The Previous Lives of the Buddha
In Siam ten of the stories of the Buddha’s hundreds of previous lives (the Jatakas) were singled out as particularly important, and were related to the perfecting of ten virtues such as patience and generosity. They were thought of as the last ten lives before the life in which the bodhisattva (that is, the Buddha-to-be) achieved Buddhahood, and their order was standardized. In nineteenth-century painting—murals on temple walls, illustrations in manuscripts, and paintings on wood and cloth—these ten stories are depicted over and over, sometimes with several illustrations for each story, and sometimes with just one each.
The story of what was understood to be the Buddha’s immediately previous life, that of Prince Vessantara, was often depicted in great detail, with attention paid to subsidiary incidents as well as to the main narrative.
Standard central Thai versions of the Vessantara story, called the “Great Life,” had thirteen chapters, and at yearly temple ceremonies all these were recited by monks, with the layfolk listening, or at least present. Various individuals or families would sponsor each of the chapters. This would entail paying for the painting of their chapter —one of a set of thirteen—and also donating sticks of incense and other offerings in numbers equal to the number of verses in their chapter. Sometimes the paintings were inscribed with the donors’ names, the number of verses in the particular chapter that was illustrated, and the donors’ wish that their donation would lead to spiritual advancement and eventual attainment of nirvana.
Complete sets of paintings for the recitation of the story of prince Vessantara are extremely rare, but a complete set is exhibited here. Once a set of paintings was used it may not have been used again, and no particular provision may have been made to preserve it. The number of single paintings or small groups of paintings surviving from sets suggests that sets were often broken up and dispersed. A mid-twentieth-century tourist buying such paintings as artistic souvenirs or décor items would not have found keeping a set intact to be a priority.
Scenes of the Vessantara story were also depicted in temple murals, in
manuscripts, and on manuscript cabinets.
