4. Thailand Sculptures (c): Srivijaya Period (Hindu-Javanese)

[Full title: Style and the Dating of Sculpture (2): South East Asia (b): Thailand (iii): Srivijaya Period (Hindu-Javanese)]

Srivijaya was not merely a network of loosely affiliated chiefdoms such as those on the Mainland, but rather a large kingdom with a royal capital located at Palembang, in southeastern Sumatra. Srivijaya’s political power was based not only on the ability of local chieftains to establish personal ties with their neighbors, but on maritime links with Malay and Chinese merchants who were then the major transporters of foreign goods throughout the Southern seas. From the eighth to the eleventh centuries, Srivijaya was able to control maritime trade between China and the west, and its area of influence included most of the old entrepots that had been established along the existing trade routes-in southern China, in Champa southern Vietnam, at Nalanda in India, in The Middle East and in Java. Not surprisingly the Thai Peninsula, located in the midst of the multicultural whirlwinds, also felt the impact.^[1]

The peninsula’s most outstanding art was produced in the ninth century and resulted from long-distance contacts with Nalanda by way of Java, which now had intimate dynastic ties with Palembang.^[2] Java’s Nalada-inspired Mahayana art was unrivaled elsewhere in South East Asian, and ninth-century Peninsula art reflected the Javanese expertise. The images portraying bodhisattva rather than the historical Buddha, were elaborately attired in heavy jewelry, ornate draperies, and headdresses whose extravagance surpassed that of the earlier bodhisattva. Sensual and human, they contrasted decisively with the unadorned authoritative Vishnus. Executed in bronze and stone, in both quality and number they far surpassed the few provincial Dvaravati images that had been made in the Peninsula not long before.

Steve Van Beek observers the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara was the most popular Buddhist subject among peninsular sculptors during Thailand’s Mahayana Buddhist phase. In the Srivjaya perio, they far outnumbered images of other Bodhisattvas and of the Buddha himself.^[3] He also assumes that the latter part of the Srivijaya period following the lull in artistic creativity saw less activity, and its representative examples are easier to classify because there is more homogeneity in their features.^[4]

An area around Dong Si Mahaphot and Muang Phra Rot, located in the Bang Pakong area just east of the Peninsula, appears to have been the major dispersal point for the Peninsula’s multicultural art. Very similar to a Sinhalese piece is an impressive Dong Si Mahaphot image of the Buddha in dhyana mudra, seated beneath the head of the seven-headed naga, Mucalinda. Naga–protected images had been produced at Amaravati in the early centuries AD and were common in Sri Lanka. Neither the Peninsula’s Hindu nor Mahayana Buddhist images inspired new traditions in the Dvaravati heartland. But while the Chao Phraya River had yet to be developed as a Major thoroughfare linking north and south, the Pasak River, which paralleled it to the east and led to the Mun River, the Khorat Plateau, and the Mekong region, was as active as ever.

Along its route art styles proliferated, and Khu Bua and Sinhalese art styles appeared side by side with Dvaravati’s traditional art. In spite of its beauty and international flavor, however, Srivijaya, Khu Bua–related Mahayana images as well as the Hindu Vishnus would engender two of the most widespread artistic tradition in all South East Asia.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

R. C. Majumdar, Suvarnadvipa Hindu Colonies of the Far East, New Delhi: 2004, p. 4.

[2]:

Steve Van Beek, Luca Invernizzi Tettoni, The Arts of Thailand, Periplus HK: 1999, p. 79.

[3]:

Ibid.

[4]:

Ibid.