抄録
The Uposatha hall is located at the center of the temple precincts of
Theravāda Buddhism. Upasampadā, Pātimokkha reciting ceremony and other
most important rites for monks are held there. In this report I would like to
present my views on what the Uposatha hall is, through the investigation of the
Uposatha hall in Wat Pho. The Chakri dynasty or the Bangkok dynasty became
the sponsor of this temple from the days of King Rama I. So the Uposatha hall
of Wat Pho was built with the clear intention of Chakri dynasty which may be
thought out with the research to follow.
King Rama I donated the art works of the epic of the Ramakian, Rāmāyana
in Thailand to Wat Pho. Because it is related to the Ramakian that Good defeats
Evil in the end of the battle and the story of it honors the king, in which the
king compares himself to the God Viṣṇu, who comes to earth in the story as the
good king Rama. King Rama I may have wished by virtue of his position as
the king to be the reincarnation of God Viṣṇu, coming to earth to solve all the
world’s troubles.
King Rama I brought many Buddha images from the temples destroyed by
the war in cities in the northern part of Thailand and then housed in the halls
or the cloisters in the site of the Uposatha hall of Wat Pho. The Lopburi style
stūpas at the four corners of the site of the Uposatha hall and the five pagodas behind the cloisters at each corner are built in the reign of King Rama I in
which the relics of Shakyamuni Buddha have been enshrined.
As for the mural paintings in the Uposatha hall of Wat Pho, King Rama
III started to draw them and King Rama IV has completed them. The lives of
disciples of the Buddha are depicted in the 29 bays between doors, or between
windows and doors there, though the biographical stories and the fixed ten
past stories of the Buddha surely appeared on the Uposatha hall in the days of
the late Ayutthaya and Tomburi. Here the biographical stories of the disciples
are depicted vividly how they entered into the Buddha’s saṅgha. Moreover the
daily lives of the lay people are shown clearly. Foreigners on the mural appear
friendly. The several scenes of the paintings of no one but Unmaggajātaka
telling on Bodhisatta Mahosadha as the Jataka stories, are shown on the upper
bays of windows and doors. In his childhood he was very clever. After he grew
up, he helped his king on many matters and he dug the tunnel in which he made
the palace having automatic doors and so on. Through the story, I have felt the
intention of King Rama IV who wanted to make Thai people know about the
importance of the wisdom and the modern industrial civilization.
The Chakri dynasty wanted to make the people know the importance of
Buddhism, Thai cultures, foreign cultures, European civilization and the
existence of foreign people are shown in the mural painting of the Uposatha
hall of Wat Pho.
