Overview

The Phra Bang is the palladium of Laos: a standing Buddha image about 83 centimetres high, cast from thong, an alloy of gold, silver and bronze, with both hands raised palm-outward in the gesture that dispels fear. It gives its name to the royal city of Luang Prabang, literally the great place of the Phra Bang, and it has long carried a political charge as well as a devotional one, since the tradition holds that only a just and legitimate government can keep the sacred image. The Phra Bang is kept at Luang Prabang, in modern times in the Haw Pha Bang, a gilded pavilion in the grounds of the former royal palace built expressly to house it. The image itself is a securely historical object with a documented place at the centre of Lao kingship since the fourteenth century; what is legendary is the account of its distant origin, which the tradition places in ancient Ceylon but which its style assigns to a later Khmer workshop.