Yantra Tattooing - History

History

Chinese chronicles describe yantra tattooing among the Thai cultures of southwestern China and northwestern Vietnam at least 2000 years ago. Over the centuries the tradition spread to what is now Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and parts of Myanmar.

The script used for yantra designs varies according to cultural and geographic factors. In Cambodia and central Thailand, Khmer script is used, while in northern Thailand one sees yantra tattoos bearing Shan, Northern Thai or Tai Lu scripts, and in Laos the Lao Tham script is employed. The script spells out abbreviated syllables from Pali incantations. Different masters have added to these designs over the centuries through visions received in their meditations. Some yantra designs have been adapted from pre-Buddhist Shamanism and the belief in animal spirits that was found in the Southeast Asian sub-continent and incorporated into the Thai tradition and cultures. Today it is most popular in Thailand, whereas in Cambodia and Laos the tradition has almost completely vanished.

Read more about this topic:  Yantra Tattooing

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    The history of this country was made largely by people who wanted to be left alone. Those who could not thrive when left to themselves never felt at ease in America.
    Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)

    The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.
    Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)

    Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)