Thailand — Commodification of Prayer at the Erawan Shrine

Step-by-step video sequence

A practice rooted in ancient heritage

The ritual from the devotees’ point of view

The ritual from the singers-dancers’ point of view

The work and its constraints

Critical perspective

Conclusion

The Erawan Shrine, also known as the Thao Maha Phrom Shrine (ศาลท้าวมหาพรหม), is dedicated to the god Brahmā — or Mahābrahmā —, one of the principal deities of the Hindu Trimūrti. Although Thailand is predominantly Theravāda Buddhist, Hindu deities continue to be widely venerated there, as in neighboring Cambodia.

Singers-dancers perform daily votive songs and dances drawn from the traditional Thai repertoire: rabam thep bantheng, krailas samrerng, or putthanuparp. These performances are today one of the last permanent examples — in both Thailand and Cambodia — of a heritage of votive dances of Indian origin transmitted by the former courts of Southeast Asia.

Introduced into the Khmer Empire from the early centuries CE with the spread of Brahmanic influences, these practices later spread to the territories of present-day Thailand, particularly from the late 12^th century onward. After the fall of Angkor in 1431, the Ayutthaya court continued their transmission and adaptation. This heritage has survived into the 21^st century through the various court traditions of Siam and then contemporary Thailand.

The Erawan Shrine illustrates what Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger have called the “invention of tradition.” The ancient symbolic structure — dance as a bodily offering addressed to the deity — remains, while its social, economic, and spatial context has undergone profound transformation. As Marshall Sahlins observed with the concept of “structures in history,” deep cultural schemas continue to be reactivated and updated in new historical contexts without losing their fundamental symbolic coherence.

Devotees, whether regular or occasional, come to pray before the gilded statue of Brahmā to offer prayers, offerings, and wishes. When their wishes are granted, they often return to the shrine to commission a votive dance (ram kae bon, รำแก้บน) as a sign of gratitude. Depending on the financial means of the sponsors, anywhere from two to eight dancers may be hired for a single performance.

This arrangement is generally not perceived as a vulgar commodification of the sacred, but rather as a pragmatic way of relating to the divine in a dense urban environment. Entrusting the performance to specialists ensures the proper execution of the ritual, which is essential to its symbolic efficacy.

The number of dancers plays a significant role: it does not merely reflect a difference in financial means, but publicly demonstrates the intensity of the devotee’s gratitude or debt to the deity. This echoes Marcel Mauss’s analyses of the gift: the offering is never a simple economic transaction, but part of a complex system of reciprocity involving obligations, recognition, and social relations. The shrine thus reveals a clear division of ritual functions: the devotee provides the intention, the promise, and the funding; the dancers provide the bodily and aesthetic expression of the relationship with the divine.

The singer-dancers can be either professionals of classical Thai dance or performers trained more quickly for the sanctuary's needs. They know a limited repertoire of songs and choreographic sequences. These positions are highly sought after due to their compensation, which is calculated based on the number of performances given. During peak periods, each of the two permanent troupes can perform up to two hundred sequences per day, with each group bringing together about a dozen performers.

The dancers occupy an ambivalent position, characteristic of contemporary ritual settings: they are simultaneously mediators of the sacred, guardians of a cultural heritage, and workers subject to intense physical demands and heavy economic pressures. Their bodies become the central medium of the ritual: gestures, postures, gazes, hand movements, and control of the ritualized smile form a codified body language transmitted from ancient Siamese traditions.

Marcel Mauss spoke of “techniques of the body,” while Thomas Csordas highlights the bodily dimension of ritual: song, posture, and movement merge into a single bodily offering addressed to Brahmā.

This organization also relies on a clear sexual division of labor: women occupy the visible space of sacred mediation (dance and song), while men are mostly associated with musical accompaniment or technical roles. This configuration contrasts sharply with major Theravāda Buddhist temples such as Wat Pho, where monks hold the institutional monopoly on ritual.

Although this activity is relatively well paid, it imposes particularly demanding working conditions. The dancers have very little rest time and often eat their meals between performances. The shrine, located in a very busy area of Bangkok dominated by hotels, shopping centers, car traffic, and the elevated train, continuously welcomes tourists, devotees, and photographers.

The performers thus work under constant visibility in a saturated sound environment where urban noise is an integral part of the ritual landscape.

This activity is part of a genuine ritual economy based on continuous bodily availability. The dancers do not merely produce an aesthetic performance: they maintain a permanent emotional and symbolic presence in a space saturated with religious, touristic, and commercial demands. The contrast is often striking between the traditional headdresses, sacred music, and gestures inherited from Siamese courts, and the smartphones, advertising screens, or tourists filming just a few meters from the altars.

The shrine thus reveals a progressive blurring of the boundaries between religious devotion, cultural heritage, public spectacle, and the tourist economy. 

Critical perspective

Despite the professionalism of the performers, some performances show a decline in artistic standards: approximate synchronization of movements, sometimes reduced gestural precision, or musicians distracted by their cell phones.

This situation echoes the “routinization of charisma” described by Max Weber. The intensive repetition of performances, essential to the shrine’s economic continuity, gradually tends to standardize the ritual gesture. What was once a highly symbolically charged act can become a repetitive technical sequence subject to demands of productivity and visibility.

The image of musicians checking their phones is particularly telling: it materializes the coexistence of two temporal regimes — that of the sacred act, based on codified repetition, and that of contemporary hyper-connectivity, characterized by fragmented attention. Yet, despite this partial standardization, devotees continue to attribute full symbolic efficacy to the ritual. The religious experience does not disappear under the effect of the market economy; it transforms and reconfigures itself within its very constraints.