Yantra cloth

What it is

A yantra cloth is a length of fabric, usually red, black or white, covered with esoteric Buddhist designs known as yantra. People in Southeast Asia keep such cloths as spiritual insurance for a household or a single person, and the protection sought is thought to reach the dead as well. The cloths are very common. A psychologist who writes about superstition treats them as an unorthodox strand of Buddhist practice rather than an official one, and some pieces carry imagery whose meaning even readers of the designs find unclear.

How it is done

Making one traditionally is not simply a matter of printing. Ritual actions and khatha writings, that is, inscribed formulae, go together with recitation, and black magic is named as part of the process meant to give the finished piece its power for people who believe in it. Cloth sold through modern marketing may be factory-made and never pass through any of this. Some pieces are sibylline, their sense unsettled even for those familiar with the designs.

Tools and materials

The base is cloth, and the colour is part of it: red, black or white. Onto the fabric go the yantra, esoteric designs of Buddhist origin, and khatha writings, short formulae that are inscribed rather than spoken aloud. Animal imagery appears as well. Among Khmer pieces made for house protection, the rain quail is the usual figure. Thai examples may instead carry a Buddhist divinity, Nang Kwak or Thao Kuwen, or a monk who has died, Luang Phor Koon being one.

What it is for

Most often the cloth is a guard for a building. It may also be cut and sewn into a shirt for a Bokator fighter, Bokator being a Khmer martial art, to strengthen him in a match, and some of these shirts have been taken up by competitors from outside the region, Thiago Silva among them. In Chinese practice the cloth serves a different end entirely: it is laid over a body after death.

Peoples and places

Thailand and Cambodia are the two countries where the custom is most at home. Khmer pieces for the home tend to be illustrated with rain quails, while Thai pieces more often honour a Buddhist figure or a monk who is remembered after death. Chinese communities use the same kind of decorated fabric in funerary practice. Through Bokator the fighting shirts have travelled abroad with international competitors.

What people believe

Behind the cloth sits a world of Buddhist figures and of spirits that can do a household harm. Protection is asked of divinities, of monks remembered after their death, and of the inscribed designs themselves. Evil spirits are the danger a new house is shielded from. Practitioners hold that the object works because the rites and formulae were carried out properly, which is why those rites are held to matter to the result.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Stuart Vyse, a psychologist who writes on superstition, counts the cloths as an unorthodox Buddhist superstition, common as they are. His reading places them among practices that many people use but that formal teaching does not require. Separately, some pieces are described as sibylline: their imagery resists a settled reading, even for people who know the designs well.

Today

The cloth has not stayed local. Shirts made from it are worn by Bokator competitors and have become popular with international fighters, Thiago Silva being one named example. At the same time, factory production supplies a market that never involves a ritual specialist. The same object therefore leads two lives: a ritually prepared protection for a household, and a mass-produced item sold through ordinary marketing.

Questions people ask about Yantra cloth

Good reading and sources

• Yantra cloth on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data