Kinnari Statue

[drtreelove]

I have a friend who has asked me to find a Kinnari (or Manora?) statue that he wants for a home, front door entry feature. He didn't specify size yet, but I am assuming he wants one about one meter tall.

Anyone seen one in Chiang Mai or elsewhere Thailand for sale? don

[Sansai Sam]

Plenty in and around Baan Tawai.

[orang37]

Sawasdee Khrup, Khun DrTreeLove,

We'd be happy to help you find a Kinarree (กินรี).

We believe you know we used to be a dealer in Asian art objects several years ago, and we still are fascinated by, and continue to read/study/wonder about, the Buddhist, and animist, and Indian-Khmer-Mon, influences on Thailand's "sacred arts."

We do know the better places ... to find such items ... to go in Chiang Mai, and the ... "relatively speaking" ... more "honest" ... i.e., less greedy ... dealers, many of whom we have known over ten years. By the way, we have never taken a "commission" from any of these persons, which is probably one reason we are on good terms with all of them (some of whom have "running vendettas" in "traditional Thai" style).

You can be sure that everything you will see in Ban Tawaii (Hang Dong), and the Night Bazaar, is of recent origin. There is a giant industry where Thais "rent" whole Burmese villages via their likely Burmese intermediaries (can you say "tea money" ?), provide them with local not-hard-to-find very old teak (lots of destroyed and fallen down temples), have them make pieces in various old styles, then artificially distress them, dirty them, fill the cracks with genuinely old amulet dust mixed with superglue.

Often the patinas these faked-up pieces have are really artistic masterpieces. I am personally convinced a supposedly 16th. century CE major Shan Buddha (in the style known as "arrayed in Royal Raiment," Thai: "Song Khreung") in the Los Angeles County Museum is a modern copy. It just looks "too good to be true" given it's from an area that was rife with warfare almost every year for many hundreds of years, as Lanna, Lan Xang (Luang Prabang), and the various Burmese polities, fought over control of the areas.

The Kinnara from India was male, half-horse, half-human, and a musician who played "celestial music, a form of angelic being. An archetype of the ultimate cosmic pleasure "kama" and mystical union in the spiritual realm. "Birds of Paradise," indeed.

In the Mahabharata (quoting from Wikipedia) the Kinnaris say:

"We are everlasting lover and beloved. We never separate. We are eternally husband and wife; never do we become mother and father. No offspring is seen in our lap. We are lover and beloved ever-embracing. In between us we do not permit any third creature demanding affection. Our life is a life of perpetual pleasure."

And interestingly the Kinnaras are mentioned in the Lotus Sutra (the first "palladial" Buddhist scripture to use the term "Mahayana"). The Lotus Sutra begins with a description of four Kinnara "Kings" who are musicians in the service of Kuvera, the God of Wealth (in Thai his name becomes "ku-waith;" at least that's what my ears hear when Thais say his name).

Somehow, as this cultural icon migrated into S.E. Asia, to Thailand, the dominant became a woman who was half-bird (Swan's feet and tail): the human parts of Her are often similar in visual portrayals to the Thai "Apsara" angelic beings. The female Kinnarree dwells in the Himapan, the primordial forest of the Jataka legend-cycle. There is a male Thai equivalent to the Kinnarree, the Kinnon, but we've never seen one.

An interesting aspect of the Kinnarree is the belief that this creature can "travel between" the non-material cosmic realms and the material realms. A similar figure is found in the serpent-bodied, winged woman figure of NagaKanya, the daughter of Muchalinda, the King of the Nagas; She is reputed to be unique in her abilities to move between "spiritual planes," Earth, and Water.

The Swan aspect of the Kinnarree, and the association with music, of course, reminds one of the Hindu Goddess of Wisdom, Music, Scholarship, and Poetry, Saraswati. The Swan is Saraswati's "vehicle" (vahanam), the means by which She can "manifest" in material reality.

In the case of the import of Saraswati to Burma: there is specific historical evidence that the conquest of the Mons by the Raman Burmese in 1047 of the Christian Calendar, and their taking back to Ava many artisans led to the popularisation of this figure whom the Burmese call "Thurathati.". So you will see in Burma, perhaps here in northern Thailand, a lovely woman sitting side-saddle on a Swan, holding a book. We are lucky enough to have a magnificent, larger, perhaps eighty-year old Burmese "Thurathati" in our collection with the most exquisitely painted face

We would not be surprised to learn that the Kinnarree also came via the Mons: in the case of northern Thailand, for example, it was the "extortion" from the Mons of Ava by King Mengrai of Chiang Mai of great tribute (to avoid war) that led to five-hundred familes of Mon metal workers being relocated to Chiang Saen (see the Chiang Mai Chronicles translated by Wyatt and Aroonrut).

Finally, in the vast collection of the Jataka legend-cycle of the previous lives that culminated in the birth of the historical Gautama the Buddha (formerly Siddhartha, Prince of the Sakyas), there are mention of animals that, because they "made merit" in some way, in their next birth became partially human. The local northern Thai word for these is "baygo" (perhaps "paygo"); it is interesting to speculate on some connection between these and such chimera as the Kinnarree.

All of this is going to be on the final, so please do memorize all of this

best, ~o:37;

[Sansai Sam]

T.M.F.T

[orang37]

T.M.F.T

Sawasdee Khrup, Khun Sansai Sam,

We find joy in sharing information about things we have been passionately interested in, and great value in continually examining what we think we know, and why we think we know it, in the spirit of the famous "razor" of William of Ockgham (aka Occam). And every time we try to articulate what we think, no matter how muddy the waters of the result, we find, most of the time, value in the attempt, or just a little more clarity in understanding our ignorance.

Michael Vatikiotis (Ph.D. northern Thai history, Chiang Mai University, later well known as the editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review) commented in his speech on the 700th. anniversary of the founding of Chaing Mai that the remarkable "cultural diversity" of Chiang Mai comes in part from the "segregation" of the many captured, enslaved, groups with which the ancient Lanna kingdoms were continually re-populated, and the captured forced migration of groups by which Chiang Mai was re-populated by Kawila of Lampang following Chiang Mai's being deserted, ruined, abandoned, depopulated for twenty years by the vicious Burmese colonial policies of their last period of control of Lanna (they had it all for over two-hundred years).

Perhaps you may view this kind of writing with the "compassion for the aged" mentioned in your very thoughtful posting-signature Or you may exercise your freedom not to read what you are not interested in ?

If this is not appropriate in the Chiang Mai forum, we don't know what is

best, ~o:37;

[Lizard2010]

Orang

Very interesting Post.

I am finding more and more as to what really happens in Thailand, by the day.

[gotlost]

Orang37 that was a very interesting and educational post. Thanks we can learn something.

[lannarebirth]

We find joy in sharing information about things we have been passionately interested in, and great value in continually examining what we think we know, and why we think we know it,

best, ~o:37;

We find joy in your sharing also. Thank you so much.

[noise]

On the middle ring road (using rough compass directions) east of the Rim Ping/Mee Choke Plaza some un-remembered number of kms, on the south side of the road, is a vendor who makes these out of concrete and not sure what else. He will either have it or would make it.