Isan scrolls depicting life of Buddha feature in new Zurich exhibition

'Hin-Gabe' project aims to spread knowledge of the Vessantara Jataka

The first international exhibition of northeast Thailand’s painted-cloth Vessantara Jataka scrolls has opened at The Ethnographic Museum of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and will remain on view until mid-April 2018. Titled “Hin-Gabe”, or “devotion”, the exhibition includes other material objects and a video to explain the meanings and uses of the scrolls that depict the various lives of Lord Buddha.

The exhibition was opened on June 18 by HE Kittiphong Na Ranong, the Thai ambassador to Switzerland, and his wife.

“This is an excellent occasion for Thai and Europeans to learn about Isan culture and the Vessantara Jataka,” the ambassador said in his welcoming remark. “Hin-Gabe refers to the devotion of Vessantara and also the painters of these scrolls. This exhibition shows how Swiss people have studied hard and conducted research over a long time in a subject that they didn’t know about until they become experts in the field.”

The exhibition was designed and mounted by Thomas Kaiser, museum curator, with the extensive assistance of t he abbots of the temples and the people of northeastern Thailand who own and use these cloth paintings in their annual Bun Phra Wet, a major merit-making ceremony in the Isan region. Kaiser and Prof Dr Leedom Lefferts, who gave a lecture at the opening, have conducted extensive fieldwork for several years on this subject, surveying the uses of the scrolls, the recitations and chanting of the monks, and the extensive use of objects during the festival.

All of the scrolls are borrowed, four from communities in the Northeast where they are featured in the annual festivals of their temples, plus an additional one on loan from the Moesgård Museum of Aarhus University, Denmark. As part of the opening, visitors placed flowers in four baskets defining the perimeter of the exhibition space, thus invoking the power of Phra Upakut to protect the exhibition during the time it is on view.

One of the Thai attendees on opening day, Thanaphorn Hessinger, whose mother lived in Isan, said he liked the exhibition “because it connects the feelings of the Thai and Lao people here in Switzerland to their hometowns”.

One scroll, a metre wide, is completely unrolled and hung at eye level for its 50.5m length. Three scrolls, partially unrolled, lie flat in covered cases. The three scrolls loaned from Thai villages dated to 1972 and later; in two cases, the identity of the painters are known, and one of them has a son who still produces scrolls in Ubon Ratchathani province. The scroll on loan from the Moesgård Museum dates to 1928 and was collected by Dr Anders Poulsen of Denmark in exchange for a new one he had commissioned for the temple that owned it. All of these scrolls will be returned to the temples and museum from which they have been borrowed.

This exhibition is the first international exhibition to feature these long, painted Vessantara scrolls from northeastern Thailand and Laos. Because of their size and the difficulties in displaying them, very few are in museum collections. Only two are known to be in Thai museums. However, perhaps as many as 6,000-8,000 exist in northeastern Thailand and Lao temples. Each one of these scrolls presents a slightly different telling of the famous Vessantara Jataka and each has been and continues to be a vibrant part of the community’s temple and religion.

A sumptuous catalogue has been prepared, in English and German, by Thomas Kaiser, DEVOTION: Image, Recitation, And Celebration Of The Vessantara Epic In Northeast Thailand (2017, Arnoldsche Art Publishers and Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich). Complete detailed illustrations for the length of each scroll as well as translations of their captions are presented, along with articles by Kaiser and Lefferts explaining the Bun Phra Wet Festival and the meanings and uses of these scrolls. An additional, illustrated essay by Dr Martina Wernsdörfer describes in detail the Tibetan dramatisation of the Vessantara story, thus providing a comparative perspective on one of the most important stories in Theravada Buddhist Southeast Asia. The book will soon be available at Asia Books in Bangkok.

This connects Thai and Lao people here in Switzerland to their hometowns