Sunday, October 29, 2006

The Royal Games of Burma

Burmese Parabeik illustrating royal pastimesFolds 1-4 : Queen watching ploughing ceremony. King watching ? archery/polo.
[description text is cutoff in the dropdown menu]. This image is spliced from
a dozen zoom screencaps so it's a reasonable size if you click on it. I didn't
splice any of the other main pages but some of the details have been both
(or either) spliced and cleaned up in the background.


2 horses and riders


Burmese soccer playing and musicians
Folds 5-8. King and queen watching Burmese football.


football detail


Burmese drummers detail


procession with elephant and horse
Folds 9-12: Procession


procession dancers detail


horse detail


elephant detail


continuation of procession
Folds 13-16: Procession continued


Umbrella men detail


detail of canopy over elephant and rider


Game with elephants in enclosure
Folds 17-20: Game with elephants in enclosure


elephant on hind legs


group of elephants near stadium


tea sellers outside stadium


stadium crowd detail

This is a 19th century burmese parabeik - a folded concertina picture book usually made of palm leaves - with watercolour illustrations of sporting and cultural activites viewed by royalty. It is listed online as 'Parabeik illustrating royal pastimes' among the wonderful 'Seeing is Believing: Traditional and Colonial Images of Popular Culture' section of the Oxford Digital Library.
Posted by peacay at

2 comments:

  1. kate31 October, 2006 16:58

    these are wonderful. love the elephants especially!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Emily25 April, 2007 00:08

    WOW.....how ROYAL is that?! :D

    I miss those olden Golden days....reminds me of all we used to be....

    (sigh)....

    :)

    ReplyDelete

Comments are all moderated so don't waste your time spamming: they will never show up.

If you include ANY links that aren't pertinent to the blog post or discussion they will be deleted and a rash will break out in your underwear.

Also: please play the ball and not the person.

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.