What's What in a Wat: Thai Buddhist Temples: Their Purpose and Design

Carol Stratton

Αυγ 2010 · Silkworm Books

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As you walk through a Thai temple, a host of unfamiliar objects, shapes, and patterns tug at you from every direction. This handy and lucid guidebook will help you distinguish what is what. It takes you through a representative Thai Buddhist temple, guiding you from structure to structure and element to element, explaining the function and purpose of each, and the symbolism behind the forms. A Thai wat can be a place of bewildering beauty, but this illustrated companion will help you focus your eye and identify what you see. Tourists and residents, novices and scholars will all gain a clearer sense of what a wat is and the role it plays today in the lives of Thai people.

Highlights

- Detailed guide to Thai temple compounds
- Definitions and explanations of architectural elements and structures
- Richly illustrated with examples
- Presents the temple in the context of Thai society
- Author is an art historian specializing in Thai Buddhist art

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Carol Stratton has been researching and writing on Thai Buddhist art history for over forty years. She is the author of The Art of Sukhothai: Thailand’s Golden Age with Miriam McNair Scott (Oxford 1981) and The Buddhist Sculpture of Northern Thailand (Silkworm Books, 2004).