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  • About the Cover
  • Catherine Raymond

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Front Cover.

Votive figure, Myanmar. Bronze. Dimensions W: 5” H: 7”. Burma Art Collection, at NIU. BC2013.06.01, BC2013.06.04A-E. Gift of Sylvia Fraser-Lu.

Cover design: Sophia Varcados, Northern Illinois University

Photo: Carmín Berchiolly, Center for Burma Studies

The image on the current Journal cover features one of the numerous objects frequently found during the Konbaung period in the relic chamber of a stupa, also called a “stupa deposit,” is now included in the Burma Art Collections at Northern Illinois University. Here specifically is a small bronze complex figure depicting a key scene in the Life of Buddha. After attaining enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, He goes forth to recount this experience to former companions who then become the First Five Disciples: an event famously taking place in the Deer Park of Sarnath known as the First sermon. The two iconic deer—usually shown kneeling on each side of the sitting Buddha—serve to confirm this episode.

The piece was donated to us by Sylvia Fraser-Lu, along with several others of that type bequeathed from the estate of Sarah Bekker, one of the original members of the Burma Studies Foundation. In 1986, she provided NIU the core of the present, much-expanded Collections. Dr. Bekker became deeply engaged in Burmese art when she lived there between 1958 and 1962.

This sculptural depiction of the historic Buddha’s First Sermon—as with several other such presented in this issue of JBS—would also have been originally placed as an offering within a sealed relic chamber during the consecration of a stupa. The “crude nature . . .” of Buddha images like these, “suggests that they were not made for display but for enshrinement.”

For much more detail on this special class of small bronzes, see the first article in this issue.

Catherine Raymond
curator of the Burma Art Collection at Northern Illinois University
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