monks roamed the countryside of ancient India more

those early days of Buddhism the monks used bowls for

alms gathering during their daily early-morning rounds

of the villagers' houses, as is still done in Thailand and

other Buddhist countries today — but with one dif-

ference: after the alms round was completed, the monks

ate their meal directly from the bowl, presumably not

using a spoon, since there are frequent references in the

Buddhist Scriptures to the Buddha or a monk "finishing

the meal and withdrawing his hand from the bowl."

Nowadays, after the monks have returned to their tem-

ples with full almsbowls, the food is set out on plates and

dishes, and eaten with fork and spoon.

Apart from that, little has changed in the monks'

approximately quarter-million monks possess only the

basic essentials to sustain life — their sets of three saffron-

dyed robes, sandals, a mat, a sunshade perhaps — and

their alms bowls.

Where do the bowls come from? Who makes them?

Nowadays, with increasing mechanization of almost

everything, more and more monks' bowls are being

made by machine. But there still exists, in the heart of

bustling Bangkok, a small community called 'Bahn Batr'

— "the Village of Monks' Bowls" — where bowls are

hand-made as in days gone by. ('Batr' is pronounced ex-

actly the same as the "baht", Thailand's unit of currency).

'Bahn Batr' is believed to have been established by

King Rama I, at the time when he founded Bangkok as

As one approaches Soi Bahn Batr, a lane lined with

shop houses leading off busy Bamrungmuang Road, one

will hear the faint rhythmic sound of hammers striking

metal. Nearer the community the regular one-two-one-

two beat of the hammers grows louder, and one will soon

see men, women and children at work fashioning the

What was once a separate village has now become a

rather run-down area of old-style wooden houses con-

trasting starkly with the modern concrete shophouses all

around it.

The bowl-makers have their own association, whose

president says there are now only four bowl-making

beating the bowls into shape and lacquering them, sons

filing, smoothing and finishing, while daughters help

with odds and ends. Neighbors are also called in to help

beating bowls into shape. When they've worked at it for

a day or two they usually go off to do something more

lucrative such as driving a taxi. The local young boys,

especially, treat bowl-making as casual labor; when

they're short of cash they come and work at it until

they've collected what they feel is enough money, and

then disappear.

There are various traditional shapes of monks'

bowls, the most common and popular being called

'manao dtat' because it resembles a lime cut in half. Iron is

strips, one inch wide, are cut to form the rims of the

bowls, and hammered until they are thin and smooth.

The seven large pieces which together with the rim make

up the bowl, are then cut into the necessary shapes — a

rectangle and two squares which are joined together to

form a cross; and four curved triangular pieces to fill up

the spaces between the arms of the cross. The edges to be

joined together are pierced with short, serrated cuts so

that they look like the paper frill on a party cake. When

the pieces are bent into the rough shape of the bowl,

these edges are dovetailed together. The joints are sealed

with molten copper when the roughly-formed bowl is

placed in a stove for two minutes. The rim is attached in

the same way, and the seams are later hammered

smooth.

More hammering follows, to beat the bowl into the

desired shape, then hours of filing to make it smooth.

Since the young men who do this need both hands to

control the file, they sit cross-legged with one foot tucked

inside the bowl to hold it firm.

Next comes lacquering to give the bowl a black

finish, and further heating. This is either done singly,

bowl by bowl, for three or four minutes each, or else in a

large oven holding fifty to sixty bowls at a time, in which

case the heating lasts for an hour.

'Bahn Batr' turns out about twenty bowls a day. An

work steadily, day after day without taking a day off,

except occasionally on religious holidays in order to offer

food to monks whom they invite to a special 'saki' or

pavilion which they built in earlier days for this purpose.

Generally speaking, only monks who have entered

the monk hood for life use hand-made bowls. The

machine-made ones, which are only seven inches in dia-

those who become monks only temporarily.

Monks travel from far a field to buy a hand-made

bowl at 'Bahn Batr' — from as far as Udorn in the

But how long 'Bahn Batr' will continue to make

bowls is an open question. A veteran who has practiced

this unusual craft for thirty years has eleven children, but