2003, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies vol. 34, no. 1
https://doi.org/10.1017/S002246340300002X…
20 pages
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This paper examines the political significance of Viṣṇu, Śiva, and Harihara images in Preangkorian Khmer civilization, arguing that their popularity reflects patterns of political authority and the ruling elite's strategies. It emphasizes that these deities embodied different conceptions of sovereignty and were utilized to symbolize royal power, especially in the context of territorial control struggles. The study critiques oversimplified interpretations of Harihara as merely a syncretic deity, suggesting a more nuanced understanding linked to the historical and political dynamics of the Khmer during the seventh and early eighth centuries.
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Indo Nordic Author's Collective, 2022
Subsumption of Hindu Dieties in the Khmer Kingdoms C O N T E N T S CHAPTER I-Introduction-Hinduism in Southeast Asia page 3 CHAPTER II-Subsumption of Hindu Dieties in the Khmer Kingdoms page 10 CHAPTER III-The Many Capitals of Jayavarman II page 46 CHAPTER IV-Mahendraparvata-The Lost Mountain City of God Indra page 55 CHAPTER V-Significance of Hariharalaya /Hariharalay in Understanding the design concept of Angkor page 70 CHAPTER VI-Ishanapura-Sambor Prei Kuk page 95 CHAPTER VII-The mountains MAHENDRAGIRI IN ORISSA & MAHENDRAPARVATA IN KAMBUJ PART II OF A SERIE ON MOUNTAINS OF KHMER page 103 ABOUT THE AUTHOR DR UDAY DOKRAS page 111
Journal of South Asian Studies
India and Southeast Asia have old-age historical and cultural connections, which created a conducive atmosphere for fostering bilateral relations between the two regions. Indian culture spread to the region since the first century Common Era. It coexisted with the local traditions though it had been modified, rejected, and localised to suit the needs of the people. Notably, the historical and cultural connections between Cambodia and India have been extensively found in archaeological, sculpture and literature evidence. Against this backdrop, this paper critically reviews the notion of Indianisation and Indian cultural influence in Cambodia. It argues that Indian cultural diffusion in ancient Cambodia created a cultural convergence between the indigenous cultural (mulatthan cheat) and imported cultural (mulatthan borotesh) foundations of Khmer civilisation.
Medieval Worlds, 2021
This article provides an edition and translation of an inscribed two-sided stela (K. 1457), discovered during the construction of a road in the northwest of Cambodia in 2019, that commemorates the endowment of a Viṣṇu temple during the reign of the ninth-century king Jayavarman III. The inscription, in Sanskrit verse except for a few lines in Khmer prose that give details of the grants made, is undated, but uses the posthumous name of Jayavarman III, namely Viṣṇuloka, whose death cannot have occurred later than 877 CE. »Syncretism« is a label often bandied about in connection with ancient Khmer religious life. In counterpoise, this epigraph alludes to Jayavarman III having attempted to drive out Buddhists and to convert his subjects into Śaivas, before being himself won over to Vaiṣṇava devotion, after his Śaiva chaplain was struck dumb and died during a debate with a priest of the temple of Cāmpeśvara, once the most famous Viṣṇu temple in the Khmer religious landscape, whose locati...
ASIANetwork Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies in the Liberal Arts
This article has been peer reviewed through the double-blind process of ASIANetwork Exchange, which is a journal of the Open Library of Humanities.
In Early Theravadin Cambodia: Perspectives from Art and Archaeology, ed. by Ashley Thompson, Singapore: SOAS-NUS Press, pp. 231–268, 2022
This essay aims to survey the artistic, epigraphic, textual and premodern ritual evidence for the emergence of the cult of past and future Buddhas in Cambodia proper and its bordering regions. It also briefly compares these lists with material from Sri Lanka and other neighbouring countries, and examines their importance in understanding the advent and uniqueness of Theravada across the region. A recorded lecture on this topic has been given at the Sirindhorn Anthropological Center, Bangkok, in Nov. 22, 2017. It is available online here: http://channel.sac.or.th/th/website/video/detail_news/
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
Cambodia is strewn with places of national, local or, most frequently, village importance, considered as potent places, that is to say, places that are said to have agency and a positive or negative power of interaction with human beings. This paper emphasises the constituent principles of potency using case studies based on ethnographic research conducted between 2007 and 2015 in Pursat Province, western Cambodia. Beginning with the analysis of the sanctuary of a powerful land guardian spirit called Khleang Muang, the author progressively guides the reader to all the potent places that form a network which spatially tells the legend of the sixteenth century Khmer king Ang Chan who passed by Pursat coming from Angkor and settled in Lovek (south of Tonle Sap Lake). Violent death and sacrifices, rituals, spiritual energy called paramī, old buildings, monasteries, precious tableware kept in the soil, trees, stones, termite mounds ... all those constituents of the potency of the places are analysed. The author's discussion of the core of potency (pāramī and paramī) enables her to show how Buddhism and land guardian spirit cults are entangled in a single still hierarchical religious system. Finally the author analyses how potent places in Cambodia embody a process of localisation of the nation-level institution of monarchy.
Indo Nordic Author's Collective, 2022
was there Subsumption of Shaivism wiith Vaishnavism in the Khmer Kingdoms? The author does not think you- there was equilateral distribution of Hindu Top Dieties
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The research indicates that Harihara's popularity was closely tied to the territorial aspirations of rulers like ∞Ω¡navarman I in the seventh century, who symbolically united regional powers through this composite deity.
The study finds that depictions of Vi≤ §u and ∫iva were strategically utilized by Khmer elites to embody contrasting leadership qualities, aiding in their claims of sovereignty.
Harihara images served as a divine analogue of political authority, symbolizing the concentration of royal power, particularly during the seventh to eighth centuries.
Chronological assessments were largely contingent upon stylistic comparisons and limited epigraphic evidence, with only two sculptures securely placed in specific sanctuaries as per Dupont's 'double equation' theory.
Anthropomorphic images of Siva began to appear in appreciable numbers only in the late ninth century, contrasting sharply with earlier depictions primarily of Vi≤ §u and Harihara.
Religion Compass, 2011
This article surveys recent scholarship on Southeast Asian religion and state formation by using the pre-Angkor Khmer religio-political organizational patterns as a case study. It begins by situating the debate in the broader chronological frame of both the pre-Angkor and Angkor periods by outlining both the India-centric, 'Khmer Hinduism' model and the Khmer-centric, indigenous model for religio-political formation. It then shifts its focus to the pre-Angkor period and uses the recent work of Michael Vickery and Alexis Sanderson to discuss the debate concerning the influence of Śaivism on pre-Angkor Khmer state and society. In doing so, it argues that the idea of a 'man : d : ala state', combined with the recognition of a distinction between élite religio-political constructions and the common experience and practice of religion, serves to reconcile Vickery's and Sanderson's arguments. The article ends with a discussion of new avenues of research that have opened up in the last decade.
Banister Fletcher: World History of Architecture, 21st edition, edited by Fraser Murray, London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020
Indonesia and the Philippines (plus other smaller island nations). Historically and geographically their make-up is diverse and complex, although they have long shared a (generally) tropical climate and an exposure to monsoons, earthquakes and volcanic activity, being so close to the Pacific 'Ring of Fire'. Looking first at the Khmer Empire in medieval Cambodia, the ascent of King Jayavarman II to the throne in 802 laid the foundations for the Angkor Empire: it would reach its apogee four centuries later, before entering a period of decline and ending in 1431. In Cambodia, the name Angkor is derived from the Sanskrit word, nagara, meaning 'city'. It became the Middle Khmer name for the huge area enclosing several monuments, reservoirs, causeways, walls and gateways at the site of Angkor near what is now the city of Siem Reap. The original name for the capital, established at this site by King Yashovarman (r. c. 889-910) at the start of his reign, was Yashodharapura. More widely known as Angkor, and then majorly rebuilt as Angkor Thom ('great city') by King Jayavarman VII (r. 1181-1218), it was to remain the capital until the Khmer Empire abandoned the city in the fifteenth century under pressure from neighbouring Thais. Hinduism was the main religion of the Khmer Empire, followed in popularity by Buddhism. Khmer kingship was perceived as being divinely bestowed, and monarchs drew upon the power of the gods by constructing temples and creating divine abodes in stone to represent heaven on earth. In the Hindu-Buddhist cosmography, the mythical Mount Meru (or Sumeru) stands at the centre of the cosmos and links the divine and human worlds. On its summit dwell the thirty-three gods, presided over by the supreme god:
Journal of the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, vol. 4, 2013
Was there ever a tradition of bhikkhunī in Cambodia? e precincts of wats, or Buddhist temples, in modern-day Cambodia usually include a handful of white-clad, shaven-headed women, whose status hovers somewhere between upāsikā and novice monk. Yet the inscriptions of the past refer oen to a corpus of women as "nuns". What are we to make of this seeming dichotomy? is paper explores the inscriptions of the th to th centuries -the period in which eravada Buddhism became entrenched as the national religion -for an answer.
Overview and bibliography on Cambodian Buddhism for the Encyclopedia of Religion
Medieval Worlds
This paper compares four Latin charters and one recently discovered Sanskrit inscription recording various royal gifts of taxation to religious foundations in the contemporary Mercian and Khmer kingdoms in the early ninth and early tenth centuries. It draws upon philology and medieval history as its principal disciplines, and considers three models of gift-giving as a way of interpreting the data. Close textual investigation of these records is used to challenge narratives which suggest that such gifts of power weakened the power of rulers, and thus led to the breakup of states. It is equally possible to argue that these gifts of power enhanced the power of Mercian and Khmer kings. Moreover, other powerful factors, such as a cultural renaissance or environmental crisis, may be adduced to explain the context for the compilation of these documents, thereby opening up new perspectives for enquiry into the history of the Khmer and Mercian kingdoms in the early medieval period.
This research article aims at examining the tradition of syncretism in Southeast Asia with a special reference to the region of the Brahmaputra Valley and in connection with the deity Hari-Hara. Eclecticism implies the integration of various information flows, religious, cultural, and philosophical, which has been traditionally significant for the formation of spiritual and social models in the areas with interactions of several traditions. In Southeast Asia particularly the Khmer Empire, the syncretism of Shaivism and Vaishnavism together with Hindu and Buddhists is evident in the worship of Hari-Hara; Vishnu-Shiva. This syncretic practice was not only a sign of religious tolerance but also expressed political power and social integration under kings such as Jayavarman VII embodied in temple architectures including Angkor Wat and Bayon temples. By contrast, the case of the Brahmaputra Valley in India can be singled out as the example of syncretism between tribal and Brahmanical practices when the local indigenous cults were gradually intertwined with the Hindu ones and produced such localized forms of Hari-Hara. The Deopani Hari-Hara sculptures of the Doiyang Dhansiri Valley elucidate the syncretization of classical Brahmanical elements with tribal regional forms. While syncretism in the Khmer Empire was more political, more centrally driven and less successful than the one in the Brahmaputra Valley which was predominantly the result of protracted social contact and the Bhakti movement's stress on individual devotion and tolerance. The research article also shows how Hari-Hara became an important identity for religious and cultural syncretism in both regions, allowing the harmonious interaction of different religions and improving political authority. Analyzing artistic, architectural and socio-political aspects of Hari-Hara worship in this study reveals the values of syncretism as a function of integrationist in maintaining social cohesion as well as preserving the political authority. Finally, the comparison of the Brahmaputra Valley with mainland Southeast Asia brings further understanding of the processes that produce and sustain syncretic religious cultures, enriching religious diverse topographies of these areas.
The Cambridge World History, 2015
ABSTRACT When the Portuguese admiral Alfonso de Albuquerque conquered the sul-tanate of Melaka (Malacca) on August 24, 1511, he brought under Portuguese control a Southeast Asian polity whose reach stretched across the Malay Peninsula. Melaka then housed an urban population of 100,000, in which eighty different languages were spoken by Malays, Chinese, Arabs, Indians, and other ethnicities. Melaka's urban form was not anomalous in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Southeast Asia. Many of the region's coasts and river valleys housed port cities and capitals with populations of 50,000–100,000 people; population density/square kilometer varied from sparsely peopled hill country to lowland agrarian areas in northern Vietnam and Bali with higher densities than those in contemporary China. 1 The onset of European colonialism in the late eighteenth century reversed this seemingly inexorable trend toward Southeast Asian urbanism, whose roots lay two millennia deep. It is this earlier heritage of Southeast Asian urbanism, and the role of the urban form in promoting and maintaining polity in first–second millennium Southeast Asia, that forms the focus of this chapter. Polity, power, and urbanism were linked in most regions of Southeast Asia, although the timing and nature of urbanization varied greatly across the region. While mainland Southeast Asians built large fortified urban centers, the densely populated island of Java remained largely free of cities until the thirteenth century ce. Disagreement over when the region's cities first appeared and the forms they took constitute the core of most debates on early Southeast Asian cities. Relatively few scholars, however, have queried the relationship
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2016
Studies of early Southeast Asia focus largely on its ‘classical states’, when rulers and their entourages from Sukhothai and Ayutthaya (Thailand), Angkor (Cambodia), Bagan (Myanmar), Champa and Dai Viet (Vietnam) clashed, conquered, and intermarried one another over an approximately six-century-long quest for legitimacy and political control. Scholarship on Southeast Asia has long held that such transformations were largely a response to outside intervention and external events, or at least that these occurred in interaction with a broader world system in which Southeast Asians played key roles. As research gathered pace on the prehistory of the region over the past five decades or so, it has become increasingly clear that indigenous Southeast Asian cultures grew in sophistication and complexity over the Iron Age in particular. This has led archaeologists to propose much greater agency in regard to the selective adaptation of incoming Indic beliefs and practices than was previously ...
Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 2019
The paper begins with a brief vignette of Angkor Wat in Cambodia as a great center of learning, and then highlights the traditions of Indian monastic institutions which had deeply influenced its development. It then turns the main features of the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, showing how they created a space for women's scholarship to flourish. The next section focuses on the development of shuyuan or academies in China that arose out of the patterns of Buddhist monasteries, demonstrating another aspect of their progressive influence. Throughout the paper comparisons are made with the European university tradition, and the conclusion considers the gifts these learning traditions could bring to the global research university.
Since the late first millennium CE, Maritime Southeast Asia has been an inter-connected zone, with its societies and states maintaining economic and diplomatic relations with both China and Japan on the east, and the Indian Sub-Continent and Middle East on the west. This global connectedness was facilitated by merchant and shipping networks that originated from within and outside Southeast Asia, resulting in a trans-regional economy developing by the early second millennium CE. Sojourning populations began to appear in Maritime Southeast Asia, culminating in records of Chinese and Indian settlers in such places as Sumatra, Malay Peninsula and the Gulf of Siam by the mid-first millennium CE. At the same time, information of products that were harvested in Southeast Asia began to be appropriated by pockets of society in China, the India and the Middle East, resulting in the production of new knowledge and usages for these products in these markets.
Paul A Lavy