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2018, National Museum (Bangkok) Volunteers Guiding Handbook.
This chapter in the docent guiding handbook for the National Museum (Bangkok, Thailand) provides a brief overview of the early historic period and social entity labelled "Dvāravatī”.
This paper employs “globalization” theory, dynamically incorporating space and time, geography and history, to challenge the notion that the development of Southeast Asian cultures along the global sea-faring arc between India and China can be best explained by constructing narratives derived from these major civilisations. The archaeological record shows a complex inventory of contacts and exchanges of goods and ideas from China and India intersecting in Southeast Asia. While globally-based trade and religion were formative, the region’s indigenous resources and cultures not only provided attractive destinations and way-stations, but also molded non-native inputs to the dynamics of already extant socio-cultural systems. The arrival of Buddhism and Brahmanism on Southeast Asian shores is framed within this context and four regions are selected to highlight these processes: the Pyu in Myanmar, Dvaravati in Thailand, the Thai-Malay peninsula, and Pre-Angkorian Cambodia from the mid-first millennium CE onwards. Southeast Asians successfully managed the twin processes of globalization and localism, adapting Buddhist and Brahmanical practices to suit their situations. These fusions facilitated transformations of Southeast Asian societies, setting them on trajectories leading to the formation of fully fledged, unique Buddhist and Brahmanical states such as Angkor in Cambodia, Bagan in Myanmar, and Sukhothai in Thailand.
In Nicolas Revire and Stephen A. Murphy (eds.), Before Siam: Essays in Art and Archaeology. Bangkok: River Books & The Siam Society, 2014
"New Observations at P’ong Tuk and Ongoing Issues with the Conceptualization of Dvāravatī." In: Advancing Southeast Asian Archaeology 2013 - Selected Papers from the First SEAMEO-SPAFA International Conference on Southeast Asian Archaeology., 2015
The archaeological site of P’ong Tuk, located in Kanchanaburi Province, west-central Thailand, was subject to field investigations by George Coedès in 1927 and H. G. Quaritch Wales in 1936. Both investigations uncovered substantial material remains, including ritual objects and architecture, used to help define an early Buddhist “ Dvāravatī” cultural expression in the region of central Thailand. These early investigations, however, while regularly cited in the scholarly literature, were brief and minimally reported. In 2008 the author initiated a comprehensive reevaluation of the Coedès and Quaritch Wales data in light of new concepts and comparative evidence for the Dvāravatī phenomenon. This new research benefitted from the “rediscovery” of Quaritch Wales’ unpublished field notes for his work at P’ong Tuk, and from a field reconnaissance of P’ong Tuk in January 2008. This re-evaluation and integration of site data resulted in the documentation of new objects and features at P’ong Tuk, and a more in-depth evaluation of older data. It also supported the identification of several new cultural patterns at the site, as well as new avenues for future research, all of which tend to coincide with wider issues extant for the conceptualization of Dvāravatī.
Journal of the Faculty of Liberal Arts (Thammasat University), Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 143-162, 2009
This paper is about Dvāravatī, one of the oldest religious cultures and artistic periods in central Thailand, circa 7th-8th centuries. After reviewing the state of our knowledge on different historical aspects, we will discuss briefly the iconography of Buddha images and other objects including the “Wheel of the Law” sculptures. This paper will then specifically deal with a peculiar posture found in the art of Dvāravatī, Buddha images seated in the so-called "European fashion" (sk. pralambapādāsana), and attempt to give new perspectives on its spread throughout South-East Asia.
2015
Contributors: Robert Brown, Tun Aung Chain, Sylvia Fraser-Lu, Jacques Leider, Patrick Pranke, Adriana Proser, Donald Stadtner and Heidi Tan. The catalogue accompanied an exhibition at the Asia Society, NY. (Feb. 10 - May 10, 2015). The majority of the 71 objects were borrowed from Myanmar. Guest Curators and Co-Editors: Sylvia Fraser-Lu, Donald Stadtner
The mid-first millennium CE represents a crucial period in the emergence of early polities in Southeast Asia. However, disagreement remains between archaeologists and art historians as to the precise dating of this shift from prehistory to history. This article focuses on the Dvaravati period and re-evaluates evidence in Thai and Western language publications. A growing number of sites excavated over the past two decades in particular show occupation from c. the fourth to fifth century onwards while others provide a continual sequence stretching back well into the Iron Age. I argue that evidence from these sites makes a strong case for postulating a proto-Dvaravati period spanning c. the fourth to fifth centuries. In doing so this article proposes this period as the timeframe within which the nascent traits and characteristics of what becomes Dvaravati in the seventh to ninth centuries are present and gradually developing.
2015
This paper situates the Phong Tuek Visnu, a lesser-known Dvāravatī sculpture from western Thailand, in its archaeological and art historical context in order to demonstrate 7th to 8th century artistic and political connections across mainland Southeast Asia. The circumstances of the Visnu’s rediscovery in the early 1950s, as well as its subsequent “restoration” and preservation at Wat Dong Sak, are examined through reappraisal of documentary evidence, new field reconnaissance, interviews of local residents, and systematic examination of the sculpture itself. Detailed stylistic analysis and conjectural reconstruction of the sculpture’s original appearance place the image within the broader development of the mitred Visnu iconographic type known from sites throughout Southeast Asia. With particular emphasis on the details of the headdress and garment, specific comparisons are made to related sculpture from Thailand, Arakan (Myanmar), Preangkorian Cambodia, and the Cham civilization of Vietnam. The Phong Tuek Visnu’s idiosyncratic features and geographically dispersed stylistic relationships suggest a probable early 8th century date following the mid-to-late 7th century expansion of Khmer elites out of the Kampong Thom area of Cambodia. The Phong Tuek Visnu, therefore, provides valuable testimony of a particularly intense period of interactions spanning mainland Southeast Asia from Arakan in the west to central Vietnam in the east.
Defining Dvāravatī, 2020
Scale of observation with archaeological phenomena has a profound impact, even though this factor is not always explicitly recognized and accounted for in research and interpretation. Continuing issues with the conceptualization of the early historic entity labeled "Dvāravatī” in central Thailand is partly attributable to the broad-scale ("top-down") approach taken by its early observers, issues that can only be addressed by applying a multi-scalar approach with a minimum of pre-conceived ideas about what Dvāravatī is or is not.
This Master thesis studies in detail a particular type of Buddha images present in early Southeast Asia, those seated in the so-called “European fashion” or in pralambapādāsana (i.e. bhadrāsana), that is the posture with both legs extended and the feet firmly planted on the ground or on a lotus pedestal. This iconographic type is widely found in central Thailand during the commonly labelled “art or period of Dvāravatī” (ca 7th-8th c.), one of Thailand’s oldest religious and artistic cultures. It also re-examines and reviews the case study of Wat Phra Men, an important temple site at Nakhon Pathom, where four or five colossal pendant-legged Buddha images are reputed to have originated.
In Mai Lin Tjoa-Bonatz, Andreas Reinecke and Dominik Bonatz (eds.), Connecting Empires and States. Selected Papers from the 13th Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists, Vol. 2, 2012
Myanmar Historical Research Journal, 2011
'The Buddhist pantheon of the Bàyon of Angkor: an historical and art historical reconstruction of the Bàyon temple and its religious and political roots', 2006
In Before Siam: Essays in Art and Archaeology , edited by Nicolas Revire and Stephen A. Murphy, 310-329. Bangkok: RiverBooks and The Siam Society., 2014
Before Siam: Essays in Art and Archaeology , 2014
Rian Thai: International Journal of Thai Studies, Vol. 5, pp. 91-152, 2012
Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 98, pp. 75-115, 2010
Journal of the Siam Society, Vol. 99, pp. 196-225, 2011
In Search of Greater India , 2019
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (Archaeology Issue), Vol. 47, No. 3, pp. 393-417, 2016
Pacific World, Third Series, No. 20, 2018
In N. H. Tan (Ed.), Advancing Southeast Asian Archaeology 2013: Selected Papers from the First SEAMEO SPAFA International Conference on Southeast Asian Archaeology, Chonburi, Thailand 2013 (pp. 301-307, 336-339). Bangkok: SEAMEO SPAFA. 2015.
River Books & The Siam Society, 2014
Nicolas Revire and Stephen Murphy edited, Before Siam: Essays in Art and Archaeology, River Books & The Siam Society, Bangkok, 2014: 132-51. , 2014
History of Bangladesh,vol.II, 2018
In India and Southeast Asia: Cultural Discourses, ed. by Dallapiccola, Anna L. & Verghese, Anila, Mumbai: K R Cama Oriental Institute, pp. 197-222, 2018
Orientalistica, 1(3-4), 2018
Connecting Empires and States: Selected Papers from the 13th International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists, Volume 2 (2013:16-24) eds Bonatz, Domink; Reinecke, Andreas; Tjoa-Bonatz, Mai Lin, 2013
In Nicolas Revire and Stephen Murphy (eds), Before Siam: Essays in Art and Archaeology, Bangkok, River Books & Siam Society, pp. 240-271, 2014
In D. Christian Lammerts (ed.), Buddhist Dynamics in Premodern and Early Modern Southeast Asia, Singapore, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, pp. 172-217, 2015
In Spirits and Ships: Cultural Transfers in Early Monsoon Asia, edited by Andrea Acri, Roger Blench, and Alexandra Landmann, 470-514. The Nalanda-Sriwijaya series (Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre, NSC) no. 28. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. , 2017