S44-6

Time and Place in the Painted Scrolls of the Bun Phra Wet in Northeast Thailand and Laos

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, U.S.A.

In the annual Bun Phra Wet Festival, the Theravada Buddhist Lao of Northeast Thailand and Laos situate themselves in the time and place of Prince Vessantara’s epic story presaging the Buddha’s discovery of The Way. The people of these communities enact Vessantara’s success in finding his way across the River of Time, which assures him that he will become the Buddha and bring Enlightenment to the world. The central artifact in this enactment is a many meters long painted scroll presenting Prince Vessantara’s story. By processing the scroll through the community, the participants bring themselves and their environment into the Times and Places of Vessantara’s story and share the joyful knowledge of his success. Local artists traditionally produce these scrolls. Examination of the variation in a number of these scrolls shows the artist’s agency in conceptualizing the story in response to its sequence of Places and Times and to the constraints of the scroll’s dimensions. This paper considers the strategies artists use to present the story and focuses on their agency as artists.