Mythical bird-man

Mythical bird-men and bird-women are among the wondrous creatures that inhabit the Eden-like Himavanta Forest of Buddhist legend. They are frequently depicted in Thai sculptures, paintings, and other mediums. Wooden figures of bird-men such as this were used in several sorts of royal ceremonies. One such statue is mentioned in the description of the coronation of King Rama IV in 1851, where it is said to have contained a relic of the Buddha. The custom of using such figures in royal ceremonies most likely went back centuries. Such statues have rarely survived, and only a handful are known. Several are in the National Museum, Bangkok. The spire of this figure’s crown was replaced at some point, presumably in the twentieth century.

Shiva on the bull Nandi, carrying the Buddha on his head

The Hindu deity Shiva, riding his usual mount, the bull Nandi, is shown with a small seated Buddha at the front of his crown. The story, which dates from the beginning of the 1800s, emphasizes the Buddha’s superiority to the Hindu god. To show off his power, Shiva challenged the Buddha to a serious contest of hide-and-seek. Shiva covered himself with one thousand layers of dirt and hid deep within the earth. The Buddha found him easily. When it was Shiva’s turn to search, the Buddha placed himself above Shiva’s head. After a long and strenuous search, Shiva still could not find the Buddha and begged him to appear. The Buddha appeared and then preached to Shiva. After the Buddha’s death Shiva built a shrine to house a beautiful Buddha image.

Chest with scenes of the Buddha enthroned in Indra’s Heaven, Phra Malai and Indra at the Chulamani Stupa, and guardians

The front of this chest shows the scene of the Buddha in Indra’s Heaven preaching to his long-deceased mother. The Heaven of Indra—also known as the Heaven of the Thirty-three Gods because Indra rules there as king of the other thirty-two gods—is situated at the summit of the legendary Mount Meru, the central mountain of the Theravada Buddhist cosmos. Here, Indra kneels to the Buddha’s left in an attitude of respectful attention. Indra’s royal regalia—a parasol, a fan, a fly whisk, and so on—flank the Buddha, emphasizing the Buddha’s king-like glory. Behind Indra kneels the Buddha’s mother. On the opposite side kneel two other figures, a mythical bird and a serpent-being recognizable by the snake body that coils below his waist. Both listen reverently.

On the back of this chest, the setting is still Indra’s Heaven, but for an entirely different story—a scene, frequent in Thai art of the 1800s, of the monk Phra Malai paying homage to the Buddha’s relics. When the young Prince Siddhartha (the Buddha-to-be), after leaving his father’s palace, cut off his long hair to mark his renunciation of his aristocratic status, Indra retrieved the hair and enshrined it in the Chulamani stupa, a monument in his capital. This stupa occupies the central position in this scene. To one side of the stupa we see Phra Malai with his frequent attributes, the ecclesiastical fan and monk’s bowl (on a stand, with a length of cloth tied around it).

Double-sided screen with scenes from the life of the Buddha: Kashyapa paying homage to the Buddha’s remains, and (perhaps) the infant Buddha-to-be standing on the head of the sage Asita

The Buddha has died, and one of his senior disciples who was not present at his deathbed has come to pay homage to the Buddha’s body. The body is held in the sort of nearly cylindrical container used in Siam for depositing the bodies of royal persons before cremation. The Buddha’s feet appear for the disciple to worship.

On the back a kneeling sage is shown with a golden figure of the Buddha standing on the top of his headdress. This is probably the sage who, in an episode soon after the birth of the Buddha-to-be, visits the royal court of the Buddha-to-be’s father to see the famous baby. Normally a child old enough to greet such a person would do so with signs of respectful humility, but, according to a Thai Buddhist text, instead of paying reverence the baby “rose into the air and placed his beautiful feet on the head of the holy man.”

Headcloth

For centuries the Sulu Islands in the Southern Philippines have been a center of trade. In the 1800s the most common trade goods imported into the region were textiles from China, India, Java, and Europe. Inspired by this cornucopia of fabrics, the highly skilled Tausug weavers of the Sulu Islands adopted foreign techniques and forms to produce their own remarkable textiles. In the hands of the Tausug, traditional Chinese tapestry weave techniques were adapted to produce designs of kaleidoscopic complexity (pis siyabit). Traditional Islamic headcloths for men, such as this one, can be folded into a wide variety of styles, each emphasizing a different aspect of the complicated geometric patterns in the fabric. These patterns show how carefully the weaver has established symmetry and regularity, then introduced subtle variations. Diamonds, crosses, chevrons, and zigzags—many having multiple stepped borders—crowd together in a dazzling display. Then, just as the mind grasps the pattern, the eyes play a trick, and figure and ground suddenly reverse.

The Buddha Shakyamuni enthroned

The Buddha Shakyamuni, seated in meditation on the lotus throne, holds the alms bowl and displays the earth-touching gesture. The excellent artisanship of this sculpture are typical of the works of Zanabazar (1635-1723) and his Mongolian school of sculpture. The semi-oval lotus pedestal directly under the figure, the treatment of the petals and stamens, and the two rows of pearls are all characteristic of the works of this school.

The throne, which has an elaborate arch, is not by the same hand. The Hindu sun bird Garuda stands triumphantly over the two serpent deities in a typical Nepalese motif that was adopted by artists in Tibet, China, and Mongolia.

The Buddhist deity Mahashri Heruka

With bared fangs, the fierce meditation deity Mahashri Heruka unites with his female counterpart. Heruka’s wings fan the flame halo around him; his twenty-one fantastically detailed heads focus the full fury of their three eyes at the fundamental fallacy underlying ordinary perception of reality: the conviction that the material, objective world is “all there is.” As if to emphasize the point, Heruka and his counterpart hold tiny globes in their sixty-four hands, each one a self-contained cosmos.

Sometimes translated as “blood drinker,” the term Heruka refers to certain fierce Buddhist deities laden with symbolic forms. When properly visualized or consecrated, Heruka imagery vanquishes obstacles to meditative progress. On the back of the thangka, an inscription in the ornamental cursive “without heads” script called Umey establishes the thangka as a fully active consecrated artwork. It can therefore act on behalf of the being it represents, in this case Mahashri Heruka himself.

Money tree

Money trees are rare; most appear to have come from Sichuan province and other parts of West China. They offer a fascinating glimpse into regional and metropolitan Han beliefs. The replicas of coins that hang from the limbs of this tree symbolize wishes for good fortune in the afterlife. The tree would have been placed in a tomb in the hope that the soul of the occupant would have wealth while residing in the paradise of the Queen Mother of the West (Xiwang Mu). The main figure near the top is the Queen Mother. She sits on a throne supported by a dragon and a tiger. Further down the tree is a seated Buddha.

Early Buddha images are found in some objects associated with Xiwang Mu, perhaps because Buddhism was a religion of the West, the direction in which the Queen Mother resided. A number of winged immortals (Xian), the residents of the Queen Mother’s paradise, can also be seen on this tree.

The casting of the many individual pieces that make up this ensemble is remarkable. Each piece is very thin and has the same decoration on both sides; X-ray analysis shows that the patterns line up exactly. This was made possible by precise control of the lost-wax casting process. Take a close look at the glazed pottery base, and you will see lively scenes of a type rarely found in Chinese art.

Emperor’s dragon robe

Nine dragon images are distributed over the surface of this robe, eight of them visible and the ninth hidden when the garment is wrapped around the body. Scattered on the background are stylized lotus blossoms and foliage as well as a fan, fly whisk, sword, crutch, fish drum, wooden clappers, basket, lotus, and flute—symbolic implements of the Eight Daoist Immortals who confer longevity. In the center is a representation of a jade qing, an L-shaped musical instrument symbolizing celebration. An image of peach trees laden with fruit emerging from a rock in an ocean appears near the bottom of the robe. The presence of these “peaches of immortality” and the attributes of the Eight Immortals indicate that this robe would have been worn by the emperor on his birthday.