Ancient sculptures from Tambon Na San, Nakhon Si Thammarat Province, Peninsular Thailand
This short note by Stanley J. O’Connor reports on two broken sandstone socles and a damaged Ganesa image recently added to the Phra Borommathat National Museum, all found at Tambon Na San, approximately eleven kilometres northwest of Nakhon Si Thammarat (p. 60).
Summary
O’Connor argues the socles are the surviving bases of long-robed standing figures, most likely Visnu, identifiable by the stone reserves between the feet and at the sides that served structural and iconographic functions (p. 60). He dates them to the seventh or eighth century. The Ganesa, originally four-armed and wearing a diadem and bracelets, is tentatively dated to the ninth or tenth century by comparison with Cambodian examples, including the Ganesa of Triton (late 8th century) and the adorned Ganesa from Prasat Bak (10th century, Koh Ker style) (pp. 60–61).
The note also surveys other ancient sculptures previously recovered from Na San, including a fifth-century stone Visnu among the earliest Hindu sculptures found in Thailand, a late 8th- or early 9th-century stone Buddha head, an 8th-century four-armed bronze Avalokitesvara, and a small four-armed bronze Hari-Hara of uncertain date (p. 61). O’Connor concludes that the concentration of works spanning several centuries at this single locality supports the presumption that Na San was an area of cultural importance before 1000 A.D. (p. 61).