4. Thailand Sculptures (b): Dvaravati Period (Non-Indian)

[Full title: Style and the Dating of Sculpture (2): South East Asia (b): Thailand (ii): Dvaravati Period (Mon–Indian)]

Two of the Dvaravati sites with the most notable Buddhist architecture were U Thong and Nakhon Pathom.^[1] As early trading centers, both cities had had the means to support viable Buddhist communities. Isolated Amaravati finds evidence the presence of Indian Buddhists in the early centuries AD, and the city moats and Dharmacakra testify to their continuing political and religious prosperity in the seventh century. The U Thong buildings, located both within and outside the city moats, are now in extremely ruinous condition–only the bases survive—but they are numerous and provide some meager evidence of their original appearance. The scattered remains include the bases of what appear to have been rectangular assembly halls, squarish image houses, and stupas.

Among all the major sculpture that would be created in Thailand throughout its history, it was the early Dvaravati images that were most distinctively related to their Indian prototypes, in this case, the best that India had to offer–the fifth-century Gupta period images for which Sarnath was renowned.^[2] Gupta images differed dramatically from those that had been made several centuries earlier at Amaravati, for although images in both areas derived from the same Gandharan traditions that had emerged in northwest India around the turn of the millennium, the early style had over several centuries evolved into something very different. In contrast to the Amaravati figures, stockily engulfed in their heavy, voluminous robes (as depicted in the small relief that had typified the Gandharan robes had become more and more stylized, gradually diminishing into ropelike appendages, and in the Gupta period, the semblance of rippled folds disappeared altogether. The bodies discernible in the Gupta images were attenuated and graceful, and the human, fleshy attributes suggested by the earlier pieces were replaced with sleek, almost abstract renditions of the human form in which any hint of mortal imperfection had been erased. The faces were oval; the waist, narrow; the chest and shoulders, broad; and there was a harmony and balance among the parts that invoked an otherworldly spirituality.

Gupta images from the Ganges region also adhered to a stricter iconography than earlier ones. Snail-like curls, always curling to the right replaced Greco–Roman hairstyle and the Buddha’s clothing began to replicate the details of a monk’s robe more than a Roman toga. There was also formal frontality which, in spite of a gentle sway to the body, was more iconic that naturalistic. The images appeared to be gently smiling, emitting an aura of inner serenity and compassion, the spiritual qualities for which the Buddha was esteemed.^[3]

Similarities between Sarnath’s images and those produced in the Central Plains are striking and there is no doubt that Dvaravati adopted the former’s most prominent stylistic and iconographic features.^[4] The neck were retained and in some cases were enlarged out of proportion to other parts of the body in order to signify their iconographic significance. Like Sarnath images (but unlike Gandharan and Amaravati ones), the urna was often omitted.

In spite of the similarities between the Sarnath and Dvaravati images, however, there were also differences. The harmonious integration of parts that distinguished the Sarnath images were absent in most of the Dvaravati examples, and they lacked the gentle sway of the bodies that softened the formal frontality. But while the bodies may have been more rigid, the faces of Dvaravati’s images were less stylized, gentler, and more approachable than the Gupta prototypes. Perhaps incorporating facial attributes that were considered most beautiful by the Mon, the faces were more human than the precisely rendered geometric shapes of the Indian examples. The cheeks were softened while cheekbones were firm. Eyes were pensive and mouths were expressive, and steeply arched eyebrows met above a flattened nose. In the best Dvaravati pieces the inner, gently smiling spirituality for which the Gupta images are revered, was not only preserved but enhanced by its rendition in more lifelike ways.

Other Buddha images evidence Dvaravati’s intimate connections with northern India. There were images in varada mudra, denoting charity, and some were seated in the yogic position. More often than not, however, images were seated in pralambapadasana, that is, in the so-called ‘European’ manner with the legs dangling.^[5] In the late fifth century there had been a sudden eruption of Pralambapadasana imges at Ajanta and its neighboring site, Ellora. From there the convention apparently spread quickly, for they began to have been produced almost simultaneously at Nalanda, whence the iconography could have spread to Thailand’s Central Plains.

During the later part of the first millennium AD, the Central Plains standing images, and to a lesser extent, the seated ones were copied time and again in both the Dvaravati heartland and in areas peripheral to the Central Plains. As large numbers of such images continued to be produced throughout the period, they became less stylized, more naturalistic, and more ethnically Mon-like. There was also a decline in quality, never to recover after the first blossoming of Gupta-inspired art in the seventh century.^[6]

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Ibid, p. 63.

[2]:

J. Dumarcay & M. Smithies, Cultural sites of Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia, Kuala Lumpur: 1995, p. 42.

[3]:

Steve Van Beek & Luca Invernizzi Tettoni, The Arts of Thailand, Periplus, HK: 1999, p. 67.

[4]:

Steve Van Beek & Luca Invernizzi Tettoni, The Arts of Thailand, Periplus, HK: 1999, p. 68.

[5]:

Steve Van Beek & Luca Invernizzi Tettoni, The Arts of Thailand, Periplus, HK: 1999, p. 68.

[6]:

Ibid, p. 73.