Marking the skin tattooing the soul : the art, history and spirituality of traditional tattooing in Thailand

Abstract

Marking the Skin, Tattooing the Soul is a study of the traditional tattoo imagery in Thailand, a practice that involves the use of non-mechanical styli to puncture and insert ink under the skin. This study examines a range of popular motifs -figurative, diagrammatical and textual. It identifies historical and contemporary differences in style, placement, form and meaning across northern and central Thailand. For the tattooed Thai, the imagery and design have specific meaning and purpose and are the result of a ritualised process performed by a tattoo master. Through a close examination of historical and contemporary sources, combined with field research in Thailand in 2004 I develop a framework for understanding the meaning and variation in Thai tradition tattoo motifs. Key to this study is the identification of three kinds of tattoo practitioner. The variations in their practice and the tattoo imagery they create are found to be directly related to the cultural and particularly the religious backgrounds of the tattooists. This is explored in the extensive analysis of three types of tattooist -northern Shan shaman, central Thai Buddhist monk and the Brahmanic urban lay tattooist of Bangkok. This examination of the spiritual and cultural practice of different tattoo masters against a close visual analysis of the tattoo imagery they create allows me to develop an innovative and valuable framework for understanding Thai traditional tattooing imagery and practice historically and as it is practised in Thailand today. Show more