The Fate of Rural Hell: Asceticism and Desire in Buddhist Thailand
Anderson, Benedict
List Price : US$ 30.18 Our Price : US$ 24.14
You Save 20% + FREE DELIVERY WORLDWIDE
PRODUCT DETAILS
Book ID : 40451
ISBN-10 : 0-85742-027-5 / 0857420275
ISBN-13 : 978-0-85742-027-5 / 9780857420275
Place
of Publication :
Year
of Publication :
2012
Edition : (First Edition)
Language : English
vii, 99p., Epil., 23 cm.
CONTENTS
CONTENTS:- 1. Strange ghosts. 2. Luang Phor Khom and his times. 3. Undercurrents. 4. Temple boy? Temple slave. 5. The future.
DESCRIPTION
In 1975, when political scientist Benedict Anderson reached Wat Phai Rong Wua, a massive temple complex in rural Thailand conceived by Buddhist monk Luang Phor Khom, he felt he had wandered into a demented Disneyland. One of the world's most bizarre tourist attractions, Wat Phai Rong Wua was designed as a cautionary museum of sorts, its gruesome statues depict violent and torturous scenes that showcase what hell may be like. Over the next few decades, Anderson found himself transfixed by this unusal amalgamation of objects, returning several times to see attractions like the largest metal-cast Buddha figure in the world and the Palace of a Hundred Spires. The concrete statuaries and perverse art in Luang Phor's Khom's personal museum of hell included, 201cside by side, an upright human skeleton in a glass cabinet and a life-size replica of Michelangelo's gigantic nude David, wearing fashionable red underpants from the top of which poked part of a swollen, un-Florentine penis,201d alongside dozens of statues of evildoers being ferociously punished in their afterlife.
