Skip to content
New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Animist religion for Thai shrines #3063

Closed
mishari opened this issue Jul 13, 2021 · 21 comments
Closed

Animist religion for Thai shrines #3063

mishari opened this issue Jul 13, 2021 · 21 comments
Assignees

Comments

@mishari
Copy link

mishari commented Jul 13, 2021

Many shrines in Thailand should be tagged religion=animist, I would like to request this as an option in the app.

@matkoniecz
Copy link
Member

https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/religion=animist is used but quite rarely, documented at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key%3Areligion

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism reveals that topic is quite tricky, I need to learn a bit to have some basic knowledge about this topic.

@westnordost
Copy link
Member

westnordost commented Jul 13, 2021 via email

@westnordost
Copy link
Member

So I'd rather see this as denomination=thai_buddhism or similar, though in Thailand this information is probably not useful as 99.9% places that are Buddhist are Thai Bhuddist

@mishari
Copy link
Author

mishari commented Jul 19, 2021

@westnordost I did a survey in Thai groups to ask which religion they would identify spirit houses would belong to and 70% responded "local religion" which translates to animism. This is the general consensus in the Thai community forum as well. https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=73213

@westnordost
Copy link
Member

westnordost commented Jul 19, 2021

Cool, thanks for starting a discussion there. Note though that most people active on the forum are farangs. I'll also try to get another opinion from a few acquaintances.

Regarding religion=animism, additionally to what I wrote, I am quite wary about adding this:

  1. I wouldn't call animism is a religion. And if it was, it is the question if animism in America should be tagged the same as Animism in South East Asia or elsewhere
  2. The number of shrines mapped so far, even in Bangkok, is very low, considering in realitity, they are around every corner. See http://overpass-turbo.eu/s/19xz . In the given Overpass link, nearly all of those mapped so far already include the information that they are sprit houses (in description, not religion).
  3. And this is what I thought: Spirit houses are small enough that they are usually not really visible on aerial imagery. A survey is required. So these spirit houses are usually added from a survey or when looking through mapillary imagery. And it it looks like the surveyors so far already considered right away to mark them as spirit houses in one way or another. So, no real information is gained when religion is added to these nodes.

Maybe StreetComplete should instead not ask for the religion of shrines that have a description or image set?
Because, is it actually easily answerable if a shrine is dedicated to some hindu god, ancestors or "the spirit of the house"? F.e. I wouldn't be able to tell with this one https://images.mapillary.com/GPXHzoJdNQA0AeZxSQ4E1w/thumb-2048.jpg - would you?

@nitinatsangsit
Copy link

nitinatsangsit commented Jul 20, 2021

Although most Thais call themselves Buddhist, I don't think that all of their rituals should be classified as Buddhism, folk Buddhism, or something similar. Most Buddhist monks won't do anything at the spirit house, but a Brahmin (Hindu priest) will. According to some scholars, Thai belief was a mixture of Phut, Phram, and Phi (Buddhism, Hinduism, and Animism).

Although a mixture is common, we can distinguish the main belief at each place of worship. To compare, in Japan we have religion=buddhist and religion=shinto, while in China we have religion=buddhist, religion=taoist, religion=chinese_folk, and religion=confucian. In those two countries, we often see a mixture of beliefs too. In Thailand, thus, using of religion=buddhist, religion=hindu, and religion=animist makes sense. If we wish to distinguish them from somewhere else, adding a denomination=* to them is a better way.

Because, is it actually easily answerable if a shrine is dedicated to some hindu god, ancestors or "the spirit of the house"? F.e. I wouldn't be able to tell with this one https://images.mapillary.com/GPXHzoJdNQA0AeZxSQ4E1w/thumb-2048.jpg - would you?

This is a shrine of Brahma, a hindu god, so religion=hindu is preferable. IMO, adding a religion=* to a wayside_shrine is at least better than doing nothing, although it is not required.

@stephankn
Copy link

Look at the large list of "others" in the religion key. So the religion=* key is actively in use for spiritual beliefs which are not necessarily classified as religion.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:religion

@matkoniecz
Copy link
Member

matkoniecz commented Jul 20, 2021

Still religion=animism seems to be like putting religion=polytheism

Even if used widely, religion=polytheism or religion=monotheism is not something that would be promoted by responsible editing software.

@westnordost
Copy link
Member

Right, good point, @stephankn , what counts is how the tag religion is used, not what would be the definition of a religion.

If animism were to be added, what would be a reasonable icon though? Maybe something with eyes, to symbolize the belief that spirits inhere in things, thus are aware, i.e. see?

@stephankn
Copy link

The spirit house should come as a preset with a fixed tagging. So no need to select the religion. See google image search for "Thai Spirit House" to get an impression about the typical look.
A line-drawing might look like this non-free: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/wooden-spirit-house-cartoon-vector-illustration-563242879

@westnordost
Copy link
Member

This Ticket is about the "what religion does this shrine have?" quest that is asked for all shrines in the world that have none tagged.

@westnordost
Copy link
Member

I.e. your comment is not applicable

@stephankn
Copy link

Ah, I get the context. Maybe the quest is not fully matching here. So instead of asking for a religion, the right question would be whether that wayside shrine is a Thai Spirit House. And if yes, you would apply the tagging. If not, you could ask for other details.
But probably the quest does not work multi-staged like this, as you are running the same quest also on the wayside_shrine in other parts, right?

Can you make quests location aware? So that a historic=wayside_shrine without religion tag in Thailand results in other questions/order of questions than the same missing tag in for example Germany? In Thailand, they are most probably Spirit houses. So you could ask for this first. In Germany probably something religion=christian. And in that case you might be interested in knowing denomination as well.

@Helium314
Copy link
Collaborator

Maybe there could be an answer "It's a spirit house", similiar to "It's a picnic table" for the bench backrest quest?

@westnordost
Copy link
Member

westnordost commented Jul 21, 2021

Even though possible, I'd not want to make this that complicated. Basically, it comes down to this question:

What would a Thai answer to the question "What is the religion of this shrine?" when asked for a spirit house?
(or better: What would anyone answer? - if possible)

If it is "Animist", then we need to add "Animist" as a religion.


In the meantime, I asked someone who graduated in Thai studies. She said that it is a difficult topic as on one hand, also monks participate in things like the inauguration of spirit houses, administer those colorful ribbons around trees, the tattoos and lucky charms but at the same time, she was quite sure that at least the higher ups in the church hierarchy would say that these practices are not at all part of Buddhism.

She mentioned that exorcism for example was also a somewhat pagan practice and still is somehow attributed to Christianity. Nowadays, at least in Europe, Christians would say that this belief is superstition, but does that change the fact that it was practiced by Christian priests in the past (and elsewhere probably still), i.e. was/is part of the religion? Would a blessing given by a Christian priest, or a crucifix on the door, to ward off demons be considered Animist?

Not so long ago, it was common to put grotesque faces on the facade of buildings in Europe, citation:

To ward off evil, builders in Europe had grimacing heads of animals, people or fabulous monsters made of stone or wood attached to doors. According to popular belief, the head of envy should ward off calamity and evil (apotropaic act). The evil forces and spirits should not envy the people in the buildings covered with them and should not turn them against the residents.

- Neidkopf (German Wikipedia)

In English, also known as Gargoyles and those can be found on churches too, right?

In any case, she said, that it will very likely depend on who is asked. People that somewhat think that such practices are superstition would probably answer that it is an animist practice. But the others, maybe not. She promised me that she would ask a few of her Thai friends - which are all academics though.


Edit: My impression so far is that if there is no clear answer to this, we should not make this about the religion. I.e. if it is not super easy for the surveyor to give an answer - or that answer may differ from person to person - , then it is the wrong question to ask. As @stephankn and @nitinatsangsit hinted at, the question should rather be, is this a spirit house or a shrine?
But if the answer "it is a spirit house" just results in it being tagged "Animist", I think we are doing something wrong. Because this means, that we'd assume interpretational sovereignty over whether a spirit house is animist, "a mixture of hindu, animist and buddhism" or something else, while this is not the point. The point is whether something is a spirit house or not. In other words - maybe there should be a special tagging for spirit houses, i.e. not identify a spirit house by its religion, but by a (sub)tag .

@matkoniecz

This comment has been minimized.

@westnordost

This comment has been minimized.

@stephankn
Copy link

Seems we are struggling here with the key "religion", which is according to the wiki already in use for spiritual beliefs which are not really considered a religion.

A spirit house matches very well the definition of a wayside shrine. and as these are in OSM then sub-classified by the religion key, this will then probably the right one to use.

Wikipedia gives some hints. Compare the description of the different languages, as it hints what it is about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_house
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Phra_Phum
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maison_des_esprits

They all agree that these are from animist beliefs, which are tolerated by Buddhism and coexists in south-east asia.
This led to the consent that religion=animist fits quite well.

They are not Buddhist, even with a larger part of the population having one.
Our house in Chiang Mai doesn't. And setting one up would require a ceremony held by a "specialist". Certainly not by Thai Monks.,

@nitinatsangsit
Copy link

nitinatsangsit commented Jul 22, 2021

We can assume that a "spirit house" is an animist shrine.
However, things are a little more difficult. Nowadays, some large buildings or projects are constructing a Brahma shrine (with an inauguration by a Brahmin) instead of a spirit house, or both, with not much different appearance. This custom was inspired by an Erawan Shrine.
For an example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_house#/media/File:Spirit_houses..JPG . The left one is a spirit house, and the right one is a Brahma shrine. Although they are look alike, I believe we can tell them quite simply. A Brahma shrine must have a statue of Brahma (the Hindu god with 4 faces and 8 hands). Meanwhile, elsewhere, we can see a Buddha shrine, a shrine with a Buddha image. It is not difficult to distinguish them then tag the religion, if not, you can leave it empty.

@westnordost
Copy link
Member

Ok, so any ideas for an icon? Or just no icon at all?

@nitinatsangsit
Copy link

I have no idea about an icon. General icon for wayside_shrine might be ok.

@westnordost westnordost self-assigned this Jul 23, 2021
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment
Labels
None yet
Projects
None yet
Development

No branches or pull requests

6 participants