Palimpsestic Ritual of Angkor & the khmer Architecture

INAC, 2022

Classical styles of Khmer Architecture as Illustrated by Angkor

2004

The thesis is a detailed analysis of the two main temples of King Rajendravarman, consecrated in the mid-tenth century, focusing on their architecture and epigraphy. The background to this study is Philippe Stern's classification of Angkorean temples into ancestor and state temples, which is examined critically. Chapter 2 provides the general background, introducing the Indian religions, both theoretically and as practised in Cambodia. Brahmanical Temple Architecture is briefly presented, followed by a detailed description of the East Mebon and Pre Rup. The methodological background is given in chapter 3. The development of Cambodian studies is examined, most importantly the theories of Ph. Stern. Subsequently, the methodologies utilised for this study are introduced. Chapter 4 analyses in depth the architectural features of the individual buildings within the temple complexes, which has not been done up to now, and formulates an internal building sequence. This is completed in chapter 7 by the application of general architectural theory and the regulations given in the Indian 6astras\.o suggest the function of the individual buildings. In chapter 5 the foundation inscriptions of the two temples are analysed. First a general introduction to the Sanskrit epigraphy of Kambujadesa is given, presenting the most important religious concepts expressed in the inscriptions. The main part of the chapter deals with the three main inscriptions of King Rajendravarman. The analysis of the texts comprises the study of the religious ideas expressed, and of the information regarding the temples themselves contained in the texts. This analysis is refined in chapter 6 to examine whether the images mentioned in the inscriptions were founded, and where they were placed. Overall it is argued that the East Mebon and Pre Rup are part of one building programme, to legitimise King Rajedravarman and secure his spiritual and political position. Due to their fundamental similarities it is not warranted to classify them in two separate categories of temples. The necessity for detailed studies is stressed, instead of attempting to impose pre conceived categories on them. 2 Numerous people all over the world have contributed to this work. First, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Tania Tribe, for her support and encouragement. I am also grateful to Dr. Elizabeth Moore, my advisor for the first two years, for her support. Moreover, I would like to thank Prof. Philip Stott, without whose enthusiasm I would not have undertaken this project. My thanks go also to Pam Radford and the staff of the registry of the School of Oriental and African Studies for all their help. In Siem Reap I would like to thank the team of the Centre for Khmer Studies for their warm welcome. My special thank goes to the director, Dr. Philippe Peycam, for his hospitality and generosity. Chheng Pharin and Oum Daraneth have gone out of their way to make the use of the library as easy as possible. Nop Sovanna, and Dr. Frangois Tainturier have been more than helpful whenever I needed them. I am very grateful to the team of the licole Frangaise d'Extrfeme-Orient. Particularly Dr. Christophe Pottier has been very enthusiastic, and very kindly spent time with me at the temples and explained some of their architectural features. Moreover, I would like to thank Dr. Pascale Roy6re for his kindness, and Sok Ramo for his help and generosity during my days in the library. My thanks go to The APSARA Authority for their generosity in providing me with an Apsara-Pass, which has greatly helped during my stays in Cambodia. Special thanks are for Prof. Ang Choulean, for his interest and enthusiasm for my topic, and for his time. I am grateful to the Conservation d'Angkor, particularly Mr. Tuon Puok, for granting me access to their collection, and particularly to Mr. Polly for being so generous with his time, and sharing his deep knowledge about the images there. Many thanks to Valter Santoro for explaining in such detail the restoration project of Pre Rup. Very special thanks go to John Weeks, who has not just been a wonderful friend, but also a fantastic research assistant. I am very grateful for his help in dealing with various bureaucratic, and technical problems. In Phnom Penh I would like to thank Khun Samen, the director of the National Museum, for his generosity in granting me unlimited access to the material of the Conservation d'Angkor. Madame Lim Yi, the librarian of the National Museum, has been wonderful in finding all the material I needed, and I thank her for dedicating so much time to my research there. I would also like to thank Peter Arfanis for being such a good friend. In Paris I am grateful to the members of the licole Frangaise d'Extrdme-Orient. I would like to thank Isabelle Poujol for all her help, time and generosity in copying the original materials for me. Wanlapa Keawjundee and Saming Prasomsouk have been very generous with their time, and made the use of the library and the equipment there very easy. In Australia I would like to express my thanks to the team of the Greater Angkor Project. I am particularly grateful to its director Prof. Roland Fletcher, who gave generously of his time and comments. My thanks go to Dr. Ian Johnson and Damian Evans for providing me with satellite images for this thesis. I am grateful to Tom Chandler, and his students Nikhil Pais and Liang Chen, for creating a magnificent computer graphic of the East Mebon for this thesis. Very 3 special thanks go to Prof. David Chandler, who gave extremely generously of his time, not only in Cambodia, but also when he edited and commented on the draft of this thesis. His enthusiasm and energy have been greatly appreciated. In Bonn I would like to thank the members of the Indologisches Seminar, Universitat Bonn. I am very grateful to Dr. Karl-Heinz Golzio and Peter Wyzlic for their generosity and kindness. I would also like to thank Prof. T.S. Maxwell for allowing me to use still unpublished translations. I would also like to thank my very dear friends Dr. Alexandra Green and Dr. William Southworth, whose friendship has kept me going. Special thanks go to Dr. Fiona Kerlogue for her hospitality and support, and for volunteering to proof read parts of this thesis. Their encouragement and help has been wonderful. I am deeply grateful to Prof. K. Bhattacharya, who has been most influential for this thesis. I would like to thank him for sharing his wisdom, and for being so generous with his time. His patience and enthusiasm have been fantastic. Without his many thought-provoking questions and comments this thesis would have been very different.

Nowadays, traditional Khmer farmers are living on the framework of the ancient capital cities of Angkor, which is also visited by more than 2 million tourists a year. They are torn between the aspiration of profiting from the country as it opens to the market economy and to mass tourism, and the restrictions of living in a place that is mummifying into a museum representation. With international heritage developers advocating the re-creation of an ancient idealized space, the solutions offered to the new generation are whether to leave the site or to become part of its folklore. But the approach these inhabitants chose when settling in this area whilst developing it within the framework of their living culture shall be taken into consideration. Angkor is not stuck in the past. These populations lay new layers on the partly erased ancient structure. Ancient developments, far from being simply archaeological remains to be preserved, are used on a daily basis in residential, farming, and religious activities. Angkor is not just an archaeological site, it is also a living territory.

Medieval Worlds, 2019

This paper serves as the first focused study since 1918 exploring the sub-structural remains of Theravāda Buddhist monasteries, known to scholarship as »Buddhist terraces«, at the Cambodian Khmer capital of Angkor Thom. Thought to have been constructed between the late 13th-16th centuries, prayer halls (vihara or praḥ vihar) and other Theravāda buildings are seen by traditional scholarship to be the products of an officially undocumented but visible religious transition from the Khmer Brahmano-Buddhist royal cult, manifested through the construction of universal temple-mountains and esoteric religious practices, to a more socially-inclusive monastic tradition which abandoned epigraphy, the deification of kings, and large-scale religious building. Data acquired from two seasons of site investigations within Angkor Thom has revealed an expansive collection of over seventy »Buddhist terraces« demarcated by sīmā boundary stones, suggesting not only a notable Theravāda building campaign within this cosmologically designed Mahāyāna Buddhist urban space but also the conversion and incorporation of Brahmano-Buddhist monuments as landmarks of the new religion. The interaction of Buddhist monastic architecture with non-religious urban infrastructure, too, most notably the road-grid of Angkor Thom previously mapped through LiDAR and GIS, has revealed intriguing patterns of construction that appear to match a configuration with the southerly temple of Angkor Wat, heavily restored as a royally patronized Theravāda sanctuary in the mid-16th century. Understanding the significance of this shift is necessary to understanding the re-appropriation of the vast urban ritual landscape of Angkor, and in turn serves as a valid study for further understanding the significance and retransformation of ritual space transcending specifically-delineated historical epochs.

The 12th-century temple of Angkor Wat is the masterpiece of Angkorian architecture. Constructed under the direction of the Khmer king Suryavarman II, it was to serve as the monarch's personal mausoleum and as a temple to the Hindu god Vishnu. Based on Dravidian architecture, it was designed as a pyramid representing the structure of the universe: the highest level at the center of the temple represented Mount Meru, the home of the Hindu gods, with the five towers on the highest level representing the five peaks of the mountain. The broad moat around the complex represented the oceans that surround the world. The period of Angkor is the period in the history of the Khmer Empire from approximately the later half of the 8th century AD to the first half of the 15th century CE. In any study of Angkorian architecture, the emphasis is necessarily on religious architecture, since all the remaining Angkorian buildings are religious in nature. During the period of Angkor, only temples and other religious buildings were constructed of stone. Non-religious buildings such as dwellings were constructed of perishable materials such as wood, and so have not survived. The religious architecture of Angkor has characteristic structures, elements, and motifs, which are identified in the glossary below. Since a number of different architectural styles succeeded one another during the Angkorean period, not all of these features were equally in evidence throughout the period. Indeed, scholars have referred to the presence or absence of such features as one source of evidence for dating the remains.

2024

PERFORMANCE OF SACRED CEREMONIES in ANGKOR

CardinalScholar, 2009

This thesis addresses the question of how the Cambodia Tourist Police prohibition of local custodians has impacted Khmer prayer rituals inside Ta Prohm Complex (Angkor Archaeological Park, Cambodia). For centuries, people of Khmer ethnicity have engaged in religious activities inside Ta Prohm. Local Khmers have functioned as custodians of spaces of religious activity there. Custodians decorate and clothe statues, and place incense, offering plates, and other religious paraphernalia in spaces of religious activity. Observations demonstrate that Khmer prayer rituals occur in spaces that contain religious paraphernalia. The prohibition reduced the number of spaces that contain religious paraphernalia in Ta Prohm. This thesis is the first research to closely examine contemporary religious activities at Angkor. The thesis discusses how the prohibition may impact future Khmer religious activities inside Ta Prohm, and presents a potential solution for the reduced functionality of Ta Prohm as a Khmer temple that resulted from the prohibition.

ANGKOR: Exploring Cambodia’s Sacred City, 2018

The diary of Henri Mouhot (1826–1861), a little known French naturalist, was published posthumously in 1863. Serialised in Le Tour du Monde, a popular French magazine devoted to expeditions abroad, it had been rewritten by a ghostwriter and illustrated with engravings based on Mouhot’s own drawings. It quickly caused a sensation, not for its descriptions of the flora and fauna of Southeast Asia, but for its tales of a lost civilisation hidden in the tropical jungles of Cambodia. Mouhot’s publications set the tone for how France, and the Western world in general, would view and imagine Angkor. They initiated the ways in which Angkor has been presented to the world over the past century and a half, with the lure of the exotic orient and enduring fantasies of discovering “lost civilisations” taking centre stage. This essay looks at to what extent these perceptions remain today and how much they have changed. It does so by exploring the paintings, photographs, architectural drawings, museum displays, and colonial expositions dedicated to the topic, and by contextualising those against the colonial mindset of the time, which framed the West’s understanding and representation of Angkor. It concludes with a look at Angkor in post-independence Cambodia, and an examination of how much the images, tropes, and exoticising stereotypes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century are still being perpetuated.

Paul A. Lavy and Martin Polkinghorne, "Bodies of Glory: The Statuary of Angkor," The Angkorian World, eds. Mitch Hendrickson, Miriam T. Stark, Damian Evans, 2023

Renowned worldwide today for its aesthetic qualities, the Hindu and Buddhist statuary of Angkor originally served as the embodiment of deities and ancestors, or what the Khmer considered ‘bodies of glory’ bridging generations and ensuring a form of immortality. This chapter provides an overview of the religious, political, cultural, and technological aspects of these statues during the Angkor and Post-Angkor periods of Khmer history. It seeks to understand the local and imported concepts that informed the religious significance of stone and metal statuary and to examine circumstances of production, consecration, veneration, distribution, and deployment as both expressions and generators of power. Because the importance of Angkor’s statuary outlasted its original contexts, consideration is also given to archaism, iconoclasm, reuse, and ritual disposal, as well as to the cultural continuities of a ‘glorious’ sculptural tradition that inspires devotion and appreciation to this day.