In the Serenity of the Himavanta Forest

Zusatztext

The Book of the Three Worlds (Traiphum; inv. no. II 650, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin) is one of the most beautiful, oldest and magnificent manuscripts on Buddhist cosmology from Thailand. The thirty-three-metre long leporello manuscript was commissioned by King Taksin of Thonburi in 1776 from four royal painters and four royal scribes. In 2023, the Berlin museum programme CoMuse allowed collaborative research to be carried out of its images and texts. This book is the outcome of the joint research by the two authors. It focuses on a six-metre-long section of the manuscript: the idyllic and secluded world of the Himavanta forest with its beautiful lakes, animals and plants, the course of the southern stream from the Himavanta forest to the human world and the many Jatakas (pre-birth stories of the Buddha) situated therein. The authors not only analyse the interplay of text and image in the manuscript, but also explore the connections between what is depicted here and other textual traditions of Thailand.

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