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Initial Findings on Wat Suthat: Presence, Power, and Merit‐Making in the Vihara Murals and Inscriptions
Author(s) -
Schmidt Luke
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
religion compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.113
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 1749-8171
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2010.00242.x
Subject(s) - mural , scholarship , context (archaeology) , buddhism , power (physics) , visual arts , art , psychology , history , archaeology , painting , law , political science , physics , quantum mechanics
This article examines the vihara mural of the Bangkok monastery Wat Suthat. Unlike most scholarship on Thai monastic murals and Buddhist murals in Southeast Asia which focus mainly on the content of the murals, this article focuses on the religious motivation for creating murals and examines the problems of viewing and understanding the mural within the context of a monastic building. This paper also examines the role of the Buddhavamsa commentary inscriptions on the walls of the vihara below the mural, showing how they like the murals assert a presence rather than a didactic function.