The life of the Buddha is frequently depicted on the walls of temples in Thailand.
For centuries, the primary purpose of these murals, which depict episodes strongly tinged with legend, has been to nurture the religious and moral education of the Buddhist faithful. For the last two centuries, their secondary purpose has been to rival Christian hagiography.
This book analyses the main episodes in the murals, explaining their details and giving their doctrinal or legendary context.
Despite their differences in quality, from the most naive to the most refined, there is a close similarity between the murals from one temple to the next, in terms of both staging and detail. And these similarities are not confined to the temples of Thailand; they extend to monasteries in all other regions where the Theravāda tradition has flourished: Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Sri Lanka, the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh and the north of the Mekong delta in Vietnam.

With a degree in philosophy from the Université Paris-Sorbonne, Didier Treutenaere is a practicing Buddhist in the Theravāda tradition. 
He is also the author of:
- 100 questions sur le bouddhisme Theravāda (link to the book)
- Bouddhisme et re-naissances (link to the book)
- La légende de Gotama (link to the book)
- Rohingyas, de la fable à la réalité (link to the book)