Vietnamese Buddhist Art

by Nguyen Ngoc Vinh | 2009 | 60,338 words

This essay studies Vietnamese Buddhist Art in South and South East Asia Context.—In the early spread of Buddhism to Vietnam, three primary sources are investigated: Chinese histories, Sanskrit and Pali literature and local inscriptions and art: Initially Buddhist sculptures were carried from India to Vietnam by monks and traders. The research are o...

4. Thailand Sculptures (e): Tai Period

[Full title: Style and the Dating of Sculpture (2): South East Asia (b): Thailand (v): Tai Period]

The Tai had begun to arrive in the Plateau, the Central Plains and the Northern Highlands sometime in the latter part of the first millennium AD, and by the eleventh century, it is thought, many communities were ‘substantially’ Tai. The Tai were an agricultural people who had migrated from southeastern China, where, like the Chinese and early Khmer, they had revered ancestral gods and mountain-dwelling deities. But soon their lives would change in a variety of ways. The Tai who settled in highly Khmerized centers like Lopburi and Ayutthaya mixed with the local Khmer population and adopted Khmer habits, but farther to the north in the vicinity of Phra Phai Luang, where the Khmer population may have been predominantly Angkorean rather than local, the Tai rebelled against their overlords and established a large farflung chiefdom network called Sukhothai Satchanalai.[1]

Like Dvaravati rulers many centuries earlier, Sukhothai chieftains formed political alliances based on personal ties among friends and relatives in sometimes noncontiguous areas. And like Dvaravati, Sukhothai established a reciprocal relation with the Buddhist monastic organization, which for a while at least provided stability at home and a cultural link with other areas. Soon there would be journeys to Sri Lanka, where the old conservative traditions had been preserved in written form, while contacts with Myanmar and the Northern Highlands provided fuel for the newly acquired religious practices. Sinhalese-style, bell-shape stupas and Indian inspired Buddha images, transmitted through Myanmar and Chiang Mai[2], proliferated along with Sukhothai’s flourishing Theravada monastic order.

1438, Sukhothai was incorporated within the Ayutthaya kingdom. In spite of the defeat, however, the Tai presence survived. Theravada Buddhism, now supported by god-king concepts, gave rise to bell shape stupas, which had been produced in great profusion at Sukhothai and now began to appear alongside Ayutthaya’s prang. Sukhothai’s distinctive sculptural style made its mark alongside Phimai-derived images, and Tai eventually supplanted Mon and Khmer as the country’s first language.

Although most old ethnic Tai traditions were soon enveloped in or supplanted by Khmer and Buddhist practices and ideologies, the pre-Indian also left its mark.[3]

Sukhothai, meaning ‘Rising of Happiness’ was the first capital of the Thai people and flourished from the mid-thirteenth to the late fourteenth centuries. Located north of Bangkok, Sukhothai was constructed as a rectanglar city surrounded by earthen walls. Its Buddhist temple and monuments, were constructed out of durable stone structure of Sukhothai, mostly stupas and monuments, feature a variety of architectural styles from Buddhist sites from other cultures. within the city of Sukhothai, the most important complex of Buddhist buildings are Wat Mahathat, the ‘Great Relic Temple’, a cluster of nearly 200 stupas, the bases of ten assembly halls and other temple structures. The principal structures of this complex are aligned along an east-west axis linking the rising and the setting sun. At the core of Wat Mahathat is a tall stupa crowned with a lotus-shaped finial, a detail that is unique to Thai Buddhist architecture. The stupa is surrounded by smaller towers, built out of brick or laterite (a clay-like material) and coated with stucco. At Wat Mahathat and the other Buddhist sites in Sukhothai are many figures of the Buddha created out of brick or laterite covered in stucco.[4] Many are of a monumental size, while others are more human in scale. These images feature the elegant, swaying bodies of the Sukhothai period, with clothes that seem to cling to their forms and hair that ends in the shape of a rising flame at the top of their heads. Their faces are characterized by a gentle smile and strong, curved lines that represent the eyebrows but continue to form the long, prominent nose. Relief carvings of multiple figures of walking disciples are also characteristic of this period.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

D. Seckel, The Art of Buddhism, trans by Ann E, Keep, London: 1964, p. 57.

[2]:

Ibid.

[3]:

D. Seckel, The Art of Buddhism, trans by Ann E, Keep, London: 1964, p. 58.

[4]:

S. Van Beek & L. I nvernizzi Tettoni, The Arts of Thailand, Periplus: 1999, p. 113.

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