Crescent Moon - Full Moon
When Aang chases The Painted Lady aka Katara the moon is a crescent, when she takes off her veil it is full.
Taking my previous posts into consideration, I am starting to wonder if I am missing something big here…
Goof or not?
The Painted Lady - Moon Symbol
The Painted Lady, in all variations, has a crescent moon shape on her forehead.
I’ve been thinking about what that could mean.
a) She’s a guardian water spirit. The moon, in ATLA, is connected to the element water. She protects the village like Heibai protects his forest.
b) She was a healer/waterbender from long ago when the nations and the elements where one.
c) She was an Avatar from very, very long ago. (The Avatar cycle is supposed to have gone on for thousands of years and Aang does not seem to have instant recognition of his past selfs - see at the ‘tower of statues’ in season one.)
What do you think?
The Painted Lady Statue
The statue the villagers erect in the square to honor the Painted Lady is depicted with her hands in a Buddhist mudra i.e. a mudra is a symbolic or ritual gesture in Hinduism and Buddhism.
The way her hands are shown means:
LeftVarada Mudrā: Charity, giving, compassion and sincerity
Right Karana Mudra or Abhaya Mudra: Removing obstacles such as sickness or negative thoughts; or
protection, peace, benevolence, and dispelling of fear
The gesture (on the statue’s right hand) shown is in between two gestures, the
Karana Mudrā
The Karana mudrā is the mudrā which expels demons and removes obstacles such as sickness or negative thoughts. It is made by raising the index and the little finger, and folding the other fingers.
and the
Abhaya Mudrā
The Abhaya mudrā (“mudrā of no-fear”) represents protection, peace, benevolence, and dispelling of fear. In the Theravāda, it is usually made with the right hand raised to shoulder height, the arm bent and the palm facing outward with the fingers upright and joined and the left hand hanging down while standing
The statue’s left hand is show in
Varada Mudrā
The Varada mudrā (“favourable mudrā”) signifies offering, welcome, charity, giving, compassion and sincerity.
The Zhu Fa Bamboo Raft(竹筏) Dock uses to ferry them to the village are traditionally used in South-East Asia for fishing.
In Guilin, the place you probably think of when you picture Chinese landscape, a ride down the river on them is part of the tourist attraction. Guilin has been a tourist destination hundreds of years, with many poems and painting praising it’s beauty natural beauty.
“The river winds like a green silk ribbon, while the hills are like jade hairpins”
— by HanYu (768–824), Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty
Image source: One, two, three, four
This kind of raft is used in many countries, I have definitely seen it in Thailand, but my google-foo is failing me when it comes to what it is called. Help?
The Painted Lady - Stilt Villages in South-East Asia
Stilt villages and buildings are common architectural feature in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Southern China, The Philippines (etc) i.e. many countries in South-East Asia.
The one village that stands out - to me - to be similar to the one in ‘The Painted Lady’, is Ko Panyi. (the one in the lake, next to that huge rock)
Ko Panyi (also known as Koh Panyee) (Thai: เกาะปันหยี) is a fishing village in Phang Nga Province, Thailand notable for being built on stilts by Indonesian fishermen. The population consists of roughly 200 families or between 1,500 and 2,000 people descended from 2 seafaring Muslim families from Java.
Further pictures are of Bang Bao in the Koh Chang District, Thailand. I chose them mainly to illustrate that the building style of the stilt houses in The Painted Lady, with it’s curved palm-leaf roofs, is very Thai.
The Hat Katara Wears as the Painted Lady is Called ‘Wei Mao’.
The 帷帽 wei mao style hat was created in the Jin dynasty, the style continued to be worn during the Tang Dynasty, but with a higher, conical top-hat like, hat. Click me for image.
The Jin Dynasty晋朝was a dynasty in Chinese history, lasting between the years 265 and 420 CE. There are two main divisions in the history of the Dynasty, the first being Western Jin (ch: 西晉, 265–316) and the second Eastern Jin (ch: 東晉 317–420). Western Jin was founded by Sima Yan, with its capital at Luoyang, while Eastern Jin was begun by Sima Rui, with its capital at Jiankang. The two periods are also known as Liang Jin (ch: 兩晉 lit, two Jin) and Sima Jin by scholars, to distinguish this dynasty from other dynasties that use the same Chinese character, such as the Later Jin Dynasty (ch: 後晉).
