Article

Temples

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Temples

Temples

Temples in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo constitute a diverse architectural and religious landscape that spans Buddhist, Hindu, and Chinese folk traditions, and that has been shaped by centuries of migration, colonial administration, and cross-cultural exchange. The records preserved in the Society’s journal reveal a subject of considerable scholarly interest, ranging from the excavation of a ninth-century brick chedi (Buddhist stupa) in southern Thailand to the ceremonial dedication of a Chinese temple in Malacca and the institutional history of Buddhist communities in Penang. These monuments and their associated practices served not merely as houses of worship but as sites of economic activity, ethnic negotiation, and political expression, their histories reflecting the broader currents of trade, conquest, and community formation across the region.

Architectural Syncretism and Early Buddhist Monuments

The chedi at Wat Keo, Chaiya, Suratthani, in southern Thailand, exemplifies the complex architectural traditions that characterised early Buddhist monument-building in the region. M.C. Subhadradis Diskul, reporting on the Thai Fine Arts Department’s 1976 and 1979 excavation and restoration, identified the structure as a rare syncretic fusion of Cham, Indonesian, and Dvaravati traditions dating no earlier than the mid-ninth century A.D. [1]. The chedi is a 12-metre-high brick structure on a square redented base of 24 metres per side, containing four chambers oriented to the cardinal directions, each with a porch and green sandstone lintels, door-jambs, and sills [1, p. 1].

Diskul distinguished three construction phases visible in the masonry. The central body employs vegetable mortar—lime and sugar-cane juice—a technique characteristic of Cham and Khmer architecture, while the upper and lower bases use clay mortar in the Dvaravati brick-and-vacant-space pattern [1, p. 1]. The double pilasters at the corners of the eastern facade, each with a central depression, are attributed to the Cham Dong-duong style of the mid-ninth century, while the four-chamber layout echoes central Javanese shrines such as Candi Kalasan and Candi Sewu [1, p. 1]. This four-chamber arrangement distinguishes the monument from Khmer or Cham structures, which typically have a single east-facing chamber [1, p. 1].

The excavation yielded sculptural material spanning multiple periods and traditions. The most significant find was a 69 cm red sandstone seated Buddha in the attitude of subduing Mara, carved in high relief with a back slab, whose double vajra on the pedestal and half-Indian, half-Chinese lions suggested an original Mahayana Vajrayana dedication later converted to Theravada [1, pp. 3–4]. Professor Jean Boisselier dated this statue to the tenth century A.D., later than the chedi itself [1, p. 4]. Hindu objects—a Sivalinga (a phallic representation of the god Shiva) and two seated Ganesa statuettes—were also recovered from the eastern chamber, indicating a period of Buddhist-Hindu syncretism at the site [1, p. 4]. Multiple red sandstone Buddha images of the Ayudhya period (sixteenth–seventeenth centuries) confirmed at least one major restoration of the chedi during that era [1, pp. 1–3].

Diskul further examined the relationship between the chedi and Sanskrit inscription no. 23 from Wat Sema Muang, which records that the king of Srivijaya built three brick prasats (shrines) in 775 A.D. to honour Padmapani, the Buddha, and Vajrapani [1, p. 4]. While some Thai scholars had identified the chedi at Wat Keo as one of these three, Diskul noted that the stylistic dating of the monument was inconsistent with that early date, and the excavation revealed no evidence of a pre-existing Srivijayan terrace as proposed by H. G. Quaritch Wales [1, p. 4].

Chinese Temple Architecture and Craftsmanship

The Cheng Hoon Teng in Temple Street, Malacca, stands as the oldest Chinese temple in Malaya, though the precise date of its foundation remains obscure [2]. C.A. Gibson-Hill, in a 1955 article, examined six carved wooden corbel-blocks in the temple and argued that they were south Indian works of the late eighteenth century, produced by craftsmen connected to the British Madras garrison that occupied Malacca from 1795 [2]. The temple’s stone tablets record restorations in 1625, 1648, and 1681, placing its original establishment at or before c. 1600 [2, pp. 173–174]. The main hall was rebuilt in 1801 by the Capitan China Chua Su Cheong, who also added two smaller halls for Taoist worship [2, pp. 173–174].

The six corbel-blocks, which support the lantern beams of the centre hall, are unique among Chinese temples in Malaya in both subject and execution [2, p. 175]. Each represents a recognisable human figure: two dapper gentlemen with European features in the formal dress of East India Company officials; two further European figures in military costume, each seated on a mastiff-like dog with a coin in its mouth; and two Chinese figures, bare from the waist upwards, one perched on what appear to be ingots of tin [2, p. 175]. Dr John Irwin at the India Museum, London, identified all six as south Indian work of the latter part of the eighteenth century, noting a particular resemblance to the wooden effigy of an East India Company official being eaten by a tiger, made for Tippoo Sahib and recovered from the ruins of Seringapatam in 1799 [2, p. 176].

Gibson-Hill’s explanation for the presence of south Indian craftsmanship in a Chinese temple rests on the demographic and economic conditions of the period. By far the greater part of the early Chinese immigrants to Malaya were unskilled labourers, and competent craftsmen had no inducement to leave China unless they wished to make a fortune as merchants [2, p. 177]. All the decorative work on the earlier Chinese temples in Singapore was brought down from China ready for fitting, and local Chinese stonemasons proved unable to reproduce traditional forms satisfactorily [2, p. 177]. The British occupation of Malacca in 1795, with its Madras garrison, provided the most likely channel through which south Indian craftsmen reached the temple for the 1801 rebuilding [2, p. 177].

The figures were already in situ by 1863, when Col. Cavenagh visited the temple and noted that they represented “the different nationalities by which the temple is supposed to be sustained” [2, p. 178]. Four derivative copies of the central pair appear in the Chwee Eng Shui I, Singapore, built and endowed by Tan Kim Seng in 1858; the workmanship is inferior, with disproportions attributable to incompetence rather than the deliberate caricature of the originals [2, pp. 178–179].

Ritual Practice and Community Life

The ceremonial life of Chinese temples in Malaya is documented in considerable detail by S.M. Middlebrook, a Malayan Civil Service officer, who published a first-hand account in 1939 of the two-week Cho Cheo (praying) ceremony marking the dedication of a new temple to Dato Choo Ong Yah at Kandang, Malacca [3]. The god at Kandang had been brought from the Chiang Chew district of Fukkien by a crew of fishermen more than two centuries before 1938, and the temple being replaced had stood for ninety-seven years [3, p. 98].

Middlebrook documented the sequential ceremonies of the dedication: the selection of auspicious dates through a necromancer and the casting of bamboo tallies, the invitation of the four younger brothers in procession, the dispatch of heavenly bodyguards to the five cardinal directions, the planting of two signal bamboos, and the culminating eye-marking of the centre beam on the seventh day [3]. The two signal bamboos were 50–60 feet tall, with thirteen cash (one per month plus the intercalary month) buried at their bases; lanterns hung eight feet from the ground were kept burning all night to guide heavenly spirits down the bamboo into the temple [3, p. 103]. The eye-marking ceremony, in which a pen dipped in the blood of a red cock’s comb was used to paint the eyes of two phoenixes and touch the Pat Kwa (eight diagrams) on the centre beam, lasted approximately six hours despite the actual painting taking only a few minutes [3, pp. 105–106].

The centre beam bore a gold-lettered inscription calling for the blessing of heavenly spirits on all persons in Malacca regardless of race and creed, partly because some of the temple’s construction funds had been subscribed by non-Chinese, including Europeans [3, p. 106]. Middlebrook situated the Kandang ceremony within the broader cycle of the Wangkang (grand cleansing ceremony), in which a model junk carrying captured evil spirits is floated out to sea. Performed roughly every fifteen years, the Wangkang was first staged at Kandang about 100 years prior to 1938 and is unique to Malacca in the Malay Peninsula, known only from two districts in Fukkien in China [3, p. 100].

Katharine Sim’s 1950 ethnographic note documents the cult of the White Tiger (Bai Hu) in Chinese temples across Penang [4]. The White Tiger is one of the four divine creatures of the cardinal directions (Black Tortoise/north, Vermillion Phoenix/south, Azure Dragon/east, White Tiger/west) and is present in almost every Chinese temple on the island, yet his effigy is invariably tucked into a dark corner, a cave-like hollow, or behind the sacrificial tables of more prominent deities [4, p. 142]. Sim witnessed a ritual service at the Kwan Yin temple in Pitt Street on the sixteenth day of the lunar month, describing the priest smearing the Tiger’s mouth with fat pork, waving a yellow “Auspicious Document that Exorcises all Evils” over candle flames, grinding miniature boots with a devotee’s sandal, and spitting on a white shirt belonging to a sick person or an unfaithful husband [4, pp. 143–144]. During the Japanese occupation the Tiger was “extremely popular,” with the Pitt Street shrine so crowded it was “almost impossible to get near it” [4, pp. 142–143].

Institutional History and Colonial Context

B. Liow Woon Khin’s 1989 survey of nine Buddhist temples and two associations in Penang between 1845 and 1948 provides the most systematic institutional account of temple life in the region [5]. Liow argues that these institutions were shaped less by doctrinal purity than by the demographic dominance of Chinese devotees over their originally Thai, Burmese, and Singhalese congregations [5]. The central historical problem he identifies is the progressive absorption of non-Chinese Theravada temples into the orbit of Chinese Buddhist patronage: Chinese New Year replaced ethnic New Year festivals, Chinese inscriptions appeared on shrine halls, and in at least one case—Wat Sawan Arun, later renamed Ang Hock Si—the temple was formally transferred from Thai to Chinese Mahayana management after the Japanese occupation left it without resident monks [5].

Kek Lok Si, the largest Buddhist temple in South-east Asia, received an Imperial Sanction from Emperor Kuang Hsu in 1904, reflecting the Manchu court’s shifting policy toward overseas Chinese [5]. Its Pagoda of Ten Thousand Buddhas cost approximately $200,000 to complete between 1915 and 1930, was funded primarily by Mdm Lim Leng Cheak, and was designed in three architectural sections—Chinese, Thai, and Burmese—reflecting inter-school cooperation [5, pp. 71–72]. The temple also received 70,000 volumes of Buddhist scriptures from Emperor Kuang Hsu under the 1904 Imperial Sanction [5, pp. 71–72].

The Penang Buddhist Association, registered in 1925, attempted to present a “correct” Buddhism free from what its founders considered the superstitious malpractices of the older Pitt Street temples, yet it simultaneously operated a provident fund that attracted thousands of members more interested in financial benefit than doctrinal study [5]. By 1939 the Association owned 49 terrace houses and three bungalows, rented exclusively to members; total membership grew from 540 in 1930 to 16,164 by 1936–1940, of whom 12,011 were Provident Fund subscribers [5, pp. 76–77]. The Japanese occupation emerged as a critical turning point: temples served as refuges for hundreds of Chinese civilians, and the PBA was compelled to pay $46,547.19 in “voluntary gifts” to the occupying forces [5, p. 77].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on temples reveals a progression from colonial-era ethnographic observation to systematic institutional and archaeological study. The earliest contributions, such as Middlebrook’s 1939 account of the Kandang ceremony and Sim’s 1950 note on the White Tiger cult, reflect the convention of presenting indigenous and immigrant religious practices as objects of learned observation, grounded in direct field experience rather than archival documentation [3], [4]. Gibson-Hill’s 1955 article on the Cheng Hoon Teng corbel-blocks represents a shift toward material culture analysis, drawing on museum collections in London and contemporary written accounts to establish the provenance of specific artefacts [2].

By the 1980s and 1990s, the focus had moved toward institutional history and archaeological investigation. Diskul’s 1980 field report on the Wat Keo chedi, produced in collaboration with the Thai Fine Arts Department, brought scientific excavation methodology to bear on a monument of considerable antiquity, while Liow’s 1989 survey of Penang’s Buddhist temples drew on marble inscriptions, land registry documents, court judgements, and oral histories gathered from resident monks to reconstruct a century of institutional change [1], [5]. The Japanese occupation recurs across these studies as a critical juncture, disrupting temple communities, accelerating demographic shifts, and leaving material traces in the form of forced payments and the absence of foreign monks that opened positions to Chinese clergy [5], [4]. A notable pattern across the records is the role of Chinese female philanthropists as principal financial patrons of non-Chinese temples, a phenomenon Liow documents repeatedly but does not develop into a separate analytical argument [5].

MBRAS Sources

References

  1. M.C. Subhadradis Diskul (1980). Chedi at Wat Keo, Chaiya, Suratthani JMBRAS 53(2): 1–4. Read on JSTOR
  2. C.A. Gibson-Hill (1955). Six wooden images in the Cheng Hong Teng, Malacca JMBRAS 28(1): 173–179. Read on JSTOR
  3. S.M. Middlebrook (1939). Ceremonial opening of a new Chinese temple at Kandang, Malacca, in December, 1938 JMBRAS 17(1): 98–106.
  4. K. Sim (1950). The “white tiger” in Penang JMBRAS 23(1): 142–144.
  5. B. Liow Woon Khin (1989). Buddhist temples and associations in Penang JMBRAS 62(1): 57–88.