THAILAND, PRAKHON CHAI STYLE, 8TH-9TH CENTURY

The present images of Maitreya are carried out in the style associated with Prakhon Chai, a region which flourished during the 7th–9th centuries in northeastern Thailand. Situated along trade routes crossing from India, through Burma and Thailand, towards Cambodia and beyond, the area around Prakhon Chai was a place of confluence, affluence, and of reception and transmission of great spiritual and artistic knowledge. The style displays a fusion of these international intersections in a uniquely local expression that would appear only in this particular place and only for a limited time. Figures associated with this sculptural tradition are characteristically lithe, elongated and upright, with a subtle degree of contrapposto in the hips.