Himanshu Prabha Ray
Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
This paper is based on sculptural representations of sailing and ship-wreck found at early Buddhist sites in South and Southeast Asia. It contextualises these depictions within the framework of the monument on the one hand, and the location and audience of religious architecture, on the other. Thus it attempts to locate the visual imagery within the larger domain of seafaring and maritime contacts in the Indian Ocean.
(Presented in the International Conference – Buddhist Narrative in Asia and Beyond, 9-11 August 2010, Imperial Queen's Park Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University with support from The Thailand Research Fund (TRF), in co-operation with Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Institute of Asian Studies, The Confucius Institute, Chulalongkorn University and l’École française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO))