Journal articles on the topic 'Buddhist art Thailand'

Since the nineteenth century, Buddhists residing in the present-day nations of Myanmar, Thailand, and Sri Lanka have thought of themselves as participants in a shared southern Asian Buddhist world characterized by a long and continuous history of integration across the Bay of Bengal region, dating at least to the third centurybcereign of the Indic King Asoka. Recently, scholars of Buddhism and historians of the region have begun to develop a more historically variegated account of Buddhism in South and Southeast Asia, using epigraphic, art historical, and archaeological evidence, as well as new interpretations of Buddhist chronicle texts.1 This paper examines three historical episodes in the eleventh- to fifteenth-century history of Sri Lankan-Southeast Asian Buddhist connections attested by epigraphic and Buddhist chronicle accounts. These indicate changes in regional Buddhist monastic connectivity during the period 1000-1500, which were due to new patterns of mobility related to changing conditions of trade and to an altered political ecosystem in maritime southern Asia.

The Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore, is to be congratulated for organising a splendid exhibition of Thai Buddhist art entitled ‘Enlightened ways: The many streams of Buddhist art in Thailand’, which ran from 30 November 2012 to 17 April 2013, and for publishing the exhibition catalogue as well as a separate monograph, Buddhist storytelling in Thailand and Laos, which elucidates the long cloth scroll depicting the story of Prince Vessantara on display at the exhibition.

Intricate paper cutting of Southern Thailand is a traditional folk art, which is passed down from one generation to another. However, there are no detailed studies or records of the historical backgrounds, beliefs, and cultural animation of Thai-Buddhist culture in Southern Thailand concerning this folk art. This study, therefore, aims to examine this art form in Songkhla and Nakhon Sri Thammarat provinces, which have their own cultural identities. The goal is to register this art form as a part of cultural heritage. The compilation of vital data includes (1) paper characteristics, (2) paper engraving methods, (3) colours, (4) instruments, (5) pattern designing, (6) purposes of the arts, (7) origins and history, and (8) knowledge of transferring methods. The findings reveal the origins of the beliefs and Buddhist faith of the community. The intricate paper cutting techniques are still maintained in the form of decorations found at auspicious events, festivals, and cultural ceremonies in every region of Thailand. The techniques of this art form are in decline but its use still prevails in community life, remaining favourites at auspicious festivities and cultural events for the sake of conserving distinct identities.

Visiting Hell parks is a popular pastime in contemporary Thailand. Situated near Buddhist temples, these gruesome sculpture gardens depict the Buddhist vision of Hell. These grotesque and violent sculptures are usually seen as an oddity and a form of low art. Perhaps for this reason, they are rarely studied by scholars. This article focuses on the parks as modern entertainment. Usually found in rural areas, these spots try to answer the challenges of the commercialisation and globalisation of Thai society. A detailed analysis of four Hell parks, Wang Saen Suk, Wat Pa Lak Roi, Wat Pa Non Sawan and Wat Pa Thewapithak, shows that these religious amusement parks serve not only as means of entertainment but are also places of Buddhist morality.

AbstractIn the mid 1920s Prince Damrong Rajanubhab and George Coedès jointly formulated the stylistic classification of Thailand's antiquities that was employed to reorganize the collection of the Bangkok Museum and has since acquired canonical status. The reorganization of the Bangkok Museum as a ‘national’ institution in the final years of royal absolutism responded to increasing international interest in the history and ancient art of Southeast Asia, but represented also the culmination of several decades of local antiquarian pursuits. This paper traces the origins of the art history of Thailand to the intellectual and ideological context of the turn of the twentieth century and examines its parallelism to colonial projects of knowledge that postulated a close linkage between race, ancestral territory and nationhood.

The story of the Śrāvastī miracles is one episode of the Buddha’s biography that is depicted in the art forms of Dvāravatī from about the 7th to the 11th centuries CE. The fact that many artefacts were produced—in such variety, over such a long period, and at so many sites—shows the popularity of the scene of the Śrāvastī miracles in the Dvāravatī culture. The objective of this research paper is to analyze the significance of the story of the Śrāvastī miracles that affected the creation of Dvāravatī art in Thailand by examining the textual sources together with the Dvāravatī artefacts. The analysis shows that the stories of the Śrāvastī miracles were significant in various ways, being one of the Buddha’s necessary deeds, a principal miracle only performed by the Buddha, a means of converting others to Buddhism, and a key source for the idea of making Buddha images as an act of merit. These significant features may explain the popularity of the Śrāvastī miracle theme in Dvāravatī culture.

When, at the end of the 19th century, the Visnu kovil in Vallipuram, in Vatamaracci, in northern Ilam (Lanka) was (re)built, a Buddha statue was unearthed close to this temple, 50 yardsnortheast of it. It remained in the lumber room of this temple until 1902, when it was set up in Old Park at Yalppanam under a bo-tree. In 1906, the Vallipuram Buddha image was presented by Governor Sir Henry Blake to the King of Siam, who was particularly anxious to have it, as it was supposed to be of an archaic type. This event together with the statue, was forgotten for almost 90 years. All Tamilar and Sinhalese born after 1906 have never seen the Vallipuram Buddha image, provided they have not gone to and found it in Thailand. The study of the religious significance per se, in its historical setting, of the statue is important. The Vallipuram Buddha image is a typical creation of Amaravati art, the spread of which documents the spread of Buddhism to Ilam, where it exercised a decisive influence on the first period of the development of Buddhist art in the Anuratapuram school. We get then a geographical triangle of a cultural encounter between Amaravati, Anuratapuram in its first phase, and Vallipuram. This happened at a time when Buddhism was still not identified as Sinhala Buddhism, but just as Buddhism. The study of the Vallipuram statue is thus a way of transcending or at least suspending for some time polarising ethnic identities, not ethnic identities as such.

This article compares the design of encased stupas from the 15th to 19th centuries CE in Thailand along with examples from Myanmar in order to highlight the shared custom of encasement alongside the differences which developed over time. Archaeological evidence of stupa encasement is plentiful, particularly in Thailand, and shows variations in the design of space and patronage. In both these countries, the second or new donor sometimes left a gap between the original inner and new outer structure for patrons and pilgrims to move around the inner structure in veneration. This article compares examples alongside the customs and beliefs that underpin the function and meaning of the encasement. Archaeological evidence of encasement in Thailand is complemented by the presence of relics of the Buddha, kings, amulets, precious stones, and possibly consecration deposits reviewed through the chronology, epigraphy, architecture, art styles and reliquaries of five Buddhist stupas dating from the 15th to 19th centuries CE. These are compared with examples from the author’s native country of Myanmar, where some encasements have a space between inner and outer stupas and relics have been recorded. While there are many similarities, in Myanmar the relic deposits from research to date have been found in many parts of the stupa, which is somewhat different from Thailand. Together, these comparative and contextual aspects contribute to a deeper understanding of the relationships in patronage traditions and also differences in encasement design between the neighboring countries of Myanmar and Thailand.

The objective of the study was to analyze the transmission and application of Rahu symbolism in contemporary Thai society. Data was collected from both documents and a field study in central and eastern Thailand. It was found that in traditional Thai art, the Rahu symbol is portrayed as his face swallowing the sun or the moon. This kind of Rahu symbol is found in Buddhist temples. Such appearances of the Rahu symbol are related to the belief that Rahu has a protective function. Interestingly, the sculpture of Rahu’s body rather than only his face has become popular in contemporary Thai society. Nowadays, Rahu sculptures tend to be located in specific places. A ritual of worshipping Rahu is often created with offerings of food generally of black color. In addition, the Rahu symbol is now created in several other forms such as posters, magic cloths and amulets. Such newly created art forms of Rahu are due to modern interpretations and meanings of the Rahu symbol in contemporary Thai society. These newly-developed meanings of the Rahu symbol are interesting since they can be applied to deal with people’s problems in the socio-cultural and political context of contemporary Thai society.

AbstractIn this article, I consider the changing forms of a traditional art genre and ritual cycle, Manooraa Rongkruu, in which it is possible for the living to communicate with the dead. I did fieldwork on the dynamics of Theravada Buddhism, Islam and indigenous religion and multi-religious rituals in Southern Thailand from 2004–2007. Religious forms in Southern Thailand have been hybridised, fragmented, post-modernised and revitalised. The performance and art genre of the Manooraa enjoy high popularity in certain parts of Southern Thailand and is used to heal a number of modern ailments. The public performances in Takae, Patthalung and Ta Kura, Songkhla, attract hundreds of thousands of worshippers. I show that the revitalised and reflexive religious practices of people in Southern Thailand to engage and worship the great ancestor spirits represent a multi-vocal arena, in which social transformations and discursive shifts are negotiated. Illustrations of the new performances of the Manooraa Rongkruu are provided to illustrate a ritual in movement that negotiates traditional obligations and postmodern requirements.

This paper presents a study of household gambling consumption in Thailand in 2011. We investigate the nonlinear relationships between this behavior and household alcohol expenditure, household gambling expenditure, and demographic factors. We use Treenet to analyze datasets drawn from a socio-economic survey of 42,083 Thai households conducted in 2011. The results show that the five most significant variables in order of importance for predicting the likelihood of household gambling consumption are household income, household region, work status of the household head, religion of the household head, and age of the household head. In summary, the Treenet results suggest that the likelihood of gambling consumption was higher for households with an income of more than 25,000 Bahts per year, a location in the North, a Buddhist head of household, a head with active work status, a head between 35 and 55 years old, with household expenditure spent on alcohol consumed at home of more than 500 Bahts, with household expenditure spent on tobacco of more than 100 Bahts, and a head of household with less education.

In the history Islam has existed in Thailand since the 13th century. Muslims have been active in trade and administration in the Thailand kingdom. However, in its development, as a minority, there was conflict due to discrimination and intimidation. In 2000 the percentage of religion in Thailand was Buddhist (95%), Islam (4%), Christian (0.6%), and other religions (0.4%). This paper seeks to examine the existence of Islam and the problems of Muslims as a minority in Thailand. In general, the Muslim population in Thailand is divided into two groups, namely Malay Muslims and Thai Muslims. The majority of Muslims are in the Southern part of Thailand, especially in Pattani area so they are often referred to as Muslim Patani Darussalam or Patani Raya which is closer to Malay. While the Thai Muslims are in the Middle and North that includes the descendants of Iranian Muslims, Champa, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, China, and Malay. Problems faced by Muslims in Thailand are more commonly experienced by Malay Muslims or Pattani in southern Thailand. They are regarded as Khaek (guests or foreigners), a negative prejudice. Malay language and names are prohibited from being used in public institutions, such as schools and government agencies. This resulted in the emergence of Pattani's reaction and resistance to the part of Southern Thailand to obtain special autonomy, even to separatists. Finally, in early 2004 there were several incidents and riots occurring in Southern Thailand, especially in Narathiwat, Yala, and Pattani. This conflict occurs because the demands of the separatist movement and the government act hard against them in militaristic ways, on the other hand people are also dissatisfied with government discrimination as well as violence actions separatist movement. This is exacerbated and worsened by USA intervention in the conflict under the pretext of fighting Islamic separatist violence.

In the history Islam has existed in Thailand since the 13th century. Muslims have been active in trade and administration in the Thailand kingdom. However, in its development, as a minority, there was conflict due to discrimination and intimidation. In 2000 the percentage of religion in Thailand was Buddhist (95%), Islam (4%), Christian (0.6%), and other religions (0.4%). This paper seeks to examine the existence of Islam and the problems of Muslims as a minority in Thailand. In general, the Muslim population in Thailand is divided into two groups, namely Malay Muslims and Thai Muslims. The majority of Muslims are in the Southern part of Thailand, especially in Pattani area so they are often referred to as Muslim Patani Darussalam or Patani Raya which is closer to Malay. While the Thai Muslims are in the Middle and North that includes the descendants of Iranian Muslims, Champa, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, China, and Malay. Problems faced by Muslims in Thailand are more commonly experienced by Malay Muslims or Pattani in southern Thailand. They are regarded as Khaek (guests or foreigners), a negative prejudice. Malay language and names are prohibited from being used in public institutions, such as schools and government agencies. This resulted in the emergence of Pattani's reaction and resistance to the part of Southern Thailand to obtain special autonomy, even to separatists. Finally, in early 2004 there were several incidents and riots occurring in Southern Thailand, especially in Narathiwat, Yala, and Pattani. This conflict occurs because the demands of the separatist movement and the government act hard against them in militaristic ways, on the other hand people are also dissatisfied with government discrimination as well as violence actions separatist movement. This is exacerbated and worsened by USA intervention in the conflict under the pretext of fighting Islamic separatist violence.

Emotional practices serve as privileged sites for moral action in a Buddhist community in Northern Thailand. In this article I draw out some of the theoretical implications of this emphasis for the study of morality, combining an anthropological focus on moments of moral breakdown with a psychological claim about the importance of emotion in moral practice. I do this through a case of emotions experienced surrounding a Northern Thai man afflicted with a severe alcohol-related illness. I trace the emotions experienced by the man, his friends, and his family during this difficult time, and analyze the ways in which their emotions are moralized within their community. Contrasting these emotions with quite different reactions raised by the same situation by members of a nearby Christian Karen community, I show how such emotions are broadly connected to locally constructed religious ideas about the value of calmness and the letting go of affective attachments. Through this study I argue that emotions provide new evidence for culturally variable expressions of morality, less as the underpinning of moral judgments and more as objects of moral assessments, and in doing so suggest a new theoretical and methodological domain for the anthropological study of morality.

This essay investigates Buddhist-Muslim intimacies and coexistence in Thailand in order to complicate recent discussions of the relation of religion to gender and sexual freedoms. It is concerned with contributing a new, Southeast Asian perspective to a prominent strain of contemporary criticism that traces the anti-Islamic bent of European and US public discourses to biases inherent in liberal thought. Authors such as Saba Mahmood, Jasbir Puar, and Judith Butler have tracked how, under the assumption of Islam’s sexual illiberalism, the figure of “the Muslim” has become liberalism’s paradigmatic other. Although it builds on these critiques, the essay asks how these logics play out quite differently in a majority Buddhist society and in a modernity that is not understood only as secular. The essay investigates how contemporary globally circulating Thai films furnish a radically different approach to multiethnic coexistence, emancipatory sexual politics, the temporalities of modernity, and the domain of the law that is so closely connected to sexual and religious freedoms. The essay thereby analyzes the problem of liberalism in the context of multiply constituted notions of freedom, belonging, and coexistence beyond European and North American contexts. Like Butler, the author relies on a claim about temporality but argues that the plural temporalities of Southeast Asian modernities allow for different relations between minority and majority populations and between notions of gender equality or sexual freedom and religious belonging.

<p>The Southern of Thailand citizens are known as the plural society that possesses various different religions. Even though the citizens are from multi-religious society, the majority of them are Muslims and followed by the Buddhists. It is a continuous issue for the religious believers in the Southern of Thailand in communicating with the other religious believers. Their interaction process is always accompanied by the suspicion and doubt among each other. Among the concepts of harmonious living in a religious pluralism society, openness attitude is the most important basic concept. It plays the significant role as a tool to form a good relationship among people. Therefore, this study is meant to scrutinize to which extent the religious teaching that teaches on the religious harmonious of life influence its believers in interpreting it to an openness attitude in their daily interaction. This study utilised two main methods namely the qualitative and the quantitative approaches. The results from the descriptive analysis depict that most of religious believers in the Southern of Thailand possess the openness attitude in interacting with the other believers at a good level as 40.02% of them agreed, and 30.96% of them strongly agreed on the issue. Hence, the findings have convinced the study that majority of the citizens in the Southern of Thailand are highly motivated to live harmoniously. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that there are some of the religious believers failed to practice the openness attitude when interacting with the other believers, so it is a must to identify the causes in order to offer the best solution for it.</p>

AbstractThis article analyses the interplay between the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) standard, Buddhist socio-economic imaginaries, and values within the global production network (GPN) of organic rice. It asks, “How do transnational standardisation and local values interact in the global production network of organic rice?” Little research has been conducted on the imaginaries and values embedded in the GPNs of organic food. This research aims to fill this gap by examining the transition to organic agriculture among two prominent organic rice farming communities in Thailand, namely the Naso Producer Group and the Ban Thap Thai Organic Agricultural Cooperative. The article draws on a combination of desk research; interviews with governmental and non-governmental officials, standard experts/certifiers, and representatives of the IFOAM; focus group discussions and photo-elicitation sessions with organic rice farmers; on-site observations; and participant observations of mindfulness meditation courses and interviews with Buddhist monks. The results show that Buddhist socio-economic imaginaries have informed the way in which Thai organic rice farmers reconnect to their arable land through an organic farming method, enabling them to live meaningfully and mindfully. This implies that the connectivity of the GPNs of organic rice is not created purely by standards and certifications formulated by transnational private actors; rather, it is also shaped to a large extent by community values and shifts in local mindsets. This article contributes to the literature on food philosophy in the developing world and the governance of the GPNs of organic rice.

The Śrāvastī miracles are among the Buddha’s principal miracles and could even be considered the prototypical Buddhist miracle stories. The narrative of these miracles is preserved in a variety of languages in different versions and is represented in the visual art of ancient India, Central Asia, as well as Southeast Asia. The objective of this study is to reexamine the visual representations of the Śrāvastī miracles found in the period of Dvāravatī, which spanned from the seventh to the eleventh centuries CE, via a comparative study of textual sources and their possible relationships to the 24 artefacts (9 types) found in the central, northeastern and southern parts of present-day Thailand. This study reveals that these artefacts illustrate important narrative elements from various Buddhist traditions, such as: (1) the demonstration of miracles (the miraculous growth of a tree and the multiplication of the Buddha, which comprises the Twin Miracle, the Great Miracle, the creation of the duplicate Buddha, and the performance of a miracle akin to the one experienced in the fourth absorption), (2) the depictions of the (six) defeated non-Buddhist ascetics, (3) of King Prasenajit, and (4) of Brahmā and Indra, bodhisattvas, and unspecified deities. The rich corpus of Dvāravatī artefacts illustrating these miracles implies that the artists might have clearly drawn their inspiration from various textual sources based mostly on the Theravādin and Mūlasarvāstivādin records. It is also possible that they were made based on known scriptures of that time, which in turn were the resultsof mixed interpretations of the Theravādin, Mūlasarvāstivādin, and other unknown texts. Alternatively, it is also possible that the visual representations do not reflect any connection to textual sources, as these artefacts cannot be attached to any particular Buddhist tradition and even less so to a specific “school.” These findings demonstrate how the key elements of a narrative from the literary sources have been transformed through visual representations, evidenced by these Dvāravatī artefacts showing their local formulation as well.

The curtain rose. The howling of desert wind filled the performance hall in the Shanghai Grand Theatre. Into the center stage, where a scenic construction of a mountain cliff and a desert landscape was dimly lit, entered the character of the Daoist priest Wang Yuanlu (1849–1931), performed by Chen Yizong. Dressed in a worn and dusty outfit of dark blue cotton, characteristic of Daoist priests, Wang began to sweep the floor. After a few moments, he discovered a hidden chambre sealed inside one of the rock sanctuaries carved into the cliff.Signaled by the quick, crystalline, stirring wave of sound from the chimes, a melodious Chinese ocarina solo joined in slowly from the background. Astonished by thousands of Buddhist sūtra scrolls, wall paintings, and sculptures he had just accidentally discovered in the caves, Priest Wang set his broom aside and began to examine these treasures. Dawn had not yet arrived, and the desert sky was pitch-black. Priest Wang held his oil lamp high, strode rhythmically in excitement, sat crossed-legged in a meditative pose, and unfolded a scroll. The sound of the ocarina became fuller and richer and the texture of the music more complex, as several other instruments joined in.Below is the opening scene of the award-winning, theatrical dance-drama Dunhuang, My Dreamland, created by China’s state-sponsored Lanzhou Song and Dance Theatre in 2000. Figure 1a: Poster Side A of Dunhuang, My Dreamland Figure 1b: Poster Side B of Dunhuang, My DreamlandThe scene locates the dance-drama in the rock sanctuaries that today are known as the Dunhuang Mogao Caves, housing Buddhist art accumulated over a period of a thousand years, one of the best well-known UNESCO heritages on the Silk Road. Historically a frontier metropolis, Dunhuang was a strategic site along the Silk Road in northwestern China, a crossroads of trade, and a locus for religious, cultural, and intellectual influences since the Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.). Travellers, especially Buddhist monks from India and central Asia, passing through Dunhuang on their way to Chang’an (present day Xi’an), China’s ancient capital, would stop to meditate in the Mogao Caves and consult manuscripts in the monastery's library. At the same time, Chinese pilgrims would travel by foot from China through central Asia to Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, playing a key role in the exchanges between ancient China and the outside world. Travellers from China would stop to acquire provisions at Dunhuang before crossing the Gobi Desert to continue on their long journey abroad. Figure 2: Dunhuang Mogao CavesThis article approaches the idea of “abroad” by examining the present-day imagination of journeys along the Silk Road—specifically, staged performances of the various Silk Road journey-themed dance-dramas sponsored by the Chinese state for enhancing its cultural and foreign policies since the 1970s (Kuang).As ethnomusicologists have demonstrated, musicians, choreographers, and playwrights often utilise historical materials in their performances to construct connections between the past and the present (Bohlman; Herzfeld; Lam; Rees; Shelemay; Tuohy; Wade; Yung: Rawski; Watson). The ancient Silk Road, which linked the Mediterranean coast with central China and beyond, via oasis towns such as Samarkand, has long been associated with the concept of “journeying abroad.” Journeys to distant, foreign lands and encounters of unknown, mysterious cultures along the Silk Road have been documented in historical records, such as A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms (Faxian) and The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (Xuanzang), and illustrated in classical literature, such as The Travels of Marco Polo (Polo) and the 16th century Chinese novel Journey to the West (Wu). These journeys—coming and going from multiple directions and to different destinations—have inspired contemporary staged performance for audiences around the globe.Home and Abroad: Dunhuang and the Silk RoadDunhuang, My Dreamland (2000), the contemporary dance-drama, staged the journey of a young pilgrim painter travelling from Chang’an to a land of the unfamiliar and beyond borders, in search for the arts that have inspired him. Figure 3: A scene from Dunhuang, My Dreamland showing the young pilgrim painter in the Gobi Desert on the ancient Silk RoadFar from his home, he ended his journey in Dunhuang, historically considered the northwestern periphery of China, well beyond Yangguan and Yumenguan, the bordering passes that separate China and foreign lands. Later scenes in Dunhuang, My Dreamland, portrayed through multiethnic music and dances, the dynamic interactions among merchants, cultural and religious envoys, warriors, and politicians that were making their own journey from abroad to China. The theatrical dance-drama presents a historically inspired, re-imagined vision of both “home” and “abroad” to its audiences as they watch the young painter travel along the Silk Road, across the Gobi Desert, arriving at his own ideal, artistic “homeland”, the Dunhuang Mogao Caves. Since his journey is ultimately a spiritual one, the conceptualisation of travelling “abroad” could also be perceived as “a journey home.”Staged more than four hundred times since it premiered in Beijing in April 2000, Dunhuang, My Dreamland is one of the top ten titles in China’s National Stage Project and one of the most successful theatrical dance-dramas ever produced in China. With revenue of more than thirty million renminbi (RMB), it ranks as the most profitable theatrical dance-drama ever produced in China, with a preproduction cost of six million RMB. The production team receives financial support from China’s Ministry of Culture for its “distinctive ethnic features,” and its “aim to promote traditional Chinese culture,” according to Xu Rong, an official in the Cultural Industry Department of the Ministry. Labeled an outstanding dance-drama of the Chinese nation, it aims to present domestic and international audiences with a vision of China as a historically multifaceted and cosmopolitan nation that has been in close contact with the outside world through the ancient Silk Road. Its production company has been on tour in selected cities throughout China and in countries abroad, including Austria, Spain, and France, literarily making the young pilgrim painter’s “journey along the Silk Road” a new journey abroad, off stage and in reality.Dunhuang, My Dreamland was not the first, nor is it the last, staged performances that portrays the Chinese re-imagination of “journeying abroad” along the ancient Silk Road. It was created as one of many versions of Dunhuang bihua yuewu, a genre of music, dance, and dramatic performances created in the early twentieth century and based primarily on artifacts excavated from the Mogao Caves (Kuang). “The Mogao Caves are the greatest repository of early Chinese art,” states Mimi Gates, who works to increase public awareness of the UNESCO site and raise funds toward its conservation. “Located on the Chinese end of the Silk Road, it also is the place where many cultures of the world intersected with one another, so you have Greek and Roman, Persian and Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese cultures, all interacting. Given the nature of our world today, it is all very relevant” (Pollack). As an expressive art form, this genre has been thriving since the late 1970s contributing to the global imagination of China’s “Silk Road journeys abroad” long before Dunhuang, My Dreamland achieved its domestic and international fame. For instance, in 2004, The Thousand-Handed and Thousand-Eyed Avalokiteśvara—one of the most representative (and well-known) Dunhuang bihua yuewu programs—was staged as a part of the cultural program during the Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. This performance, as well as other Dunhuang bihua yuewu dance programs was the perfect embodiment of a foreign religion that arrived in China from abroad and became Sinicized (Kuang). Figure 4: Mural from Dunhuang Mogao Cave No. 45A Brief History of Staging the Silk Road JourneysThe staging of the Silk Road journeys abroad began in the late 1970s. Historically, the Silk Road signifies a multiethnic, cosmopolitan frontier, which underwent incessant conflicts between Chinese sovereigns and nomadic peoples (as well as between other groups), but was strongly imbued with the customs and institutions of central China (Duan, Mair, Shi, Sima). In the twentieth century, when China was no longer an empire, but had become what the early 20th-century reformer Liang Qichao (1873–1929) called “a nation among nations,” the long history of the Silk Road and the colourful, legendary journeys abroad became instrumental in the formation of a modern Chinese nation of unified diversity rooted in an ancient cosmopolitan past. The staged Silk Road theme dance-dramas thus participate in this formation of the Chinese imagination of “nation” and “abroad,” as they aestheticise Chinese history and geography. History and geography—aspects commonly considered constituents of a nation as well as our conceptualisations of “abroad”—are “invariably aestheticized to a certain degree” (Bakhtin 208). Diverse historical and cultural elements from along the Silk Road come together in this performance genre, which can be considered the most representative of various possible stagings of the history and culture of the Silk Road journeys.In 1979, the Chinese state officials in Gansu Province commissioned the benchmark dance-drama Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, a spectacular theatrical dance-drama praising the pure and noble friendship which existed between the peoples of China and other countries in the Tang dynasty (618-907 C.E.). While its plot also revolves around the Dunhuang Caves and the life of a painter, staged at one of the most critical turning points in modern Chinese history, the work as a whole aims to present the state’s intention of re-establishing diplomatic ties with the outside world after the Cultural Revolution. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, it presents a nation’s journey abroad and home. To accomplish this goal, Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road introduces the fictional character Yunus, a wealthy Persian merchant who provides the audiences a vision of the historical figure of Peroz III, the last Sassanian prince, who after the Arab conquest of Iran in 651 C.E., found refuge in China. By incorporating scenes of ethnic and folk dances, the drama then stages the journey of painter Zhang’s daughter Yingniang to Persia (present-day Iran) and later, Yunus’s journey abroad to the Tang dynasty imperial court as the Persian Empire’s envoy.Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road, since its debut at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on the first of October 1979 and shortly after at the Theatre La Scala in Milan, has been staged in more than twenty countries and districts, including France, Italy, Japan, Thailand, Russia, Latvia, Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and recently, in 2013, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.“The Road”: Staging the Journey TodayWithin the contemporary context of global interdependencies, performing arts have been used as strategic devices for social mobilisation and as a means to represent and perform modern national histories and foreign policies (Davis, Rees, Tian, Tuohy, Wong, David Y. H. Wu). The Silk Road has been chosen as the basis for these state-sponsored, extravagantly produced, and internationally staged contemporary dance programs. In 2008, the welcoming ceremony and artistic presentation at the Olympic Games in Beijing featured twenty apsara dancers and a Dunhuang bihua yuewu dancer with long ribbons, whose body was suspended in mid-air on a rectangular LED extension held by hundreds of performers; on the giant LED screen was a depiction of the ancient Silk Road.In March 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping introduced the initiatives “Silk Road Economic Belt” and “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” during his journeys abroad in Kazakhstan and Indonesia. These initiatives are now referred to as “One Belt, One Road.” The State Council lists in details the policies and implementation plans for this initiative on its official web page, www.gov.cn. In April 2013, the China Institute in New York launched a yearlong celebration, starting with "Dunhuang: Buddhist Art and the Gateway of the Silk Road" with a re-creation of one of the caves and a selection of artifacts from the site. In March 2015, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s top economic planning agency, released a new action plan outlining key details of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Xi Jinping has made the program a centrepiece of both his foreign and domestic economic policies. One of the central economic strategies is to promote cultural industry that could enhance trades along the Silk Road.Encouraged by the “One Belt, One Road” policies, in March 2016, The Silk Princess premiered in Xi’an and was staged at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing the following July. While Dunhuang, My Dreamland and Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road were inspired by the Buddhist art found in Dunhuang, The Silk Princess, based on a story about a princess bringing silk and silkworm-breeding skills to the western regions of China in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) has a different historical origin. The princess's story was portrayed in a woodblock from the Tang Dynasty discovered by Sir Marc Aurel Stein, a British archaeologist during his expedition to Xinjiang (now Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region) in the early 19th century, and in a temple mural discovered during a 2002 Chinese-Japanese expedition in the Dandanwulike region. Figure 5: Poster of The Silk PrincessIn January 2016, the Shannxi Provincial Song and Dance Troupe staged The Silk Road, a new theatrical dance-drama. Unlike Dunhuang, My Dreamland, the newly staged dance-drama “centers around the ‘road’ and the deepening relationship merchants and travellers developed with it as they traveled along its course,” said Director Yang Wei during an interview with the author. According to her, the show uses seven archetypes—a traveler, a guard, a messenger, and so on—to present the stories that took place along this historic route. Unbounded by specific space or time, each of these archetypes embodies the foreign-travel experience of a different group of individuals, in a manner that may well be related to the social actors of globalised culture and of transnationalism today. Figure 6: Poster of The Silk RoadConclusionAs seen in Rain of Flowers along the Silk Road and Dunhuang, My Dreamland, staging the processes of Silk Road journeys has become a way of connecting the Chinese imagination of “home” with the Chinese imagination of “abroad.” Staging a nation’s heritage abroad on contemporary stages invites a new imagination of homeland, borders, and transnationalism. Once aestheticised through staged performances, such as that of the Dunhuang bihua yuewu, the historical and topological landscape of Dunhuang becomes a performed narrative, embodying the national heritage.The staging of Silk Road journeys continues, and is being developed into various forms, from theatrical dance-drama to digital exhibitions such as the Smithsonian’s Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottes at Dunhuang (Stromberg) and the Getty’s Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China's Silk Road (Sivak and Hood). They are sociocultural phenomena that emerge through interactions and negotiations among multiple actors and institutions to envision and enact a Chinese imagination of “journeying abroad” from and to the country.ReferencesBakhtin, M.M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1982.Bohlman, Philip V. “World Music at the ‘End of History’.” Ethnomusicology 46 (2002): 1–32.Davis, Sara L.M. Song and Silence: Ethnic Revival on China’s Southwest Borders. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.Duan, Wenjie. “The History of Conservation of Mogao Grottoes.” International Symposium on the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property: The Conservation of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes and the Related Studies. Eds. Kuchitsu and Nobuaki. Tokyo: Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural Properties, 1997. 1–8.Faxian. A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms. Translated by James Legge. New York: Dover Publications, 1991.Herzfeld, Michael. Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the Making of Modern Greece. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985.Kuang, Lanlan. Dunhuang bi hua yue wu: "Zhongguo jing guan" zai guo ji yu jing zhong de jian gou, chuan bo yu yi yi (Dunhuang Performing Arts: The Construction and Transmission of “China-scape” in the Global Context). Beijing: She hui ke xue wen xian chu ban she, 2016.Lam, Joseph S.C. State Sacrifice and Music in Ming China: Orthodoxy, Creativity and Expressiveness. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998.Mair, Victor. T’ang Transformation Texts: A Study of the Buddhist Contribution to the Rise of Vernacular Fiction and Drama in China. Cambridge, Mass.: Council on East Asian Studies, 1989.Pollack, Barbara. “China’s Desert Treasure.” ARTnews, December 2013. Sep. 2016 <http://www.artnews.com/2013/12/24/chinas-desert-treasure/>.Polo, Marco. The Travels of Marco Polo. Translated by Ronald Latham. Penguin Classics, 1958.Rees, Helen. Echoes of History: Naxi Music in Modern China. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. “‘Historical Ethnomusicology’: Reconstructing Falasha Liturgical History.” Ethnomusicology 24 (1980): 233–258.Shi, Weixiang. Dunhuang lishi yu mogaoku yishu yanjiu (Dunhuang History and Research on Mogao Grotto Art). Lanzhou: Gansu jiaoyu chubanshe, 2002.Sima, Guang 司马光 (1019–1086) et al., comps. Zizhi tongjian 资治通鉴 (Comprehensive Mirror for the Aid of Government). Beijing: Guji chubanshe, 1957.Sima, Qian 司马迁 (145-86? B.C.E.) et al., comps. Shiji: Dayuan liezhuan 史记: 大宛列传 (Record of the Grand Historian: The Collective Biographies of Dayuan). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959.Sivak, Alexandria and Amy Hood. “The Getty to Present: Cave Temples of Dunhuang: Buddhist Art on China’s Silk Road Organised in Collaboration with the Dunhuang Academy and the Dunhuang Foundation.” Getty Press Release. Sep. 2016 <http://news.getty.edu/press-materials/press-releases/cave-temples-dunhuang-buddhist-art-chinas-silk-road>.Stromberg, Joseph. “Video: Take a Virtual 3D Journey to Visit China's Caves of the Thousand Buddhas.” Smithsonian, December 2012. Sep. 2016 <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/video-take-a-virtual-3d-journey-to-visit-chinas-caves-of-the-thousand-buddhas-150897910/?no-ist>.Tian, Qing. “Recent Trends in Buddhist Music Research in China.” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 3 (1994): 63–72.Tuohy, Sue M.C. “Imagining the Chinese Tradition: The Case of Hua’er Songs, Festivals, and Scholarship.” Ph.D. Dissertation. Indiana University, Bloomington, 1988.Wade, Bonnie C. Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.Wong, Isabel K.F. “From Reaction to Synthesis: Chinese Musicology in the Twentieth Century.” Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music: Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology. Eds. Bruno Nettl and Philip V. Bohlman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. 37–55.Wu, Chengen. Journey to the West. Tranlsated by W.J.F. Jenner. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2003.Wu, David Y.H. “Chinese National Dance and the Discourse of Nationalization in Chinese Anthropology.” The Making of Anthropology in East and Southeast Asia. Eds. Shinji Yamashita, Joseph Bosco, and J.S. Eades. New York: Berghahn, 2004. 198–207.Xuanzang. The Great Tang Dynasty Record of the Western Regions. Hamburg: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation & Research, 1997.Yung, Bell, Evelyn S. Rawski, and Rubie S. Watson, eds. Harmony and Counterpoint: Ritual Music in Chinese Context. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Abstract Background The abortion act in Thailand is approximately 60 years old. However, because of increasing problems due to unsafe abortions, the act was recently amended to accord a legal status for abortions. In the southernmost provinces of Thailand, most people follow the Islamic faith, according to which induced abortion is a sin for both the providers and the pregnant women. This may affect the attitude of the medical staff, such as registered nurses, who play an important role in abortion services. Our study aims to evaluate the knowledge of the amended abortion act, attitude toward abortions and the intentions behind them, and willingness to perform abortions among registered nurses. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted from January 2022 to February 2022 wherein a self-administrated questionnaire was electronically distributed to 450 registered nurses practicing at a tertiary hospital in the southernmost province of Thailand. Linear regression analysis and Fisher’s exact test were conducted to evaluate the association between basic characteristics, knowledge scores, and attitudes toward induced abortion. Results A total of 375 nurses (83.3%) completed the survey. Most participants were Muslim (58.9%), and 18.7% of them correctly answered > 80% of the knowledge questions. Among all the participants, 41.4% had a favorable attitude toward induced abortion, of which 21.3% were willing to provide safe abortion services. Knowledge scores were independently associated with practicing in obstetrics-gynecology departments and a lower age. Participants practicing Buddhism and having good knowledge scores tended to have favorable attitudes toward abortion. Conclusions Nurses in the southernmost province of Thailand lack knowledge regarding the amended abortion act and do not have a favorable moral attitude toward abortion. Favorable attitudes toward abortions, support toward intentions behind abortions, and a willingness to provide abortion services were all lesser among the Muslim participants than among the Buddhist participants. Compared with participants who scored lower, those with higher knowledge scores had a better moral attitude toward abortion and, in turn, demonstrated a greater intention to provide abortion services. Encouraging nurses to gain better knowledge may improve their attitude toward abortion, which may positively influence future medical practices.