Laos’s history and culture

Laos lies almost exactly at the heart of Indochina, and is the world’s only peninsula country which has no access to the sea. Yet ancient trade routes run here, which historically connect Laos to China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar. These historic links have had a strong affect on the country’s development. Archaeological evidence suggests that even back in the C5th and C6th BC, local people here were growing rice, and living off hunting and herding. At the turn of the New Millennium, there was a flourishing megalithic culture on the Plain of Jars in Northern Laos (province of Xiengkhouang). Experts believe the enormous stone vessels, sunk into the earth – which number around 1000! – probably served as funerary urns, or possibly places for storing provisions and fresh water. Local legend preserves a story that they were the wine-goblets of the giants. From the C1st to C13th AD, large areas of Laos were under the control of medieval states - Funan, Chenla and Kambujadesha where the Mon, Khmer and Cham nations lived. The southerly Wat Phou mountain monastery was a major religious centre in the C5th AD in the Champasak province. It had originally been dedicated to Lord Shiva, and its stone carvings show themes from Hindu mythology. Wat Phou later became a Buddhist shrine. A series of further religious foundations were built in the Khmer style, of which the largest is That Inghang in Savannakhet province. This that, or stupa, which enshrines a fragment of the Buddha’s ashes and other relics, was founded approximately in the C7th or C8th, but was rebuilt in the C16th to a height of twenty-five metres. Cave and cliff monasteries were founded in the C9th and C10th by ‘forester’monks – such as the Vangsang Shrine near Vientiane, where giant Buddha statues are carved into the rock-face, or the Caves of Pak-U in Luang Phabang province, which are filled with a great variety of different carvings of the Buddha. 

The earliest Laotian state, known as Lan Xang, was founded in 1353 AD, and was later known in the C19th as Lan Xang Hom Khao - “the realm of a thousand elephants and a white parasol”. This development greatly prompted the rise of a national culture. This state was founded by Fangum (1353–1371/93), and adopted Therevada Buddhism as its official belief – the southern manifestation of the faith. Luang Phabang became the capital city, the ‘City of the Golden Buddha’, named after the Sacred Phabang statue of the Buddha. An intense building program of Buddhist monasteries – wats – began. In Luang Phabang they are clustered around the “sacred hill” of Phousi, where they line the centre of the town in streets running parallel to the Mekong River. The ‘pearl’ of Laotian architecture was created at the main wat of Siengthong in 1561 – where the monastery was building with a beautifully decorated multi-storeyed towered roof, and topped with a ‘bouquet of heavenly flowers’ in the form of pyramids. Also within Laotian monastery a library was built, along with a tower for the bell and great drum, pavilions for statues of the Buddha, thats, and dormitories for the monks. Generally monastery stupas are of modest size – but an exception is made for those monasteries where relics of especial significance are kept. 

The largest of Laos’s stupas is That Luang in Vientiane – to where King Setthathilat relocated the capital of Lan Xang in 1563 AD. It was built in 1566 on the site of the former That – which, as legend claimed, had been founded in the C3rd BC. It was then that Indian missionaries visited Laos, bringing with them a relic of the Buddha – a bone – which was put inside the stupa. Buddhists say that the new 45-metre gilded stupa is the manifestation of Mountain of Meru, which marks the centre of the universe. The upper section has an unusual structure in the form of a four-sided vessel, around which there are a series of thirty repeated small thats – symbols of good intention. It was during Setthatilat’s rule that the capital’s greatest temple was built – Pha Kaew (1565), in which the Emerald Buddha had stood (in 1778 the statue was seized by Thais who raided the city, and carried off to Bangkok). Each temple in Laos has its own holy statue. One example in Vientiane is at the altar of the C16th temple, where there stands a gigantic bronze statue named Pha Ongty, or “Buddha which weighs a million Buddhas”. During the reign of King Sulinyavongsa (1637–1694) Lan Xang was first visited by Europeans – a Dutch expedition arrived, led by the Gerritt van Wuysthoff (1641) and another led by the Jesuit Giovanni-Maria de Leria stayed in Laos from 1642 to 1647. De Leria wrote messages back to Italy about the “.enormity, wealth and power. ” of this then-unknown land. However, by the C17th Lan Xang had split into three separate realms – Luang Phabang (in the north), Vientiane (in the centre) and Champasak (in the south). 

Domestic strife and civil and international wars continued for two further centuries, until the Laotian territories were captured by France in 1893. In 1945 the Laotians declared their hard-won freedom, and in 1953 France conceded Laos the status of an independent country. The monarchy was overthrown in 1975, and the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos was declared.