The plush new auditorium at the National Museum Bangkok was bursting with people from the far corners of the world. John J. Toomey listened in as scholars and archaeologists presented their latest findings while reviewing past wisdom of a long lost culture that had all but been hidden for the last 1,000 years.

Photography by Ben Owen Browne

Exciting findings and theories spun throughout the room, rapidly charging the atmosphere and raising the tone to fever pitch. The intoxicating questions and answer exchange elated both sharp-minded audience and deeply learned professionals.  So what was all this hurly-burley about? Why had so many enthusiastic renowned professionals and hundreds of volunteers dedicated so much time and effort to this rather obscure intellectual endeavor?

Organized and conducted through the dedication of scores of French-, Japanese-, German-, and English-speaking National Museum Volunteers and docent guides from across the globe, this was the First International Dvaravati Symposium. In the exhibit hall opposite the symposium was the focal point; the current Dvaravati exhibition at the National Museum Bangkok, manifesting the result of several years of cultural cooperation and exchange between the Thai Fine Arts Department and the French government.

So what is or was Dvaravati? It was, and still is, all about the Golden Land of Happiness, known in Buddhist scriptures as Suvarnabhumi. The name Dvaravati wasn’t even known until the end of the 19^th century when the work of the French archaeologist Lucien Fournereau brought the polity to light. In 1927 the Thai Fine Arts Department, under the direction of French archaeologist George Coedès, uncovered more artifacts. Still, the mystery remained shrouded as the Thais struggled with the concept that another culture had been in existence on their soil many hundreds of years before theirs.

After decades of intensive excavation and research carried out, exquisite objects surfaced, bearing witness to the “glorious merit of the Lord of Dvaravati”, as inscribed in Pali (the language of ancient Buddhist scriptures) on the many silver coins that proved the existence of the once flourishing kingdom and culture.  The discovery of so many energetic, earthy, confident and smiling artifacts was a shock, more so because the Mon ethnic minority had been marginalized in modern Thai culture.

Presently, a “Dvaravati Wave” is sweeping through Thailand, evidenced in the modern adaptations of the ancient sweet-smiling Dvaravati buddhas and deities in popular home and garden décor. When a Thai professor recently told a Thai audience that this culture was non-Thai, he was mobbed. Thais suddenly want to claim Dvaravati as their own, which is hardly surprising considering the high level of sophistication and craftsmanship coupled with a sense of joie de vivre and dynamism that imbue the arts in this exhibition.

Dvaravati is the name that comes from the designation To-Lo-Po-Ti that ancient Chinese monks had given to a Mon kingdom in the Chao Phraya River basin from around the 6^th to 11^th centuries CE (i. e. the term for AD, or Common Era in museum talk).  The roots of their culture may have gone back to as far as the 2^nd century in the area of Pong Tuk, west of Bangkok, and experts believe they may have practiced a sun-worshipping cult.  Since the 4^th century it had taken on Indian religions and systems of statecraft, art and architecture.

Visitors to the exhibit are met with some fascinating insights into the life, beliefs, and aesthetics of the pre-Thai Mon people. Modern scholarship, citing the discovery of medals with the Pali inscription “The Glorious Merit of the Lord of Dvaravati” on one side, has shown that Dvaravati was a 7^th-8^th century Mon kingdom, not necessarily contiguous, but joined like a mandala, with Nakhon Pathom at the center.

The distant colony of Haripunchai and the far-flung settlements in the four directions radiate out from the hub capital of Nakhon Pathom. These moated city-states were each laid out in an oval or spiral form to echo the conch motif and to reinforce defenses (the word “Dvaravati” means “Possessing Gates”).  Though as a state it lasted only a short time, as a style of art it spanned the 6^th through the 11^th centuries.

Adorning large sculptures and stone dharmacakra Wheels of the Law with their pillars, and cave sculptures as far as Chaiya in the deep south, their influence spread further east and may have been the inspiration for the art canons of Angkor and Champa (ancient southern Vietnam).

An iconography unique to Dvaravati, and existing nowhere else in the world of the art, is found in the mysterious stelae of Buddha on Panasbati, an enigmatic chimera made from the vehicles of the Hindu Trinity. Brahma’s swan Hamsa is represented by the large wings attached to the beaked face of Vishnu’s mount Garuda, who sports the horns of Shiva’s bull Nandi.  Standing astride the panasbati, Buddha, with hands raised in the teaching gesture (vitarka mudra), descends from having preached to his mother in Indra’s Tavatimsa heaven. He is attended on left and right, variously by Brahma holding a fly whisk and Indra holding an umbrella, or by bodhisattvas holding loti. Sometimes they are riding the sun-god Surya. All figures, whether Buddhist or Hindu, are smiling, none feeling oppressed by the others.

Both Mahayana and Theravada and perhaps one or two other sects of Hinayana Buddhism, as well as Brahmanism, each in harmony with the others, fulfilled their own functions in the Dvaravati civilization and cultures.  The people were devoted to the Buddhist sects and the Brahmanical rites were necessary to consecrate and give validity to the kingship.  Experts believe it is even possible that these intriguing stelae of Buddha on Panasbati were used in the coronation rites.

The Mon racial characteristics appear in the sculptures, such as fat, soft, moist and sometimes pointed curls on the head of the Buddha, a flat face, prominent cheekbones, curved and connected eyebrows, protruding partly closed and downcast eyes, broad nose, and thick lips.  Further, a delicately upturned line accentuates the silhouette of the well-defined lips in the case of Buddha statues, which also have a somewhat pointed nose.

It would seem that some joie de vivre, frivolity, and passionate expression of enjoyment ceased in the fine arts with the end of Dvaravati and the establishment of a god-king state in Thailand.  Perhaps the current struggle of Thai artists to find a common language of artistic expression in secular forms of art today is the resulting reaction to the suppression of former ages.  They could, perhaps, take inspiration by looking back to the arts of the Dvaravati.

This exhibit was first mounted for the Musee Guimet in Paris, where it enjoyed an extended showing, and includes works from many of the national museums in Thailand, that will return to their homes after the close of the exhibit.

The exhibit in Bangkok was mounted by the French Embassy, as the culminating event in this year’s French cultural festival, La Fête.

On until October 9 in the Issaravinitchai Throne Hall of the National Museum Bangkok, on Na Phrathat Road, across from the Sanam Luang Parade Ground and next to Thammasat University.

Hours:  Wednesday thru Sunday, 09:30-16:00.  Telephone 02-224-1333 or 02-224-1404.

Photo Captions:

Typical Dvaravati motifs found in this exhibit were carried along the trade routes from the Amaravati culture of India, including the sunrise, the conch, the purnaghata (pot of plenty), the Brahmanic hourglass hand drum, a special four-petal flower, rhombuses, strings of pearls derived from ancient Persian art (where they signified the glory of the king), acanthus leaves and other special foliate motifs.

Further characteristics are a low conical ushnisha (the cranial protuberance), topped with a round or lotus-bud ketumala (the finial radiance, symbolizing the Buddha’s further enlightenment), the portrayal of very large teaching Buddhas sitting with legs pendant, and a sheer U-shaped robe that clings to the body.  In the later part of the Dvaravati period, the Buddha performs the same mudra (hand gesture) with both hands. However, the Dvaravati works tended toward simplification, with a more human and not so conspicuously supernatural anatomy; and, if they were not as refined as their Indian models, they were more vigorous

The current exhibition includes the bronze oil lamp found in 1927 at Pong Tuk by Georges Coedès that has fomented much argument among scholars over the last century. Originally thought to be ancient Roman or Alexandrian, it has recently been proved to date to the Byzantine Empire of the 5^th-6^th centuries CE or possibly later.  It became the model for a style of ceramic long-nozzled oil lamp unique to the Dvaravati culture that helps to date Dvaravati’s beginnings.

The miniature sculptures of a naked pubescent boy holding a bunch of grapes, representing the fullness of manhood, and a monkey on a leash, symbolizing the tethering of rebellious and agitated emotions of adolescence, portray in a very poignant style youth’s determination to dedicate themselves to the teachings of the Buddha.  The bulla case of talismanic scriptures around the boy’s neck defines these statuettes as amulets to protect the boy on his journey to manhood. Such statues are found only in the Indian and Dvaravati cultures.