Our visit to Ban Sema and the temple of Wat Pho Chai Semaram in Kalasin province, was a late afternoon encounter with familiar signs of merit-making and active temple curation. An orderly layout of ancient sema stones or boundary markers (from the Pali sīmā) framed by Fine Art Department (FAD) panels, identified them as works of the Dvaravati period (6th to 11th century). Sandstone and laterite slabs with carved Jataka reliefs were housed under cover, while plain ones lined the main walkway and stood in lines on the front lawn of the temple. All of them had apparently been registered with the FAD since 1937 (Fig.1). Replica stones also lined the main walkway, their moulded brown-painted reliefs inviting scrutiny and comparison with the originals.
Evidence of renovation, storage, and construction suggested active community support. A stupa was hastily being whitewashed, while an open-sided display at the rear of the temple housed a collection of pottery and votive tablets, flanked by sema stones mounted on steel supports around the perimeter. Described simply as a ‘building’ by the FAD, this was clearly an example of the kind of temple museum that can be found throughout Thailand and wider mainland Southeast Asia. Designated spaces of safekeeping, they evidence active curatorial care by temple custodians, be they lay or monastic (Fig.2). The Thai term phiphitthapanthasathan or ‘a site that houses a variety of things’, first recorded in the late 1880s (Paritta 2006, 151), resonates with the typically diverse constitution of temple museum collections.
Questions of one’s positionality relative to the temple and its custodial community aside, the immersive quality of this display departs from conventional forms of re-presentation viewed more often at state museums. The leaf-shaped slabs with worn reliefs confront visitors with their monumental scale and lithic qualities, particularly where their roughly hewn bases are revealed (Fig.3). This self-revelatory means of display simultaneously foregrounds their function and significance, which is to remain rooted in order to bound and maintain consecrated space for the continuity of Theravāda Buddhist monastic practices (Carbine and Davis 2022). The material and physical effect of this encounter distinguishes the display from the occularcentric approach, for example at the Khon Kaen National Museum, where spacious arrangements, plinths and raked lights, emphasise the aesthetic and narrative qualities of the carved Jataka stories (Murphy 2010, 248).
At the temple museum however, the potential for a wider range of readings is presaged by the construction of a double-height building, the next stage of the museum’s incarnation according to resident monastic Phra Khru Phochaivaraphirak. The emblematic deployment of boundary markers in the form of relief images rendered within the main entrance pediment, even as the structure awaits its cladding, suggests that sema continue to do their work of sacralising and inscribing local identity. The museum’s capacity implies potential for expanding the collection and facilitating future returns. Perhaps only with this demonstration of local support and technological prowess, will custodians be able to assert the moral imperative of bringing sacred stones and other objects back to a place of appropriate local significance.
This short encounter raises more questions than answers particularly in relation to the continued ritual efficacy of the sema and the role of the temple museum in future. As Schober discusses in the Burmese context, the ritual practice of dāna (generosity) to accrue and share merit with others, is integral to the hierarchy of social relations and obligations between lay supporters and powerful temple patrons, and moreover is required to sustain the monastery [and temple] as lawful and authentic field of merit (Schober 2022, 117). Previous observations of temple museums in Myanmar evidenced their use as extensions of ritual space that offer further opportunities to make merit and validate donors’ gifts. Pilgrims also seek out temple museums, to see gifts of sacred objects, and so share in the donors’ merit; a response that I referred to as the ‘pagoda museum effect’ (Tan 2022). The multiple roles of the temple museum in protecting and promoting the ritual lives of objects and the cultural identities of their communities has also been discussed (Paritta 2022). Phra Khru Phociavaraphirak’s own production of colourful tung (banners) for the forthcoming Wat Phra That Na Dun festival, raises further questions of monastic agency in the engagement of meritorious constituencies and identity (Fig. 4). Colourful and somewhat anthropomorphic in scale, it would seem no coincidence that they resonate with sema stones in their ability to viscerally engage merit-makers and perpetuate support for the temple and museum as living fields of merit.
Acknowledgement: With thanks to Phra Khru Phociavaraphirak for accommodating CO-OP members’ questions and photo documentation.
References
Carbine, Jason, A. and Erik Davis (2022). ‘Introduction’ to Simas. Foundations of Buddhist Religion. Honolulu. University of Hawai‘i Press.
Murphy, Stephen, A. (2010). ‘The Buddhist Boundary Markers of Northeast Thailand and Central Laos, 7th – 12th century BCE. Towards an Understanding of the Archaeological, Religious, and Artistic Landscapes of the Khorat Plateau’. PhD Thesis, Department of History of Art and Archaeology, SOAS University of London.
Parita Chalermpow Koanantakool (2022). ‘Monastery Museums in Thailand: A Brief History’ in Gods’ Collections edited by Crispin Paine and Jessica Hughes. https://www.godscollections.org/case-studies/monastery-museums-in-thailand
__________. (2006) ‘Contextualising Objects in Monastery Museums in Thailand’ in Buddhist Legacies in Mainland Southeast Asia. Mentalities, Interpretations, and Practices, edited by Paritta Chalermpow Koanantakool and François Lagirarde. Paris; Bangkok: École française d’Extrême-Orient; Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Anthroplogy Centre, 2006, 149–65.
Schober, Juliane (2022). ‘Ritual giving and its cultural mediations’ in Routledge Handbook of Theravāda Buddhism edited by Stephen C. Berkwitz and Ashley Thompson. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp.115–126.
Tan, Heidi (2021). ‘The Shwedagon Pagoda’ in Gods’ Collections edited by Crispin Paine and Jessica Hughes. https://www.godscollections.org/case-studies/the-shwedagon-pagoda-museum-yangon