Another version of The Great Departure reflecting stylistic elements of Shan culture.
Many Shan princes can trace their ancestry to before the twelfth century, although local myths and legends give a much earlier history that links them to heavenly beings in the Buddhist Tavatimsa Heaven. According to Buddhist cosmology, a prince was a bodhisattva (a being on the way to Enlightenment) who resided in a royal palace built as a symbol of a celestial mountain. He should have a tiered and canopied throne and a tiered crown, symbols of cosmological and protective forces.*
*The Shan, Culture, Art and Crafts by Susan Conway, River Books
Detail of mural in Wat Buak Khrok Luang, Chiang Mai, Thailand
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The image above is a composite of Shan architecture, Prince Siddhartha is dressed as a Thai prince wearing a “Crown of Victory” and his wife sleeps bare-breasted in a wrap-around skirt typical of woman of La Na.