition", "name": "Deq", "as": "Another word for tattoo that means to puncture." }, { "from": "godna", "type": "tradition", "name": "Godna", "as": "Another word for tattoo that means to prick." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "arku-cave", "type": "find", "names": { "name": "The Arku Cave tools", "said": "Cagayan, northern Luzon — hafted tattoo heads from before 1500 BCE" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "era": "prehistory" }, "when": { "from": -1500, "to": -1400, "circa": true, "label": "Dated before 1500 BCE" }, "text": { "what": "Chisel and serrated heads of probable hafted tattooing instruments, excavated in a burial site in northern Luzon.", "story": "They came up alongside adzes, spindle whorls, barkcloth beaters and lingling-o jade ornaments — the standard Austronesian kit — and they closely resemble the comb-type tattoo chisels found across Polynesia three thousand years later.\n\n*Inference —* a tool type that travelled the whole Pacific is sitting in a cave in Luzon before 1500 BCE. The method on this site with the widest reach is also the oldest one with surviving hardware." }, "text_th": { "what": "หัวสิ่วและหัวหยักของเครื่องมือสักแบบติดด้าม ขุดพบในแหล่งฝังศพทางเหนือของลูซอน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "gisi-pat-ik", "as": "The tool, still in use.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "tap", "as": "The method.", "rel": "method" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "archaeology" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "batok", "type": "tradition", "name": "Batok", "as": "The tools, dug up, older than the Roman Empire by a millennium." }, { "from": "gisi-pat-ik", "type": "tool", "name": "Gisi and pat-ik", "as": "Where a set of these was dug up." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "chinchorro-man", "type": "find", "names": { "name": "Chinchorro Mo-1 T28 C22", "said": "A dotted line above the upper lip, about 1880 BCE" }, "region": [ "the-americas" ], "facets": { "era": "prehistory" }, "when": { "from": -1980, "to": -1780, "circa": true, "label": "1880 ± 100 BCE" }, "text": { "what": "A mummified man from the Chilean coast with a dotted line tattooed above his upper lip — the oldest tattoo yet found in the Americas.", "story": "The Chinchorro were mummifying their dead by about 5050 BCE, across the whole community rather than for an elite. One of the bodies carries the marks." }, "text_th": { "what": "ร่างมัมมี่จากชายฝั่งชิลี มีรอยสักเป็นจุดเรียงเหนือริมฝีปากบน เก่าที่สุดเท่าที่พบในทวีปอเมริกา" }, "sources": [ "s:wp-chinchorro-mummies" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-chinchorro-mummies" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "archaeology" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "cordilleran-mummies", "type": "find", "names": { "name": "The Cordilleran mummies", "said": "Apo Anno and the hanging coffins, from the 13th century" }, "region": [ "island-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "era": "ancient" }, "when": { "from": 1200, "to": 1500, "circa": true, "label": "Oldest surviving examples from the 13th century" }, "text": { "what": "Mummified Cordilleran people in cave and hanging-coffin burials, tattooed, with the designs also carved on the coffins.", "story": "A Kankanaey mummy known as Apo Anno, 700 to 900 years old, is marked even on the soles of the feet and the fingertips. The tattoos are individualised: a woman's arms, a man's whole body.\n\n*Inference —* when the coffin carries the same patterns as the body, the design set is doing more than decorating a person. It identifies them, to whoever opens the coffin." }, "text_th": { "what": "ร่างมัมมี่ชาวคอร์ดิลเยราในถ้ำและโลงแขวน มีรอยสัก และลายเดียวกันถูกแกะไว้บนโลง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "kalinga-cordillera", "as": "The tradition.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "archaeology" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "gebelein", "type": "find", "names": { "name": "The Gebelein mummies", "said": "Egypt, about 3400–3100 BCE — figurative tattoos on a man and a woman" }, "region": [ "north-africa" ], "facets": { "era": "prehistory" }, "when": { "from": -3400, "to": -3000, "circa": true, "label": "Naqada II; EA 32751 calibrated 3341–3017 BCE" }, "text": { "what": "Six naturally mummified bodies from Upper Egypt, dug out of sand graves in 1896, two of them tattooed.", "story": "They were excavated by Wallis Budge for the British Museum and sat there for a century before infrared imaging showed the marks — a wild bull and a Barbary sheep on the man, S-shaped motifs on the woman.\n\n*Inference —* that hundred-year gap is the point. The marks were on the bodies the whole time and nobody could see them, because dark pigment on darkened skin needs infrared. How much else in the world's museum drawers is tattooed and unread is not a question this site can answer." }, "text_th": { "what": "ร่างมัมมี่ธรรมชาติหกร่างจากอียิปต์ตอนบน ขุดพบในปี 1896 สองร่างมีรอยสัก" }, "kin": [ { "to": "timeline", "as": "Contemporary with Ötzi, on another continent.", "rel": "story" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-gebelein-predynastic-mummies", "s:wp-amunet" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-gebelein-predynastic-mummies" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "archaeology", "museum" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "ice-maiden", "type": "find", "names": { "name": "The Ukok woman", "aliases": [ "the Siberian Ice Maiden", "the Altai Princess" ], "said": "5th century BCE, tattooed shoulder, frozen" }, "region": [ "siberia" ], "facets": { "era": "ancient" }, "when": { "from": -450, "to": -400, "circa": true, "label": "5th century BCE" }, "text": { "what": "A Pazyryk woman buried on the Ukok Plateau, preserved in ice for about 2,400 years, with animal designs on her skin.", "story": "An embalmed man from the same culture, at Pazyryk itself, is covered in animal motifs. The ice did the preserving, and the ice is also why the debate about where her body should now rest is a live political question rather than an academic one.\n\nThis site names the find, dates it, and leaves the reburial argument to the people whose argument it is." }, "text_th": { "what": "หญิงวัฒนธรรมปาซีริกที่ฝังบนที่ราบสูงอูก็อก เก็บรักษาในน้ำแข็งราว 2,400 ปี มีลายสัตว์บนผิวหนัง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "ukok", "as": "The place.", "rel": "place" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-siberian-ice-maiden", "s:wp-pazyryk-culture" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-siberian-ice-maiden" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "archaeology", "women" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "ukok", "type": "place", "name": "The Ukok Plateau", "as": "Who was in it." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "otzi", "type": "find", "names": { "name": "Ötzi", "said": "61 marks, mostly on the legs, about 3300 BCE" }, "region": [ "europe" ], "facets": { "era": "prehistory" }, "when": { "from": -3300, "to": -3100, "circa": true, "label": "Radiocarbon range for the body" }, "text": { "what": "The Alpine body with sixty-one tattoos — nineteen groups of black lines, and the greatest concentration on the legs.", "story": "The marks are 1–3 mm wide and 7–40 mm long: groups of parallel lines along the body's long axis and either side of the lumbar spine, a cross behind the right knee, another at the right ankle, parallel lines round the left wrist. Twelve of the nineteen groups are on the legs.\n\nMicroscopy on samples showed the pigment was made from fireplace soot.\n\n*Inference —* the oldest tattooed body in Europe is a set of short lines on the legs and lower back, put there with soot. Five thousand years later, the *htoe kwin* is a leg tattoo made with lamp soot. Nothing connects them and the resemblance is not a lineage; it is what the available tools and the available pigment produce." }, "text_th": { "what": "ร่างจากเทือกแอลป์ที่มีรอยสัก 61 รอย เป็นเส้นดำ 19 กลุ่ม กระจุกตัวมากที่สุดที่ขา" }, "kin": [ { "to": "soot-water", "as": "What the pigment turned out to be.", "rel": "ink" }, { "to": "timeline", "as": "The oldest dated point on it.", "rel": "story" } ], "links": [ { "label": "Ötzi", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-tzi" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-tzi" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "archaeology", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "soot-water", "type": "ink", "name": "Soot and water", "as": "The oldest example that has been analysed." }, { "from": "timeline", "type": "story", "name": "Five thousand years", "as": "The oldest." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "qilakitsoq", "type": "find", "names": { "name": "The Qilakitsoq women", "said": "Greenland, about 1475 — facial marks under infrared" }, "region": [ "arctic" ], "facets": { "era": "ancient" }, "when": { "from": 1460, "to": 1490, "circa": true, "label": "About 1475" }, "text": { "what": "Mummified Inuit women from north-west Greenland, five centuries old, with facial tattoos visible under infrared.", "story": "They are the physical evidence behind a practice that missionaries later ended and that Inuit women have now taken up again. The revival is not reconstructing something imagined; there are faces." }, "text_th": { "what": "มัมมี่หญิงชาวอินูอิตจากกรีนแลนด์ตะวันตกเฉียงเหนือ อายุห้าศตวรรษ มีรอยสักบนใบหน้าที่เห็นได้ด้วยอินฟราเรด" }, "kin": [ { "to": "kakiniit", "as": "The tradition.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-kakiniit", "s:wp-mummy" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "tradition" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "needs_verification": true, "tags": [ "archaeology", "women" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "kakiniit", "type": "tradition", "name": "Kakiniit", "as": "The oldest Inuit faces that survive, and they are marked." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "murals", "type": "art", "names": { "name": "The murals", "th": "จิตรกรรมฝาผนัง", "said": "What a painting of a tattoo is evidence of" }, "region": [ "lanna" ], "facets": { "kind": "mural" }, "when": { "from": 1800, "to": 1900, "circa": true, "label": "Nineteenth-century Lanna temple painting" }, "text": { "what": "Northern temple walls carry men with marked legs and torsos, painted by people who saw them daily.", "story": "The Lanna volume rests its case on exactly this: the evidence for the custom is the murals in important temples, which show men tattooed until they look dressed.\n\n*Inference —* a mural is good evidence for three things — that the custom existed, roughly what area of the body it covered, and that it was ordinary enough to paint without comment. It is weak evidence for the designs themselves: painters simplify, and a wall painted with a hundred figures is not a pattern book. This site reads the murals for extent and does not read them for detail." }, "text_th": { "what": "ผนังวัดทางเหนือมีภาพชายที่มีลายบนขาและลำตัว วาดโดยคนที่เห็นของจริงทุกวัน", "story": "*อนุมาน —* จิตรกรรมเป็นหลักฐานที่ดีสำหรับสามเรื่อง คือธรรมเนียมนี้มีจริง คลุมร่างกายราวไหน และเป็นเรื่องธรรมดาพอที่จะวาดโดยไม่ต้องอธิบาย แต่อ่อนสำหรับตัวลายเอง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "wat-phumin", "as": "The best-known wall.", "rel": "place" }, { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "What it shows.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:ms6968", "s:thwp-จ-ตรกรรมฝาผน-ง", "s:wp-wat-phumin" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:ms6968" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "medium", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "images": [ { "file": "murals/murals-peinture-murale-wat-phumin-nan.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Peinture murale Wat Phumin, Nan.JPG", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Peinture_murale_Wat_Phumin%2C_Nan.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APeinture_murale_Wat_Phumin%2C_Nan.JPG", "license": "CC BY-SA 3.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "author": "Ellnik", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Peinture_murale_Wat_Phumin,_Nan.JPG", "date": "2007-05-11", "primary": true, "sha256": "24c30908650db2d1e6d137e8d8f6c8549fc73e6e806d58304a09b31dea42d34f" }, { "file": "murals/murals-wat-phumin-2018-07-30-20.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Wat Phumin 2018-07-30 (20).jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Wat_Phumin_2018-07-30_%2820%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AWat_Phumin_2018-07-30_%2820%29.jpg", "license": "CC0 1.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/", "author": "Index Librorum Permissorum", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Mural painting of Thai women working and smoking at Wat Phumin, a Buddhist temple in Nan province, Thailand.", "date": "2018-07-30 09:47:54", "primary": false, "sha256": "88347edec998a6b19ba31b4e56f88b263675bb7e59e1349befc78957a219d1ca" } ], "kin_in": [ { "from": "wat-phumin", "type": "place", "name": "Wat Phumin", "as": "What a painting is evidence of." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sample-book", "type": "art", "names": { "name": "The sample book", "said": "Burma, 1882 — flash, before the word existed" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "kind": "object" }, "when": { "from": 1880, "to": 1890, "circa": true, "label": "Described in 1882" }, "text": { "what": "A book of drawings a Burmese tattooist carried, so the boy could pick his figures and their positions before the work started.", "story": "Shway Yoe: \"The best *sayas* carry about sample-books with them containing clever drawings, from which the aspirant may select the patterns he likes best, and mark their relative positions before he takes the opium.\"\n\nThat is a flash sheet, a consultation and a layout, in 1882, in a tradition usually described as though the designs came out of nowhere." }, "text_th": { "what": "สมุดภาพที่ช่างสักพม่าพกไป เพื่อให้เด็กเลือกลายและตำแหน่งก่อนเริ่มงาน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "design-block", "as": "The same invention, three times over.", "rel": "tool" }, { "to": "htoe-kwin", "as": "The work it was for.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "measured" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "images": [ { "file": "sample-book/sample-book-bodleian-ms-burm-a-5-fol063-3.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Bodleian Ms. Burm. a. 5 fol063-3.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Bodleian_Ms._Burm._a._5_fol063-3.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABodleian_Ms._Burm._a._5_fol063-3.jpg", "license": "CC BY 4.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/", "author": "", "credit": "Bodleian Library, Oxford. Shelfmark Ms. Burm. a 5", "alt": "Bodleian Ms. Burm. a. 5 fol063-3.jpg", "date": "", "primary": true, "sha256": "aa65129597620f82ec0d99cbd812b4b1ace59e06812cfb487aabe84bc3e95546" }, { "file": "sample-book/sample-book-burmese-kinnara-and-three-headed-peacock.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Burmese Kinnara and three-headed peacock.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/Burmese_Kinnara_and_three-headed_peacock.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABurmese_Kinnara_and_three-headed_peacock.jpg", "license": "Public domain", "license_url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain", "author": "Unknown authorUnknown author", "credit": "Library of Congress, Asian Division (2), Washington, D.C., USA, published online at https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/wb-dream.html (wb0002s-th.jpg), section \"BURMESE WINGED CREATURE\"", "alt": "Illustrations in a Manuscript of talismans and tattoos from Burma.\nupper image: half-human, half-bird creature and is known as a \"Kinnara.\" This mythical beast was originally an Indian creation though", "date": "19th centurydate QS:P,+1850-00-00T00:00:", "primary": false, "sha256": "623e0f13f1fe42501aa782def44f8418d8312ea50134d9fd8902162aa96324ce" } ], "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "stencils", "type": "art", "names": { "name": "The stencil book", "th": "แบบสักยันต์สำหรับลอกลาย", "said": "A Thai book of yant designs, for tracing" }, "region": [ "mainland-southeast-asia" ], "facets": { "kind": "object" }, "text": { "what": "A volume in the corpus this site counted is exactly what its title says: yant patterns for tattooists to trace.", "story": "Its first page reads *แบบสักยันต์ · แบบยันต์ต่างๆ · สำหรับช่างสัก* — tattoo-yant patterns, various yant patterns, for tattooists. The plates are columns of Khom-script medallions under finials, birds facing each other into a heart shape, script down both sides.\n\n*Inference —* the existence of a tracing book is the same fact as the Burmese sample book and the Bornean carved block: the repertoire is stored outside anybody's head, and it is stored in the form that transfers to skin." }, "text_th": { "what": "เล่มหนึ่งในคลังเอกสารที่เว็บนี้นับ เป็นอย่างที่ชื่อบอกไว้ คือแบบยันต์สำหรับช่างสักลอกลาย" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "The tradition.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "design-block", "as": "The same idea.", "rel": "tool" } ], "sources": [ "s:corpus" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "field" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "script" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "sak-yant-chiang-mai", "type": "org", "names": { "name": "Sak Yant Chiang Mai", "th": "สักยันต์เชียงใหม่", "said": "A booking service, by its own description, with a published lineage" }, "region": [ "lanna" ], "facets": { "kind": "studio" }, "text": { "what": "The Chiang Mai operation that publishes the profile of every master it works with — teacher, temple, family line, years in the robe and out.", "story": "Seventeen practitioners, twelve *ajarn* and five monks; thirty teacher links; twelve named temples; family lines to the third, fourth and fifth generation.\n\n*Inference —* that is a lineage map for a living hand tradition, published by the people in it, and there is nothing else like it on this site. Every other lineage here was reconstructed by an outsider after the fact, or lost.\n\nIt describes itself as a booking service rather than a *samnak*, a master's house, and this site repeats its own description rather than upgrading it." }, "text_th": { "what": "สำนักงานในเชียงใหม่ที่เผยแพร่ประวัติของครูทุกคนที่ร่วมงาน ทั้งครูผู้สอน วัด สายตระกูล และจำนวนปีทั้งในและนอกผ้าเหลือง" }, "kin": [ { "to": "ajarn-dang-sak", "as": "Two of the masters.", "rel": "person" }, { "to": "sak-yant", "as": "The tradition.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "sakyantchiangmai.com", "url": "https://sakyantchiangmai.com/" } ], "sources": [ "s:sycm" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:sycm" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "images": [ { "file": "sak-yant-chiang-mai/sak-yant-chiang-mai-thai-tattoo-chiang-mai-2005-058.jpg", "source": "commons", "title": "File:Thai tattoo Chiang Mai 2005 058.jpg", "url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9c/Thai_tattoo_Chiang_Mai_2005_058.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=original", "page_url": "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AThai_tattoo_Chiang_Mai_2005_058.jpg", "license": "CC BY-SA 3.0", "license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "author": "YashiWong", "credit": "Own work", "alt": "Thai tattoos. Chiang Mai 2005", "date": "", "primary": true, "sha256": "22f800ac8738d273a0864babb7234f0acfd9a2a715f924acd131d79578da390b" } ], "kin_in": [ { "from": "sak-yant", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sak yant", "as": "The published lineage." }, { "from": "ajarn-dang-sak", "type": "person", "name": "Ajarn Dang and Ajarn Sak", "as": "Where the profiles are published." }, { "from": "saya-chein", "type": "person", "name": "Saya Chein", "as": "What a recorded lineage looks like when the tradition is still running." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "veiqia-project", "type": "org", "names": { "name": "The Veiqia Project", "said": "Fijian women artists, taking the practice back out of the archive" }, "region": [ "oceania" ], "facets": { "kind": "collective" }, "when": { "from": 2015, "to": 2026, "label": "From the mid-2010s" }, "text": { "what": "The collective of Fijian women artists who researched veiqia in collections and archives and brought the practice back.", "story": "The research problem was that the practice ended around 1910 with one named practitioner. The material was in museums, in nineteenth-century accounts, and on objects. The project worked from those and from Fijian women's own reading of them." }, "text_th": { "what": "กลุ่มศิลปินหญิงชาวฟิจิที่ค้นคว้า veiqia จากคอลเลกชันและหอจดหมายเหตุ แล้วนำกลับมาปฏิบัติ" }, "kin": [ { "to": "veiqia", "as": "The practice.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "revival", "as": "The pattern.", "rel": "story" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-veiqia" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-veiqia" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "women", "revival" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "wichaa", "type": "org", "names": { "name": "wichaa.net", "th": "วิชา", "said": "Where the manuscript corpus this site counts is held" }, "region": [ "lanna" ], "facets": { "kind": "archive" }, "text": { "what": "The manuscript corpus and knowledge hub this site's Lanna material comes out of, and where its companion page lives.", "story": "The corpus holds thousands of pages of northern Thai manuscript material, transcribed and translated, including the yant volumes indexed at /yant. The count this site publishes — how many of those transcribed pages mention the leg tattoo — was run against it." }, "text_th": { "what": "คลังเอกสารและศูนย์รวมความรู้ที่เนื้อหาล้านนาของเว็บนี้มาจาก และที่ตั้งของหน้าคู่กัน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "What the corpus was asked about.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "links": [ { "label": "wichaa.net", "url": "https://wichaa.net/" }, { "label": "The yant designs", "url": "https://wichaa.net/yant/" } ], "sources": [ "s:corpus" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "field" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "lanna" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "the-needle-now", "type": "issue", "names": { "name": "The needle now", "said": "What changed in fifty years is not the method" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "none" }, "text": { "what": "Single-use needles, gloves and an autoclave are the difference between a hand tradition in 1882 and the same hand tradition today.", "story": "Shway Yoe's chapter records what the old practice cost: swelling, fever, days of itching, and opium given to boys in doses that occasionally killed them. Milne's Shan boys sat in a circle being told not to scratch. None of that is nostalgia material.\n\nThe method did not have to change for that to stop; the supply did. *Inference —* this is the part of a revival that is never a reconstruction, and the practitioners doing it say so themselves.", "notes": "This site carries no medical advice and no aftercare instructions, and nothing here is a recommendation about getting tattooed anywhere." }, "text_th": { "what": "เข็มใช้ครั้งเดียว ถุงมือ และหม้อนึ่งฆ่าเชื้อ คือความต่างระหว่างธรรมเนียมเดิมในปี 1882 กับธรรมเนียมเดียวกันในวันนี้" }, "kin": [ { "to": "the-pain", "as": "What it used to cost.", "rel": "rite" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:milne-shans", "s:wp-sterilization-microbiology" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:shway-yoe" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "the-photographs", "type": "issue", "names": { "name": "The photographs", "said": "Why this site is short of pictures of people" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "none" }, "text": { "what": "The free pictures of tattooed bodies are mostly colonial-era photographs of people who did not choose to be photographed, or sideshow portraits made to be sold.", "story": "A picture can be correctly licensed, on subject, and still be the wrong thing to put in front of a reader. This site's rules on that are simple and were set by its publisher: no blood, no wounds, nothing that turns a person into a specimen, and where a historical photograph is used, it is named for what it is.\n\nThe pictures here that show living practice were taken with permission and are credited to the people who gave it." }, "text_th": { "what": "ภาพที่ใช้ได้โดยเสรีส่วนใหญ่เป็นภาพยุคอาณานิคมของผู้คนที่ไม่ได้เลือกจะถูกถ่าย หรือภาพเวทีที่ทำขึ้นเพื่อขาย" }, "kin": [ { "to": "exhibited", "as": "Where those pictures came from.", "rel": "story" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-human-zoo", "s:commons" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "inference" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "what-counts", "type": "issue", "names": { "name": "What counts as hand-poked", "said": "Tapping is not poking, and both are hands" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "none" }, "text": { "what": "The site is called hand poke and half the traditions on it do not poke. Here is the line it draws and why the line is arguable.", "story": "A poked tattoo is driven by the hand holding the tool. A tapped one is driven by a second stick striking a hafted comb. A stitched one is sewn. A cut one is chiselled or incised and then rubbed with pigment.\n\nAll four are hand methods and none of them is a machine, which is why they are all here. But calling them all \"hand-poke\" flattens the thing each tradition is proudest of, so this site keeps them as four and says which is which on every record.\n\nThe hard cases are real. Māori *uhi* work was replaced by needle work in the nineteenth century and the tradition kept its name. Modern professional hand-poke uses a cartridge needle in a stabiliser pen, which is a tool with a handle and a grip and no motor. **A reader who would draw the line somewhere else is looking at the same field on the same records and can re-sort it.**" }, "text_th": { "what": "เว็บนี้ชื่อว่าสักด้วยมือ แต่ครึ่งหนึ่งของธรรมเนียมบนนี้ไม่ได้แทง นี่คือเส้นที่ลากไว้ และเหตุผลว่าทำไมเส้นนี้เถียงได้" }, "kin": [ { "to": "poke", "as": "One.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "tap", "as": "Two.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "stitch", "as": "Three.", "rel": "method" }, { "to": "cut", "as": "Four.", "rel": "method" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok", "s:wp-t-moko", "s:wp-stick-and-poke" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "inference" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "stick-and-poke", "type": "tradition", "name": "Stick and poke", "as": "And the question that gets asked about it." }, { "from": "poke", "type": "method", "name": "Poke", "as": "Where the line between them stops being clear." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "who-wrote-it-down", "type": "issue", "names": { "name": "Who wrote it down", "said": "An administrator, a doctor, a missionary, an archaeologist" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "none" }, "text": { "what": "Most of what is known about the stopped traditions was written by the people whose arrival stopped them.", "story": "Shway Yoe was Sir James George Scott, who wrote as a Burman and spent his career extending British rule over the Shan States. Leopold Glück was a doctor in occupied Bosnia. Ćiro Truhelka was an archaeologist in the same administration. Hose and McDougall were a colonial officer and a psychologist. The Gazetteer of Upper Burma is a government publication, and in the middle of a paragraph about Chin women's faces it stops to insult them.\n\nThis site uses all of it, because there is nothing else, and it names the writer every time. **The detail is usually reliable and the frame usually is not** — a measurement of a tool, a rate of work, a fee, an age, a sequence, these are the things an observer can get right. Why people did it, what they believed, what it meant: on those, the source is guessing about people it does not respect.\n\nThe Lanna volume in the corpus is the counter-case on this site, and that is why it is quoted at length: same region, same custom, written from inside it." }, "text_th": { "what": "สิ่งที่รู้เกี่ยวกับธรรมเนียมที่หยุดไปแล้วส่วนใหญ่ ถูกเขียนโดยคนที่การมาถึงของเขาทำให้มันหยุด", "story": "เชวโยคือเซอร์เจมส์ จอร์จ สก็อตต์ ซึ่งเขียนในนามคนพม่าและใช้ชีวิตราชการขยายอำนาจอังกฤษเหนือรัฐฉาน เลโอโปลด์ กลึคเป็นแพทย์ในบอสเนียที่ถูกยึดครอง\n\nเว็บนี้ใช้ทั้งหมดนั้น เพราะไม่มีอย่างอื่น และระบุชื่อผู้เขียนทุกครั้ง **รายละเอียดมักเชื่อถือได้ ส่วนกรอบการมองมักเชื่อไม่ได้**" }, "kin": [ { "to": "shway-yoe", "as": "The clearest case.", "rel": "person" }, { "to": "chin-ming", "as": "Where the contempt is on the page.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "sak-kha-lai", "as": "And the counter-case.", "rel": "tradition" } ], "sources": [ "s:shway-yoe", "s:gazetteer-3", "s:wp-sicanje", "s:wp-salvage-ethnography" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "inference" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "colonial-record", "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [ { "from": "chin-ming", "type": "tradition", "name": "Chin facial tattooing", "as": "The clearest case of the problem with the only sources there are." }, { "from": "sicanje", "type": "tradition", "name": "Sicanje", "as": "Recorded by a doctor and an archaeologist, which is the usual pair." }, { "from": "shway-yoe", "type": "person", "name": "Shway Yoe", "as": "And the problem with it." }, { "from": "truhelka-gluck", "type": "person", "name": "Truhelka and Glück", "as": "The pattern." }, { "from": "exhibited", "type": "story", "name": "Exhibited", "as": "The same problem in another medium." } ] }, { "schema": 1, "id": "whose-designs", "type": "issue", "names": { "name": "Whose designs", "said": "Closed motifs, earned marks, and a queue of visitors" }, "region": [ "worldwide" ], "facets": { "family": "none" }, "text": { "what": "Several traditions on this site hold that certain designs may not be worn by people who have not earned them. That rule is theirs to state and not this site's to adjudicate.", "story": "Cordilleran elders hold that copying an old warrior's chest design marks a person as a killer and brings bad luck, blindness or an early death — and men who fought in the 1960s and 70s declined the marks on that advice. Kalinga inheritance rules held that tattooing could only pass down a bloodline. Sak yant carries rules the bearer keeps afterwards. *Moko kauae* is worn by Māori women.\n\nWhat this site does: state the rule where a tradition states it, name who states it, and print no design as available. What this site does not do: decide who may wear what, or rank the arguments." }, "text_th": { "what": "หลายธรรมเนียมบนเว็บนี้ถือว่าลายบางลายสวมไม่ได้ถ้าไม่ได้มาด้วยการกระทำ กฎนั้นเป็นของพวกเขา ไม่ใช่ของเว็บนี้ที่จะตัดสิน" }, "kin": [ { "to": "kalinga-cordillera", "as": "Where the rule is stated plainly.", "rel": "tradition" }, { "to": "whang-od", "as": "And where it was changed, from inside.", "rel": "person" } ], "sources": [ "s:wp-batok", "s:wp-whang-od", "s:wp-cultural-appropriation" ], "provenance": { "default": { "tier": "cited", "source": "s:wp-batok" }, "fields": { "text_th": { "tier": "inference", "note": "written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated" } } }, "confidence": "high", "tags": [ "start-here" ], "updated": "2026-09-19", "kin_in": [] } ] }