BIRMANIA. Medicine and tattooing. Old Burmese Parabaik : lac - Lot 175

BIRMANIA. Medicine and tattooing. Old Burmese Parabaik : lacquered tattoo book. Handwritten collection written in steatite on black paper. 20 sheets (40pages), size : 39,2 x 13,3cm, accordion binding. Patina of the black lacquer covers. Shan state, Burma. These books were written in steatite by the tattoo shaman and served as a "memory aid". They are written on both sides and contain numerous explanations on the prophylactic or protective use of each tattoo, the nat or spirit to be called upon and the role of the magic numbers. History of Burmese tattooing and medicine: from shamanism to the art of tattooing Protection, devotion, healing, decoration but also wish fulfillment and individual or clan demarcation... this is what tattooing in Burma is all about. Magic, prophylaxis, ethnic assimilation or identity claim remain the primary objectives. Protection is the essential function of this art of body adornment. The formidable Burmese warriors fought the Indians, the Thais and the English armed, among others, with tattoos that made them invincible. The tattooed "x", traditionally used to prevent snake bites, deflects bullets. It would have helped the Burmese soldiers in the massacres of the Indians in 1930 and 1938. Still today the Thais are afraid of this tattooed, fierce and under-equipped army. On the contrary, the tattoo does not make Chinese women stronger but... uglier! The motif, close to a spider's web, inscribed from childhood on their faces, was to discourage the kidnapping by the Burmese of these too beautiful women. The legend, which dates back a thousand years, does not of course apply to all clan tattoos. Most of them celebrate the manhood, the courage of the tattooed person or indicate his guardian spirits. Tattooing is the medicine of the body and the soul. The introduction of tattooing in Burmese magic goes back to 2000 years BC. The Shans would have learned the techniques of tattooing in their original settlement, the south of China. They would have then transmitted them to the Burmese during their migration. The Burmese have sublimated this art in their mystical and magical faith. In a rather primitive society, the tattoo is a religious medicine - preventive and curative. It is taken before any dangerous or uncertain undertaking (getting married, travelling, joining the army...). The story is told of a thief who planned to loot a pagoda: he had the image of the god Hipsay, who traditionally watches over criminals, tattooed on his body and whose good graces he attracted by reciting a mantra adapted to his work throughout the tattooing process. A parrot on the shoulder, bringing good luck, would not have been enough for the miscreant. The spiritual doctor Shan, the sayah, delivers potions, charms, exorcisms and tattoos. Bloodletting, scarification and tattoos are often associated with ancestral and ritual purification techniques. Pain and violence are an intrinsic part of the tattoo rite - clan, mystical or prophylactic. Because the tattoo is powerful and gives, through the shaman, powers, it hurts. The association between tattoos, powers and spirits was almost absent until the 1950s. But magic is not only born from the representation engraved in the skin. The ceremonial of the shaman, the attitude of the patient, the goodwill of the god interfere in the magic - the one that attributes invincibility to the soldier, invisibility to the monk, charity to the poor, healing to the sick... The shaman incorporated in the skin of the latter, with the ink, the powder curing him from the evil. A tattoo spike allows to punctuate the skin, thanks to a weight situated at the end (generally representing itself the magic spirit presiding over the tattoo). The powder came from a medicine box or a statuette made of magical materials, which, scraped by the tattoo spike, would slip under the dermis. The prophylactic power emanates at the same time from the statuette, from the material of which it is made, from the tattoo and from the spirits thus invoked or removed by the power of the shaman. The ink and the weight depend on the mission assigned to the tattoo - hence the existence of collections, the parabaiks, where the shaman recorded his encyclopedia of medical and mystical tattoos. The role of the word, that of the spiritual doctor and that repeated by his patient, is primordial. The tattooed image has an intrinsic force but the magical and medical power results from the success of the entire rite. Failure will be attributed, as always with the Burmese, to the believer's inability to please the guardian spirit (perhaps he did not make enough offerings? Was the day of the tattoo insufficiently favorable or too close to the celebrations of another god?), or even to the choice of a spirit whose expected power was within the competence of another. Budd