Five Buddhas of the past, present, and future; Phra Malai visiting the stupa of the hair relic in Indra's heaven; scenes from two of the previous lives of the Buddha (Sama Jataka and Nimi Jataka)
- Cambodia
Importance and rarity
The destructive effects of the tropical climate of Cambodia together with the Cambodian civil war and the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in the 1960s and 1970s led to the loss of many Cambodian artworks. Few traditional religious paintings on cloth, such as this one, survived. Few of those surviving are composed and painted with such skill and precision.
Conservation
When this painting arrived at the museum it had sustained considerable damage. For example, repeated folding had caused some areas to break into small fragments. Our conservators spent months painstakingly reattaching the fragments and delicately cleaning and relining the painting.
The conservation of this painting was made possible by a generous donation from Joyce Clark.
Theme and subjects
Achieving rebirth in a higher state, as envisioned in nineteenth-century Buddhist traditions of Cambodia (and Thailand) is the overarching theme of this painting.
In the middle is the conical stupa in the heaven of the god Indra that enshrines hair relics of the Buddha-to-be. According to accounts of the Buddha’s life, when the young Prince Siddhartha left home and family to begin the spiritual quest that led eventually to Buddhahood, he cut off his long hair as a symbol of renouncing his luxurious life. Indra, king of the gods, claimed the hair and built this glittering monument to hold it. As seen here hovering above the stupa, gods and celestial beings from several other heavens come periodically to worship the hair relic.
At the top are three Buddhas of the past; the Buddha of our age; and Maitreya, the Buddha of the future. They are identified by animals associated with them.
At the bottom are two scenes of the stories of the Buddha of our age in his previous lives on earth (the Sama Jataka and the Nimi Jataka), during which he perfected the virtues needed to make himself worthy of becoming a Buddha.
Just above these two scenes is a wall surrounding Indra’s heaven. A person wearing a diadem enters a doorway. The identity of this figure is a mystery. We might speculate that it is the donor of the painting, after death, entering the heavenly realm.
