Buddhist amulets contain infant remains

A THAI Buddhist temple has been reprimanded by religious authorities for selling amulets containing the ashes of cremated infants to raise money for a plot of land and a crematorium, an official said yesterday.

The bodies of 28 foetuses or infants who died of natural causes were cremated legally at the temple’s ageing incinerator, they said, as Thailand’s craze for Jatukam Ramathep amulets promising wealth showed no signs of easing.

“It is not illegal, but it is inappropriate,” said an official of the local office of Buddhism.

“The chief provincial monk has submitted a formal reprimand letter to the temple’s abbot,” said the official.

The Thawee Kara Anant temple in a northern Bangkok suburb was taking advantage of a craze for the amulets that promise to make their owners “super rich” sweeping across Thailand.

In July, it made 140,000 disc-shaped amulets from a variety of herbs and human ashes and had sold most of them, a monk at the temple said.

The idea of mixing the human ashes into the “Multiple Rich” amulets came after neighbours told the abbot they saw spirits of dead infants buried in the temple graveyard in their dreams asking to be freed, monk Lertsak Thitayano told Reuters.

“The abbot wanted to set them free so he decided to cremate them and make merit for them by mixing their ashes into the amulets to empower them in helping the people,” he said.

A top-of-the-range gold-leaf edition from a well-respected temple costs 10,000 baht (€225) or more — more than a month’s wages for many Thais.

Some monks say the frenzy has turned the Buddhist priesthood into an “amulet-blessing industry” despite the religion’s shunning of materialism.