Engendering the Sukhothai beliefs: coexistent beliefs between the indigenous masculine mountain worship and the exotic masculine Buddhism during the 14th C.E.
Keywords:
Sukhothai art, Buddhist art, Buddha’s footprint, mountain worship, gender of artAbstract
This article evaluates the gender of Sukhothai art through the scrutiny of the literature of King Ram Khamhaeng and King Lidhaiya as well as the Buddhist art of Sukhothai during the mid-13th to 14th C.E.
Significantly, by integrating interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks and methods from art history in the traditional realms and the post-modern perspectives of gender, epigraphy, and landscape archaeology, this study discloses that the gender of art can be represented and seen in the coexistent beliefs between the indigenous Sukhothai masculine mountain worship and the exotic Singhalese masculine Buddhism, in which the significance of great masculinity had been embodied, in Sukhothai during the 14th C.E. Additionally, this study further evaluates that the power of the Buddhist art was exploited to support the righteousness of King Lidhaiya, and archaeologically evaluates that the indigenous sacred landscape of Khao Luang was the best sacred space for establishing the new exotic Buddha’s footprint (Buddhapāda) cult. Finally, the scrutiny of these two-distinctive beliefs allows us to see the continuous landscape use and the link of the different beliefs’ locus, in which the masculinity was embodied and made them exist contemporarily as a gendered representation through beliefs and art.
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