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Next Meeting:
325th
Meeting – Tuesday, August 10th 2010
"Buddhist Murals
of Northeast Thailand: Reflections of
the Isan
Heartland".
A talk and book
presentation by Bonnie Brereton
Books on mural
painting in Thailand
have tended to focus on works commissioned by royalty or other elite in
the
country’s present or past centers of power. This little volume is
the first of
its kind to examine a vibrant sub-school of painting in the rural
heartland of the Northeast. The murals are distinct in that they
are painted
on the exterior of ordination halls and their compositions give a sense
of
movement around the building. The book examines characters
depicted in
the murals and reveals that many are, in fact, the villagers themselves
as they
participate in the festivals and rituals that inform their
understanding of
Buddhism.
The authors, Bonnie
Pacala Brereton, an art historian and Buddhologist, and Somroay
Yencheuy,
a local Isan heartland artist and scholar, combine their perspectives
and
approaches to produce a multifaceted and empathetic study of these
lovely and
lively paintings.
Written as an
introduction to the topic, the book appeals to generalists interested
in the
Mekong Region as well as to scholars of art history, Buddhism, and
anthropology
whose focus is Southeast Asia.
In my talk I will discuss the challenges of analyzing murals at seven
wats
located in villages in Khon Kaen and Maha Sarakham provinces. The
murals, which
are found both on the interior and exterior of ordination halls, vary
greatly
from one temple to another in terms of quality, composition, relative
scale of
figures in the paintings, and themes depicted. The talk will be a
walking
tour of the wats, revealing the diversity of pre-modern Lao-Isan mural
painting.
Bonnie Brereton has a PhD in Buddhist
Studies and an MA in
Asian Art History from the University of Michigan.
A resident
of Chiang Mai, she has been doing research on Buddhist mural painting
and
shadow play in Isan Lao villages for the past five years.
Future
Meetings:
326th
Meeting – Tuesday, September 14th 2010
Hunting Northern Thailand’s Snakes on a Motorbike
A talk and
presentation by Sjon Hauser
After completing my biology studies at the University
of Amsterdam in the early
1980s, I
left for Thailand
to become engaged as a writer and journalist, mainly working for Dutch
magazines and newspapers. I wrote some twenty books about South-East
Asia and
one of them, Thailand.
Zacht als zijde, buigzaam als bamboe, has become a ‘Dutch
bestseller’. In
the late 1990s my interest in biology rekindled. Crossing the country
on a
motorbike for the purpose of getting information and pictures for
guidebooks
and travel stories, I often
came across roadkills of snakes. Gradually, studying such roadkills and
spotting and photographing living snakes in the wild became an aim at
its own.
I am currently working on a book about the Snakes of Northern Thailand.
Summary
Until the publication of the good Photographic Guide to Snakes and
other
Reptiles of Thailand and Southeast Asia (1998), amateur herpetologists
in Thailand
could have a tough time in identifying a snake they had spotted. Due to
its
limited scope this Photographic Guide is unfortunately incomplete as an
aid,
and Northern Thailand is a little
underrepresented. A number of rather common snakes in the North are
missing,
while some rare species only known from the far South are covered. Some
of the
pictures are of little help, while
the scientific names of a dozen of species have been revised in the
meantime.
‘Common English names’ are often meaningless or even
confusing. Despite the
large number of excellent pictures included, the publication
of Lai Ngu
Thai (‘Snakes in Thailand’)
in 2001, has not filled the gap. There are some websites with good
pictures of
Thai snakes, but the information is usually sketchy and sometimes
wrong. Until
recently, the red-necked keelback, the bite of which may be fatal, has
been
described as ‘harmless’ on one site. More commonly,
harmless snakes are
supposed to be dangerous — a non-venomous Indo-Chinese rat snake
is taken for a
(deadly) king cobra on one nature site.
Most Thai people know virtually nothing about snakes, which is
surprising, as snakes
abound in the country and are often spotted, while Thailand hosts a dozen of
deadly
serpents. ‘Local knowledge’, often hailed by both
anthropologists and social
workers, is virtually absent with regard to snakes. The cultural
attitude
towards snakes differs little from the one in the West:
snakes are considered the embodiment of evil.
Over 180 species of snakes occur in Thailand, and I came across
some
eighty of them in the North. Although the South surpasses the latter in
species
richness (including many sea snakes), snakes abound in the North and
are
important elements in the ecology and food pyramids of most habitats,
such as
cultivated lands (rice paddies, orchards, gardens, etc.), streams,
marshes and
other waters, and all types of forests. Doi
Suthep-Pui National Park hosts some 50 species, while
over twenty species can
regularly be spotted in the city of Chiang Mai.
Despite seldom being spotted, snakes are numerous in many places. In
gardens
one (tiny) flowerpot snake may be present per cubic metre of soil.
Large
numbers of the Assamese mountain snake live in the evergreen forest of Doi
Suthep
at elevations from 1000-1600 metres, and on sunny days a few dozens of
them may
be killed on the road between Wat Phra That Doi Suthep and the Phuphing Palace alone. Dozens of
chequered
keelbacks may hunt fish and frogs in a few rai of flooded rice paddies.
This presentation will focus on some twenty of the most commonly
encountered
snakes, a number of dangerous species, and some interesting and less
common
mountain snakes. Furthermore I will elaborate on some taxonomic problem
groups,
such as kukri snakes, and the merits of studying roadkills and
‘hunting snakes
on a motorbike’. All this will be illustrated with about 80
pictures of snakes.
Request for
assistance
Can anyone loan Sjon a laptop for the
evening. He has the CD
but nothing to play it on. If you can help Sjon with a laptop, please
contact
him at shauser@loxinfo.co.th
.You
will probably need to arrange with Sjon to meet at the Alliance some
time before his talk to make
sure that your laptop is compatible with their LCD projector.
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