Book Launch: Buddhist Landscapes: Art and Archaeology of the Khorat Plateau, 7th to 11th Centuries
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
- Venue
- Royal Asiatic Society, 14 Stephenson Way, London NW1 2HD
- Room
- Lecture Theatre
- Event type
- Launch
About this event
The Khorat Plateau is a landscape of some 155,000 square kilometres of what is now northeast Thailand and central Laos. Despite the 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 the Dvāravatī culture of the Chao Phraya Basin to its west and the Zhenla and later Angkor civilisations to its south and southeast.
In this lecture, Stephen Murphy will discuss his new book 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.
Moreover, by combining archaeological and art historical analysis with an historical ecology approach, he traces the outlines of Buddhism's spread into the region, along its major river systems.
In this lecture he will illustrate how he read this history into and against the Khorat landscape, attending to the emergence of monumental architecture such as stūpas and Buddha images carved into the rockfaces of hills and mountainsides, and the importance on the Khorat Plateau of the use of boundary markers, or sīmā.
The book 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.
This lecture is hosted by the Royal Asiatic Society.
About the Speaker
Stephen A. Murphy is Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art at SOAS, University of London. He specializes in the art and archaeology of Buddhism and Hinduism in first millennium CE Southeast Asia with a focus on Thailand and Laos. He has a particular interest in the 7th to 9th centuries CE as well as maritime connectivity between Southeast Asian cultures, Tang China, and the Indian Ocean world in general. His museological focus engages with issues of restitution and curation of Asian art.
About the Respondent
Professor Ashley Thompson is the Hiram W. Woodward Chair in Southeast Asian Art, SOAS University of London.
Image: Detail of Buddha image in mahāparinibbāṇa posture carved into the rock face on the Phu Wiang Mountain range, Khon Kaen province, Thailand. Late 8th to early 9th century. Author’s photograph.
