Although H.R.H. Prince Damrong Rajanubhab, in 1926 did
classify Buddhism in Siam into four periods the Theravada school of the Hinayana, the
Mahayana school, the Hinayana of Pagan, and the Ceylon Order he did not correlate them
with works of art. Instead he formulated a periodization based on the supposititious
correlation between religious art and historical sources. Hence from 1926 to the present
day students are required to study Buddhist art within the conceptual framework of
political history. Since no such frame of reference exists for religious art that is based
on religion, it is the aim of this paper to restore Buddhist art of its rightful place -
in the service of Buddhism.
Within the last couple of years I have published articles pointing out
that Prince Damrong's and Coedes' periodization of Thai art cannot be applied to images of
Buddha. These scholars made the fundamental error of taking images of Buddha to be
analogous with Western works of art, which can be classified into time spans. They failed
to see that an image of Buddha is a copy of its stylistic prototype. The Pali word for an
image of Buddha is "patima" meaning "replica" - the very nature of an
image of Buddha defies categorization into a neat time slot. Hence, where a Buddha image
is concerned, style cannot be correlated with a time period.