Peter Skilling
French School of Asian Studies (EFEO), Bangkok
The province of Phetchburi (ancient Bajrapuri) lies some 130 kilometres to the southwest of Bangkok and has been a centre of trade and culture since the Dvaravati period and earlier. Today, the area is an old and relatively quiet town celebrated for its temples with woodcarving and stucco work. A special art form that is preserved in a number of Phetchburi temples is wood-panel painting (Thai: citrakam kho song). Buddhist narratives – commonly the life of the Buddha (pathomsomphot) or Jatakas – are painted on long panels of wood and suspended below the roof so that they can be read as a series. They are placed in sala kanparian (sermon/study halls) and sala rimnam (riverside pavilions). Most are recent or modern, dating from the reigns of King Rama V and later, and they represent an age of change and intersection, when artists were adopting Western techniques and principles.
The wood-panel paintings are generally well preserved in comparison to mural paintings, depicting a number of interesting episodes that are rare elsewhere. These include the encounter of Upagupta and Mara, Asoka’s auto-cremation as an offering to the Buddha, and the “Nibbana of the relics” at the end of Sakyamuni’s Sasana. The paper gives an overview of wood-panel painting with examples of unusual narratives.
(Presented in the International Conference on Buddhist Studies: Buddha's Biography – Buddhist Legends, 18-19 July 2015, Le Meridien Bangkok Hotel, Bangkok, organized by Department of Thai, Faculty of Arts, The Pali and Sanskrit Section, Department of Eastern Languages, Faculty of Arts and Institute of Thai Studies, Chulalongkorn University)