Chiang Mai National Museum

To my count, the National Museum here in Chiang Mai has around 9 exhibits starting with a geographical overview of the area, and moving to the weapons, tools, pottery and burial of prehistoric peoples. It then gives a history of the city and with it, the Lanna Kingdom, of which Chiang Mai was the capitol. The next exhibit was about the fall of the Lanna, and the occupation of their territory, first by the Burmese, and then the Siamese. (On display in this section were two rifles, both 6 inches wide in the stock and5 to 6 feet long.)

After this exhibit, you go up the stairs, past portraits of the hereditary kings of Chiang Mai. Next is an exhibit on forestry, then religion, finishing with a sculpture supposedly containing elements of these animals: elephant, fish, lion, deer, and naga. We think we located all of the animals, but our lion was a little theoretical. It had the basic shape of a naga (snake), maybe the head of a lion, the hooves of a deer, the tusks and trunk of an elephant, and the tail of a fish. (Sorry about the lack of photos, but cameras were not allowed in the museum.)

On this trip we've seen lots of Buddha heads. Everywhere we've been seems to take pride in the number of Buddha images they have. Temples and museums brag about having 1,000, 2,000 or even 9,000 Buddha images. In this museum they had a bunch of Buddha heads, including on small grouping of 7 heads. 6 of the 7 heads were ye olde original Buddha heads, the 7th however looked like what you'd get if you took a three inch elongated egg of steel about a centimeter in diameter, and slightly squashed so it was more like a centimeter and a half wide, and bent it into a boomerang shape and then carved the face of a man on it. Imagine the face at the front, with the forehead and hair sloping off backwards. I was struck by it because it seemed completely different from every other Buddha image that we've seen. I wonder what was special about this particular Buddha?