# Peeps at Many Lands: Siam/Chapter 9

There are temples everywhere in Siam, some not much bigger than barns; others, great buildings with high roofs and stately surroundings. Some are quite new, gay in all their glory of gold and varied colour; others are old, dirty, and crumbling to dust. Temples are not usually repaired; they are built and then allowed to go to ruin. A temple is not a place to worship in; for, strictly speaking, there is no one to worship, Buddha does not ask for people to kneel to him. He was a man, not a god, and he became holy because he lived a sinless life. Any other man who lived a life like his would become a Buddha too. And a temple is not built to pray in, because there is no one to whom to pray. Every man must save himself by his own deeds, and Buddha does not pretend to hear and answer prayers. In the temples sacred books are read, chants are sung, and occasionally sermons are preached, but there is no worship and no prayer quite in the way we understand and practise these things.
To understand, then, why so many temples are built, you must know something more about the Buddhist religion. Buddha taught that when we die our souls pass into other bodies. If we have been very wicked in this life, we may be reborn as cats, or toads, or beetles. If we have been very good, we may re​appear as nobles or princes, or perhaps live in another world as angels. The man who has lived the perfect life, who has neither thought, said, nor done anything wrong, goes to Nirvana, where there is everlasting peace, and where no trouble, sorrow, or sickness of any kind is ever known. When Nirvana is reached, the soul rests for ever, and is not born again, either in the heavens or on the earth.
When a person dies, all the good and all the evil he has done are added up, and a kind of balance is struck. The happiness or misery of the person in his next life depends on whether he has a good or a bad balance. There are many things that we may do in this life that go to the good side of the account. To do these things is to "make merit." Some actions only make a little merit; others make a great deal of merit. One of the best ways of getting a big figure on the right side of the account is, according to the priests, to build a temple. Hence, when a man is rich enough, he builds a house for the Buddha, where his image may be seen, his lessons learned, and his praises sung. But once the temple is built, the matter is finished, and there is no need to repair it. The Buddhist says that though the temples will crumble away, yet his children will build others, so that there will always be plenty of churches, and many opportunities of making merit in this way.
The Siamese word wat means all the buildings enclosed in the sacred wall, and includes the houses where the priests live, the holy buildings where the images are kept, and numerous spiral ornaments that ​cover relics. The most sacred of these buildings is the bawt. Near the four corners, north, south, east, and west, there are four stones, carved in the shape of the leaf of the Bo-tree, the tree under which Gautama became Buddha. When the bawt is erected, consecrated water is poured over these stones, and evil spirits are thus for ever prevented from entering.
In the temple grounds there are always a number of graceful tapering structures, which cover relics, or supposed relics. You will see some of these in several of the pictures in this book. They sometimes stand directly on the ground, but at other times the slender spires will be found over the doorways, or even on the tops of the buildings. There is a story which says that after Buddha's death one of his disciples gave away all the property of the Teacher to the other followers. He meant to keep nothing at all for himself, but on finding one of Buddha's teeth, he looked longingly upon it, and then took it and quietly hid it in the coil of hair which many Hindus wear upon the top of the head. One of the gods in the heavens saw the deed, flew swiftly down to earth, snatched the precious relic from its hiding-place, and buried it under a great mound, which he built in a tapering fashion to resemble the tuft of hair in which the tooth had been concealed. Others, however, say that the shape of these relic mounds is due to the fact that Buddha told his disciples, as he lay on his death-bed, to bury his bones under a mound shaped like a heap of rice.
The chief building has straight walls with rectangular openings for windows. There are no beautiful arches, ​no carving, and no stained glass. The roof is made in tiers, which overlap one another, and are covered with beautiful coloured tiles—amber, gold, green, scarlet, and blue. Groups of great teak pillars are so arranged that a cool and shady walk surrounds the building. The outside, with the exception of the roof, is whitewashed, and when the midday sun beats down upon the wat the place glitters and shines—one big splash of white crowned with fantastic colours.
Inside there is little light, and if the roof be high the rafters are hidden in darkness. At the far end sits an enormous gilded image of Buddha, surrounded by smaller images of himself and his disciples, some with raised hands, as if about to speak; others with fans before their faces, as if to shield them from the evils and the sorrows of the world. The number of these images is sometimes very great. In one of the temples in Ayuthia, the old capital, there are no fewer than 20,000 of them.
At the end of the ridge of the temple roof, at the corners of the gables, and in many other places, there are graceful curved horns. These represent the head of the Naga, or snake with seven heads, who curled himself round the Teacher's body and shielded him with his seven heads when he was attacked by the Evil One under the Bo-tree.
In connexion with the temple there are one or more salas, or rest-houses. To build a sala is another way of making merit, and as it costs less to put up one of these wooden rest-houses than to build a temple, there are thousands of them in the country. They are to be ​found upon the banks of the rivers and canals, in lonely parts of the jungle, on waste land near the towns and villages—in fact, almost anywhere and everywhere. They consist of a platform raised a few feet above the ground, and covered by a roof which is supported on a few poles. There are no walls or partitions. Here the traveller may rest, eat, and sleep. He pays no rent, gets no comforts, and is often interfered with by the local lunatic, the casual traveller, or a crowd of merry, inquisitive children. He may not complain, for the slender platform is free to all comers.
One of the best-known temples in Bangkok is at the Golden Hill. This hill is made of bricks and mortar, and stands about two hundred feet high. Trees, shrubs, and creepers have grown over it, and it is not at first easy to believe that the hill is the work of man. On the top is a snow-white spire, and under the spire, in a gilded shrine, there is a glass model of one of Buddha's teeth. For three days every year the people come in thousands to worship this tooth. They buy a bit of gold-leaf or a few wax flowers, and then they mount to the top of the hill. There they stick the gold leaf on the iron railings round the shrine, light the candles, throw the wax flowers into a big bonfire, and bang a few drums. When they have completed all these little acts of devotion, they go to the foot of the hill again. At the bottom a grand fair is going on. There are lotteries of all kinds, tea-houses, crowds of merry young men and women, dozens of yellow-robed priests, side-shows with giant women and two-headed snakes. It is all laughter, chatter, and enjoyment.
​In another temple there is an image of Buddha asleep. The idol is 175 feet long, and has a whole building to itself. The gigantic figure is made of brick and covered with gilded cement. It is 18 feet across the chest; the feet are 5 yards long; the toes, which are each of equal length, measure 1 yard.