{"id":18981,"date":"2026-08-16T16:40:07","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T09:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesiamsociety.org\/?post_type=activity&p=18981"},"modified":"2026-10-09T16:41:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T09:41:48","slug":"in-the-serenity-of-the-himavanta-forest","status":"publish","type":"activity","link":"https:\/\/thesiamsociety.org\/th\/activity\/in-the-serenity-of-the-himavanta-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Serenity of the Himavanta Forest: What the Berlin Traiphum Discloses"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The \u2018Book of the Three Worlds\u2019 (\u2018Traiphum\u2019; inv. no. II 650, Museum f\u00fcr 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 on its images and texts. It focused 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 J\u0101takas (pre-birth stories of the Buddha) situated therein. The collaborative team (Martina Stoye, curator of South and South East Asian Art and Dr. Peera Panarut, philologist with specialization in Thai philology and manuscriptoloy, and at the Museum f\u00fcr Asiatische Kunst, Berlin) not only analysed the interplay of text and image in the manuscript, but also explored the connections between what is depicted here and other textual traditions.<\/p>\n

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Martina Stoye<\/strong> has studied Indian philology and South Asian art history at the University of T\u00fcbingen as well as at Freie Universit\u00e4t Berlin, where she also taught South Asian art history and specialized in Early Buddhist Art of the Indian Subcontinent, always taking into account Buddhist textual tradition(s). After co-curating exhibitions for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin and the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn, she entered service as a curator of the South and Southeast Asian Art Collections at the Museum f\u00fcr Asiatische Kunst Berlin in 2008, since 2021 with new permanent galleries at the Humboldt Forum Berlin.<\/p>\n

Peera Panarut<\/strong>, PhD is a researcher on Thai manuscripts and inscriptions. After graduating with a BA in Thai language and literature from Chulalongkorn University in 2012, he earned his PhD from the Graduate School of Manuscript Cultures within the Universit\u00e4t Hamburg in 2019. During 2020\u20132024, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Universit\u00e4t Hamburg, before working in a collaborative research project on the Berlin Traiphum at the Museum f\u00fcr Asiatische Kunst, Berlin, in 2025\u20132026.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Thursday, 26 November 2026 at 19:00<\/p>\n

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