Abstract

• Among the themes of Buddhist visual art, Jātaka stories have mostly reflected on social lives of Bagan people especially on performers and the characters intermingle as main icons and supporting icons in a single scene of jataka stories. The stories gave moral and ethical education to the common people and they were reflected with Bagan life-style. Jātaka stories are depicted at the most temples as interior wall mural painting decoration and adorned at many prominent solid-pagodas as the exterior glaze plaque decoration. Jātakas are mostly illustrated on the side walls of vestibule or entrance hall in the temples. In fact, these real narrative stories are transformed into the static scenes of narrative performance. Most Jātaka plaques and mural panels have serial numbers, captions of title and mentioned notes under them. They can be identified easily by mean of iconic and narrative patterns if they have without captions. The kind of Jātaka with Burman caption is different from those with Mon caption on figural attitude and scenic composition and even interpretation on each story is distinguished each other because of their religious concepts and different times of early and later periods. Most Bagan narrative stories murals and plaques are arranged in the pattern of square or rectangular panels. Few are in the pattern of circular tondos. The study will comparatively focus and examine the Jātaka stories between plaques and murals.