Detail of commoner family with three children (Thai Ramayana mural)
About this photograph
- Creator
- Margery H. Freeman
- Date created
- Unknown
- Location
- Bangkok, Thailand
- License
- This photograph copyright ©2006. Terms of use
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This detail of a commoner family shown in a Ramayana mural at the Emerald Buddha Temple depicts parents with three children. The mother and oldest child each carry small naked children. The mother holds a crying baby in her arms, while the oldest child carries the middle child piggy-back. The father carries a walking stick in his left hand and gestures stiffly to his wife with his right hand. The figures stand on bare ground with a horizon line passing behind their chests. The area is mostly bare of vegetation, except for a two boulders and part of a tree at the left.
The parents and oldest child wear cloths wrapped around their legs to form short pants or loincloths. The father has an extra cloth sash around his neck while his wife has hers discreetly wrapped across her breasts. In general, the influence of European or Middle Eastern dress codes led to the addition of shirts or other top garments in tropical Southeast Asia.
This mural suggests what life was like in the ancient kingdoms where Rama and Sita were born. It actually is based on an idealized vision of life during the late 1800s in Siam (now Thailand).
Some Siamese versions of the Ramayana were lost when the Burmese sacked the Simaese royal city of Ayudhya in 1767. A version was created between 1797 and 1807 under the writing supervision of King Rama I, the founder of the Chakri dynasty. His version was depicted on the painted murals surrounding the Temple of the Emerald Buddha in Bangkok.
The original mural paintings in the Emerald Buddha Temple galleries are two hundred years old, but scenes are repainted from time to time under the supervision of the Thai royal family.
This image was photographed in November 1982.
