At the head of the Siamese writers of profane history stands, I think,
P'hra Alack, or rather Cheing Meing,--P'hra Alack being the generic term
for all writers. In early life he was a priest, but was appointed
historian to the court, and in that capacity wrote a history of the
reign of his patron and king, P'hra Narai,--(contemporary with Louis
XIV.)--and left a very curious though unfinished autobiography.
Seri Manthara, celebrated as a military leader, wrote nine books of
essays, on subjects relating to agriculture and the arts and sciences.
Some of these, translated into the languages of Birmah and Pegu, are
still extant.
Among a host of dramatic writers, Phya Doong, better known as P'hra
Khein Lakonlen, is entitled to the first rank. He composed about
forty-nine books in lyric and dramatic verse, besides epigrams and
elegies. Of his many poems, the few that remain afford passages of much
elegance and sweetness, and even of sublimity,--almost sufficient to
atone for the taint of grossness he derived from the licentious
imagination of his land and time. While yet hardly out of his infancy,
he was laid at the feet of the monarch, and reared in the palace at
Lophaburee. Some dramatic pieces composed by the lad for his playmates
to act attracted the notice of the king, who engaged teachers to
instruct him thoroughly in the ancient literature of India and Persia.
But he seems to have boldly opened a way for himself, instead of
following (as modern Orientals, timid or servile, are so prone to do)
the well-worn path of the old Hindoo writers. In his tragedy (which I
saw acted) of _Manda-thi-Nung_, "The First Mother," there are passages
of noble thought and true passion, expressed with a power and beauty
peculiarly his own.
The entertainments of the theatre are devoured by the Siamese with
insatiable appetite, and the popular preference is awarded to those
intellectual contests in which the tragic and comic poets compete for
the prize. The laughter or the tears of the sympathetic groundlings are
accepted as the expression of an infallible criticism, and by their
verdict the play is crowned or damned. The common people, such is their
passion for the drama, get whole tragedies or comedies "by heart." Every
day in the year, and in every street of Bangkok, and all along the
river, booths and floating salas may be seen, in which tragedy, comedy,
and satirical burlesques, are enacted for the entertainment of great
audiences, who are thrilled, delighted, or amused. In compositions
strictly dramatic the characters, as with us, speak and act for
themselves; but in the epic the poet recites the adventures of his
heroes.
Judges are appointed by the king to determine the merits of new plays
before they are performed at court; and on the grand occasion of the
hair-cutting of the heir-apparent (now king) his late Majesty caused the
poem "Kraelasah" to be modernized and adapted to grace the ceremonies.
P'hra Ramawsha, a writer highly esteemed, did wonders for the Siamese
drama. He translated the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, and portions of the
Cambodian lyrics into Siamese; introduced masks, with magnificence of
costume and ornament; substituted theatres, or rather salas, for the
temporary booth or the open plain; and elevated the matter and the style
of dramatic compositions from the burlesque and buffoonery to the
sentimental and majestic. He was also the first to impart spirit and
variety to the dialogue, and to teach actors to express like artists,
and not like mere animals, the strong _human_ passions of anger, love,
and pity. The plays of P'hra Ramawsha are highly esteemed at court. In
his management of amorous incidents and intrigues, he is, if not
positively refined, at least less gross than other Siamese dramatists.
[Illustration: SIAMESE ACTOR AND ACTRESS.]
The dress of the players is always rich, and in the fashion of that worn
at court. The actors and actresses attached to the royal establishment
make a splendid display in this respect, large sums being expended
annually on their costumes, jewels, and other adornings.
The development of native genius and skill, in the direction of the fine
arts, has greatly declined, if it has not been absolutely arrested,
since the reign of P'hra Narai, the enlightened founder of Lophaburee;
and almost all the vestiges of art, purely national, to be found in the
country now, may be traced to that golden age of Siam. The Siamese,
though intelligent, clever, facile, and in a notable degree susceptible
to the influences of the beautiful in nature or in art, by no means slow
or awkward in imitating the graceful products of European taste and
industry, are yet fettered by a peculiar oppression in their efforts to
express in visible forms their artistic inspirations. No Siamese subject
is to be congratulated, who by his talent or his skill has won popular
applause in any branch of industry. No such man, having extraordinary
cleverness or taste, dare display it to the public in works of novel
utility or beauty; because he and his inventions may alike be
appropriated, without reward or thanks,--the former to serve the king,
the latter to adorn the palace. Many ply in secret their dangerously
graceful callings, and destroy their work when it is done, rather than
see it wrested from them, and with it all that is left to them of
freedom, to serve the whim of a covetous and cruel master. All that
P'hra Narai did to foster the sciences and arts in his land has been
undone by the ruinous selfishness of his successors; and of the few
suicides recorded in the annals of Siam since his time, one of the most
remarkable is that of a famous painter, who poisoned himself the day
after his installation at court. Thus all natural ambition has been
stupidly extinguished in the breasts of the artists of a land whose
remaining monuments attest her ancient excellence in architecture,
sculpture, and painting.
The most remarkable examples of Siamese painting are presented in the
cartoons to be found on the walls of the ancient temples, decorated with
the brush before the introduction of wall-paper from Birmah. One that is
still to be seen in the Watt Kheim Mah, or Mai, is especially
noticeable. This temple was built by the grandmother of the late Maha
Mongkut. The plant _kheim mai_ (indigenous to Siam), which bears a
lovely little blossom, was one of her favorite flowers, and she called
her temple by its name. Being a liberal patron of the arts, she employed
a promising young painter named Nai Dang to decorate the Watt. The man
would hardly be remembered now but for a poem he wrote and dedicated to
the queen mother, in which her beauty and goodness are extolled. I could
learn of him no more than that he was self-educated, and by unaided
perseverance attained a respectable proficiency in drawing and design.
He had also a fair knowledge of chemistry as it is practised in the
East; but, aspiring to fame and fortune, he abandoned that study and
devoted himself exclusively to painting. For years he struggled
desperately against the discouragements of poverty in himself and
ignorance in his neighbors, but found his reward at last in this
engagement to embellish the walls of the Watt Kheim Mai.
Nai Dang's must have been an original and independent mind, for his
conceptions in this cartoon are as bold as his handling is vigorous and
effective, while his colors are more true to nature than any that I have
seen in Chinese or Japanese art.
He has grandly chosen for his subject the Birth of Buddha. The mother of
the divine teacher being on a journey, is overtaken with the pangs of
childbirth. Her attendants and slaves have gathered about her; but she,
as if conscious of the august nature of the babe she is about to bestow
upon the world, retires alone to the shade of an orange grove, where,
clinging to the friendly boughs, with a look of blended rapture and
pain, she gives birth to the great reformer. A few steps farther on, a
circle of light is seen glowing round the feet of the infant, as it
attempts to rise and walk alone. Next we find the child in a rustic
cradle; a branch of the tree under which he is sleeping bends low, to
shield him from the fierce rays of the sun, and his royal parents,
beholding the miracle, kneel and adore him. Now he is a youthful prince,
beautiful and gentle, troubled with pity for the poor, the afflicted,
and the aged, as they rest by the roadside. And finally, as a hermit, he
sits in the shade of a boh-tree, rapt in divine contemplation.
It is a great work, full of imagination, truth, and power, if justly
contemplated by the light of a semi-barbaric age. Every figure is
instinct with character and action, and the whole is rendered with
infinite _naïveté_, as though it represented undisputed and familiar
facts.
On the opposite wall another great cartoon represents the Hell of the
Buddhists, with demons whose hideous heads are those of fabulous beasts
and creeping things. As a work of imagination and force this is worthy
to be the companion of the Birth of Buddha.
The roof is painted as a firmament,--stars in a blue ground; and here it
is that the charm of pure feeling and noble treatment is most apparent.
With five colors the artist has produced all the variety we see. No cast
shadows are shown, the forms themselves are but partially shaded, yet
wonderful harmony and beauty pervade the whole. All honor to Nai Dang!
who alone, amid the national decay of art and culture, preserved this
germ of glorious life and strength, wrapped in his own obscure,
neglected life!
The practice of decorating walls and ceilings with paintings may be
traced to a remote period in the history of Siamese art. In an ancient
temple at Lophaburee is a curious picture, of less merit than those of
Nai Dang, representing the marriage of Buddha with the princess Thiwadi,
beside many of the transmigrations of the Buddhas; and there are
elsewhere one or two pictures well worthy of notice, by masters whose
names have not been kept in remembrance. Thus art in Siam has
degenerated for want of kind, fostering patrons, and faithful,
sympathetic chroniclers, till it has become a thing of mere tools and
technics.
Nevertheless, they still paint with some cleverness on wood, cloth,
parchment, ivory, and plastic material, as well as on gold and
silver,--a sort of enamelling. They also retain a fair knowledge of
effect in fresco, tracing the outline on the wet ground, and laying on
the color in a thin glue; in some of their later work of this kind that
I have seen, the idea of the designer is expressed with much vigor.
Their mosaics, executed in colored porcelain of several varieties, glass
of all kinds, mother-of-pearl, and colored marbles, represent chiefly
flowers and sprays on a brilliant ground. The most remarkable work of
this kind is, I imagine, that which is lavished on the temple Watt P'hra
Këau,--the walls, pillars, windows, roofs, towers, and gates being
everywhere overlaid with mother-of-pearl and ivory, and profusely
gilded. The several façades are likewise inlaid with ivory, glass, and
mother-of-pearl, fixed with cement in the mortar, which serves as a
base. In all cases these works are characterized by a touching
simplicity, which seems to struggle through much, that is obscure and
illegible to get nearer to nature and truth. Most of the tiles employed
in the roofing of temples and palaces are colored and gilt.
[Illustration: SPIRE OF THE TEMPLE WATT-POH.]
Among the older pictures, one in the Royal bedchamber of the abandoned
palace deserves a parting glance. It is a cartoon (much defaced, and
here and there re-touched by clumsy Chinese hands) of The First Sin. In
the foreground a newly created world is rudely represented, and here are
several illuminated figures, human but gigantic. One of these,
discontented with his spiritual food, is seen tasting something, which
we are told is "fragrant earth"; after which, in another figure, he
appears to be electrified, and here his monstrous anatomy is depicted
with ludicrous attempts at detail. No one could tell me by whom or when
this cartoon was painted, and the painting itself is so little
appreciated that I might never have seen or heard of it but for a happy
chance.
A characteristic effect in the few great works by Siamese painters
appears in their management of shade. They impart to darkness a
pervading inner light or clearness, and heighten the effect of the
deeper shadows by permitting objects to be seen through them. In
addition to the pictures I have described, one or two of some merit are
to be found in the Watt Brahmanee Waid.
The florid style of architecture seems to have been familiar to the
Siamese from a very early period. Their palaces, temples, and pagodas
afford innumerable examples of it, many of them not unworthy of European
art. They build generally in brick, using a cement composed of sand,
chalk, and molasses, in which the skin of the buffalo has been steeped.
Their structures are the most solid and durable imaginable. When the
masons building a wall round the new palace at Ayuthia found their
bricks falling short, they tried in vain to detach a supply from the
ruined temples and walls of that ancient city.
In the art of sculpture the Siamese are in advance of their
civilization. Not only in their palaces, temples, and pagodas, but in
their shops and dwellings likewise, and even in their ships and boats,
all sorts of figures are to be seen, modelled and finished with more or
less delicacy.