A Lanna man was expected to carry a tattoo from the waist to the ankles. The murals paint it as trousers. In 4,710 transcribed pages of manuscript here, the word for it appears on 1.
ปรากฏภาพจิตรกรรมฝาผนังในวัดสำคัญต่างๆ มากมาย แสดงให้เห็นว่าชายชาวล้านนานั้นนิยมที่จะสักยันต์ลงบนร่างกายจนดูเหมือนนุ่งกางเกงสีดำหรือเสื้อผ้าทั้งตัว ผู้เฒ่าผู้แก่บางคนเล่าว่า ในสมัยโบราณสักขาลายตั้งแต่บั้นเอวเรื่อยลงมาจนถึงข้อเท้า สักตามลำตัวทั้งด้านหน้าและด้านหลัง สักตามแขนหรือแม้แต่นิ้วมือ ทั้งนี้บางคนสักไปจนถึงคอและส่วนบนหัว ซึ่งความนิยมการสักเช่นนี้พบมากในกลุ่มชาวพม่าและชาวไทยใหญ่ ซึ่งก็มีการสักยันต์ลงบนร่างกายไม่น้อยไปกว่าชาวล้านนาMany murals in important temples show that Lanna men favoured tattooing yantras over their bodies until it looked as if they wore black trousers or a full suit of clothes. Some elders relate that in old times they tattooed the legs in patterns from the waist down to the ankles, the torso front and back, the arms, even the fingers; some tattooed up to the neck and the crown of the head. This fashion was widespread among the Burmese and the Tai Yai, who tattoo yantras no less than the Lanna.Item 6968, page 20 — a contributed volume in this corpus. Translation this project’s.
ด้วยเหตุว่าชายใดไม่สักขาและลำตัวก็จะถูกนินทาว่าเป็นผู้หญิงที่ไม่มีน้ำอดน้ำทน… ถ้าไม่มีรอยสักเลยก็ให้ไปนุ่งผ้าซิ่นเหมือนดังผู้หญิงเสียAny man who did not tattoo his legs and torso would be gossiped about as being like a woman, lacking the endurance… if he had no tattoos, he might as well wear a sarong.Same page. The enforcement was talk, and the fee had a Lanna name of its own — ขันตั้ง.
| word | said | what it means | pages | mss | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| สัก | sak | to prick — and the everyday word for “about”, so this is an upper bound | 490 | 29 | |
| สักยันต์ | sak yant | to tattoo a yantra | 6 | 3 | |
| การสัก | kan sak | tattooing, as a noun | 5 | 3 | |
| สักขาลาย | sak kha lai | to tattoo the legs in patterns — the Lanna leg tattoo | 1 | 1 | |
| ขาลาย | kha lai | patterned legs | 1 | 1 | |
| พุงดำ | phung dam | black belly — the outsider’s name for the tattooed northerner | 0 | 0 | |
| รอยสัก | roi sak | a tattoo, as a mark | 1 | 1 | |
| ช่างสัก | chang sak | a tattooist | 1 | 1 | |
| เหล็กจาร | lek chan | the iron stylus — the palm-leaf pen | 10 | 5 | |
| ขันตั้ง | khan tang | the teacher’s fee, in the Lanna word | 2 | 1 | |
| ชาด | chat | vermilion | 59 | 22 | |
| เขม่า | khamao | soot | 3 | 3 |
Thai is written without spaces, so a short word matches inside longer ones and every count here is an upper bound — สัก is also the everyday word for “about”. The silence is not evidence that the custom was rare: it is a fact about what manuscripts are for. This corpus is katha, yantra, horoscopes and recipes. A tattoo every man in the kingdom wore needed no instructions written down.
| where | when | what it says | source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upper Burma | 1882 | Nearly all Bamar men were tattooed at boyhood, from the waist to the knees — the effect “not so much of a marking of the cuticle as of a skin-tight pair of caleçons”. | Shway Yoe (Sir James George Scott), The Burman: His Life and Notions |
| The Shan States | 1910 | “A Shan boy is considered to have reached manhood when he has been tattooed… the rule is to tattoo both legs from waist to knee.” | Leslie Milne, Shans at Home |
| Lanna | — | “…until it looked as if they wore black trousers… from the waist down to the ankles.” | A contributed volume in this corpus, item 6968, page 20 |
| Siam | 1910 | “The Siamese, who are so closely related to them, tattoo themselves very slightly, or not at all.” | Leslie Milne, Shans at Home |
The fourth line is usually read as a fact about Thailand. It is a fact about central Thailand: Milne was comparing the Shan to Bangkok, and Lanna — a tributary kingdom, not a province, until 1899 — is on the other side of her comparison. The leg tattoo’s territory is the Tai-Buddhist upland, and its edge runs through the middle of the modern country.
สักขาลาย is not สักยันต์. The same needle, a different job: the leg work covered a man, the yant marks him with a formula. The named yant designs of this corpus are indexed separately.
The whole subject, worldwide → The yant designs → The plates →