REVIEWS elsewhere, and will recall other items similar to those in this exhibition. For others this catalogue will provide an Forrest McGill, ed. The Kingdom of introduction to Siamese art, and its Siam: The Art of Central Thailand, peculiar forms and expressions. How 1350–1800. San Francisco, Asian Art successfully does it perform this role? Museum - Chong-Moon Lee Center for To begin with, the production is ex- Asian Art and Culture, 2005, pp.200. cellent. There are striking full-page pho- tographs of the architectural remains of This is the catalogue published to Ayutthaya, Buddha images, painting and accompany the exhibition by the same inlay work, and smaller, but still ad- name first held at the Asian Art Museum equate, illustrations of the exhibition in San Francisco and then at the Peabody items. A strength of the book is its com- Essex Museum in Salem, Massachu- prehensive bibliography, which pro- setts, in 2005. The exhibition brought vides interested readers with all the nec- together 89 of the finest examples of the essary leads for further study. There is arts of the Ayutthaya period of Siamese also a useful list of Siamese kings, and history (1351–1767), together with a a good index, but no glossary. few from the Thonburi and early Roughly half the book is devoted to Bangkok periods loaned by museums the items of the exhibition, and half to around the world, especially national the introductory essays. These cover a museums in Thailand. variety of themes. Forrest McGill pro- A catalogue, by its very nature, is vides a cautious introduction to the his- designed to accompany a visual experi- tory and culture of Siam over these four ence. Its introductory essays sketch the and a half centuries - cautious because historical, social and artistic context the historical destruction of Ayutthaya essential to an understanding of the art, makes it almost impossible for the art and its notes on individual items give historian to provide a connected account viewers information about what con- or stylistic flowchart for Siamese art. fronts them. But catalogues are also For what we have left of the art of collectors’ items, to be treasured as aids Ayutthaya are mere fragments preserved to memory, to be dipped back into as a by the accidents of time. The sacking of means of recall for those lucky enough the city in 1767 was so thorough that to have seen the exhibition. almost nothing survived. The ruins of For those not so lucky, a catalogue temples provide stark reminders of what must have an additional purpose. Many was lost, for so much fine art was reli- readers of this review will, like the re- gious. Of palaces nothing remains. The viewer, not have seen the exhibition, but murals and painted banners, sculpture they may well have seen several of and wood carving that adorned the great the items illustrated, in the National royal temples have irretrievably gone. Museum in Bangkok, or in museums Journal of the Siam Society 2007 Vol. 95 205 [01-034]JSS P205-216 205 15/6/07, 10:56 206 Reviews McGill outlines what we might call include spices, for that would have at- the material religious context, the com- tracted occupation, as it did in the spice ponent elements of Buddhist temples islands. Siamese trade goods were and the place of image, stupa (or chedi), mostly drawn from an extensive hinter- and narrative relief or mural painting. land, which included the inland king- This is essential, but so too is an under- doms of Lan Na and Lan Xang. It was standing of the worldview that this art control of this trade that gave Ayutthaya expresses and communicates - and this the edge in the Tai world, but never is not well covered, in any of the essays. enough to unify it in the face of the threat There is no outline of Buddhist cosmol- from Burma. ogy, no discussion of the legitimation In artistic terms, to the earlier Cam- of power provided by royal donations bodian influence, always strong, were to the Sangha and the construction and added influences from the north (Lan beautification of Buddhist temples, and Na) and west (Sri Lanka, either directly passing reference only to the purpose of or via Burma). What the Europeans making merit. An understanding of Bud- brought were luxury items for the dhism is assumed, but this is surely an amusement of the nobility and, most unwarranted assumption for many importantly, new technology and knowl- Americans who viewed the exhibition, edge, mainly military, but in medicine, and even for readers of the catalogue. too. They affected the construction of The second essay is by Dhiravat na fortifications, not temples. Pombejra on foreign contacts and trade The next four essays focus on archi- with Ayutthaya in the seventeenth and tecture and art. Hiram Woodward pro- eighteenth centuries. This makes the vides an informed discussion of the very important point that Ayutthaya was Buddha images of Ayutthaya. Then a remarkably cosmopolitan city, and key follow Santi Leksukhum’s study of the hub in a trading network that connected evolution of memorial towers and M. Siam with China to the east and both L. Pattaratorn Chirapravati’s interesting the Indian sub-continent and the Mus- account of the treasures discovered in lim world to the west. The addition of the crypt of the main tower of Wat Europeans to this mix further stimulated Rachaburana. Finally there is a fine trade, but only over time. From an ar- study of Ayutthayan painting by Henry tistic point of view, the influence of In- Ginsburg. dia and China was always more impor- There is something a little illogical tant, at least until the nineteenth century. about the order here, which derives, I The importance of Ayutthaya in the surmise, from the failure to provide an network of trade lay not in its strategic account of the growth of Ayutthaya, both location (as in the case of Malacca or as an urban centre, and more importantly Batavia), but in its goods on offer. in terms of the symbolism expressed in Dhiravat makes the point that it was urban relationships (of palaces and lucky for the Siamese that these did not temples and administrative and com- Journal of the Siam Society 2007 Vol. 95 [01-034]JSS P205-216 206 15/6/07, 10:56 Reviews 207 mercial areas). Provided with such a The crypt of Wat Rachaburana was context, Santi’s more narrowly architec- rather hurriedly excavated by the Fine tural study of the various forms of prang Arts Department of Thailand in 1957, and chedi would make better sense (al- after looters got away with some twenty ways supposing that this is sufficiently bags of gold objects, so Pattaratorn germane to the focus of the exhibition.) reminds us. But how do we know there Then would follow naturally chapters were twenty bags? How big were the on the Buddha image, the artefacts dis- bags? Was any of this loot recovered? covered in Wat Rachaburana, and Fascinating questions, which Pattaratorn Ayutthayan painting. leaves us wondering about. What Because Ayutthayan art is so over- escaped the thieves still made up an whelmingly religious, and because Bud- extraordinary collection, without which dha images are the focus of worship, our knowledge of Ayutthayan art would some sense must be made for the non- be very much the poorer. Buddhist reader of the plethora of forms What is particularly significant was and postures that confronts anyone vis- that we know precisely when the votive iting the exhibition or reading the book. plaques, small Buddha images, and Woodward does this well, categorizing finely wrought gold objects were depos- images in terms both of the four pos- ited in the crypt (in 1424). This assists tures (iriyapatha) - standing, sitting, enormously in dating not only these walking and reclining - and of hand ges- objects, but in establishing dating crite- ture (mudra). He also devotes attention ria for a whole range of Siamese arts to peculiarly Siamese forms, such as the and crafts. Two points are particularly Buddha in royal attire and the Sihing of note about this collection, both of type of seated Buddha with the right which reinforce our understanding of hand resting on the right knee. Wood- Zthe importance of international rela- ward indicates the significance of fa- tions at this time, both for trade and for mous Buddha images, and notes how religious contacts within the Buddhist very few survived the sack of Ayutthaya. world: one is the evident Chinese influ- Santi’s detailed exposition does have ence (well before the arrival of Europe- the benefit of drawing attention to ans); the other is the number of artefacts architecture (and by extension, art) out- of foreign Buddhist provenance. side the capital, and to the eclecticism Painting, as Ginsburg reminds us, is of Siamese borrowing of architectural particularly subject to damage through forms (the prang from Cambodia, the war, weather, and neglect. What must bell-shaped stupa from Burma via Sri have been wonderful mural paintings in Lanka, the octagonal stupa from Mon the great temples have disappeared Haripunjaya). What the Siamese did was almost completely. The best that remain to elaborate upon these forms, particu- are in Phetchaburi and Bangkok, not in larly in the Baroque decoration of the the ruins of Ayutthaya. Banner paintings later stupas. are almost as poorly represented. Our Journal of the Siam Society 2007 Vol. 95 [01-034]JSS P205-216 207 15/6/07, 10:56 208 Reviews knowledge of Ayutthayan painting de- rives overwhelmingly from miniature panels flanking the text in folded paper manuscripts - and few enough of these remain.