Lintel with dancers and musicians entertaining a nobleman

Four female dancers, whose stances and hand positions are not very different from those of Thai and Cambodian dancers today, perform for a nobleman. He sits at ease in the center, shaded by parasols and cooled by a longhandled fan waved by a servant.
This scene probably represents an unidentified episode from mythology. The mythological quality is reinforced by the presence, under the nobleman’s pavilion, of a row of flying geese. They suggest that the pavilion itself is floating through the sky.
Musical Instruments: At the far right a musician plays a harp, an instrument that has fallen out of use in Thailand and Cambodia but has continued to be played in Myanmar (Burma). Next to her, another musician plays what appears to be a stringed instrument of an unusual type still sometimes used in Thailand. It uses half of a dried gourd as a resonance chamber. The open side of the gourd is pressed against the musician’s bare chest, which acts as another resonance chamber. One hand plucks the string while the other fingers it to change the pitch.