ritualThe armbands

ประเจียด · prachiat

These stay on. In Chaiya they were tied round the head.

Victor Soares Cardoso · CC BY-SA 3.0

What it is

Cloth or cord tied round the upper arms, worn through the fight.

The long version

Same origin story as the mongkhon and the same function: a piece of somebody else's cloth, worn into danger. And the cloth is usually not blank — a prajiat carries a yantra, written in the same script and by the same kind of master as a tattoo. Thai accounts of what a warrior took into battle list the prajiat beside the takrut, before the moulded Buddha image took over that job. At Sala Kao Hong in Chaiya the prajiat went round the head and stayed there for all five rounds, which is a different object from the modern armband.

In some gyms outside Thailand, and the article names Brazil in particular through the Chute Boxe lineage, prajiat are coloured by rank in the way a karate belt is. That is a western graft onto a Thai object, and Thai gyms do not read them.

Connected to

• The mongkhon The headband.
• Muay Chaiya Where it went round the head.
• Sak yant The same yantra, on skin.
• Takrut The same yantra, in metal.

Named here by

• Muay Chaiya Worn through the fight, not just into the ring.
• The mongkhon The armband version.
• Sak yant The same thing, on cloth.
• The dance before the fight The other thing tied on.
• Takrut The same thing on cloth.

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