Buddhist Hell Theme Park in Vietnam and Elsewhere in Southeast and East Asia
From: jkirk <jkirk@spro.net>
Date: 2008/12/13
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Anyone been there (theme park I mean, not Hell)?
http://tinyurl.com/6lptp5
Apparently Buddhist Hell theme parks or dioramic displays are found all over the place, as noted by
the monk Sravasti Dhammika in his blog for Dec. 9/08 ( http://sdhammika.blogspot.com/ ) :
"From Hanoi to Colombo you will find sort of theme parks, usually in temples, dedicated to depicting purgatory and its horrors. One of the bigger and more revolting of these is Wat Wang Saen Suk near Bang Saen, about an hour from Bangkok. In the temple grounds are hundreds of garishly painted and crudely fashioned statues of people being tortured in almost every conceivable way. The sign at the entrance reads 'Welcome to Hell.' I know of a similar temple called Wat Thawer near Sukhothai and Alu Vihara in Sri Lanka has dioramas of purgatory too. To see some pictures of yet another Thai version of purgatory have a look at cunyqueen.blogspot.com, the post for March 30. But be warned, these pictures are pretty graphic. Here in Singapore we have the Tiger Balm Gardens which likewise displays vivid recreations of purgatory as understood in the Chinese Buddhist/Taoist tradition. Not many Singaporeans go there nowadays. They get all the blood and gore they want watching Steven Segal movies. Much more realistic and with sound effects too. A huge new theme park and entertainment centre called Suoi Tien has just opened in Saigon which includes, together with swimming pools, games, rides and the Sacred Frog Show, a whole section depicting all the horrors of hell."
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From: <justinm@ucr.edu>
Date: 2008/12/13
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks for sending this. I finished a book last year on Thai magic, ghosts, and ritual (should be coming out soonish). In it I included some information on "hell theme parks" as part of this larger study. I gave a talk on this subject last June, perhaps your blogger heard this talk or we have similar weird travel plans! I thank Edward Miller (Dartmouth) for taking me to a temple in Saigon with extensive hell scape reliefs. Here is a short excerpt from the book (introduction to chapter three):
"In the Reitberg Museum in Zurich a bronze sculpture depicting half-human, half-chicken creatures and a saw cutting off a man’s head tells us much about ritual and liturgy in Thai Buddhism. The small cube-shaped piece is missing its top, which originally depicted the powerful enlightened arahat, Phra Malai, looking over various scenes of various hells. Circular saws cut off people’s heads in one hell, the metal beaks and talons of humanoid chickens tear the flesh off of other sinners who have been re-born in another hell. In another, emaciated naked men beg for their lives before hot irons stab and brand them. In Buddhist legends, Phra Malai, at the behest of the Buddha, traveled to various hells and heavens to give a report for the Buddha. He saw the horrible fates of those who lived lives of selfishness, anger, hatred, and delusion. In various hells he preached to the suffering beings about the importance of giving. In doing so, he warned naïve human beings of their possible futures.
This Dante-esque Pali story, composed either in Sri Lanka or Northern Thailand sometime in the fifteenth or sixteenth century, known as the Māleyyatherasutta, is better known in its eighteenth century verse form – Phra Malai. It is a very popular story in Thailand. Scenes, the more gruesome the better, are part of the repertoire in Thai murals, illuminated manuscripts, and statuary. Large Phra Malai “samut khoi” mulberry paper manuscripts composed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century depict scenes from hell and are designed to be read at funerals alongside chanting from the Abhidhammatthasaṅgaha or the Abhidhamma Chet Kamphi. Murals in dozens of monasteries, including a 35 foot high mural at Somdet To’s home monastery of Wat Rakhang, show half-man/half-chicken creatures impaling emaciated naked men and women while flames lick at their feet. Today there are popular and quite garish comic books describing different hells and descriptions of hell are part of funeral sermons. There is even a hell “theme park” on the outskirts of Southern Bangkok near the resort town of Bang Saen. Visitors to the park are greeted with a sign in English and Thai “Welcome to Hell” and in the park there are life-size Styrofoam and plastic dioramas depicting each level of hell. In one, a woman is being ripped limb from limb by ogres and in another a saw is separating a man’s legs from his torso. Giant worms devour baked sinners in a vat of molten lava and iron tongs pry open a man’s throat into which fiery ashes can be poured in. All of these scenes are in a garden on the grounds of Buddhist monastery -- Wat Sang Saen Suk. Perhaps the strangest thing to a non-Thai visitor, is that this park is not strange to a Thai Buddhist. Just like Southern Baptists, Mexican Catholics, or Pentacostal Christians in the United States, constantly imbibing scenes and listening to sermons about hell are part of daily religiosity. The serene and compassionate Buddhism depicted in most Western textbooks and documentaries is hard to find while watching chicken and goat men feasting on human entrails.
There are similar parks to this hell theme park at Wat Thawet in Sukhothai, the massive hell sculpture garden in the forested grounds behind Wat Bha Rak Roi in Nakhon Ratchasima (Northeastern Thailand), Wat Aham in Luang Phrabang (Laos), the Taoist-Buddhist Jade Emperor (Ngoc Hoang) Pagoda in Saigon (Vietnam), Aluvihāra Monastery in Matale (Sri Lanka), among many other places. Between 2001-2006, I had the chance to visit each one of these hell theme parks and was struck not only by the garishness of the sites, but at the number of children and families who visit them. In Northeast Asia, descriptions of hell are popular in Japanese and Korean literature about the bodhisattva Jizo (Sanskrit: Kṣitigarbha) who vows to empty various hell realms of all sentient beings before reaching enlightenment. Hell scenes and generally violent depictions of suffering are common in Buddhism. This is not a new phenomenon. The Pali collection Petavatthu (Stories of Hungry Ghosts) dates from as old as the first century BCE, and are as gruesome in their descriptions of suffering and death as any modern horror film. The famous fourteenth century, Three Worlds of King Ruang (Traibhūmikathā), Thai cosmological text offers descriptions that overlap with those of Phra Malai, the Petavatthu, and popular jātakas like the Nimi and Lohakumbhī. These stories are still well-known throughout Buddhist Asia today. Phra Malai was not the only witness to hell in Buddhist literature and art. The bronze piece in Zurich is particularly beautiful, but it is certainly not unique."
If anyone on the list can tell me more about Vietnamese (to my area of study) depictions of hell (especially outside of Saigon), I would appreciate it very much. I would especially like to hear about travel narratives to hell like the story of Phra Malai or the Petavatthu(s) or murals depicting hell.
Thanks,
justin
______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
3046 INTN
University of California, Riverside
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From: jkirk <jkirk@spro.net>
Date: Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 11:01 AM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I wonder about the prevalent trope of part-chicken demons. Could it be because chicken is perhaps the commonest food item, so humans slay more of them than other animals?
Reminds me, perhaps irrelevantly, of the Russian witch Babyaga, who lived in a house that stood and turned about on chicken legs.
Please post the publisher of your book--
Thanks,
Joanna K.
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From: Charles Keyes <keyes@u.washington.edu>
Date: 2008/12/14
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I also look forward to seeing Justin's book.
I have visited a number of such places -- in Phayao, Nongkhai, and Saraburi in Thailand, near Vientiane in Laos, and near Saigon in Vietnam. The key text in the Theravadin tradition, as Justin says, is the Malaya-sutta (Phra Malai), Malai being the Buddhist equivalent of Dante.
There is an interesting mystery novel by Nick Wilgus set in The Garden of Hell (the title of both the book and the place) near Saraburi.
Charles (Biff) Keyes
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and International Studies
Department of Anthropology
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From: <justinm@ucr.edu>
Date: 2008/12/14
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Thanks for the novel recommendation. It certainly makes a dramatic setting! I haven't been to the one in Phayao either. I will certainly go when I return to the North later in the year. This subject might make a good AAS panel in the future if anyone would like to do a comparative "hell" panel. Its rare that AAS panels include folks in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam, and Laos Studies. Anyone interested for 2010?
Best,
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From: Dr Alexander D Soucy <Alec.Soucy@smu.ca>
Date: 2008/12/16
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I have been interested in these images as well and wrote a paper about it ten years ago (that was never published).
There is an amusement park just outside of Saigon that has a dayglow hell. Their website is: http://www.vietnamhost.com/suoitien_park/index.html
There are many images to be found in pagodas in Vietnam. In Saigon the best I have seen are in the Jade Emperor temple where there are a set of beautifully carved wood panels that are around 100 years old (or so I was told). Chua Nghiem Vien also has a couple of paintings.
In the north you can try Chua Tram Gian. There is a recently (re)constructed pagoda on West Lake, not far from Phu Tay Ho that has hell images as well. The Fine Arts Museum, and I think the History Museum in Hanoi both had displays of painted and carved panes as well. Of course, images of the Ten Kings (without the torture scenes) are common in northern pagodas.
Cheers,
Alec Soucy
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From: Philip Taylor <philip.taylor@anu.edu.au>
Date: 2008/12/16
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Alec, have you also published a paper somewhere on a Buddhist Hell theme park in Taiwan?
Justin, Wat Chanrangsay (Tran Quoc Thao St, District 3, Saigon), one of the two Khmer (Theravada) pagodas in the city, has some evocative pictures of the torments that await some of us in Hell.
Philip
Dr Philip Taylor
Department of Anthropology
Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Australian National University
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: 2008/12/16
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
a couple of comments.
The concept of the Ten Kings of Hell is very widespread not just in Theravada Buddhist countries but also in Mahayana Buddhist ones. Indeed, at the last AAS meeting, Haruko Wakabayashi explored the Japanese iconography of the Ten Kings of Hell. I
Stephen Teiser has written on this topic as well.
The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (1994). It received the 1996 Levenson Prize of the AAS. One of the Tunhuang caves has a painting depicting hell.
In 1993, I visited Giac Lam pagoda and took a picture of a wall painting depicting the Ten Hells. I like to show it to my class: one of the torments is reserved for disrespectful students!
Hue-Tam Ho Tai
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From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>
Date: 2008/12/16
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
On thinking about this topic, the issue is not the prevalence of the idea of Hell in East or Southeast Asian Buddhism, but the popularity of Hell Theme parks. This has to do with the appeal of the grotesque, but it maybe similar to the spread of Halloween in and beyond the US. The city of Salem, MA, does a brisk business in the Witches' Castle around that time.
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From: T. Nguyen <nguyenthanhbl@yahoo.com>
Date: 2008/12/16
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I have seen them in many old Buddhist temples in the South and I believe these paintings are visual descriptions of Thap Vuong Kinh [Sutra of the Ten Kings] which was widely circulated in the past. This "sutra" itself was probably compiled some time at the end of the Tang dynasty in China and it is not considered an official Buddhist scriptural text in the Taisho Tripitaka. Newly built temples no longer have them though. I think the whole purpose of these paintings was to teach viewers the consequences of their deeds, the cause and effects, reincarnationsm, and so on. I also think they actually served well in helping illiterate Buddhists to understand these concepts when there were not many competent lecturers in Buddhism around during the French colonization.
Best,
Thanh Nguyen
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From: <justinm@ucr.edu>
Date: Tue, Dec 16, 2008 at 10:25 PM
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Yes, certainly, the aesthetics of the grostesque is as important, if not more, than the pedagogical or protective value of these depictions. Good point.
Marina Warner has written a rather unruly, but provocative book about this appeal in the growth of wax museums, horror literature, and the like in Western Europe. Scholars like Marcus Bingenheimer and Buzzy Teiser in Chinese Studies (as you point out) and Hank Glassman, James Benn, and Max Moerman in Japan Studies have discussed this as well. Jackie Stone and Brian Cuevas have a relatively recent edited volume called the Buddhist Dead which looks at East Asian histories and Liz Wilson and Reiko Ohnuma have worked a bit on the appeal of the grostesque in South and East Asian literature and art. Similar works have not been written on Southeast Asian subjects/examples as far as I know. But, then again, I am always surprised by the number of books I don't know!
Thanks again,