Excerpts from the book: The Sacred Sculpture of Thailand:
The Buddha, tradionally thought to have lived in the sixth century BC in northern India, passed at his death into nirvana - a state of bliss that, strickly speaking, is commeasurable with the universe as we know it. The Buddha is absent: we can have no contact with him, and representations of him - in the form of statues, small clay tablets, or paintings - take his place.
In Thailand there developed the Theravada Buddhists. Anyone who commissions a Buddha image has done a good deed, an act of merit (punna). On the Buddhist scale, every action has a result, and in this case the result will be a positive one. The making of a statue in Buddhas likeness needs to adhere to strict proportions and ideals. Texts concerning proper proportions (iconometry) are known in all parts of the Indic world. They can at times be extremely detailed. In the Tibetan tradtion they can even include penalties for deviations from the rules.
In the Thai language, there are no more than five hundred known printed words devoted to iconometry. The manuscript bearing this brief text dates from the third reign of the Bangkok period (1824-51). Early Buddhist texts identify the dharma - the teachings of the Buddha, the order of the world - with the Buddha himself. The Dhammakayati, a Pali-language text preserved in Thailand, where it was the basis for an inscription set up in Phitsanulok in 1548, makes the connection explicit and lists correspondences between the body of the Buddha and elements in the doctrine. Twenty six body parts are listed, beginninbg with the head ( which includes thirteen of twenty six) and ending with the feet.
Hair is the ideal state of nirvana considered as a sense object. Standing for the "diamond attainment," a consecration situated at the very summit of both consciousness and the known world is the "lustre of wool." Strickly speaking this is the urna or hairy tuft in the Buddha's forehead, but in Thailand it is confused with the symbolic curlicue known as the unalom, which is the form taken by the central motif in the crowning flame or rasmi. In Buddhist thinking, the higher concentrations are equivalent to the upper realms of the cosmos.
Many of of the correspondences can be read together to form an ideal mental picture of an upward path, out of the mundane world into the higher heavens and towards a gateway to the ultimate state of nirvana.
The Portal Market is now featuring several Buddha heads, hand crafted by artisans in Thailand, representing Buddha heads from various periods in the long history of Thailand. Some are carved out of wood and covered in gold leaf, while others are cast in bronze.
The Sukhothai Period (1298-1438)
Two Buddha heads from this period are offered. Both in bronze.
Click on photos for larger view
1. Left: Bronze cast Buddha head on pedestal.(Pointed hairline on forehead)
Height 10 and 1/4 inches, with pedestal 12 and 7/8inches
2. Right: Bronze cast Buddha head on pedestal.(Straight hairline on forehead)
Height 5 inches, with pedestal 7 and 1/2 inches
The city of Sukothai remains the crucial site because of the greatness of the sculpture that was produced there and because there is more extant evidence - in the form of inscriptions, monuments, and images - of the developments. Sukhothai's time of cultural glory, and the time in which most of its surviving monuments were built, dates from a later period - from sometime in the second quarter of the fourteenth century through 1438, when Sukhothai was incorporated into the kingdom of Ayutthaya.
How to order:
Contact Portal Market:
Make checks or money orders payable to Portal Market:
Address - PO Box 655, Fairfax, California 94978
Each piece is packed safely, and shipped directly by UPS.
Sukhothai Buddha Heads
Lan Na Period (1441-1513)
Click on photos for larger view
In the book, Dated Buddha Images of Northern Siam (1957), by A. B. Griswold, he mentions the mixed styles that are to be found in the Buddha statues in this period. The types to be found represent a continuation of an older, fourteenth-and early fifteenth-century Lan Na tradition has been a matter of considerable contention for decades. The gold leaf Buddha head here being offered shows the postulated arrival of the Sukhothai craftman in the third quarter of the fifteenth century. There may also of been a Chinese connection as well. There flourished an extensive casting center in Chang Mai in the later part of the fifteenth century which also led to this style as show in these Buddha heads.
There are three sizes being offered with these Buddha heads
How to order:
Contact Portal Market:
Make checks or money orders payable to Portal Market:
Address - PO Box 655, Fairfax, California 94978
Each piece is packed safely, and shipped directly by UPS.
Lan Na Period Buddha Heads
The Period of Khmer Domination (900-1200)
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| In Phimai the important Buddhist temple was built in the latre 11th and early 12th centuries in Northeastern Thailand. The Phimai area had become part of the kingdom of Cambodia sometime around 900; before that, the culture was one that produced Buddhist boundary stones and bronze images of Prakhonchai type. The temple of Phimai was built at a time of political weakness at Angkor, by craftsmen who belonged to the cosmopolitan mainstream. But it reflects a streak of ideological independence; it was dedicated to Tantric or Vajrayana Buddhism, of a sophisticated sort that suggests contact with the Buddhist centers of Bihar or Bengal.
The crown no doubt was a sign, as in India, of the attainment of complete Buddhahood according to Vajrayana belief. At Phimai there may also have been introduced a story of ancestral to the Thai legend of the crowned Buddha, according to which, as the finale of the duel of magical appearances, the Buddha assumed the attire of royalty in order to covert a heritic king. The type of standing crowned Buddha produced subsequently in Hinayana circles in central Thailand can be traced back to Phimai.
How to order:
Contact Portal Market:
Make checks or money orders payable to Portal Market:
Address - PO Box 655, Fairfax, California 94978
Each piece is packed safely, and shipped directly by UPS.
Khmer Period Buddha Heads
Other Buddha artifacts on the Portal Market: