The Function and Spatial Distribution of Inscribed Objects in Luang Prabang
Background
Among the countries of mainland Southeast Asia, the epigraphical landscape of Laos is the least explored. On the background of the scarcity of edited inscriptions from Laos, our project focuses on the rather limited monastic environment of the city of Luang Prabang, the former royal capital of Laos and centre of Lao Buddhism since the fourteenth century. We do that out of various reasons. First, unlike most other cities of Laos, including Vientiane, Luang Prabang has hardly been affected by foreign invasions, colonial rule, civil war and revolution. Thus, the loss of cultural heritage, including inscribed steles and art objects, has been much less in this town of at present some 50,000 inhabitants which, with its more than thirty monasteries, has been inscribed on the UNESCO list of world heritage since 1995.
Each of the city’s numerous monasteries contains a variety of inscribed objects, ranging from those accessible at public spaces such as stone steles, stupa basements, boundary markers (sema), gongs, bells, pillars inside ordination halls (sim) and Buddha statues, to those kept in the more reclusive environment of monk’s abodes (kuti) and ordination halls. The latter play important roles in the everyday life of monks and novices, such as sermon seats, wooden plates, vases, medals and seals. Moreover, most monasteries have small bone stupas where the ashes and bones of members of the nobility are enshrined. Such stupas as well as the shrines with the remains of less prominent persons are part of the monastery’s outer enclosure and bear mostly funerary inscription, thus contributing some fine examples to the studies of the epigraphy of death.
Objectives
The main objective of the project is to study the spatial distribution of inscribed Buddhist art objects as well as their function by analysing the inscriptions which reveal a lot about different kinds of usage. Furthermore, we will examine the visibility and accessibility of the objects and their inscriptions since they were obviously kept in different spatial environments. Another research question relates to the motives for the collecting of Buddhist objects of art and utility by the abbot as reflected in dedications recorded in inscriptions.
Our study explores the content of the inscriptions and how they are related to the objects on which the text is inscribed. Of crucial importance are language and script. Inscriptions are usually written in vernacular Lao occasionally interspersed with Pali words and phrases. The preferred script is the Lao variant of the religious Dhamma script (Tham Lao), though the secular Old Lao script (Lao Buhan) is also found, notably in stone inscriptions. In many of the more recent inscriptions, including funerary inscriptions, the modern Lao script (a simplified derivative of the Lao Buhan script) is being used. Thus, we seek to address the following questions: Where and how is a change from Tham Lao to modern Lao script recognizable? When and in which contexts did this change occur? Moreover, we seek to classify the inscriptions both according to their contents and social functions as well as to their material aspects. Special attention will be given to multi-lingual (f.e. Lao, Pali) and multi-scriptural (f.e. Tham, Lao Buhan, modern Lao) inscriptions.
Finally, we will investigate whether the epigraphical landscape of Luang Prabang documented by our project reveals any hierarchy of the almost three dozen monasteries. Why do certain monasteries contain more inscriptions of the different categories and, in particular, more prominent inscriptions than others? This question needs to be discussed also on the background of the history of these monasteries and their religious, cultural and political significance.
The project aims to document, digitise, and catalog written artifacts from 27 monasteries in Luang Prabang, Laos. These artefacts will be stored sustainably using the University of Hamburg's research data management system. The collected data will be used for a research project titled ‘The Function and Spatial Distribution of Inscribed Objects in Luang Prabang’.
Principal Investigators
- Volker Grabowsky (University of Hamburg)
- Khamvone Boulyaphonh (Buddhist Archives of Luang Prabang)