monastic rooms, and Dalai Lama’s living apartments or fu-
nerary stupas. The adjoining Red Palace to the east was erect-
ed by the last regent of the fifth Dalai Lama from 1690 to
1694 to incorporate the latter’s mausoleum. Courtyards,
monastic living quarters, access ramps, and defensive end
bastions completed the complex. While it is defensible and
has indeed been besieged a number of times, it is doubtful
whether its main purpose was defense so much as a visual
symbol of the religio-political center of the Tibetan polity.
The dzongs of Bhutan (the main ones located at Ha,
Thimphu, Punakha, and Tongsa, and dating from the seven-
teenth to the twentieth centuries), while built around a mo-
nastic core, had defense as a principal purpose. Each was in-
tended as a center of civil, military, and religious
administration for its surrounding valley complex. Within a
mighty enclosing and elongated rampart are typically two
courtyards: a public courtyard near the single entrance, sepa-
rated by a towering central temple of three to five stories
from an inner monastic courtyard.
The external appearance of religious buildings has been
largely standardized, with outer walls tapering inward toward
the top, and whitewashed to contrast with black-framed win-
dows. The style closely resembles that of the local farm-
houses, even to the extent of incorporating the roof parapets
of stacked brushwood or other fuel and animal fodder as a
fossilized element in religious buildings usually painted red.
There are local variations—for instance in Bhutan the win-
dow frames are more elaborate and brightly painted and the
temples are provided with overhanging pitched wooden
roofs, but even here the red horizontal band is present in
painted form. Stylized banners and standards of textile or,
more commonly, gilded metal, of Indian, Nepalese, or Mon-
golian derivation adorn the roofs of temples, the more im-
portant of which may still be marked with small Chinese-
style gilded pavilions. Internally the tapering wooden col-
umns that support beams via elongated voluted brackets, all
brightly painted, have also been largely standardized.
THE STUPA: RGYAL RTSE (GYANTSE). Tibetans convention-
ally recognize eight designs of stupa, relating them to epi-
sodes in the life of the Buddha. In practice all but the type
commemorating the enlightenment are rare. However there
are a few examples of the “stupa of many doors,” the most
remarkable being that in the town of Rgyal rtse, the so-called
Kumbum, which dominates its temple complex. Built from
1427 to 1439 by the local princes, it is unusual in that all
five stories of the stepped base, the dome, and the spire are
hollowed out into chapels containing a rich variety of images
and wall paintings. Thus the form of the stupa is fused with
that of an elaborate Tantric man:d:ala.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chayet, Anne. Art et archéologie du Tibet. Paris, 1994. General ac-
count of Tibetan architecture in its cultural and artistic
setting.
Denwood, Philip. “Architectural Style at Shalu.” In Tibetan Art:
Towards a Definition of Style, edited by Jane Casey Singer
and Philip Denwood, pp. 220–229. London, 1997. Analysis
of the successive building phases of Shalu Monastery.
Goepper, Roger. Alchi, Ladakh’s Hidden Buddhist Sanctuary: The
Sumtsek. London, 1996. Lavish documentation of the temple
and its mural paintings.
Guise, A., ed. The Potala Palace of Tibet. London, 1988.
Khosla, Romi. Buddhist Monasteries in the Western Himalaya.
Kathmandu, Nepal, 1979. Study by an architect of a well-
defined region (Ladakh and northern Himachal Pradesh)
with unusually accurate plans.
Klimburg-Salter, Deborah E. Tabo: A Lamp for the Kingdom.
Milan, Italy, 1997. Thorough historical account and well-
illustrated documentation of the contents of this temple.
Ricca, Franco, and Erberto Lo Bue. The Great Stupa of Gyantse:
A Complete Tibetan Pantheon of the Fifteenth Century. Lon-
don, 1993. Thorough textual and visual documentation.
Richardson, Hugh Edward. “The Jo-khang: ‘Cathedral’ of Lhasa.”
In Essais sur l’art du Tibet, edited by Ariane Macdonald,
pp. 157–188. Paris, 1977.
PHILIP DENWOOD (2005)TEMPLE: BUDDHIST TEMPLE COMPOUNDS
IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
Buddhists in Southeast Asia have established temple com-
pounds of importance since ancient times. In Java, signifi-
cant complexes were built in the eighth and ninth centuries
(in Central Java) and in the eleventh to fifteenth centuries
(in East Java), prior to the spread of Islam. In mainland
Southeast Asia, where Therava ̄da Buddhism is practiced
today, the development of Buddhist temples can be traced
from early historical times through the present.
Because so many temple compounds have included
dwelling places for monks, it is sometimes held that it is pref-
erable to speak of monasteries, rather than temples. Since,
however, monastic establishments are in general places of
public worship, either term is acceptable. Temple com-
pounds can include the same elements found in India: the
stupa, which need not contain an actual relic of the Buddha;
a sanctuary or a hall holding a principal Buddha image; and
housing for monks. In the living traditions of Burma (Myan-
mar) and Thailand (together with Laos and Cambodia), spe-
cial importance is attached to halls that can accommodate
public worship and to those that provide for monastic cere-
monies a space that is necessarily demarcated by ritual
boundary stones. Sometimes these halls are distinct, some-
times one in the same.
In this entry, a survey of developments in Southeast Asia
follows descriptions of three complexes of particular distinc-
tion and ambition: Borobudur in Central Java (eighth to
ninth centuries); the Nagayon in Pagan, Burma (eleventh
century); and Wat Phra Chettuphon in Bangkok, Thailand
(eighteenth to nineteenth centuries).
BOROBUDUR. Borobudur, or Chandi Borobudur, is a unique
monument, the profundity of which has been widely ac-9052 TEMPLE: BUDDHIST TEMPLE COMPOUNDS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA