Art & manuscripts
The Berlin Traiphum: A Six-Metre Public Window onto a 33-Metre Manuscript
Eighteenth-century Thonburi / Berlin collection
Berlin Traiphum II 650 is an eighteenth-century Thai folding-manuscript cosmogram associated with a 1776 commission. Its public research project makes six metres accessible, including Anotatta folios with an object-specific animal-direction arrangement. It is a rich visual witness, but the full 33-metre manuscript remains untranscribed and the public image rights are not cleared for this site.
What this page does
One source family at a time
This guide links each major assertion to a named source and a boundary. It is designed to be useful for readers, artists, teachers, and researchers without pretending that later images can repair earlier silence.
Why it is a flagship object
The Berlin Traiphum shows how a Thai cosmogram can make mountain, water, animals, trees, buildings, labels, and moral space visible at one time. It is the kind of object many visitors expect when they search for Himmapan.
Its Anotatta folios preserve a direct visual-direction arrangement: east lion, south bull, west horse, north elephant. That makes the manuscript a crucial comparison point—not a master template.
A material and scholarly boundary
The public project focuses on six metres, while the object itself is roughly 33 metres. Research leaves open whether the survivor is the original commission, a workshop copy, or a preparatory/subsidiary copy. Those are material-historical questions, not minor caption details.
The work needs a full transcription and systematic folio review before claim-level labels across the whole manuscript can be published. A beautiful crop cannot substitute for that labor.
Why there is no image here
The previous site self-hosted museum images whose public web availability did not establish a reuse license. This rebuild removes them rather than treating visibility as permission.
The page links directly to the Museum für Asiatische Kunst research project and the open-access specialist article. It will add imagery only after written permission or an explicit reusable license is recorded.
Evidence ledger
Claims you can trace
These are the precise points supporting the guide. Each includes a claim type, source, locator, and limit.
Object arrangement
The public research identifies Anotatta at fols. 35v–36v and records its four object-specific directions.
Locator: II 650, fols. 35v–36v
Does not establish: The arrangement belongs to this manuscript and cannot be universalized.
Research boundary
The published project covers six metres; the full manuscript remains a larger, unresolved object of study.
Locator: Museum project and specialist article
Does not establish: The site does not claim a full transcription.
What not to carry forward
- No Berlin image is self-hosted until rights are cleared.
- Do not call its six-metre public section the complete manuscript.
Sources
Read the evidence layer
Berlin Traiphum II 650 research record
Anotatta at fols. 35v–36v; six-metre public project section
An eighteenth-century Thonburi cosmogram with an object-specific animal-direction arrangement.
Boundary: The surviving manuscript’s relationship to the 1776 commission remains disputed; this site does not reproduce unlicensed imagery.
Open source ↗“In den seligen Gefilden des Himavanta”
Open-access specialist article on the Berlin Traiphum project
Specialist context for the six-metre public presentation of the Berlin manuscript.
Boundary: The article does not substitute for a transcription of the full 33-metre manuscript.
Open source ↗Traibhumikathā textual-tradition audit
1689 Chiang Mai lead; 1778 complete witness; 1912 print; 1983 governing edition
The Thai cosmographic tradition is layered rather than a transparent surviving 1345 autograph.
Boundary: No sentence in the governing edition should automatically be dated to 1345.
Open source ↗Continue through the archive
Related guides
Comparison
The Animal Mouths of Anavatapta: Why Traditions Differ
A clear comparison of animals and directions at Anavatapta’s waters across Chinese, Khmer, and Thai witnesses.
Traditions
Thai Traiphum: A Layered Cosmographic Tradition, Not Just “1345”
Why the Traibhumikathā has a traditional 1345 attribution but a layered surviving textual and visual history.