The Fate of Rural Hell
Asceticism and Desire in Buddhist Thailand
Benedict Anderson
5.5 x 7.75 inches, 120 pp. October 2016
ISBN : 9780857424020
Rs 499.00 (PB)
$17.00 (PB)
£11.99 (PB)
Buy (PB) In 1975, when political scientist Benedict Anderson reached Wat Phai Rong Wua, a massive temple complex in rural Thailand conceived by Buddhist monk Luang Phor Khom, he felt he had wandered into a demented Disneyland. Over the next few decades, Anderson found himself transfixed by this unusual amalgamation of objects, including the largest metal-cast Buddha figure in the world and the Palace of a Hundred Spires. The concrete statuaries and perverse art in Luang Phor’s personal museum of hell included, 'side by side, an upright human skeleton in a glass cabinet and a life-size replica of Michelangelo’s gigantic nude David, wearing fashionable red underpants from the top of which poked part of a swollen, un-Florentine penis’, alongside dozens of statues of evildoers being ferociously punished in their afterlife.
In The Fate of Rural Hell, Anderson unravels the intrigue of this strange setting, trying to discover what compels so many Thai visitors to travel to this popular spectacle and what order, if any, inspired its creation. At the same time, he notes in Wat Phai Rong Wua the unexpected effects of the gradual advance of capitalism into the far reaches of rural Asia. Both a one-of-a-kind travelogue and a penetrating look at the community that sustains it, The Fate of Rural Hell is sure to intrigue and inspire conversation as much as Wat Phai Rong Wua itself.
Now available in paperback, the volume includes a review of the book by renowned writer Marina Warner and her subsequent brief correspondence with Anderson—material that will prove both valuable and amusing to every reader.
Benedict Anderson is profesor emeritus of international studies and politics and government studies at Cornell University. He is best known for Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.
History
Anthropology