The Siam Society is holding a lecture on "Buddhist Landscapes: Art And Archaeology Of The Khorat Plateau, 7th To 11th Centuries" on Thursday at 7pm.
It will be conducted by Stephen A. Murphy, a senior lecturer in curating and museology of Asian art at SOAS University of London. He will discuss his new book of the same title which, built on extensive fieldwork and archaeological surveys, reveals the Khorat Plateau as having a distinctive Buddhist culture including new forms of art and architecture, and a characteristic aesthetic.
The Khorat Plateau is a landscape of some 155,000m² of what is now northeast Thailand and central Laos. Despite rich evidence for the region's dynamism and development in the metal age, knowledge of subsequent first millennium developments on the Khorat Plateau remains limited.
The spread of Buddhism across the region has been overshadowed by the attention given to the Dvaravati culture of the Chao Phraya Basin to its west and the Zhenla and later Angkor civilisations to its south and southeast.
Murphy will illustrate how he reads this history into and against the Khorat landscape, attending to the emergence of monumental architecture such as stupas and Buddha images carved into the rockfaces of hills and mountainsides, and the importance of the use of boundary markers, or sīmā, for the Khorat Plateau.
Launched in May, his book Buddhist Landscapes: Art And Archaeology Of The Khorat Plateau, 7th To 11th Centuries provides a new picture of the region in the first and early second millennia, adding to our understanding of the development of Buddhism in Southeast Asia.
The fee is 300 baht (free for members). Call 02-661-6470--3 ext 203 or email pinthip@thesiamsociety.org.
