Devotion: image, recitation, and celebration of the Vessantara Epic in Northeast Thailand

Uittreksel

Devotion presents, for the very first time, a selection of six full-length Vessantara Jataka picture scrolls and explores a contemporary multimedia celebration of an ancient Buddhist text through in-depth essays. Provides the reader with an exciting journey into unknown stories and narrative structure. The Vessantara Jataka is the tale of Buddha's last life, before he was reborn as the historical Buddha 2,500 years ago. In this earlier existence as Prince Vessantara he demonstrated evidence of the highest virtue that constitutes an enlightened one, namely generosity. Vessantara gave away everything dear to him in the climactic scene of the story even his wife and children. In North-East Thailand the Vessantara tale is celebrated annually as Bun Phra Wet. Vessantara cloths form the visual framework for this festival; they are hand-painted scrolls, which can reach lengths of up to one hundred meters. This book accompanies an exhibition, to be held in the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich, June 20, 2017 to April 4, 2018.