Erawan Shrine

About

The Erawan Shrine, formally the Thao Maha Phrom Shrine (ศาลท้าวมหาพรหม, San Thao Maha Phrom, 'Shrine of Lord Maha Brahma'), stands at the busy Ratchaprasong intersection of Ratchadamri Road in Bangkok's Pathum Wan District, beside the Grand Hyatt Erawan hotel and a short walk from the BTS Skytrain's Chit Lom Station.

At its centre is a gilded image of Phra Phrom, the Thai form of Brahmā, the four-faced Hindu god of creation. The same name 'Maha Brahma' also evokes Mahābrahmā, the ruler of the Brahma realm in Buddhist cosmology. Around the shrine devotees offer flowers, incense, and elephants, and Thai dance troupes are often hired by worshippers to perform in fulfilment of vows answered at the shrine.

Though nominally Hindu in form, Phra Phrom is honoured here largely in a Thai folk-religious register, as a guardian spirit whose favour brings protection and prosperity. The Erawan Shrine is one of the most visited devotional sites in Bangkok, and is encircled by a small constellation of related shrines to Hindu deities, Phra Laksami (Lakṣmī), Phra Trimurati (Trimūrti), Phra Khanet (Gaṇeśa), Phra In (Indra), and Phra Narai Song Suban (Nārāyaṇa on his Garuḍa).

History

The shrine was raised in 1956 beside the state-owned Erawan Hotel after a string of mishaps, cost overruns, injured labourers, a lost shipload of Italian marble, were blamed on the foundation having been laid on an inauspicious date. On an astrologer's counsel, Thailand's Fine Arts Department designed and cast an image of Lord Brahma, consecrated on 9 November 1956, and the hotel's construction proceeded without further trouble. The image was destroyed by a man suffering severe psychiatric illness in March 2006 and was carefully recast within weeks. On 17 August 2015 a bomb attack at the shrine killed twenty people and wounded many more, an act mourned across Bangkok; the shrine reopened within two days and devotion has continued unbroken since.

Significance

Devotees offer flowers, incense, and carved wooden elephants before Lord Brahma here, and worshippers whose prayers are answered often commission Thai dance troupes to perform in thanksgiving. The shrine stands as one of Bangkok's most visible points of contact between Hindu and Buddhist devotional life, its four faces looking out over one of the city's busiest intersections at the meeting of prayer and commerce.

Architecture

Thai-Hindu shrine architecture; open-air gilded pavilion with a four-faced image of Brahma at its centre