Diwali in Khmer Kingdoms

Dr Uday Dokras Phd

STOCKHOLM

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Diwali in Khmer Kingdoms

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Contents page 4

CHAPTER I-Diwali in Khmer Kingdoms page 5

CHAPTER II-Did the Architects of Angkor apply the Hindu

Perspective- What makes a Good City page 28

CHAPTER III-Importance of Mountains in Hindu Temple Architecture

of India & Cambodia page 5h6

CHAPTER IV-SE Stupas with Multitiered spirelike roofs –pyathat page

74

CHAPTER V-The Mound and Ruins of the Square Plan stone temple,
(5x5) Dah – Parbatia page 105

CHAPTER VI-Hindu royal temples  as basis for Southeast Asian arts

Artistic styles page 112

About the Author page 253

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102 NOW & 550 Papers

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 CHAPTER I
Diwali in Khmer Kingdoms

1. People buy Gold or gold or kitchen utensils to help bring good fortune.
2. DAY TWO: People decorate their homes with clay lamps and create design patterns
called rangoli on the floor using colored powders or sand.
3. DAY THREE: On the main day of the festival, families gather together for Lakshmi puja, a
prayer to Goddess Lakshmi, followed by mouth-watering feasts and firework festivities.
4. DAY FOUR: This is the first day of the new year, when friends and relatives visit with gifts and
best wishes for the season.
5. DAY FIVE: Brothers visit their married sisters, who welcome them with love and a lavish
meal.
Diwali, or Deepavali—a festival of lights that stretches back more than
2,500 years.Like many Hindu festivals, there isn’t just one reason to celebrate
the five-day holiday. Pankaj Jain, a professor of anthropology, philosophy, and
religion at the University of North Texas, says that the ancient celebration is
linked to multiple stories in religious texts, and it’s impossible to say which
came first, or how long ago Diwali started. Many of these stories are about the
triumph of good over evil. In northern India, a common tale associated with
Diwali is about King Rama, one of the incarnations of the god Vishnu. When an

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evil king in Lanka (which some people associate with Sri Lanka) captures
Rama’s wife Sita, he “builds up an army of monkeys” to rescue her, Jain says.

The monkeys “build a bridge over from India to Sri Lanka, and they invade Sri
Lanka and free Sita and kill that evil king,” he says. As Rama and Sita return
to the north, “millions of lights are spread out across the city Ayodhya just to
help them come back home, just to welcome them.” Lighting lamps has long
been one of the ways that Hindus celebrate Diwali.

In the south of India , Diwali is popularly linked to a story about the Hindu god
Krishna, a different incarnation of Vishnu, in which he frees some 16,000
women from another evil king. In the western state of Gujarat, the New Year
coincides with Diwali (there are multiple New Years throughout India), and
Diwali is associated with asking the goddess Lakshmi for prosperity in the
coming year. During the festival, many celebrants exchange gifts and coins.

Other religions like Buddhism, use Diwali to mark important events in their

histories, too. Professor Jain says that while Diwali is a religious holiday, it’s
also somewhat of a national holiday in India. Comparing it to Christmas in the
United States, he points out that many non-Christians in America still buy a
Christmas tree and give each other gifts.

I have no doubt that DIWALI was celebrated in Angkor and the Khmer empire
not to mention Java, Indonesia, Mayanmar Thailand Nepal, Sri Lanka,
Maldives, Mauritious and many othet countries that come under South East
Asia or bordering it.

DIWALI IN ANGKOR?
King Suryavarman II built Angkor Wat in the early 12th century, at the height
of the Khmer Empire's reign. The sun began to rise at 6:15 and it was a
magical. Today, Indian culture is visible in Cambodia. Indian Hindu festivals
like Diwali and Holi are celebrated by the Indian community. Hinduism was
one of the Khmer Empire's official religions. Angkor Wat, the largest temple
complex in the world (now Buddhist) was once a Hindu temple. The main
religion adhered to in Khmer kingdom was Hinduism, followed by Buddhism in
popularity. Initially, the kingdom followed Hinduism as the main state religion.
When the Khmer Empire came to power in the ninth century AD, 

Hinduism was the official religion. It had been the case in that part of the world
for generations. Rulers of the great empire worshipped Hindu gods such as
Vishnu and Shiva, and dedicated the 12th-century temple of Angkor Wat to
these beliefs.

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When did Hinduism come to Cambodia?

Cambodia's Hinduism can be traced back to the Funan Kingdom which ruled

between 100BC and 500AD. During this period, kings worshiped Vishnu and
Shiva. When the Khmer Empire came to power, Hinduism remained the
dominating religion until Jayavarman VII (reigned 1181-1218).The biggest
festival in Cambodia is the Khmer New Yearnor Choul Chnam Thmey – is one
of the largest celebrations in Cambodia. The annual celebration falls on either
April 13th or 14th and spans three days to mark the safe collection of the
harvest and the welcoming of the rainy season.

Stone reliefs on Cambodia's temples from as far back as the 10th century
depict scenes from the epic narrative of Indian origin, the Ramayana.
Statues of the poem's heroes were worshipped in temple sanctuaries. While the
Ramayana has been an important epic in India for at least two thousand years,
the literary text of the Khmer adaptation of the Ramayana, the Reamker, dates
to the 16th or 17th century.

The story centers on Rama (Preah Ream, in Khmer), a prince who was exiled to
the forest, through no fault of his own, for fourteen years. Following many
adventures, including the abduction of his wife Sita (Neang Seda) by the evil
giant Ravana (Reap), and her eventual rescue with the help of an army of
monkeys guided by Hanuman, Rama returns home in triumph and claims his
throne. Though the general storyline of the Ramayana was conserved in
Cambodia, the Khmer text contains episodes and innovations unique to
Cambodian and other Southeast Asian cultures. An example of a story that
does not appear in Indian texts and performance is that of the encounter
between Hanuman, the monkey general, and Sovann Maccha, the mermaid, a
favorite of Cambodian audiences.

Diwali in ancient Khmer Kingdom??

In the Reamker, issues of trust, loyalty, love, and revenge are played out in
dramatic encounters between princes and giants, monkeys and mermaids, and
a forlorn princess. Indeed, though it is understood that Preah Ream is an
incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, his characteristics and those of the
others in the story are interpreted in Cambodia as those of mere mortals, not of
the gods as is the case in India. The complex interplay of strengths (bravery,
foresight) and weaknesses (distrust, trickery)—though couched in episodes
lined with magic—none the less represents aspects of decidedly human social
behavior.

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 .
Hanuman on his chariot, a scene from the Ramakien in Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok

The Reamker serves as an inspiration for various genres of performance in

Cambodia. Classical dance-drama, all-male masked dance-drama, and shadow
puppet plays all include episodes in their repertoire. The Reamker is
traditionally the only story performed by all-male masked dance-drama and
large shadow puppet play troupes, though each focuses on different episodes.
Thematically, however, there is, of course, considerable overlap. Author: Toni
Shapiro-Phim.

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Rama crosses to Lanka Episode du Reamker (Phnom Penh- Le Reamker est la version
khmer du Ramayana.A la fin du 19ème siècle, le roi Norodom 1er a décidé de faire
peindre des fresques illustrant le Reamker sur le mur d'enceinte de la Pagode d'argent
qui est dans le Palais royal.Ces fresques ont été restaurées en 1993 mais sont par endroit
abimées soit par l'humidité, soit par des dégradations volontaires.L'album Flickr sur le
Palais royal) 

DIWALI IN THE KHMER KINGDOMS

The Khmer Kings were staunch HINDUS and must have celebrated Diwali in a
Big way since they worshipped Ram and Diwali is associated with him in a Big
Way.
One of the most popular festivals of Hinduism, Diwali symbolizes the spiritual
"victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance.
The festival is widely associated with Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity, with
many other regional traditions connecting the holiday
to Sita and Rama, Vishnu, Krishna, Yama, Yami, Durga, Kali, Hanuman, Gane
sha, Kubera, Dhanvantari, or Vishvakarman. Furthermore, it is, in some
regions, a celebration of the day Lord Rama returned to his
kingdom Ayodhya with his wife Sita and his brother Lakshmana after
defeating Ravana in Lanka and serving 14 years of exile.

Diwali is the festival of lights which signifies the victory of good over evil
and the eradication of dark shadows, negativity, and doubts from our lives. It
is a celebration of prosperity in which people give gifts to their loved ones. The
festival usually lasts five days and is celebrated during the Hindu
lunisolar month Kartika (between mid-October and mid-November

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Dhanteras, Dhanatrayodashi (Day 1) Dhanteras, derived from Dhan meaning
wealth and teras meaning thirteenth, marks the thirteenth day of the dark
fortnight of Kartik and the beginning of Diwali. On this day the Hindu kings
and Queens must have got their palaces cleaned with the help of servants and
slaves. Installed DIYas or ooen oil wick lamps- small earthen oil-filled lamps
that they light up for the next five days, near Lakshmi and Ganesha
iconography.
Women and childrenof the Court must jave woken up early to take bath and
give bath to the Royal childres anointing them with perfumed oil before
bathing so the bodies smell; , decorated the palace doorways within homes
with rangoli, colourful designs made from rice flour, flower petals and coloured
sand. While this is going on the boys and men are supposed to decorate the
roofs and walls of family homes, markets, and temples. The day also marks a
purchase new utensils,, jewellery, firecrackers, and other items.On the evening
of Dhanteras, families offer prayers (puja) to Lakshmi and Ganesha, and lay
offerings of puffed rice, candy toys, rice cakes and batashas (hollow sugar
cakes). According to Tracy Pintchman,

This I am sure happened not only in the Palaces but in countless homes of the
Cambodian citizenery at least up to the time they were Hindus and selectively
even after that in Hindu Homes.

Dhanteras is a symbol of annual renewal, cleansing and an auspicious

beginning for the next year. The term "Dhan" for this day also alludes to the
Ayurvedic icon Dhanvantari, the god of health and healing, who is believed to
have emerged from the "churning of cosmic ocean" on the same day as
Lakshmi. Some communities, particularly those active in Ayurvedic and
health-related professions, pray or perform havan rituals to Dhanvantari on
Dhanteras. Naraka Chaturdashi, Chhoti Diwali (Day 2) Naraka Chaturdashi
also known as Chhoti Diwali, is the second day of festivities coinciding with the
fourteenth day of the second fortnight of the lunar month. The term "chhoti"
means little, while "Naraka" means hell and "Chaturdashi" means "fourteenth".
The day and its rituals are interpreted as ways to liberate any souls from their
suffering in "Naraka", or hell, as well as a reminder of spiritual auspiciousness.
For some Hindus, it is a day to pray for the peace to the manes, or deified souls
of one's ancestors and light their way for their journeys in the cyclic afterlife. A
mythological interpretation of this festive day is the destruction of the asura
(demon) Narakasura by Krishna, a victory that frees 16,000 imprisoned
princesses kidnapped by Narakasura. Naraka Chaturdashi is also a major day
for purchasing festive foods, particularly sweets. A variety of sweets are
prepared using flour, semolina, rice, chickpea flour, dry fruit pieces powders or
paste, milk solids (mawa or khoya) and clarified butter (ghee). According to
Goldstein, these are then shaped into various forms, such as laddus, barfis,
halwa, kachoris, shrikhand, and sandesh, rolled and stuffed delicacies, such

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as karanji, shankarpali, maladu, susiyam, pottukadalai. Sometimes these are
wrapped with edible silver foil (vark). Confectioners and shops create Diwali-
themed decorative displays, selling these in large quantities, which are stocked
for home celebrations to welcome guests and as gifts.Families also prepare
homemade delicacies for Lakshmi Pujan, regarded as the main day of Diwali.
Chhoti Diwali is also a day for visiting friends, business associates and
relatives, and exchanging gifts.

Puja
of Laxmi RIGHT PIC
Lakshmi Pujan (Day 3) The third day is the height of the festival, and
coincides with the last day of the dark fortnight of the lunar month. This is the
day when Hindu homes are aglow with lights, thereby making it the "festival of
lights". The word Deepawali comes from the word the Sanskrit word deep,
which means an Indian lantern/lamp. The youngest members in the family
visit their elders, such as grandparents and other senior members of the
community, on this day. Between Dhanteras and Lakshmi Pujan,commerce is
closed or open for a limited period.The markets at Angkor too must have done
the same.

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Laxmi Hindu Goddess of wealth- main goddess of Diwali celebrations Carving from
Banteay Srei Temple at Angkor 

Shops either do not open or close early on this day allowing employees to enjoy
family time. Shopkeepers and small operations perform puja rituals in their
office premises. Unlike some other festivals, the Hindu typically do not fast
during the five-day long Diwali including Lakshmi Pujan, rather they feast and
share the bounties of the season at their workplaces, community centres,
temples and homes.

Firecrackers have been around for the past 100 years only

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 b

As the evening approaches, celebrants will wear new clothes or their best
outfits, teenage girls and women, in particular, wear saris and jewellery.At
dusk, family members gather for the Lakshmi Pujan, although prayers will also
be offered to other deities, such as Ganesha, Saraswati, Rama, Lakshmana,
Sita, Hanuman, or Kubera. The lamps from the puja ceremony are then used
to light more earthenware lamps, which are placed in rows along the parapets
of temples and houses while some diyas are set adrift on rivers and
streams.After the puja, people go outside and celebrate by lighting up patakhe
(fireworks) together, and then share a family feast and mithai (sweets,
desserts). The puja and rituals in the Bengali Hindu community focus on Kali,
the goddess of war, instead of Lakshmi.According to Rachel Fell McDermott, a
scholar of South Asian, particular Bengali, studies, in Bengal during Navaratri
(Dussehra elsewhere in India) the Durga puja is the main focus, although in
the eastern and north eastern states the two are synonymous, but on Diwali
the focus is on the puja dedicated to Kali. These two festivals likely developed

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in tandem over their recent histories, states McDermott. Textual evidence
suggests that Bengali Hindus worshipped Lakshmi before the colonial era, and
that the Kali puja is a more recent phenomenon. Contemporary Bengali
celebrations mirror those found elsewhere, with teenage boys playing with
fireworks and the sharing of festive food with family, but with the Shakti
goddess Kali as the focus. On the night of Laksmi Pujan, rituals across much
of India are dedicated to Lakshmi to welcome her into their cleaned homes and
bring prosperity and happiness for the coming year. While the cleaning, or
painting, of the home is in part for goddess Lakshmi, it also signifies the ritual
"reenactment of the cleansing, purifying action of the monsoon rains" that
would have concluded in most of the Indian subcontinent.
Vaishnava families recite Hindu legends of the victory of good over evil and the
return of hope after despair during the Diwali nights, where the main
characters may include Rama, Krishna, Vamana or one of the avatars of
Vishnu, the divine husband of Lakshmi. At dusk, lamps placed earlier in the
inside and outside of the home are lit up to welcome Lakshmi. Family members
light up firecrackers, which some interprinterpret as a way to ward off all evil
spirits and the inauspicious, as well as add to the festive mood. According to
Tracy Pintchman, in Woman and Goddess in Hinduism this ritual may also be
linked to the tradition in some communities of paying respect to ancestors.
Earlier in the season's fortnight, some welcome the souls of their ancestors to
join the family for the festivities with the Mahalaya. The Diwali night's lights
and firecrackers, in this interpretation, represent a celebratory and symbolic
farewell to the departed ancestral souls.
The Brahmins Priests in Angkotr,irrespective of their social and economic
prosperity, must have follow their Brahmin Dharma by going door-to-door to
get Bhikhsha Daan and provide people such Diwali Patrikas.

During the Muhurt Chittan or Lakshmi Chittan ritual, this Diwali Patrika
having image of Lakshmi is placed or applied within the drawn door frame. The
celebrations. Major temples and homes are decorated with lights, festive foods
shared with all, friends and relatives remembered and visited with gifts.
Annakut,
Balipratipada (Padwa), Govardhan puja (Day 4) The day after Diwali is the first
day of the bright fortnight of the luni-solar calendar.It is regionally called as
Annakut (heap of grain), Padwa, Goverdhan puja, Bali Pratipada, Bali Padyami,
Kartik Shukla Pratipada and other names. According to one tradition, the day
is associated with the story of Bali's defeat at the hands of Vishnu. In another
interpretation, it is thought to reference the legend of Parvati and her husband
Shiva playing a game of dyuta (dice) on a board of twelve squares and thirty
pieces, Parvati wins. Shiva surrenders his shirt and adornments to her,
rendering him naked. According to Handelman and Shulman, as quoted by
Pintchman, this legend is a Hindu metaphor for the cosmic process for creation

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and dissolution of the world through the masculine destructive power, as
represented by Shiva, and the feminine procreative power, represented by
Parvati, where twelve reflects the number of months in the cyclic year, while
thirty are the number of days in its lunisolar month. Annakut community
meals (left), Krishna holding Govardhan Hill ritually made from cow dung, rice
and flowers (right). This day ritually celebrates the bond between the wife and
husband, and in some Hindu communities, husbands will celebrate this with
gifts to their wives. In other regions, parents invite a newly married daughter,
or son, together with their spouses to a festive meal and give them gifts. In
some rural communities of the north, west and central regions, the fourth day
is celebrated as Govardhan puja, honouring the legend of the Hindu god
Krishna saving the cowherd and farming communities from incessant rains
and floods triggered by Indra's anger, which he accomplished by lifting the
Govardhan mountain. This legend is remembered through the ritual of building
small mountain-like miniatures from cow dung.

Diwali festivities?
Bhai Duj, Bhau-Beej (Day 5) The last day of the festival is called Bhai Duj
(literally "brother's day", Bhau Beej, Bhai Tilak or Bhai Phonta must have been
celebrated as the the sister-brother bond, similar in spirit to Raksha Bandhan
but it is the brother that travels to meet the sister and her family.
This festive day is interpreted by some to symbolise the God of Death-Yama's
sister Yamuna welcoming Yama with a tilaka, while others interpret it as the
arrival of Krishna at his sister's, Subhadra, place after defeating Narakasura. –
a demon.
Subhadra welcomes him with a tilaka on his forehead.

The day celebrates the sibling bond between brother and sister. On this day the
womenfolk of the family gather, perform a puja with prayers for the wellbeing of

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their brothers, then return to a ritual of feeding their brothers with their hands
and receiving gifts.

According to Tracy Pintchman, in Woman and Goddess in Hinduism in some Hindu

traditions the women recite tales where sisters protect their brothers from
enemies that seek to cause him either bodily or spiritual harm. In historic
times, this was a day in autumn when brothers would travel to meet their
sisters, or invite their sister's family to their village to celebrate their sister-
brother bond with the bounty of seasonal harvests.

AROMATIC UBTAN FOR ABHYANGA SNAN OR ROYAL BATH IN

DIWALI
Green Lifestyle

Sometimes Dhanatrayodashi or sometimes Narak-Chaturdashi is considered as the

first day of Diwali. On this day a particular type of aromatic bath is taken called
‘Abhyanga Snan’. This has been going on for millions of years and I am sure the
Khmer Kings and their families as well as their subjects did exactly this as done today.

Before the bath, a fragrant herbal paste called Utna or Ubtan is applied to the body.
It’s made out of special herbs which have a therapeutic value.

Following are the ingredients of Diwali Ubtan:

 Kapoor kachri (kaempferia galanga): Powder of dried rhizomes- pinch

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 Nagarmotha (Cyperus Rotundus): Powder of dried rhizomes: / Vetiver
powder (Chrysopogon zizanioides): Powder of dried roots: 25 g

 Haldi (Curcuma longa):  Powder of dried rhizomes:

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Chandan (santalum album): Powdered heartwood:

Camphor (Cinnamomum camphora): Powdered medicinal camphor

Manjishtha (Rubia cordifolia): Powder of dried roots: / Rose flower (Rosa

centifolia): Powder of petals OR dry petals of rose

Orange (Citrus aurantium): Powder of dried fruit peel

Multani mitti (Fuller’s earth) M ix all the powders thoroughly, and your
Diwali Ubtan powder is ready!

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Abhyanga snan of the Royals??

The procedure of Abhyanga Snan:

 Get up before sunrise on the first morning of Diwali, i.e., on the day of
Naraka-Chaturdashi
 Apply aromatic Jasmine oil all over the body, before applying Ubtan.
 Add lukewarm water in Ubtan powder and make a thick paste. Warm
milk or coconut milk can also be used to make this paste.
 Apply the layer of Ubtan paste on your skin wherever you have applied
aromatic oil.
 Leave it for 10-15 mins and let it dry. If possible, make the morning
sunrays fall on it.
 Take a hot water bath and remove the dried ubtan by gentle rubbing and
massage.

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  Use sandalwood or Rose scented bath soap for best results.
 Such bath can be taken on all mornings during Diwali.  

This ubtan is very useful in nourishing and softening the skin. It’s a herbal
scrub that removes all the dead cells from the skin and rejuvenates it. The
pleasant herbal fragrance improves the mood and sense of well being. Read
about how to celebrate green Diwali.

Karit fruit ritual:

According to a story mentioned in Shrimad Bhagwat Puran – A demon called

Narakasura ruled Pragjyotishpur. The cruel rakshasa began harassing Deities
and women alike. He imprisoned about 16,000 princesses who he won in
battles and decided to marry them. This led to chaos.When Lord Krishna heard
of this, he and Satyabhama attacked the demon, killed him and set all the
imprisoned princesses free. When dying Narkasur pleaded Lord Krishna for a
boon, “On this day let the one who has an auspicious bath not suffer in hell.
Lord granted him his wish.Thus, Ashvin Chaturdashi was known as Narak
Chaturdashi, and on this day people started having Abhyanga snan just before
sunrise.

After the Abhyanga Snan, the Karit fruit (cucumis melo var agrestis) is crushed
by pressing it under the large toe of the foot. This signifies killing of
Narakasura the demon, a metaphor for all the negative thoughts. Its seeds are
applied to the head, and a small drop of the extremely bitter fruit pulp is
tasted.

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Special sweets and delicacies eaten during Diwali

One wouldn't actually be celebrating Diwali without having sweet delicacies.

Cambodian sweets come in a variety of colours and flavours today.Khmer
families celebrating Diwali must have prepared sweets prior ten days to the
festival. However, the celebration features various rich savoury and sweet
dishes. While eating out with relatives and friends is popular, families will
mostly cook food at home for when the relatives arrive in and exchange gifts
and watch fireworks. Each family celebrating Diwali will more than likely have
its own favourite meal for the festival.

Why do sweets get eaten during Diwali?

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Traditionally Sanskrit word for sweets is ‘Mithai’. It is an old tradition of
considering sweets to be pure and an offering to the gods. Sweets are a small
gesture of greeting people, family, and friends with the joy of celebrating the
festival. A wide range of choices of flavours and endless types are a must at any
festival and especially Diwali. There are a hundred types of Hindu varieties
ranging from laddoo, barfi, besan, gulab jamun, petha, halwa, and so many

more. Some of the special mithai's that are prepared during Diwali are Gujjia,
Gulab jamun, Coconut barfi, besan or flour laddoo's, etc.
Today’s Cambodians relish
1. Pudding. Nom lote. CAMBODIA. Nom lote is a Cambodian rice pudding
that is made with a combination of rice flour, water, pandan leaf extract,
palm sugar, and coconut milk.
2. Dessert. Sticky Rice Banana Cake(Ansom chek) CAMBODIA. ...
3. Dessert. Sankhya lapov. CAMBODIA.

In s Sacred fudge, an ode to Indian mithais and Diwali

sweet inventions or dessert by Michael Krondl  says that

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earlier the house was always brimming up with same old flavours home made
sweets or mithais,and the first bite was shared by Gods and then offered to us
mortals, thus purifying one’s soul in return.  He says that from growing
sugarcane in the fields to producing the first refined sugar ever, the
Indian mithais has accomplished centuries of journey to reach its zenith today
and thanks to our Gods who inspired us at every step. The vast array of
sweets, is beyond the vocabulary of any European langauge and a literal
translation would dilute the essence of these ancient sweets. Hindu sweets
were always focussed around milk and milk products. This holy trinity of milk,
curd and ghee is as ancient as the human civilization itself, from the land of
milk and honey the first milk fudge or humble peda evolved that was holy and
sacred , an offering to the deity. Yes Hindu Gods are known for their sweet
tooth and are food connoisseurs in their own right.

Kheer or payesh  or payasam is perhaps the most ancient sweet that was ever
made, a milk and rice porridge with some scented spices or flower perhaps, the
porridge was then offered to Lord Krishna as bhog kheer on his birthday
or janmashtami.

Sweetener like honey and gur or jaggery extracted from date palm even
predates the sugar rich sweets. Kheer made with fruits
like basundi or kheer komola, wheat, semolina
and semiya / vermicelli  were introduced at later centuries perhaps under
the influence of Mughal rulers, thus adding new dimension in the taste.
Sugar was premium at earlier historic times, so does the mithais that were
prepared in those days. As the sugar losses its gloss and become readily
available to every section of the society, we found ways to curdle the milk to
extract cheese or chhena and this goes for miles in our tradition to produce
beautiful array of sweet delicacies that we known today
as rossogolla, sandesh, and several other new variants
like rasmalai, chamcham etc.

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Some will argue that early portuguese settlers in India showed the way to
extract chhena from milk, as they bought vinegar with them , the souring
agent which is widely used now a days to curdle the milk. But historians and
sacred text would love to differ, as since time immemorial we used curd to
curdle the milk and not vinegar. The age-old tradition of offering Rosgollas to
Lord Jagannath at Puri in Odisha will attest to that fact.

Interestingly chhena remain restricted within its geographic realm and was

never travelled beyond its boundaries and so its origin and later inventions
becomes synonymous to eastern part of the country only. In Northern part of
the country, another milk product called mawa or khowa is used widely to
make mithais. Mawa or khowa is reduced milk or evaporated milk. Milk is first
boiled and then reduced to evaporate all its moisture content till it becomes dry
like powder. This is called  mawa and it is then used to make variety of
mithais, and every year some new inventions being added to this huge and
growing army of mithais. Another mithai that evolved from this process of
reducing the milk is called kalakand or Indian milk fudge. When milk is simply
reduced to one fourth of its volume and then sweetened with sugar is
called rabdi – the delicious accompaniement with our
sweet jalebis and malpuas. 

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Since Halvas were introduced to India by the Arab traders and settlers who
settled at the western coast of India, precisely on the Malabar coast, these
would not have been present in Cambodia 1000 years ago. The fruits, flour,
and vegetables were primarily used to make halwa and being cheap, longer
shelf life and its ready availablity makes it to secure a favourite place at
common man’s dining table. Anjeer halwa is another varaint made with dried
figs and spices, when married with chocolates it takes the humble halwa to
another level.

Sugar dipped fried doughs are another Mughal influence that nestled now in
Hindu customs and becomes a part of tradition too would not have been there
in Khmer cuisine. Gulab jamuns, jalebis, boondi, motichur
laddoos, gujiya, balushahi, chandrapuli and malpuas earned rave
appreciations from the sweet conneisuer of the country. Several other variants
does exist which is more region and culture specific.
___________________________________________________________________________
TODAYS CAMBODIAN SWEET

25
Spiced Pumpkin Ice Cream//
Noum Crowrp Khnow Recipe ,Cambodian version Dessert/// Taro Tapioca
Dessert

1. Nom Kroch

2. Chet Ktiss (Bananas in Tapioca and Coconut Pudding)

3. How to make Num Koum (Glutinous rice dumplings filled with sweet
coconut, basil seeds and peanuts)

26
A painting depicting the fight between Krishna-Satyabhama and
Narakasura (Illustration of a 16th-century manuscript of the
Bhagavata Purana from north India; Photo Source:   The Metropolitan
Museum of Art courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

TEXTUAL RECORD of DIWALI

It’s interesting to note that while the popular association of Diwali is with
the return of Rama to Ayodhya, there are no references to Diwali or
Deepavali in the  Ramayana  or even Tulsidas’  Ramcharitmanas . However,
there are several Puranic references to Diwali and Deepotsava that
explain the different connections between Shiva, Parvati, Lakshmi and
the festival. Apart from  Padma Purana , Vishnu Purana  and Kalika
Purana mentioned previously, references  exist in the Bhavishyottara
Purana (Monier-Williams'  Sanskrit-English   dictionary)
and Bramhavaivarta Purana .

Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra  has references to the festival of Yaksha Ratri,

which according to some scholars is where  Diwali has its origin. This was
a festival of the Yakshas, attendants of the god of wealth, Kubera, who
spent the night playing dice. This could be seen as yet another
connection between gambling and Diwali.
King Harsha's seventh-century play  Nagananda  has a reference to
Deepotsava and Yaksha Ratri, and talks about giving gifts to newly-weds
on the occasion.

27
Battle scenes from Ramayana. No mention of DIWALI

Monkeys fighting the evil forces Carvings from Angkor

28
Death of Sugriva the monkey king. Bas Relief AngkorScene from Ramayana, bas-relief, Angkor Wat
Temple
Scene from the Ramayana, bas-relief, Angkor Wat Temple, Cambodia, engraving from Voyage au
Cambodge, Khmer architecture (Journey to Cambodia, Khmer architecture), by Louis Delaporte, 1880,
Paris. (Photo by Icas94 / De Agostini via Getty Images

29
 CHAPTER II
Did the Architects of Angkor apply the Hindu Perspective-
What makes a Good City
Wat (វត្ត) is the Khmer word for "temple grounds", also derived from
Sanskrit/Pali vāṭa (Devanāgarī: वाट), meaning "enclosure". The original name of
the temple was Vrah Viṣṇuloka or Parama Viṣṇuloka meaning "the sacred
dwelling of Vishnu." In everyday language in Thailand, a "wat" is any place of
worship except a mosque surao; or Thai or matsayit or a synagogue - surao
yio).

There are rich Hindu textual resources that one can draw upon to create an
environmentally friendly city. Ideas about cities in pre-colonial India were
closely linked with the concept of kingship and polity. Classical Sanskrit texts
on polity and kingly duties (dharma) not only speak of a king’s moral duty to
protect his kingdom and his people but also require him to care for the
environment.

This is clearly articulated in the coronation oaths in texts such as the

Yajurveda Samhita (9.22) and the Mahabharata (Santi Parva 59. 106.107)
which stipulate that the king should act as a trustee of natural resources and
protect his subjects: ‘To you [state is given.] for agriculture, for well-being for
prosperity, for development’ (Yajurveda Samhita). A king who does not protect
his subjects gets severe treatment (Mahahbarata (Santi Parva 61.32.5) and in
Manusmriti (8.307). Even if a king was driven by economic motives, it was
his dharma to protect his people and the environment. There are numerous
other texts, which call for veneration of all aspects of creation. There are hymns
to the Earth in the Atharava Veda– hymns asking the Earth to give us
wealth(12:44) but at the same time respect for and protection of the Earth is
expressed. That we should not cause injury to the Earth is made
clear: Whatever I dig up of you, O Earth, may you of that have quick
replenishment! O purifying one, may my thrust never reach into your
vital points, your heart! (12:35).

The word for city in Sanskrit is nagara. A nagarika was a city person – a person
of refined taste and culture and one who enjoyed the good things of life.

While the term nagara was used for the town, mahanagara was used for a
considerably larger well- established wealthy, politically significant city, and
grama for village, the smallest settlement. A market town situated along a
coast was referred to as pattana or pattinam. The evolution and growth of
towns did not follow a uniform pattern. Their development was influenced by a
variety of factors. Some towns began as commercial, educational,
administrative, or pilgrim centres. In some cases, the name of the town

30
indicated the main occupation of its inhabitants. Each city had distinctive
features and differed from the characteristics of another city.

Nagara and grama are not to be seen as mutually exclusive locations –

the relation between the two has been rather fluid. It was mainly during the
colonial period that the distinction between nagara and village became marked,
and with the rapid industrialization that occurred soon after Indian
Independence, the polarity between the two was all the more visible.

City and its Functions

Cities in pre-colonial India were not only centres of trade and commerce but
also of learning, religion, art and culture. The city/village is seen as the locale
for the encounter between gods and humans. In other words, a traditional
nagara or city is one where the sacred and the secular mingle. Temples have
been an essential part of city/village life, and the link between the cosmic and
the human is made visible through art, worship, poetry, music, dance and so
forth. Temples were not simply places of worship, but also centres of cultural,
educational and social life. The Hindu god Shiva, the Lord of the Dance, is the
patron of arts, and even to this day classical dancers invoke his blessings. In
this connection mention needs to be made of Bharata’s Natya Shastra (about
second century BCE), a comprehensive and foundational work on dance,
music, drama, poetry and other subjects. Debates and discourses among
scholars, music and dance performances, as well as the meeting of the local
assembly to discuss civic matters including elections to local bodies took place,
within the temple premises. The temple also played a significant part in the
economy of the village. Generous donations to the temple made it possible for
temples to advance money to needy farmers and others as well as give
employment not only to ritual specialists but also to teachers, musicians,
dancers, tailors, accountants, florists and many others.

With the emergence of various religious movements in the seventh and eighth
centuries, educational activity pervaded the urban ethos and culture. The

31
Buddhist university at Nalanda which attracted scholars from China and other
places was in existence even before the universities of Oxford and Cambridge
were founded (Sen 2005: 354). Schools or pathashalas were attached to
temples where pupils were taught subjects such as literature, philosophy and
ethics. Jain centres for advanced religious education, Hindu Sanskrit colleges
of brahmanical learning (ghatikas) and Hindu monastic institutions (mathas)
were in vogue. The mathas functioned not simply as monastic centres of
education but also as feeding centres and rest houses for pilgrims.
Chatrams, traditional centres of hospitality in pre-colonial India, which were
established by kings, were open to common people – pilgrims, the sick and the
needy were taken care of – but with the advent of colonial rule these
institutions of hospitality were deprived of their traditional role. What was seen
as an act of religious duty (dharma) came to be seen as a waste of resources by
colonial administrators and kings were discouraged from using the revenue to
maintain hospitality centres.

Vatsyayana, the author of the Kamasutra (composed between first and fourth

centuries BCE) saw urban living as the epitome of civilization and civilized life.
The Kamasutra, which deals with the art of love making, courtship, marriage
and family life, offers some valuable insights into the daily life of a well-do-to
and refined city person (nagarika). In Vatsyayana’s city, as Thapar puts it
‘comfortable if not luxurious surroundings were provided to harmonize with
moods conducive to poetry, painting and recitals of music, in all of which the
young city dilettante was expected to excel. The young man had also to be
trained in the art of love. The courtesan was a normal feature of urban life,
neither romanticized nor treated with contempt. Judging by the training given
to a courtesan, it was among the more demanding professions, for, unlike the
prostitute, she was a cultured and sociable companion similar to the geisha
of Japan or the hetaera of Greece’. Courtesans attached to royal courts were
highly accomplished in art, music, poetry, dance and literature. In fact,
courtesans enjoyed certain privileges which were not within the reach of
ordinary women. Some eminent courtesans were patrons of the arts and were
actively engaged in literary pursuits and were held in high esteem.

City in literary and epic narratives

The city finds a prominent place in various sacred and literary texts – in
Sanskrit epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and Tamil epic
poems such as Silappadigaram and Manimegalai, as well as in Kalidasa’s
play Shakuntala and Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra, the last two the most well-
known in Europe. For example, in the Tamil epic Silappadikaram,
Kaveripattinam (also known as Pukar or Puhar) figures as a city of technical
order – vibrant, wealthy and a heterogeneous city which is hospitable to
strangers and immigrants in search of fortune.

32
In Kautliya’s Arthashastra, a treatise on statecraft and polity, one finds the
image of a well-planned city where people of diverse occupations interact,
although within the given framework. Both the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata show an advanced stage of city-life, although we find some poetic
or mythical descriptions of the city. Valmiki’s Ramayana abounds in
descriptions of the physical features of the city of Ayodhya and Sri Lanka, such
as the existence of city-gates, moats, streets of different sizes, street-lights,
recreational places (parks and forest groves), and the modes of transport within
the cities (by elephant, horse and the chariot). One also finds shops, markets
and storehouses, and even eating-houses. Being active centres of trade and
commerce, the cities were prosperous. One gets the impression that the cities
were repositories of wealth. Besides a couple of descriptions of the city as a
desolate place, the image is one of prosperity. The author of the epic paints an
idealized picture of the city. The city of Ayodhya (now the scene of conflict) is
seen as a symbol of the ideal moral or cosmic order and the king as the ideal
monarch whose rule is just and fair.

A perfect kingdom is where all live in peace and prosperity. It is worth recalling
Gandhi’s constant reference to the ideal kingdom of Rama (rama rajya) in his
efforts to establish a society where there would be equality, justice and peace.

City as a site of liberation and alienation

The city plays a significant role in providing the locale for the pursuit and
fulfilment of the four aims of life (purusharthas) enumerated in Hindu texts:
dharma (duty, righteousness, morality)  kama (pleasure),  artha (wealth)
and moksha (liberation).

In some brahmanical texts, the city is also seen as a place to be avoided

(Apastamba) Dharmasutra (I, 32,21). Some see the quest for liberation as
impossible in a city. The Bauddhayana declares that: “It is impossible for one
to obtain salvation, who lives in a town covered with dust” (II, 3, 6, 33).
Although there are negative images of the city as a dreadful place, the contrast
between the city and forest/country is not as stark in early Sanskrit or Tamil
literature as it is in later epic and courtly narratives. In Kalidasa’s play
Shakuntala, a person from the country is referred to as gramya, a person who
is not acquainted with the courtly language (Sanskrit), norms and way of life of
a city person. While the epics celebrate city life, one can see the contrast
between the city and forest in the Forest sections of the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata, and the fourth stage in the life of a householder (the other three
being student, forest dweller and renunciate). The contrast between the city
and forest do not necessarily imply discontinuity between the two.

The idea of a sacred city or temple as the centre is not simply confined to one
geographical location, although some sacred locations such as Benares are
seen as exemplifying in a more powerful manner the connection between the

33
human and the cosmic order. Since most Hindus believe that this universe is a
manifestation of an eternal order, Truth or Divine, they perceive a link between
the human and the cosmic order. Although the infinite is seen as
formless, beyond all forms, it is seen as manifesting itself through forms, thus
providing a link between the formless and form, the divine and the human.
Sacred cosmologies have been recreated in various places outside India. One of
most significant forms of expression of the inter-connectedness is exemplified
in the construction of traditional/classic style Hindu temples in Sydney,
Pittsburgh, and in Birmingham where stands the newly constructed Balaji
Venkateswara temple.

City and Environment

Despite its Machiavellian traits, the Arthashastra offers sound ideas on
environmental management which was necessary to protect natural resources
and promote the well being people, especially when empires were involved in
warfare. The concerns included maintaining a proper irrigation system,
construction of dams and bridges, as well as planting trees and plants, and
taking care of infirm animals. Kautliya’s text also provides valuable information
about farming and crop rotation and also about botanical matters ranging from
seed collection to plant/tree classification, from diagnosis and treatment to
landscaping. Superintendents appointed to oversee different departments of
the state were required to have not only management skills but also expert
knowledge in these matters. The Arthashastra takes a cautionary step not only
with regard to the protection of natural resources from excessive use but also
with protecting humans from natural calamities such as floods, fires disease,
famine and by making the necessary provisions at such times. As a text that is
concerned with the economic and political order of the society, the
Arthashastra has a contemporary ring. It offers a blueprint for how the state
and private ventures could conserve, cultivate and safeguard the earth and its
natural resources. Although the text is concerned with political and economic
gain, it gives serious attention to the welfare of the less fortunate or
disadvantaged who are part of society.

Trees and gardens were an important aspect of town planning in pre-colonial

India. Archeologically speaking, the genesis of Indian gardening and landscape
tradition can be traced back to the Indus valley civilization where there is some
evidence that some specific trees held in reverence were protected. References
to and descriptions of gardens are found in various Hindu texts. The
Mahabharata gives a graphic account of pleasure gardens. In a Hindu text
on astronomy, Brihatsamhita, gardens are seen as the dwelling places of
gods. We have a vivid description of the private garden of wealthy people in the
Kamasutra. A good wife is expected to take delight in gardening. She
should surround the house with not only vegetable, fruit and herbal garden but
also with beautiful flower garden as well as make it recreational by having a
tank or pond and seats (Kamasutra 5. 1). Recreational gardens and parks were

34
an integral part of city life. There were trained experts who maintained the
garden, and in Kautilya’s period an efficient system of managing public parks
and gardens was in place. Some remarkable gardens were maintained by
Indian princes in the late nineteenth century, one of them being Sajjan Niwas
Bagh, created under the royal patronage of a the Hindu prince of Udaipur in
Rajasthan and later maintained by his successors. They were keen that the
garden should have economic, educational, recreational and botanical value to
the state.

The Purnanas and other texts speak

about the value and significance of tree planting. The tree planting ceremony
(Vanamahotsa) has a long history in the Hindu tradition. It is being revived
now by certain temple organizations such as the Sri Venkateswara temple in
Tirupathi in southern India, which offer tree saplings as prasada (blessed food)
and invite donations to conserve the environment by the planting of trees.
Such steps are being taken by the temples in diaspora such as the Balaji
Venkateswara temple in Birmingham. The Hindu reverence’ for trees and
plants has been based partly on utility, but mostly on religious duty and
mythology. Hindu ancestors considered it their duty to save trees; and in order
to do that they attached to every tree a religious sanctity’ (Dwivedi 1990:206).
Textual sources are clear that one should not exploit natural resources without
any consideration for the environment. If one does, one is going against the
ethical injunctions prescribed in the texts. Ahimsa (non-injury) is seen as the
highest and the noblest form of dharma. It is one’s duty to abstain from
violence, and, where inevitable, violence should be minimal. The Puranas
draw attention to the dire consequences (going to hell) for those who fail to
plant trees. The Arthashastra, although motivated by economic rather than
religious interests does not undermine the value of sacred trees, and in fact
imposes fines on those who cause injury to plant and trees:  ‘For cutting off
the tender sprouts of fruit trees, flower plants or shady trees in the
parks near a city, a fine of 6 panas shall be imposed; for cutting off the
minor branches of the same trees, 12 panas, and for the cutting of the
big branches of the same tree, 24 panas shall be levied…’

35
The emperors of old such as Ashoka (who embraced Buddhism), known for
their love of nature and concern for the environment, planted banyan trees
along the roads to give shade to people and animals as well as provided rest
houses and watering facilities. The king’s dharma came to be undermined
during the colonial period. With the loss of political authority under the
colonial rule, and with the introduction of new land reforms and the emergence
of a market-oriented economy, the traditional role of the king/state as the
protector of resources and his people had little value. However, we have some
contemporary examples of model environmentalists such as Vansh Pradip
Singh, a twentieth century ruler of Sawar in North India who is known for his
kingly duty (rajadharma) of caring for the environment.

There are also clear injunctions against polluting land, air and water, but
whether they are put into practice is another matter. However, texts clearly
warn against disposal of waste into sacred rivers such as the Ganges: ‘One
should not perform these 14 acts near the holy waters of the river Ganga: i.e.,
remove excrement, brushing and gargling, removing cerumen from body,
throwing hairs, dry garlands,… washing clothes, throwing dirty clothes,
thumping water and swimming (Parvacitta Tatva 1.535). The point is that one
is not supposed to wash oneself in sacred rivers but to have a holy dip. It is
ironic that those who profess faith in the cleansing power of the sacred rivers
tend to pollute it.

To sum up, the Hindu tradition has a rich treasure of textual sources which
are relevant to contemporary concerns and could be used in constructive ways.
A good city is one that embodies the concept of the welfare of all humans as
well as the created order (sarva-bhuta-hita). A good city is one that is dharmic
– where (truth, righteousness, morality, duty) prevails; where all activities
benefit both the individual and the community; where there is concern for the
environment; where there is room for trust and hope; and where people from
1
diverse backgrounds and cultural traditions can live in peace and harmony.

Sacredness is many times a dynamic, emerging and largely a cultural and

social process. It is inseparably embedded in peoples' life. If we approach the
sacred heritage from the perspective of its people, it is a living thing which is
constantly created, maintained and modified by associated people and their
belief systems

A wat is a type of Buddhist temple and Brahminical temple

in Cambodia, Laos, East Shan State, Yunnan and Thailand. The word wat is a
thai word that was borrowed from Sanskrit vāṭa (Devanāgarī: वाट), meaning
'enclosure'. The term has varying meanings in each region, sometimes referring
to a specific type of government-recognised or large temple, other times
referring to any Buddhist or Brahminical temple.

36
Wat Mahathat, Luang Prabang

Strictly speaking, a wat is a Buddhist sacred precinct with vihara (quarters

for bhikkhus), a temple, an edifice housing a large image of Buddha and a
facility for lessons. A site without a minimum of three resident bhikkhus
cannot correctly be described as a wat although the term is frequently used
more loosely, even for ruins of ancient temples. As a transitive or intransitive
verb, wat means to measure, to take measurements; compare templum, from
which temple derives, having the same root as template.
In Cambodia, a wat is any place of worship. "Wat" generally refers to a
Buddhist place of worship, but the precise term is  wat putthasasana. Angkor
Wat  means 'city of temples'.
In everyday language in Thailand, a "wat" is any place of worship except
a mosque (Thai: ส เุ ห ร า่ ; RTGS: surao; or Thai:  RTGS: matsayit) or
a synagogue . Thus, a wat chin or san chao ) is a Chinese temple
(either Buddhist or Taoist), wat khaek or thewasathan (เ ท ว ส ถ า น ) is a Hindu
temple and bot khrit  or wat farang (ว ัด ฝ ร ั่ง ) is a Christian church, though
Thai bot may be used descriptively as with mosques.

The facade of Phra Wihan Luang (meeting hall), Wat Suthat, Bangkok

According to Thai law, there are two types of Thai Buddhist temples:

 Wats are temples which have been endorsed by the state and have been
granted wisungkhammasima (วิสงุ คามสม ี า), or the land for
establishing central hall, by the king. These temples are divided into
o Royal Temples-: phra aram luang ): established or patronised by
the king or his family members.

37
 o Public temples- wat rat  established by private citizens. Despite the
term "private", private temples are open to the public and are sites of
public religious activities.
 Samnak song : are temples without state endorsement
and wisungkhamasima.

Thai temple art and architecture

Royal stupa (preăh chêdei) of Kuntha Bopha was built by using Khmer

architectural style during the Angkor period in the form of temple shrine, Silver
Pagoda, Phnom Penh

The main chedi in Wat Phra Mahathat, Nakhon Si Thammarat/Pha That

Luang, Vientiane, Laos/Wat Chaiyamangkalaram, George Town, Malaysia

A typical Buddhist wat consists of the following buildings:

 Bell tower 
 Bot uposatha or sim  the holiest prayer room, also called the "ordination
hall" as it is where new monks take their vows. Architecturally it is similar
to the vihara. The main difference is the eight cornerstones placed around
the bot to ward off evil. The bot is usually more decorated than the wihan.
In Cambodia nowadays, this type of building is considered to be Vihear. It
was previously called Ubaosathakea or Rorng
Ubaosoth Chedei or Chedi from Sanskrit: chaitya, temple or that (It is also
known as a stupa. Usually conical or bell-shaped buildings, but many
Cambodian stupas are constructed in the style of temple shrine. They often
contain relics of Buddha. The urns containing the ashes of the cremated
dead are kept here and serve as memorials for those ancestors.

38
 Chantakhara a room in which fire and water are kept.
 Drum tower Thai: 
 Hong Song Nam toilet.
 Ho trai library where Buddhist texts are kept.
 Kappapiya Kudi utility and storage room.
 KodKut, Kutti, Kuti or Kati the living quarters of monks separated from
the sacred buildings.
 Mondop or Sanskrit Mandapa: usually an open, square building with
four arches and a pyramidal roof, used to worship religious texts or objects.
 Pond Sa Nam: is rectangular in shape and sometimes decorated
with lotus flowers, the emblematic flower of Buddhism. In addition, some
wats illustrate the figure of Buddha being sheltered by a seven
headed naga, named Mucalinda (Khmer: មុជល ្ជ ន
ិ ្ទ), in the middle of the pond.
The pond itself is called Mucalinda Pond.
 Sala from the Sanskrit word शाला, cognate of Hindi शाल, meaning hall,
large room or shed. A pavilion for relaxation and miscellaneous activities. In
Cambodia, the sala also serves as the Buddhist educational center in a wat,
but not every wat has one. It can be found outside the wat proper.
o Oupadthan Sala or Sala Bonn or Sala Wat - a hall for people
gathering together to make a donation or for ceremonies.
o Sala Baley or Sala Putthikakseksa (Khmer: សាលាបាលី ឬ សាលា
ពុទក្ធិ សិក្សា): literally means 'Pali school' or 'Buddhist educational school',
is the place to teach Buddhist Dharma and other subjects in
both Pali and Khmer languages. Sala Baley is divided into three levels.
They are: Buddhist elementary school (Khmer: ពុទក្ធិ
បឋមសិក្សា Putthikakpathamaseksa); Buddhist high school
(Khmer: ពុទក ិ
្ធិ វទ្យាល័យ - Putthikakvityealay); and Buddhist university
(Khmer: ពុទក ិ
្ធិ សកលវទ្យាល័
យ Putthikaksakalvityealay). Beside Buddhist
Dharma, Buddhist university includes subjects such as philosophy,
science, information technology, Sanskrit, and other foreign languages.
These schools may be constructed outside the wat and laypersons are
also permitted to study there.
o Sala Chhann (Khmer: សាលាឆាន់), Sala Bat (Thai: ศาลาบาตร), or Ho
Chan (Thai: หอฉั น): cafeteria for monks.
o Sala Chhatean (Khmer: សាលាឆទាន), Sala Klang Yan (Thai: ศ า ล า
ก ล า ง ย า่ น ) or Sala Rong Tham (Lao: ສາລາໂຮງທໍາ; Thai: ศ า ล า โ ร ง ธ ร ร ม ): is
usually smaller than other halls and can be built outside the wat,
especially along the roads or even in the center of villages. It is used to
celebrate Buddhist events as well as for dining and relaxation.
o Sala Kan Parian (Thai: ศ า ล า ก า ร เ ป ร ย ี ญ ) or Ho Chaek (Lao: ຫໍ
ແຈກ; Thai: ห อ แ จ ก ): study hall, In the past this hall was restricted to
monks.[

39
 o Sala Song (Thai: ศ า ล า ส ร ง ): the room where monks receive holy
water blessings.
o Sala Thormmasaphear or Thormmasala (Khmer: សាលាធម្មសភា ឬ
ធម្មសាលា), Sala Fang Tham (Thai: ศ า ล า ฟ ั ง ธ ร ร ม ): Dharma assembly
pavilion, however some assume this hall to be Sala Bonn.
o Sala Tha Nam (Thai: ศาลาท่าน้ำ): pier pavilion.
 ិ
Vihear (Khmer: វហារ) or wihan (Lao: ວິຫານ; Thai: ว ห ิ า ร ) from
Sanskrit: vihara: a meeting and prayer room.
 Wachak Kod toilet.
Almost all Buddhist temples in Cambodia were built in Khmer architectural
style. Most temples were finely decorated with a spiked tower (bosbok) some
temples have three or five spiked towers; some have none) on the rooftop along
with pediments, naga heads, and chovear(a decorative ridge-piece that is
placed at each topmost edge of the roof, just above the tip of each pediment).
Below the edge of the roof and at the top of external
columns, garuda or kinnari figures are depicted supporting the roof. There are
a pair of guardian lions and one head or several (three, five, seven, or
nine). naga sculptures are beside each entrance of the temple. Inside the main
temple (vihara) and the multipurpose hall (lunch hall), mural paintings depict
the life of Gautama Buddha and his previous life.
The roofs of Thai temples are often adorned with chofas.
Some well-known wats include:
Cambodia
At the end of 2017, there were 4,872 wats with 69,199 Buddhist monks
supporting Buddhism in Cambodia.[5] By 2019, it was illustrated that 97.1
percent of the Cambodian population was Buddhist, [6] making Cambodia to be
one of the most predominant Buddhist nations in the world.

 Angkor Wat, Siem Reap

 Wat Preah Keo, Phnom Penh
 Wat Botum Vattey, Phnom Penh
 Wat Moha Montrey, Phnom Penh
 Wat Ounalaom, Phnom Penh
 Wat Phnom, Phnom Penh
 Wat Bakan, Pursat
Laos
Pha That Luang, Vientiane, Laos

 Wat Xieng Thong, Luang Prabang

Malaysia
Wat Buppharam, Penang

40
 Wat Chayamangkalaram, Penang
 Wat Chetawan, Selangor
 Wat Phothivihan, Kelantan
Despite having only 3.8 percent Buddhists in Kelantan, the northern Malaysian
state of Kelantan has numerous Thai wats.[7]
Singapore

 Wat Ananda
 Wat Palelai
Thailand
As of 2016 Thailand had 39,883 wats. Three hundred-ten were royal wats, the
remainder were private (public). There were 298,580 Thai Buddhist monks,
264,442 of the Maha Nikaya order and 34,138 of the Dhammayuttika
Nikaya order. There were 59,587 Buddhist novice monks.[8]

 Wat Suthat, Bangkok, Thailand
 Wat Benchamabophit (The Marble Temple)
 Wat Ratchanatdaram
 Wat Phra Kaew
 Wat Arun
 Wat Bowonniwet Vihara
 Wat Pho
 Wat Saket
 Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, Chiang Mai
 Wat Chiang Man, Chiang Mai
 Wat Chedi Luang, Chiang Mai
 Wat Phra Singh, Chiang Mai
 Wat Phra That Lampang Luang, Lampang
 Wat Phumin, Nan, Thailand
 Phra Pathommachedi, Nakhon Pathom
Wat Pah Nanachat (Bung Wai International Forest Monastery), established in
1975 by Ajahn Chah as a training community for non-Thais and foreigners, the
primary language of instruction is English.

 Nagar can refer to:

 Nagar, Rajshahi Division, a village

 Nagar, Barisal Division, a settlement
India
Nagar taluka, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra State

41
 Nagar, Murshidabad, a village in West Bengal
 Nagar, Rajasthan, a town in Rajasthan
 Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, a pargana in Basti district

Dr. Sharada Sugirtharajahttps://www.sanskritimagazine.com/indian-

religions/hinduism/makes-good-city-hindu-perspective/

Aruna Rajapakse , RECONCEPTUALIZING SACRED CITY MEANING: THE SACRED CITY OF

ANURADHAPURA 2019.Conference: PGIHS Research Congress,: University of Peradeniya,
Kandy, Sri Lanka.
Iran

 Nagar, Iran, a village in East Azerbaijan Province

Pakistan

 The Nagar Valley in northern Pakistan

o Nagar, Pakistan, a town
o Nagar District, an administrative unit
o Nagar (princely state), a former autonomous princely state
Syria

 Nagar, Syria, an ancient city

Varanasi (Benares), known as the microcosm of India and the most sacred city
of Hindu religion, has maintained its cosmic layout which developed in the
historical past. The passage from macrocosmos (heaven) into mesocosmos
(earth) and further down into microcosmos (the temple, or body) is made
spatially visible and is regulated by the network of pilgrimage routes - this is
what we call pilgrimage mandala. In Varanasi five of the various pilgrimage
circuits are well developed; taken as a sequence leading from outer to inner
space, they reveal parallels between macro-, meso- and microcosmos and the
related transcendental powers. Moreover, the spatial arrangement of the 56
shrines of Ganesha ("Elephant-headed God") and the routes following
Vinayaka's pilgrimage journey, also form a mandala representing the product
of 8 directions and 7 layers of atmosphere, thus the number 56. These aspects
are described and the notion of cosmogonic integrity is discussed.
Nagara also known as Dionysopolis  was an ancient city in the northwest part
of Indian subcontinent, distinguished in Ptolemy. It also appears in sources
as Nagarahara, and was situated between the Kabul River and the Indus, in
present-day Afghanistan.
From the second name which Ptolemy has preserved, we are led to believe that
this is the same place as Nysa (Νύσα) or Nyssa (Νύσσα), which was spared from

42
plunder and destruction by Alexander the Great because the inhabitants
asserted that it had been founded by Dionysus, when he conquered the area
and he named the city Nysa and the land Nysaea (Νυσαία) after his nurse and
also he named the mountain near the city, Meron (Μηρὸν) (i.e. thigh), because
he grew in the thigh of Zeus.
______________________________________________________________________
A Cosmic Layout of the Hindu Sacred City, Varanasi (Benares) ,Rana P.B.
Singh, rch. 8 Comport. /Arch. 8 Behav., Vol. 9, no. 2, p. 239-250 (1993)

When Alexander arrived at the city, together with his Companion cavalry went

to the mountain and they made ivy garlands and crowned themselves with
them, as they were, singing hymns in honor of Dionysus. Alexander also
offered sacrifices to Dionysus, and feasted in company with his companions.
[4]
 On the other hand, according to Philostratus although Alexander wanted to
go up the mountain he decided not to do it because he was afraid that when
his men will see the vines which were on the mountain they would feel home
sick or they will recover their taste for wine after they had become accustomed
to water only, so he decided to make his vow and sacrifice to Dionysus at the
foot of the mountain.
The site of Nagara is usually associated with a site now called Nagara Ghundi,
about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) west of Jalalabad, south of the junction of the
Surkhäb and Kabul rivers, where ancient ruins have been found.
Archaeologist Zemaryalai Tarzi has suggested that, following the fall of
the Greco-Bactrian cities of Ai-Khanoum and Takht-i Sangin, Greek
populations were established in the plains of Jalalabad, which included Hadda,
around the Hellenistic city of Dionysopolis, and that they were responsible for
the Buddhist creations of Tapa Shotor in the 2nd century C
Angkor, which is a Khmer version of the Sanskrit term nagara ("city"), was in
fact a succession of sacred cities that served as the capital of the rulers of an
empire from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries. Each pyramidal-shaped
structure or temple that we so associate with Angkor was a re-creation in stone
of the cosmology by which the Khmer rulers ordered their lives and that of
their subjects. Through such buildings, the rulers of Angkor sought to bring
the world of strife and struggle into harmony with ultimate order. The
identification of the kind with a Hindu (or Buddhist) deity become complete at
the time of the King's death. The shrine he had built during his lifetime
become, after his death, his immortal body. Members of the royal family and
the aristocracy emulated the ruler by erecting many more shrines in the capital
and provincial centers. The cult of Visnu did not survive for very long as the
exclusive religion but the change to Buddhism did not lead Jayavarman VII to
make a radical break with the architectural and inconographic traditions that
had preceded his reign. His city, Angkor Thom, still centered on a

43
representation of the sacred Mt. Meru, but he added new Buddhist elements to
his shrine- basreliefs

The culmination of the pyramid-temple form, which represents in stone and

space he sacred center of the universe, Mt. Meru, was realized in the twelfth
century with the construction of unquestionably the most well-known
monument at Angkor, Angkor Wat. Although the name Angkor Wat means
"pagoda of the capital," it was not, in its original conception, a Buddhist temple
(wat), but was, rather, dedicated to to god Visnu.

The cult of Visnu did not survive for very long as the exclusive religion of
Angkor. King Jayavarman VII (1181 to the early thirteenth century), the best
remembered king of the Angkorean period, sought (apparently form his wife's
influence) religious inspiration from Mahayana Buddhism rather than from
Hinduism. This inspiration. These are not, however, scenes from the lives of
Visnu or Rama; rather they are scenes from the world of humans, the most
important of the worlds in the Buddhist realm of feeling and desire, Aside from
their religious meaning, these murals tell us much about life in Angkor at the
time. The higher elevations of the shrine represent the realm of the gods, a
realm dominated by the Bodhisattva, Lokesvara, whose compassion for all
humans can assist them in achieving ultimate salvation.

The images of Lokesvara that dominate the Bayon have long captured the
attention of visitors. Pierre Loti, in his Pélerin d'Angkor, wrote: "I looked up at
the tree-covered towers which dwarfed me, when all of a sudden mu blood
curdled as I saw an enormous smile looking down on me, and then another
smile on another wall, then three, then five, then ten appearing in every
direction." The faces represent not only the Bodhisattva alone; they are also of
Jayavarman VII, who has become the Buddharaja, the king who is also a
Buddha. The images looking in many directions were indicative of Jayavarman
VII's control over a vast domain. While Jayavarman's authority may have been
extended over a larger territory than his predecessors, the Angkorean world
had long included much of what today is not only Cambodia, but also most of
northeastern and much of central Thailand, central and southern Laos, and
southern Vietnam.

The account of Chou Ta-kuan, a Chinese envoy to Angkor at the end of the
thirteenth century, reveals that much of the populace as well as many in the
elite adhered to that form of Buddhism known as the "Way of Elders,"
Theravada, although the Chinese themselves termed it Hinayana (the "lesser
vehicle") in contrast to their own from of Buddhism, Mahayana (the "greater
vehicle"). With the adoption of Theravada Buddhism, much of the rational for
the monumental architecture of Angkor disappeared since people found greater
appeal in the rituals performed in small shrines by Buddhist monks than in
those performed by kings and priests in large temples.

44
As the rational for Angkorean civilization was undermined, so too did the
military power of Angkor decline. In the fourteenth century a number of new
states were formed by Tai-speaking peoples in what is today Thailand and
Laos. Although the Tai from Ayutthaya attacked and defeated Angkor in the
fifteenth century, it is more appropriated to see Ayutthaya as one of a number
of successor states to Angkor - including also those of Lan Xang (Laos) and
Phnom Penh - rather than as an aggressor intent on destroying Khmer culture.
The court of these new Tai kingdoms, like that of Phnom Penh, derived most of
their ideas about statecraft from Angkor.

The Wonder City Of Ancient And Modern Cambodia: Journey To And The Exploration To
Angkor Wat: Wonder City Of Ancient Cambodia Kindle Edition,by Dylan
Diaz (Author)  Format: Kindle Edition

Laser Scanning Reveals the Hidden City of Angkor Wat

45
Airborne laser scanning technology, or LiDAR, has revealed the imprint of
a vast urban landscape hidden in the jungles and lowlands surrounding
Angkor Wat.

I N T H E Y E A R  802 C.E., the founder of the medieval Khmer empire,

Jayavarman II, anointed himself "king of the world." In laying claim to such a
grandiose title, he was a little ahead of his time: It would be another few
centuries before the Khmers built Earth's largest religious monument, Angkor
Wat, the crowning glory of a kingdom that stood in what is today northwestern
Cambodia. But Jayavarman II had good reason to believe that his nascent
kingdom, in the sacred Kulen hills northeast of Angkor, was a record-holder.
Airborne laser scanning technology, or LiDAR, has revealed the imprint of a
vast urban landscape hidden in the Kulen's jungle and in the lowlands
surrounding Angkor Wat; by the 13th century, the low-density cityscape
covered an area of about 1,000 square kilometers.
The findings show that the cityscape at the heart of the Khmer Empire of the
9th to 15th centuries C.E. was much more sprawling and complex than
archaeologists realized and lend weight to the hypothesis that, strained by
climate change, the complexity of the kingdom's vast waterworks was its
ultimate undoing. The LiDAR revelations are "astonishing," says Roland
Fletcher, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney in Australia and a
member of the international team whose findings are in press at
the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
At its height, the medieval Khmer empire encompassed much of modern-day
Cambodia, central Thailand, and southern Vietnam. Archaeologists have long
inferred that Angkor was the most extensive city of its kind in the pre-
industrial world. Its singular achievement was a complicated network of

46
waterways and reservoirs that were apparently vital to producing enough rice
to sustain a population that in the center's heyday numbered in the hundreds
of thousands.
Through painstaking ground and aerial surveys and excavations, Fletcher and
colleagues in recent years have uncovered evidence that Angkor's waterworks
began to break down around the time that the kingdom faded from the
historical record. "Things are going wrong by the 1300s," Fletcher says. Signs
of severe distress include massive sand deposits in canals and the ruins of a
spillway that the Khmers may have ripped apart themselves. In 2009, tree ring
data indicated a potential culprit: a decades-long period of megamonsoons and
droughtsin Southeast Asia in the 14th century.

To get a better understanding of Angkor's urban landscape, Fletcher's

colleague at Sydney, Damian Evans, turned to LiDAR, an instrument that a
few years ago mapped hidden features of medieval Mayan ruins in Central
America. Using a helicopter for just 20 hours of flight time in April 2012, a
consortium put together by Evans imaged 370 square kilometers of terrain,
encompassing Angkor and two nearby temple complexes, Phnom Kulen and
Koh Ker. LiDAR laid bare the imprints of a 9th century city on the Kulen,
known from inscriptions as Mahendraparvata. "We found the great early
capital of the Khmer empire," Fletcher says. "The discovery of this early
Angkorian city is a very exciting example of LiDAR's use in the region," adds
Miriam Stark, an anthropologist at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, who has
recently started to conduct research at Angkor but was not involved in last
year's LiDAR campaign.

The LiDAR survey also showed that the medieval settlements at Phnom Kulen
and Koh Ker had extensive hydraulic engineering on a scale comparable to
Angkor, showing a much wider reliance on water management systems "to
ameliorate annual-scale variation in monsoon rains and ensure food security,"
the team reports. The LiDAR readings also uncovered cryptic coil-shaped
rectilinear embankments covering several hectares near Angkor Wat. "It was
an unbelievable surprise," Fletcher says. "Nothing like them had been seen
before in Khmer architecture." He speculates that they had some role in
farming, but for now their function remains a mystery.
The LiDAR data also add weight to the idea that Angkor's complicated
waterworks unraveled. It uncovered "very serious" erosion in parts of the
ancient city that, Fletcher believes, accounts for the deep sand deposits
documented in the team's excavations.

*Damian Evans Photos.This story provided by ScienceNOW, the daily

online news service of the journal *Science.
https://www.wired.com/2013/06/angkor-wat/

47
 by Adam Clulow and Tom Chandler

The Virtual Angkor project aims to recreate the sprawling Cambodian

metropolis of Angkor at the height of the Khmer Empire’s power and influence
in the twelfth century. A collaboration across disciplines and technologies, it
has been built from the ground up by a team of Virtual History Specialists,
Archaeologists and Historians at Monash University in Melbourne, Flinders
University in Adelaide and The University of Texas at Austin across a period of
more than ten years.

Although it has been used for research, Virtual Angkor was constructed

specifically for the classroom and can be used at both secondary and tertiary
level. It deploys advanced Virtual Reality technology, 3D Modeling and
Animation to bring a premodern city to life, to place students on its streets and
allow them to interact with a historical environment.

48
Angkor and the Khmer Empire

For approximately 500 years from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, the
Khmer empire dominated the politics and economy of Southeast Asia. Located
in modern day Cambodia, it was unique in the history of the region, extending
direct influence across a vast swath of territory, encompassing most of present-
day Thailand and the southern provinces of Laos and Vietnam.

Today, the Khmers are most famous for the remarkable architectural sites they
left behind. Stretching over some 400 square kilometers, the Angkor
Archaeological Park in Cambodia contains the remains of successive capitals of
the Khmer Empire including an extensive network of stone temples. Together,
these form one of the most important archaeological sites in Southeast Asia. At
its peak in the twelfth century, the city is estimated to have been home to
around three-quarters of a million people. This means that Angkor was, in the
words of one archaeologist, “the most extensive city of its kind in the pre-
industrial world.”

49
While the name Angkor conjures up immediate images of crumbling stone
temples in a verdant jungle, reconstructing the city represents a huge
challenge. Apart from inscriptions on temples, no written records from the
period have survived the ravages of time and the monsoonal environment. The
more important source comes in the form of extensive archaeological surveys of
Angkor undertaken by the French School of Asian Studies (École française
d’Extrême-Orient), the Greater Angkor Project, and the Khmer Archaeology
Lidar Consortium. Together, they have produced detailed, multilayered maps of
temple complexes, rice fields, roads, canals and settlement mounds throughout
the Angkor Archaeological Park. These surveys provide the spatial foundations
for any subsequent reconstruction of the city’s architectural and environmental
landscapes. For written sources, historians rely especially on observations
made by Zhou Daguan, a Chinese official dispatched to Angkor in 1296 by the
Temur Emperor, who produced a detailed account of the city and its
inhabitants.

50
Teaching

Most Asian history survey courses make reference to Angkor but the standard
black and white illustrations contained in textbooks make it difficult for
students to gain a sense of the scale and grandeur of the city. The Virtual
Angkor project allows educators to place students inside the Angkor Wat
complex, to view the famous bas-reliefs first hand without leaving their seats,
to sail down one of the hundreds of canals crisscrossing the city, to inspect a
marketplace selling goods from across Southeast Asia and to watch as
thousands of animated people and processions enter, exit, and circulate
around the complex.

The project, which went online in January 2018, can be experienced in

multiple ways, through Virtual Reality headsets, online 360° videos that

51
provide a glimpse into the city, short animated scenes that highlight episodes
in the daily life of Angkor, and interactive teaching modules.

The most immersive experience comes via a Virtual Reality headset combined
with earphones as the project includes multiple soundtracks of the
environment complete with music, snatches of conversation, and sounds of
daily life. The experience can be dizzying for students who jump to move aside
as processions pass, who experience vertigo as they look down from elevated
structures, and who become aware of the sun slowly rising in the sky above
them.

While such equipment is usually available in university laboratories, it is also

bulky and expensive. As a result, Virtual Angkor is designed to be accessed
using student’s smartphones. In History classes, with their focus on close
analysis and discussion, the phone is often seen as the enemy of the
instructor, a source of distraction and diversion from the material at hand. But
it can also be turned into a key educational tool. In this case, Android phones
can be paired with relatively crude headsets such as Google Cardboard, which
can be purchased for less than $20, to create an immersive environment. In
addition, students can interact with the project via 360° panoramas which
enable them to look around the city from the particular stationary point or by
watching short 15-20 second animated scenes.

The site also includes a series of interactive modules focused on three themes:
Architecture and Power, Water and Climate, and Trade and Diplomacy. These
use the technology as a jumping off point for more conventional historical
enquiry. To cite one example, students can look around a thriving marketplace
in the city before making use of primary and secondary sources to consider
how Angkor was integrated into wider networks that stretched across the

52
region. For this particular week, the site combines a visualization of the
marketplace with Zhou Daguan’s description of “sought-after Chinese goods”
and an important article on Chinese ceramics in Angkor. These combine to
push students to reassess the place of Khmer merchants and consumers in
regional networks of trade.

The Virtual Angkor project represents an attempt to harness advances in

technology to create an immersive environment allows students to experience
one of the great cities of Global History. https://notevenpast.org/building-a-
virtual-city-for-the-classroom-angkor/

Overview from Sonneman and colleagues of the location of the very ancient buried towers (yellow, at left) of
Angkor Wat relative to the slightly less ancient temple (tan/golden, at right) of Angkor Wat (built in the mid-
twelfth century CE) https://cals.ncsu.edu/applied-ecology/news/lessons-from-climate-change-induced-
collapose-angkor-wat/

53
 .Angkor Skyscraper: Vertical City In Cambodia
2020 Skyscraper Competition-
Yifei Fan, Wenxuan Tang, Shuting Xu, Yinshan Wang
China
Nowadays, there still exist a large number of landmines which are
undiscovered during wars in the last century, which brings a huge potential
threat underground just like the invisible bombs. The landmines are
menacing residents’ safety anytime and anywhere. Cambodia is such a
country, which is covered with about 73. 4 mines per square kilometer. As
the war continued in the past century, the number of mines in Cambodia
was also increasing. Due to the loss of maps in wars, nobody now knows the
exact locations where the landmines buried in.

lt is a normal phenomenon in Cambodia that poor people who have a

financial problem living in the landmine field because here is the only place
where they can afford to. As time goes by, they have established their villages
in the landmine field and farmed in this area. The landmines were often
accidentally detonated by the people, which is a common problem for the
residents. So they made a lot of red signs and drew the skull on them in
order to warn people to mind their step. The cost of living in a safe zone and
landmines are now seriously threatening people’s safety.
In order to solve these problems, we are planning to build a compositive
vertical community in the little safe zone to ensure people’s safety and
convenience. Meanwhile, the specialists will enter into the old dwelling
districts to clean the landmines and make sure the residents could have
their lands back as soon as possible.
Specification strategy

1. Dwelling form
We combine traditional stilted buildings with Angkor Wat to form the
appearance of our skyscraper and all the conventional lifestyle will be kept
inside such as collecting water, washing and playing. People could serve
their daily life without exit the building. The use of stilted buildings and
different functional areas make the residential form no longer homogeneous.
2. Transportation
A.   The mono floor does not change the original mode and still operates
independently.
B.    Strengthening the vertical traffic between each floor and weakening the
concept of “Storey” by using the stairs to connect different functional
districts in the vertical network.
3. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the community is
optimized the material needs and spiritual needs.
A. Individual life (Livestock farms, barns, residences, and markets. )
B. Social facilities (Schools, handicraft factories, hospitals, and a healing
garden. )

54
C. spiritual life (festivals, temples and ritual space. )
4. Establish a new vertical industrial chain
In the last period, tourism can be promoted in the skyscraper and various
interactive activities are able to be carried out such as agricultural activities,
holding exhibitions, handicraft activities and so on. The sightseeing elevators
within the building will be used to link the touring routes and attracting
more tourists. On this account, the community inside the skyscraper is
capable of achieving the consolidated development in farming,
manufacturing and tourism fields.
5. Water-recycle system & Tradition
The Cambodian people depend on water for their daily lives, we use a
combination of modern pumps and traditional water wheel technology to
meet the water demand of the entire building, as well as adding several semi-
outdoor pools to inherit the local unique traditions, and create a diverse-
communicating space. We also provide spaces for the celebration of local
festivals such as the Water-splashing festival, Imperial Ploughing Festival,
and Hungry Ghost Festival. https://www.evolo.us/angkor-skyscraper-
vertical-city-in-cambodia/

55
56
57
58
59
 CHAPTER III

Importance of Mountains in Hindu Temple Architecture of India &

Cambodia

Since all the peoples of Southeast Asia already believed the natural habitat of
spirits and gods to be a mountaintop, the Indian pattern was readily accepted,
where the temple usually stands upon a lofty terraced plinth (a block serving
as a base), which also symbolizes a mountain. Hindu royal temples in Indian
styles provide the basis for the architectural and decorative elements found in
the ancient monuments of Southeast Asia. But a distinct
local aesthetic emerged early on, when builders identified architectural form
with cosmological beliefs. Each Hindu temple centres on a shrine, symbolizing
heaven upon earth. The shrine is crowned by a roof tower representing the
cosmic Indian mountain, Meru, conceived as the hub of creation.

The temple usually stands upon a lofty terraced plinth (a block serving as a

base), which also symbolizes a mountain. Towered shrines could be multiplied
on the terraces, though one of them remains the principal focus. Within the
cell of this main shrine is a sacred image carved in stone or cast in bronze. The
local Hindu ruler identified the subject of this image as
his transcendent patron, or celestial alter ego. This was normally one of the
Indian high gods, Shiva (represented perhaps by a phallic emblem, the linga) or
Vishnu.

In Mahayana Buddhist kingdoms, and shrines a royal bodhisattva (a being

that refrains from entering nirvana in order to save others) was sometimes
adopted to fulfill the same role; a favourite form was known as Lokanatha,
or Lokeshvara, Lord of the World. Subsidiary shrines, niches, or terraces
sometimes contain subsidiary images, including goddesses representing at the
same time wives of the god and queens of the king. These images were worked
in smooth, deeply rounded, and sensuously emphatic styles derived
from Indian art but with varying inflections characteristic of each region and
time.

Temple complexes whether Buddhist or Hindu, tended to grow as successive

kings strove to outdo their predecessors with the magnificence of their
buildings. Hindu rulers, influenced perhaps by vestiges of tribal custom, would

60
sometimes retain their own family’s temples and images while destroying those
of earlier dynasties.

Both Hindu and Buddhist art were produced according to theoretical

prescriptions. If the formulas were not followed, the art was believed to not
fulfill its transcendent function. In practice, however, there was room for styles
and types of images to change and develop fairly quickly. Hindu and non-
Theravada art recognizes what could be called aesthetic values as a component
in religious expression.

Theravada Buddhism, however, always attempts to preserve the closest

possible connections with the Buddha’s recorded original deeds and sayings;
its art, therefore, concentrates on repeating in its main Buddha figures the
most exact possible imitations of authentic ancient images. The Theravada Pali
canon lists 32 major lakshanas—the attributes of the Buddha—plus 80 minor
anatomical characteristics. Some of these interpretations have developed over
time. Many of these attributes appear to be Brahmanical and pre-Buddhist
(pre-6th century BCE), which explains why they are often linked to depictions
of Hindu deities as well. (See below Burma; Thailand and Laos. In the
subsidiary sculptured and painted figures, however, which illustrate scenes
from sacred history, Theravada art has greater freedom of invention. In the
20th century, Theravada Buddhism was the only form of Indian religion to
survive in Southeast Asia, save for the modified Hinduism of Bali.
Its architecture from this period is decorated with a robust and innovative use
of coloured glass, mirrored tiles, and a fantastical array of bright colours.

The stone of dynastic buildings of course survived the best, by far. Scholars
thus know much more about Indianizing stone architecture, with its sculpture,
than about any other Southeast Asian visual art. But where good relief
sculpture flourished, one can legitimately assume that vanished pictorial arts
also flourished. And from details carved in stone and incised on bronze as well
as from the scattered enthusiastic references in Chinese sources, one can be
sure that throughout their history the Southeast Asian peoples were intensely
creative and lived their lives surrounded by a wealth of imaginative art in many
different mediums. Ram Temple will be built using only stones, will stand for
1,000 yrs: Trust official.

61
 Workers clean
stone blocks to be used in construction of the Ram Temple at a workshop in
Ayodhya(PTI)

Only stones will be used for building the Ram Temple in Ayodhya and it will
stand for over 1,000 years.

In the 1st century CE the predominantly Hindu kingdom known as Funan (the

name given it by Chinese historians) was established in Cambodia. It seems to
have controlled an empire that included kingdoms in what is now Peninsular
Malaysia and even parts of southern Burma. Its population was
probably Mon and shared the culture of the Mon in the lower Irrawaddy basin.
(The Funan kingdom really represents the earliest phase of what became, in
the 9th century, the great Cambodian Khmer empire.) Between about 550 and
680 the kingdom retreated from the coast up to the Mekong River into Laos,
where it was called by the Chinese Chenla. This joint Funan-Chenla tradition
produced some of the world’s most magnificent stone cult images. Though
Buddhist icons are known, these images principally represent Hindu deities
including Vishnu, his incarnation Krishna, Shiva, and a combined Shiva-
Vishnu figure called Harihara. The images were housed in wooden or brick
shrines, now vanished.

During the Chenla retreat a number of Theravada Buddhist city-states

of Dvaravati flourished in central and northeast Thailand. The historical record
of Dvaravati is very limited and provides a somewhat shaky basis for referring
to it as a kingdom. Its wider geographical extent is not known. It is likely that a
number of Thai city-states existed, one of which went by the name of
Dvaravati. This entity flourished until the 11th century, when the Khmer
captured it. What little of its art is known is close to that of eastern India and
provided the basis for later Buddhist art in the Khmer empire as well as for
some of the later forms of Thai art.

62
Almost contemporary with Chenla was the rise of the central Javanese
kingdom. Soon after 600 CE the earliest surviving Hindu temples were built.
About 770 the Shailendra dynasty began its long series of superb stone-cut
monuments, both Hindu and Buddhist, which culminated in two enormous
symbolic architectural complexes: the Mahayana Buddhist Borobudur (c. 800)
and the Hindu Lara Jonggrang, at Prambanam (c. 900–930). These monuments
were decorated in an individual and exceptionally accomplished style of full-
round and relief sculpture. Many small bronze religious images have survived.
The art of the Shailendra dynasty testifies to the imperial and maritime power
of the central Javanese kingdom, which seems to have influenced politics and
art in Khmer Cambodia. It also took over the possessions of a
major Theravada Buddhist kingdom called Shrivijaya, which had flourished in
what is now Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra and was centred at Palembang.
The Javanese Shailendra ruled most of Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra and
installed themselves there in the mid-9th century, when their home terrain in
Java was taken over by the Mataram dynasty, heralding the eastern Javanese
period, which began in 927. Shrivijaya, under Shailendra rule, declined in the
mid-11th century, and most of its remains still await discovery.

In Vietnam about the 2nd century CE the predominantly Hindu kingdom

of Champa was founded. Its capital was at My Son, where many temples have
been found. This kingdom suffered much from attacks by the Chinese, and,
after it began to lose the north to the Sinicized Vietnamese, the Cham capital
moved in 1069 to Vijaya (Binh Dinh), in the south. There it was involved in
continual warfare with the Khmer, who finally annexed southern Vietnam in
1203. The art of the northern Vietnamese as a whole was always so strongly
under the influence of China that it can best be characterized as a provincial
Chinese style.
10th century to the present

In Cambodia the Khmer empire succeeded to the old territories of Funan-

Chenla. About 790 the first major Khmer ruler, Jayavarman II, who was
related to the old Funan royal family, went to Cambodia from
the Shailendra court in Java. In 802 he set up a religious capital on a hill at
Phnom Kulen. He seems to have called in artists from Champa and Java, thus
giving to Khmer art a distinct new impetus. At another site, Sambhupura
(Sambor), he built temples with sculpture based upon the old Funan-Chenla
tradition. At Amarendrapura, about 800, he built a brick pyramid—an artificial
mountain—to support a quincunx of temples.

It was Indravarman I (877–889) who laid the foundations of the fabulous

temple complex known as Angkor. His plan was based on a rectangular grid
of reservoirs, canals, and irrigation channels to control the waters of the river
system. Later kings elaborated this original design to a colossal scale.
Indravarman built the first great works of Khmer architecture: the Preah Ko, at

63
Roluos, and at Angkor his temple mountain, the Bakong, ornamented with
sculpture. Successive kings built their own temple mountains there, including
the Bakheng (c. 893), the Pre Rup (c. 961), the Ta Keo (c. 1000), and the
Baphuon (c. 1050–66), culminating in Angkor Wat, built in the first half of the
12th century by Suryavarman II. After a disastrous invasion by the
Cham, Jayavarman VII undertook the most ambitious scheme of all,
the Mahayana Buddhist Angkor Thom and the Bayon (c. 1200). Thereafter, for
a variety of reasons, including conquest by the Thai, no more large-scale work
was done by Angkor, and the country became Theravada Buddhist. The
modern dynasty adapted remnants of traditional splendour, and the
craftspeople of Cambodia remained capable of work in the same vein.

Hindu Javanese art continued to be made under the eastern

Javanese dynasties (1222–14th century), although their structures were not
nearly as ambitious as the central Javanese works. There are many temple
enclosures and volcanic bathing places with modest stone-cut architecture.
Some of the stone sculptures from these sites, however, are now world famous.
In the 21st century the east Javanese tradition still survives, modified by folk
elements, in Bali, to which the east Javanese Hindu kings retreated in the 16th
century to maintain their religious independence in the face of Muslim
expansion. Muslim monuments in the form of mosques and tombs are found in
various parts of Indonesia. They adapt older forms of Indonesian art.

Hill (& Mountain) Location of Jain Temples -Contributed by Julia A. B. Hegewald

By building several such walled compounds in one place, the Jains create so-
called temple-cities at particularly important sites of pilgrimage. These sacred
cities can contain several hundred temples and smaller shrines.

64
 Many temple-cities are on raised ground or high mountain peaks. This is
frequently indicated in their names, which bear the suffix ‘-giri’ – hill.
Examples include Drona-giri and Naina-giri in Central India.
Which hill station is famous for Jain temple?
Dilwara Jain Temples is a beautiful temple dedicated to the followers of
Jainism. It is situated at the only hill station of Rajasthan - Mount Abu.
Famous in the entire world for its unique and amazing structure, the temple
turns into one of the most striking pilgrimage site for the Jain in India.
Temple-cities

Jain temple-cities are groupings of temple compounds, which contain large
numbers of individual and interconnected temples and smaller shrines. They
are walled and entered through gateways.
Temple-cities are not cities in the conventional sense. They do not contain
streets, houses or shops. They are dedicated to the veneration of Jain
values and the glory of the enlightened Jinas.
Most temple-cities are located on hills and have developed out of clusters of
temples and walled compounds, which have been expanded over time. Donors
give money to help build shrines and temples, which eventually form sizeable
groups of temple compounds.
There are numerous examples of temple-cities throughout India. The best
known include:
 Mount Girnār
 Mount Śatruñjaya
 Mount Sameṭa Śikhara
 Mount Sonā-giri
 Shravana Belgola
 Mudabidri.
Temple-cities are depicted on pilgrimage banners and in relief carvings at
other Jain sites. Imitations of well-known temple-cities have also been built at
smaller sites.
The creation of temple-cities in the form outlined here is unique to the Jain
faith. Representations of temple-cities in Jain art and at other important Jain
sites throughout India, and abroad, indicate the great importance of these holy
sites for the Jain community.

Definition

A temple-city is a term for a large number of temples built very closely

together. Jain temple compounds tend to contain a multitude of major temple
buildings and minor shrine structures. Dense accumulations of such
compounds are then referred to as temple-cities. Usually found in sites of
religious importance, these are not conventional cities, because human beings

65
do not live in them. Instead, Jains make pilgrimages to these temple-cities,
which are devoted to spiritual matters.
Jain temple complexes are frequently altered and enlarged and there is no rule
or convention as to when a large number of temple compounds can be
described as a temple-city.

Architecture

There is a clear tendency in Jain temple architecture towards creating

numerous shrines. This leads to the construction of temple buildings with
many shrines and storeys, which are often surrounded by further free-standing
and interconnected shrines. These collections of religious buildings frequently
combine temples of different forms.
The religious buildings are regularly grouped into compounds and surrounded
by high protective walls – prākāras. The enclosing walls can consist of
uninterrupted lines of small shrines – deva-kulikās – which form a solid wall
on the outside. The walled complexes – tunks – are strongly fortified. They have
massive gateway structures and can be securely locked.

66
Visiting temple-cities

No human beings live in the temple-cities. There are no shops and houses, and
no streets inside the cities. Therefore the temple-cities are not cities in a
domestic or commercial sense.
Pilgrims and priests climb the hills in the morning, venerate the statues, clean
the compounds and descend to their accommodation at night. People visiting
the city walk barefoot on small, usually paved, paths, so that they can follow
the concept of ahiṃsā – non-violence – and avoid stepping on minute
creatures.
Many temple-cities contain large sub-complexes and group their temples into
smaller sets. This helps pilgrims to find their way, since they usually visit the
individual temples of a sacred site in an organised and ritually prescribed
sequence. These temple clusters are regarded as pure spheres, which
aid meditation and the development of a detached attitude towards the
physical world. Focusing on spiritual progression instead of material concerns
is what Jains should aim to do.
Development

67
Temple-cities have developed from the Jain custom of constructing
many shrines close together. Temples and shrines are built with donations
from lay Jains, who gain spiritual merit from this act. Holy sites that have
special religious significance attract many donations over the centuries,
meaning that popular pilgrimage centres are frequently very large and may well
be described as temple-cities. A temple-city may develop from just two original
temple compounds next to each other.
The various temples and shrines that comprise a temple-city are probably built
over some time, rather than all at once. The buildings may therefore display a
variety of architectural styles. Donors express their devotion by giving money
towards the construction of impressive temples and entire temple-cities. Such
donations also glorify the Jain religion and the 24 enlightened saintly teachers,
the Jinas or Tīrthaṅkaras.
There is a smooth transition from a number of tightly grouped temple
compounds to the creation of substantial, fully-fledged temple-cities. The
more statues and donations a sacred site receives, the more it expands and
comes closer to the ideal of the temple-city.
In many instances, this process starts with just two
neighbouring temple complexes. In such cases, one is often administered by
the Śvetāmbara sect and the other by the Digambara community. This is the
case at Taranga and Idar, both located in Gujarat. However, double complexes
do not only exist at jointly managed Jain sites. There are examples where
two Śvetāmbara complexes are next to each other, as may be seen at Bikaner
in Rajasthan.
Temple-cities across India

The development from temple compounds towards the creation of complete

temple-cities can be found in all regions of India. The most famous temple-
cities are the principal pilgrimage sites in the Jain faith.

68
North-western India

In the north-west of the subcontinent there are adjacent Jain compounds in

several places. In Rajasthan neighbouring temples number:
 three at Rānakpur
 four at Mirpur
 five at Kumbharia
 six on Mount Ābū.
The latter case also illustrates the location of such clusters of large temple
complexes on the summit of a hill. A further good example is the hill at Talaja
in Gujarat, which consists of a great number of tightly grouped temple
compounds.
The largest concentrations of temple compounds can be found on the sacred
mountains of Girnār and Śatruñjaya, both in Gujarat. On Mount Girnār, near
Junagadh, there are about six substantial walled complexes and many more
stand-alone temples. On Mount Śatruñjaya, near the town of Palitana, between
800 to 900 temples are grouped in about ten substantial walled compounds,
covering the two peaks and the valley between. Each of these Jain
temple compounds contains a multitude of major temple buildings and
minor shrine structures.

69
North and east India

The phenomenon of temple-cities can also be studied in the north and east of
India. For instance, adjoining large temple compounds are comprised of:
 three at Sauripur in Uttar Pradesh
 four at Manicktolla in the north of Kolkata in West Bengal
 several at Hastinapur in Haryana
 five at Pavapuri in Bihar.
Also in Bihar, the town of Arrah alone accommodates forty Digambara Jain
temples in the city centre.
Like other parts of the subcontinent, such accumulations of Jain temples are
regularly located on hill tops. At Rajgir in Bihar, caves and temples of different
construction styles are found on five sacred hills surrounding this
ancient pilgrimage centre. The largest Jain temple-city in the east is the
venerated hill site of Mount Paraśnātha. Also known as Mount Sameṭa Śikhara,
it has developed near the village of Madhuban in Bihar.
Other examples include the temples and cave temples on:
 Mandar Hill in Bihar
 Pabhosa Hill in Uttar Pradesh
 the twin peaks of Udaya-giri and Khada-giri in Orissa.
Central India

70
Accumulations of temples are equally popular and widespread in the central
region of India.
In Madhya Pradesh, large numbers of temple complexes are found at:
 Mount Cūla-giri
 Deogarh
 Khajuraho
 Mandu
 the hill at Pisanhariki Mariya.
In Maharashtra the same phenomenon can be seen at Anjaneri and Ramtek,
and on the sacred hills at:
 Gajpantha
 Kumbhoj, also known as Bāhubali Hill
 Maṅgī Tuṅgī.
There is no clear dividing line from where a large number of Jain temple
compounds starts to be defined as a temple-city, and temple complexes are
regularly enlarged and added to. Sites in the region that can be referred to as
fully developed temple-cities are the mountains Droṇa-giri and Nainā-giri, with
roughly forty temples each, and Papora and Mount Muktā-giri in Maharashtra
with more than fifty shrines each.
At Kundalpur in Madhya Pradesh, the number of temples at one site is even
larger, reaching up to sixty. The temples have been arranged around a central
lake and on a crescent-shaped ridge enclosing half the lake.
The largest temple-city in the central region of India, however, is Mount Sonā-
giri. This site boasts 108 individually numbered temples, spread over hilly
terrain near Datia in Madhya Pradesh.

South India
In the small town of Shravana Belgola in Karnataka, for instance, the Arkaṇṇa
Temple group consists of two walled compounds. At Varanga, in the same
state, three religious complexes lie side by side, and at the site of
Gommateshvara, near Mysore, five fenced sacred areas are grouped on and
around the monumental central rock formation.
This tendency to build temple compounds next to each other has also led to the
creation of so-called Jain temple-cities in the south. Those on Vindhya-giri and
Candra-giri at Shravana Belgola, as well as the temple-city on Tirumalai in
Tamil Nadu are dispersed over hill sites, with a concentration
of temples towards the peak. The paths leading up the steep hills are lined by
religious statues, small shrines and water structures.
As in other regions, not all Jain temple-cities in the south have been
constructed on high peaks. The one at Melsittamur in Tamil Nadu, as well as
the substantial Hiriangadi Temple complex at Karkala in Karnataka, have been
created on level ground.
Urban temple-cities

71
It is common practice in the southern Indian states to have many temple
compounds at pilgrimage sites

Most Jain temple-cities are relatively isolated. They can be reached from
towns or monastic settlements but are usually quite remote sites. An
alternative form of the Jain temple-city is a dense complex of walled temple
compounds in the centre of a city or in the main Jain quarters of a town.
This kind of urban temple-city can be found in Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, where
a large number of Jain temples are very closely grouped inside the old fort.
Further examples, also from Rajasthan, are the high concentration of Jain
temples in Nadol and Udaipur, where most of the temples are located along
just one road.
The compact cluster of Jain temple complexes inside north-western Indian
towns, however, can best be studied in Jamnagar and Sirohi, both
in Rajasthan. In these towns, large areas have been densely packed with
Jain temples, thus creating temple-cities within towns.
This phenomenon can also be observed outside the region of north-western
India. For instance, there is a sizeable collection of Jain temples in the centre
of Seoni in Madhya Pradesh.
An example of a Jain temple-city that forms the physical centre of an actual
inhabited village in the south is Mudabidri in Karnataka. In Mudabidri the so-
called Jain temple street runs through the centre of the village and is lined by
walled temple complexes on both sides. In addition to the nine major temple
compounds along this road, at least another seven large temple complexes are
scattered throughout this large traditional south Indian village.

72
Temple-cities in art

Because of the wide popularity and strong sacred associations of temple-cities,

they have frequently been represented in Jain art. Artistic representations of
temple-cities mainly consist of:
 pilgrimage banners – tīrtha-paṭas
 carved panels in marble
 miniature models.
These sacred objects are displayed and venerated in Jain temples throughout
the subcontinent and in temples among the diaspora. Jains study
and meditate on these depictions of temple-cities for two main reasons. Firstly,
it allows devotees who are unable to make the journey to these often
distant pilgrimage centres to gain merit. Secondly, they can mentally visit
a sacred site.
Replicas of temple-cities

It is fascinating that, due to the particular importance and sacredness of

certain temple-cities and venerated hills, there are Jain sites throughout India
that imitate their layout and shape.
The sacred hill of Mount Bāmaṇavāḍjī in Rajasthan, for instance, which itself
has nine large temples and thirty small pavilions – chatrīs – is perceived to be
a replica of the sacred Sameṭa Śikhara in Bihar.
Another striking example is the collection of small shrines on raised ground
inside the Śvetāmbara Dādā Baṛā Jain temple complex in Delhi. This is said to
recreate in miniature form the layout of the famous Mount Śatruñjaya in
Gujarat.

73
 CHAPTER IV
SE Stupas with Multitiered spirelike roofs –pyathat
Dr Uday Dokras

pyathat means 'Prasāda' is sometimes translated as gift or grace and

also serves tpo denote offering made to god of food stuff.
When visiting Southeast Asia,one can find a dazzling assortment of different
religious buildings. None are more iconic than the stupas built to hold relics.
In Thailand they are called chedis, in Myanmar, zedis… and in Laos, that.
They are remarkable structures worthy of further investigation.

Stupas trace their history back to pre-Buddhist burial mounds, but they came
into their own and developed after the passing of the Buddha, whose remains
were buried in ten mounds. Later, more permanent structures started to be
built to house relics such as the 3rd century BCE Great Stupa at Sanchi in
India.

Sanchi. india

The original meaning was retained and the Sanskrit word stūpa literally means
heap.The Burmese, Thai and Lao all have styles that come as a result of the

74
transmission of Theravāda Buddhism from Sri Lanka. One of the most
common style of chedi in Thailand is the Lanka-style bell chedi. Interestingly,
this bell shape is not much seen in Sri Lanka, where the original
round Sanchi-style stupa remains the most usual. Looking at the great sites of
Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, we can observe some interesting styles that give
us good reference points for stupas we see on our travels through Southeast
Asia.

The architecture of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), in Southeast Asia,

includes architectural styles which reflect the influence of neighboring and
Western nations and modernization. The country's most prominent buildings
include Buddhist pagodas, stupas and temples, British colonial buildings, and
modern renovations and structures. Myanmar's traditional architecture is
primarily used for worship, pilgrimage, storage of Buddhist relics, political
activism and tourism.In architecture, the multitiered spirelike roofs (pyathat)
that replicate the Buddhist cosmos were reserved for monasteries, palaces, and
royal barges. By the early 17th century, intricate wood
carved pediments and pilasters of doorways also came to be adorned
with pyathat and ornate foliage (kanok) carving. The 19th-century wooden
Shwenandaw monastery in Mandalay reveals a wide range of Burmese motifs
and ornamentation, many of which may date to the 18th century. The carved
wooden screens, panels, and brackets used inside temple halls are often
decorated with carved depictions of the last 10 Jatakas. The importance
attached to imposing gilded sadaik (manuscript chests and cabinets), found in
monastery libraries and pagodas and used to store sacred Buddhist texts,
testifies to the excellence of the sculptors’ artistry. The gilt gesso (paste used
for making reliefs) facings of those chests carry the schematic style of relief
sculpture.

Burma

One date is crucial in the art history of Burma: 1056 CE. In that year

King Anawrahta of Pagan decreed Theravada Buddhism to be the state religion
of all Burma. This signaled the unity of what had been a divided
country, consummating tendencies apparent in earlier Burmese history.

75
6th–11th century-The only major Burmese art known to scholars is based
upon Indian and Sri Lankan Buddhist art. In the period preceding Anawrahta’s
decree there had been three major historical eras in Burma, the first two of
which produced Indianized art known to scholars only fragmentarily: the rule
of the Mon kingdom of the lower Irrawaddy (9th–11th century),
the contemporaneous dominion of the Pyu people in central and Upper Burma,
and the subsequent decisive incursion of Burmese people from the northeast
(11th century).

The earliest concrete evidence of Indian culture in Burma is a Buddhist

inscription from Pyè (Prome) dated c. 500 CE. This and later inscriptions from
the same area were cut probably in the western Mon kingdom, which followed
Theravada Buddhism and was confederated with the Theravada Buddhist
eastern Dvaravati city-states (see below Thailand and Laos) in southern
Thailand and part of Cambodia (6th–12th century CE).

During this same period in Upper Burma, the people called Pyu, speaking
a Tibeto-Burman language and perhaps originating in Central Asia, built cities
whose magnificence was known to contemporary compilers of the Chinese Tang
dynasty history. In the 8th century one city was recorded as being some 50-
odd miles (80 km) in circumference, containing 100 Buddhist monasteries
lavishly painted and decorated with gold and silver. The Pyu were in direct
contact with northeast India, where various forms of Mahayana Buddhism,
which embraced philosophies and rituals unacceptable to the Theravada,
flourished; their Ari priesthood was later proscribed by Anawrahta. Their
capital city, Shri Kshetra (modern Hmawza, near Pyè), which was once larger
than even Pagan or Mandalay, was partly excavated. Three huge Buddhist
stupas—one 150 feet (about 46 metres) high—survive there. They illustrate the
pattern from which all later Burmese stupas were developed. Enshrining
revered relics of Buddhist saints, they consist of tall solid brick cylinders
mounted on shallow circular stepped plinths and crowned by what was
probably a tapering bell-like pinnacle. Other excavated halls, one on a square
plinth with four entrance doors, follow Indian examples. A few Hindu fragments
survive as well.

The Pyu were conquered by a neighbouring kingdom, probably before 900 CE.

During the following century their terrain and cities were infiltrated by the
Burmese people. These people were of common ancestry with the Thai and
northern Vietnamese and were probably on the move under pressure of the
Chinese colonization of their home terrain around the Gulf of Tonkin. They
were converted to Buddhism by the Pyu and later by the western Mon, but they
never completely abandoned their own original cult of nature spirits, known

76
today as the nats. The nats are a mixed collection of spirits that act
supernaturally, each according to its character. They were worshipped with
orgiastic ceremonies and trance rites of spiritual possession. Certain
mountaintops were sacred to them. Even in the 21st century the nats exerted a
powerful influence on the lives of the ordinary people. Every village had its
own nat house—a fragile pavilion built into a tree after the pattern of the tribal
house, and adorned with shreds of coloured cloth, glass, and other offerings.
The Buddhist temple in Burma is conceived essentially as an
enormous nat house, a section of the domain of the spiritual located upon
earth. And, since the Buddha was adopted as the last and greatest of the nats,
the same symbols of supernatural splendour that adorn the nats adorn the
Buddha’s images, and a nat-like spirituality attaches to the ubiquitous monks
in whom the presence of Buddhism is experienced as an everyday reality.

Pyatthat  from Sanskrit prāsāda; also spelt pyathat is the name of a

multistaged roof, with an odd number of tiers (from three to seven). The
pyatthat is commonly incorporated into Burmese Buddhist and royal
architecture (e.g., kyaungs, palace buildings, pagodas) and towers above the
image of the Buddha or other sacred places (e.g., royal thrones and city gates).
The pyatthat is made of successive gabled rectangular roofs in an exaggerated
pyramidal shape, with an intervening box-like structure called the lebaw 
between each roof.[1] The pyatthat is crowned with a wooden spire called
the taing bu (or kun bu depending on its shape, similar to the hti, an umbrella
ornament that crowns Burmese pagodas. The edges of each tier are gold-gilded
decorative designs made of metal sheet, with decorative ornaments called du
yin at the corners (analogous to the Thai chofah). There are three primary
kinds of pyatthat, with the variation being the number of tiers called boun 
from Pali bhumi). Three-tiered, five-tiered and seven-tiered roofs are
called yahma, thooba, and thooyahma, respectively.

A mural scene depicting a brick pyatthat roofed structure in Inwa.

77
The usage of the pyatthat began early in Burmese architecture, with
examples dating to the Pagan period. Prominent examples from this era that
feature the pyatthat include the Ananda Temple and Gawdawpalin Temple.
In pre-colonial Burma, the pyatthat was a prominent feature in the royal
buildings, which itself symbolized Tavatimsa, a Buddhist heaven. Above the
main throne in the king's primary audience hall was a nine-tiered pyatthat,
with the tip representing Mount Meru  and the lower six tiers representing the
six abodes of the devas and of humans.Furthermore, the 12 city gates of
Burmese royal capitals were crowned with pyatthats, with the main ones used
by royalty possessing five tiers, and the others possessing five tiers.
In pre-colonial Burma, sumptuary laws restricted the usage of pyatthats to
royal and religious buildings,[  and regulated the number of tiers appertaining
to each grade of official rank, The nine-tiered pyatthat was reserved solely for
the kingdom's sovereign, while the sawbwas of important tributary states were
entitled to seven-tiered pyatthats
Prasāda (Sanskrit pronunciation: [pɽɐsaːdɐ], Sanskrit: प्रसाद), variantly spelled
as Prasādam, Prasād and Prasāda, is a material substance that is a religious
offering in both Hinduism and Sikhism. Most often prasada is vegetarian food
consumed by worshippers after worship. Prasāda is derived from the
verb prasād which consists of the verb सद् (sad - to sit, dwell) which is prefixed
with प्र (pra - before, afore, in front) and used as finite verb प्रसीदति (prasīdati -
dwells, presides, pleases or favours etc).  It denotes anything, typically food,
that is first offered to a deity or saint and then distributed in His or Her name
to their followers or others as a good sign. 'Prasāda' is sometimes translated
as gift or grace

78
English: Photograph of the Nandaw (Royal Palace) at Mandalay in Burma
(Myanmar), from the Archaeological Survey of India Collections: Burma Circle,
1903-07. The photograph was taken by an unknown photographer in 1903
under the direction of Taw Sein Ko, the Superintendent of the Archaeological
Survey of Burma at the time. This is a view of the Great Audience Hall, with
two-tiered roofs, which was situated at the eastern end of the palace facing the
main city gate of Mandalay. Above it in the centre rises the gold-plated seven-
tiered spire or pyatthat known as the "Centre of the Universe", which marked
the sacred space of the Lion Throne room below. Mandalay was founded in
1857 by Mindon Min (reigned 1853-78), Burma’s penultimate king, in
fulfilment of a Buddhist prophecy that a religious centre would be built at the
foot of Mandalay Hill. In 1861 the court was transferred to the newly-built city
from the previous capital of Amarapura and it became Burma’s last great royal
capital. The royal palace or Nandaw stood at the centre of the walled city and
was one of the first buildings to be constructed, re-using many parts of the
teak buildings from Amarapura. The glory of Mandalay was shortlived as it was
annexed by the British Empire in 1886 after the Third Anglo-Burmese war, and
the Burmese monarchy was sent into exile in India. The original palace was
destroyed by fire during Allied bombing raids in 1945 during the Second World
War but has since been partially reconstructed.

In its material sense, prasāda is created by a process of giving and receiving

between a human devotee and the god. For example, a devotee makes an
offering of a material substance such as flowers, fruits, or sweets. The deity

79
then 'enjoys' or tastes a bit of the offering. This now-divinely invested
substance is called prasāda and is received by the devotee to be ingested,
worn, etc. It may be the same material that was originally offered or material
offered by others and then re-distributed to other devotees. In many temples,
several kinds of prasāda (e.g., nuts, sweets) are distributed to the devotees.
Offering food and subsequently receiving prasāda is central to the practice
of puja. Any food that is offered either physically to the image of God or silently
in prayer is considered prasāda.[9]
In Sikhism, karah parshad is served to the congregation after prayer and
reading of scripture. Parshad represents the same values as langar in that it is
served indiscriminately.
Kurukshetra Prasadam (Channa laddu) in 48 kos parikrama of
Kurukshetra and Mathura peda in the Braj Parikrama are geo-
specialty prasada

What is a Burmese stupa?

80
Myanmar is known for its pagodas or stupas which are prominent places of
worship for Buddhist pilgrims. ... These stupas are called Zedi, which in term
is derived from the Pali word “cetiya” meaning a solid, bell-shaped stupa. These
Zedis are of different types depending on what is housed inside the stupa

Photograph of Mindon Min’s Tomb at Mandalay in Burma (Myanmar) from the

Archaeological Survey of India Collections: Burma Circle, 1903-07. The
photograph was taken in 1903 under the direction of Taw Sein Ko, the
Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey of Burma at the time. Mindon Min
(reigned 1853-1878) was the penultimate king of the Konbaung Dynasty (1752-

81
1885). He was a progressive monarch who was much admired by his people.
He founded Mandalay in 1857 in fulfilment of a Buddhist prophecy that a
religious centre would be built at the foot of Mandalay Hill. In 1861 the court
was transferred to the newly-built city from the previous capital of Amarapura
and in 1872 he hosted the Fifth Great Buddhist Synod at Mandalay. Mindon
was succeeded by his son Thibaw (reigned 1878-1885), the last Burmese
monarch, who was exiled with his queen Supayalat to Madras in India by the
British in 1885 after the annexation of Upper Burma. Thibaw erected the tomb
in his father’s memory. It stood in a group of mausoleums inside the square
fortress containing the Royal Palace (Nandaw), to the north of the East Gate.
This view shows four royal tombs, with Mindon's in the centre.

It is a square brick structure, surmounted by a tiered spire known as a

pyatthat, a characteristic symbolic feature of Burmese royal and religious
architecture which demarcates sacred space. The building was at first
plastered over and whitewashed, later given an ornate finish with glittering
mirrored glass mosaic and gilding. These forms of applied decoration were
traditionally used to create an impression of magnificence in palaces,
monasteries and pagodas. In his ‘Guide to the Mandalay Palace’ (Rangoon,
1925), a later Superintendent of the Burma Archaeological Survey, Charles
Duroiselle, described the effect: “the peculiar feature of this tomb is that the
whole surface, with the exception of the roofs of the pyatthat, is covered with
glass mosaic, which, together with the gold on the ornamental carvings of the
roofs, makes of this little building a thing of beauty when seen in the ambient
rays of the sun or better in the soft light of the moon.”

82
Photograph of King Thibaw’s State Barge on the moat at Mandalay in Burma
(Myanmar), taken by Willoughby Wallace Hooper in 1885.
 The photograph is from a series documenting the Third Anglo-Burmese
War (1885-86) made by Hooper while serving as Provost Marshal with the
British army. Thibaw was the last king of Burma and ruled from 1878 until
1885, when he was deposed and exiled to India by the British. The Burma
Expeditionary Force entered Mandalay, the Burmese royal capital, on 28
November, beginning an occupation of the city, and the war culminated in
the annexation of Upper Burma by the British on 1 January 1886.
 Burmese state barges were magnificent gilded vessels roofed by a tiered
spire (pyatthat) denoting sacred royal space, and a prow in the form of a
mythical beast or celestial spirit. They were used by kings, courtiers and
high officials in spectacular ceremonial processions and water festivals. At
Mandalay the barge was moored on the moat which surrounded the city.
 Hooper describes the barge and the use to which it was put during the
occupation in a caption accompanying the photograph: “This is a very
gorgeous affair, the whole of it is gilded over, and it has a wonderful looking
prow in the form of an eagle. The usual bits of looking glass have not been
omitted in its decoration. Theebaw and his Queen used to be towed round
the moat in this, on some of the rare occasions when he ventured out of the
palace enclosure. It is now moored alongside the berm near the N.E. corner
of the city, where the 'Gymkhana' sports of the Garrison are held, and
serves as a refreshment room, a very necessary adjunct to any athletic
sports in the tropics.”

Hooper was a dedicated amateur photographer and his photographs of the war
in Burma are considered “one of the most accomplished and comprehensive
records of a nineteenth century military campaign They were published in
1887 as ‘Burmah: a series of one hundred photographs illustrating incidents
connected with the British Expeditionary Force to that country, from the
embarkation at Madras, 1st Nov, 1885, to the capture of King Theebaw, with
many views of Mandalay and surrounding country, native life and industries’.
There were two editions, one with albumen prints, one with autotypes, and a
set of lantern slides was issued. The series is also notable for the political
scandal which arose following allegations by a journalist that Hooper had acted
sadistically in the process of photographing the execution by firing squad of
Burmese rebels. The subsequent court of inquiry concluded that he had
behaved in a “callous and indecorous” way and the affair raised issues of the
ethical role of the photographer in documenting human suffering and the
conduct of the British military during a colonial war.

Early Indian influence

Much of Myanmar's architecture is tied to ancient Indian culture, and can be
traced to the country's earliest known inhabitants. [2] During the Pyu period,
cylindrical stupas with four archways—often with a hti (umbrella)[3] on top[4]—

83
were built. The Mon and Pyu people were the first two influential groups to
migrated to Myanmar, and the first Indo-Chinese adherents of Theravada
Buddhism.[2] Beikthano, one of the first Pyu centers, contains urbanesque
foundations which include a monastery and stupa-like structures. These Pyu
stupas, the first Indian foundations in Myanmar, were built from 200 BC to
100 CE and were sometimes used for burial. Early stupas, temples and
pagodas are topped with htis and finials or spires symbolizing Theravada
Buddhist transcendence.

Bagan period

Plan of Ananda Temple

By the 9th century, the Bamar people had established a kingdom centered

at Bagan. During the 11th century, King Anawrahta unified the Irrawaddy
Valley region and founded the Pagan Empire. Bagan, with over 10,000 of
Myanmar's red brick stupas and pagodas, had become a center of Buddhist
architecture by the mid-12th century.[6] During this period, the Pyu-style
stupas were transformed into monuments reminiscent of alms bowls or gourd-
shaped domes, unbaked brick, tapered and rising roofs, Buddha niches,
polylobed arches and ornamental doorways influenced by India's Pala
Empire and its monuments.[7] Stucco was widely used in Bagan, especially by
the Mon people. Stucco features of Bagan structures include garlands, flames
or rays of the sun, peacock tail feathers and mythical creatures.

The Dhammayazika Pagoda has a plan similar to the Tantric Paharpur stupa

in India. It does not have a square base like many Bagan stupas; instead, it
has a pentagonal base with radial halls and low skirting.

84
The Ananda Temple (finished in 1090), one of the first temples erected in
Bagan, was influenced by Indian architecture.  The vaulted temple
represents the Theravada branch of Buddhism, Bagan's official religion when it
was built. Architectural features of the temple include brick vaulted halls,
Buddha statues, tapered roofs and the absence of terraces.[11] The temple has
one of the first uses of the pyatthat, or tiered roof, which indicates the presence
of a throne within. With both royal and religious symbolism, many of the
temple's images depict the Buddha seated before an odd number of pyatthat
tiers.

Many of Bagan's historical monuments are well-preserved, due to the dry

climate. Bagan, with one of the largest concentrations of temples in the world,
is one of Myanmar's most important pilgrimage sites.[13] Many of the temples'
paintings and murals are still visible. [14] Notable architectural sites in Bagan
include the Bupaya Pagoda, the Dhammayangyi, Gawdawpalin and Htilominlo
Temples, the Inn-hpaya Stupa, the Mahabodhi Temple, the Mingalazedi
Pagoda, the Minochantha stupa group, the Taung Kyaung monastery,
the Nathlaung Kyaung Temple, the Nga-kywe-na-daung Stupa, the Pahto
Thamya and Shwegugyi Temples, the Shwezigon Pagoda and
the Sulamani and Thatbyinnyu Temple. [15]

The Gawdawpalin Temple in Bagan was built during the 12th century/

The Thatbyinnyu Temple in Bagan was built by King Alaungsithu in the
mid-12th century.

85
 1. The Dhammayangyi Temple, Bagan's largest
2. Htilominlo Temple's stucco ornamentation
3. Frescoes in the Gubyaukgyi Temple (Myinkaba)
 

The Bawbawgyi Pagoda is a Pyu-style stupa in Sri Ksetra/Colonial era The

Secretariat (Ministers' Building) and Government House in Yangon are
examples of colonial architecture in Myanmar.

Burma was part of the British Empire by the end of the 1880s, and this
ushered in a period of colonial architecture. Rangoon, now known as Yangon,
became a multi-ethnic capital. As large, colonial buildings were built
throughout the city, social disruption in Burma spawned nationalist rallies and
anti-colonial protests.

One of Bangkok’s most recognisable landmarks, Wat Arun (also known as

the Temple of the Dawn), is an imposing sight on the banks of the Chao
Phraya River. A temple has occupied the site for hundreds of years, but the
name and design of the temple has changed a number of times over those
years. Along the base of this central tower are sculptures of Chinese soldiers
and animals. Head into the ordination hall and you can admire a golden
Buddha image and the detailed murals that decorate the walls. Though Wat
Arun is very popular for tourists, it's also an important place of worship for
Buddhists.

History of Wat Arun

In 1768, the man who was to become King Taksin travelled to Thonburi
from Ayutthaya to establish a new capital on the banks of the Chao Phraya
River. According to legend, he arrived just as dawn was breaking at the site of
the temple which is known today as Wat Arun. For a while, the temple became
the royal chapel and housed the Emerald Buddha. However, it was during the
reign of Rama II (1809-1824) that the current design of the temple began to
take shape. The temple was further enhanced during the reign of Rama III
(1824-1851) and the largest central ‘phra prang’ was extended to the current
height seen today.
86
87
88
Architecture
Wat Arun is a Khmer-style temple with four prangs (also known as prasat) and
one larger one in the middle. This layout is a representation of the five sacred
mountains which were home to the gods according to Khmer, Hindu and
Buddhist cosmology. The central prang represents Mount Meru, the centre of
the universe. When the height of the central prang was extended, Rama III
ordered that colourful ceramics and porcelain should be used to form elaborate
motifs and designs. This unusual design feature makes the prangs shimmer
and shine in the sunlight and give the temple a unique appeal that has to be
seen close up to be fully appreciated. A staircase, which is very steep with
narrow steps, allows visitors to climb part way up the central prang to a
platform which gives fine views.

89
90
The central prang at Wat Arun

View from the platform on the first level of the central prang

91
Despite the name, Temple of the Dawn, many locals will tell you that Wat
Arun looks most impressive in the late afternoon as the sun is setting.
Wat Arun, Temple of the Dawn, Bangkok
Roy Cavanagh · January 20, 2020

In The Stupas of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, Tom Billinge  who runs The
Temple Trail classifies the pyathat as follows depending on the temple it adorns:

92
Myanmar

In Myanmar, there is a clear progression of styles. The earliest stupas were

built by the Pyu people and this Pyu-style can be found at the 7th
century Bawbawgyi Pagoda at the ancient city of Sri Ksetra near modern day
Pyay.

Bawbawgyi.
(Wikimedia Commons
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BawbawgyiPaya.jpg)

93
This bulbous, but elongated version of the simple mound is the beginning of
the Burmese stupa.

Buphaya.

In the kingdom of Bagan, the Pyu-style turned into the gourd-shape evident in

the Buphaya in Bagan. Bagan is home to many great stupas which illustrate
the stupa’s evolution in Myanmar. The wonderful 11th century Shwezigon
Pagoda pioneered the banana bud design and the beginning of elongation.

94
Shwezigon.

Dhammayazika.

By the 12th century, the bell-shape of the golden Dhammayazika Pagoda, also

in Bagan, came to be the standard.

95
 Shwedagon.
Photo credit: Matt Werner
http://www.flickr.com/photos/makemydinner/7999526276
The stunningly beautiful Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon is the culmination of
centuries of Burmese architectural innovation. Expanded many times by
various rulers, the Shwedagon has elements of the bell shape, the banana bud,
upturned and down-turned lotus petals, a turban and a diamond bud, topped
with a hti (umbrella). It is the zenith of grace in stupa design.

Pha That Luang

Laos has a unique style of stupa which stands out from those in neighbouring
countries. Vientiane has the best example of the Lao-style that: Pha That
Luang. This is considered to be a national treasure of Laos. It is tall and thin

96
with a curvilinear design. It has four corners and is modelled on an
unopened lotus bud.
This style is also evident, in much smaller form, in That Chom Si in Luang
Prabang. The slim angular lotus sits atop Phou Si hill in the centre of the town.

That Chom Si. Photo credit, thetempletrail.comThat Dam. Photo credit,

thetempletrail.com

97
In Vientiane, That Dam displays a different style. This shows some influence of
its southern neighbour, Thailand, but retains an angular nature, rather than
having a round ‘bell’.

“Watermelon
Stupa”. Photo credit, thetempletrail.com
Luang Prabang has one quite unusual stupa that seems more closely linked to
the Sri Lankan mound shape. Known as the ‘Watermelon Stupa’, That Pathum
(or That Makmo) at Wat Wisunalat is a 16th century Singhalese-style stupa
and a one-of-a-kind in Laos.

Prang at Wat Choeng Tha, Ayutthaya. Photo credit, thetempletrail.com

98
ThailandThailand gets the prize for the most varied styles of stupas. While
many associate the Khmer-style prang with Thailand, it really isn’t a true
stupa like the chedi. The famed ‘corn cob’ shape actually developed from
Khmer temples and not from burial mounds. While they did evolve to have the
same relic containing function, they are not quite stupas, as you can normally
enter them.

Wat Chai Watthanaram.

Photo credit, thetempletrail.com
Many great examples of towering prangs are found in the old capital of
Siam, Ayutthaya. A walk around the ancient city will reveal many kinds of
chedi also. The most famous is the Ayutthaya-style chedi, which you can find
in temples like Wat Chai Watthanaram. It is a stylized, squarer version of the
bell chedi and has 12 indented corners.

99
 Doi Suthep.
(Wikimedia Commons –
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Doi_Suthep_Temple.JPG )
 In the northern city of Chiang Mai, you can find a wonderful example of a
chedi in the heart of the ancient Kingdom of Lanna. The golden stupa at Wat
Phra Doi Suthep is again a variation of the bell chedi, but is in the Lanna-style
with its multiple facets and tiers.

Suwanna. (Wikimedia Commons –

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LamhunWPTHaripch200107c.jpg)
 

100
In nearby Lamphun, just 25 kilometres from Chiang Mai, Wat Phra That
Hariphunchai has its own special chedi. The former Mon Kingdom of
Hariphunchai had its own style before it was invaded by neighbouring Lanna
in the 13th century. The Haripunjaya-style chedi, Chedi Suwanna, is square
and angular and looks more like an elongated pyramid.

Wat Mahathat.
Photo credit, thetempletrail.com

Travelling south to the original Thai Kingdom of Sukhothai you find another

Mon Haripunjaya-style chedi at Wat Mahathat, but it is one of many different
kinds that surround the main Thanan-style chedi. This is a tall, thin lotus bud
that is distinctively from Sukhothai and it can only be there and in its
subordinate cities.
In the capital, Bangkok, you will find many kinds of chedi, but it is a city that
is home to many of the classic bell-shaped chedis that people picture when
they think of Thai temples. While there are many examples, the golden chedi at
Wat Saket Ratcha Wora Maha Wihan on the Golden Mount is a beacon that
sparkles in the sun above the Bangkok skyline.

101
 Wat Saket. Photo credit,
thetempletrail.com
With their diverse array of stupas, these three Southeast Asian countries are a
joy to discover and the photogenic architecture can provide hours of
exploration. There are few other places on earth with so much to offer the
interested cultural traveller.

https://architectureofbuddhism.com/books/stupas-myanmar-thailand-laos/

102
 CHAPTER V
The Mound and Ruins of the Square Plan stone temple,
(5x5) Dah – Parbatia
DISTRICT:Sonitpur
LOCALITY: Tezpur (Lat. 26° 37' N; Long. 92°47' E)
APPROACH: Airport: Salani (Tezpur);
Railway Station :Tezpur.Bus Station :Tezpur.

The site is famous for magnificent doorframe of the highest architectural merit.
The remains are ascribed to an ancient temple of brick and stone masonry
oriented in east-west direction. The temple was designed on the principle
of square. The garbhagriha is of square plan (5.10 x 5.10m) as well as the mandapa
(7.90 x7.90m.).

The most noteworthy feature of the temple is its doorframe, the stylistic
features show a close affinity with the art tradition of the Gupta rulers and the
doorframe accordingly may be placed around circa 6th century CE. The jambs
and lintel of the doorframe are profusely carved. The five vertical bands begin
with the jambs and carried up to the lintel. Beautifully carved river goddesses
Ganga and Yamuna respectively occupy the right and left doorjambs. The
figures are shown in gently slanting posture with garlands in their hands. The
doorframe is also decorated with scroll designs. The long tails of two nagis
carved from the doorjambs are shown holding by a figure of Garuda, depicted at
the middle of the lintel. The lintel contains five chaitya windows and contains
three figures viz. Lakulisa, Krisna and Surya.

Fig 1: Door frame 2: Stone temple Da Parbatia is a small village very close to

103
west Tezpur, in the Indian State of Assam. In the village there are significant
architectural remnants of an ancient temple of the 6th century overlying the
ruins of another Shiva temple built of bricks during the Ahom period.
Archaeological excavations done here in 1924 have unearthed a sixth-century
antiquity in the form of a stone door frame with extensive carvings. The ruins
of the temple built during the Ahom period are built over the ancient temple's
foundations and are in the form of a stone paved layout plan of the sanctum
sanctorum and a mandapa. This complex is under the jurisdiction of
the Archaeological Survey of India and its importance and notability is
recorded under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains
Act 1958.
The Dah Parvatiya village, located to the west of Tezpur, was subject to
archaeological excavations by the Archaeological Survey of India in 1924, and
also during 1989–90. The excavations of many mounds have revealed
structural features built of brick and stone; these are in various stages of
decay. The excavations revealed many terracotta plaques in which human
figures were shown in a sitting position.

104
The antiquities found at the Dah Parvatiya are inferred to have been from a
temple complex built during the 5th or 6th century, prior to
the Bhaskaravarman period. On the basis of the mouldings and its
architectural style it is inferred that the terracotta plaques are definitely not
later than the 6th century; the altered form of motifs noted in Assam confirms

105
this assessment. This type of architectural feature, particularly in the stylistics
of figurines of the ruins, is seen in North India, in the temples of the Bhumra
and Nachha Kuthara which belonged to the Gupta period. Further
confirmation of the dating is provided by the carvings of the river
Goddesses Ganga and Yamuna, which are also akin to the Greek
architecture with striking similarity to the Hellenistic art. The decorative
elements of the ruins also have close similarity with those seen in the temples
of Orissa.
During the Ahom period, a Shiva temple was built with bricks over the ruins of
an ancient Gupta period temple. When the Ahom period temple was destroyed
during the Assam Earthquake of 1897, the remains of Gupta period temple
were exposed but only in the form of a door frame made of stone. [3] Epigraphic
evidence and ancient literature found here, supplemented by the ruins seen
scattered around the area, also confirms that in the pre-Ahom period Gupta art
extended into the early Medieval period.
Features: The excavated foundation of the temple of the Gupta period revealed
the base of the garbhagriha (sanctum sanctorum) in a roughly square form
measuring 8.925 feet (2.720 m) x 8.33 feet (2.54 m),[3][8] which is enclosed by a
circumambulatory passage leading to a colonnaded hall of rectangular shape,
which is interpreted as a mantapa or outdoor pavilion. To the east of the
mantapa is a mukhamantapa (front hall), which is of smaller size. In the open
space of the garbhagriha there is a "stone kunda" or Vedi (altar) of 2.418 feet
(0.737 m) x 2.66 feet (0.81 m) size with a depth of 5 inches (130 mm). It is also
inferred from the exposed ruins that the original temple was built of bricks (of
size 15 inches (380 mm) x 11.5 inches (290 mm) x 2.5 feet (0.76 m)) which
were in use in the 5th century, with door frames and sill made of stone. ]
The door frame made of stone, which stands in front of a large block of stone
with a square cavity that held the original linga, is the most important find
here that has carvings which attest to the Gupta period art form. [1] [8] The
architectural depictions on this door frame are akin to the Gupta architectural
features in Northern India, deciphered in the archaeological excavations done
by Sir John Marshall.[3]
Doorjambs
The door jambs or posts (the vertical part of the door frame), which measure
5.25 feet (1.60 m) in height and 1.25 feet (0.38 m) in width, have high relief
carvings in their lower parts while the upper parts have four vertical bands or
strips carved in different patterns. [1] The human figures carved at the base of
the door posts are of the river goddesses Ganga and Yamuna,[9] which belong to
the Gupta period art traditions, and also depict carvings of flying geese. This
architectural depiction is stated to be the "finest and oldest specimen of
sculptural art in Assam".The goddesses carved in an elegant standing posture
are shown with divine halos over their heads with each figure holding a garland
in its hands. This type of depiction of goddesses on the door frames was

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prevalent in the medieval temples. Many smaller figurines are also carved as if
in attendance to the main goddess. On the right door post, there are two female
attendants, one is in a standing posture holding up a chamara or an umbrella
while the second attendant is shown on bent knees and holding a flat tray filled
with flowers. The carvings on the right door post are better preserved than
those on the left. On the left door post, the two figurines standing in
attendance flanking the goddess are not distinct. Here, there is also a carving
of a naga in a kneeling posture carved to the right of the halo of the goddess; to
the left of this depiction there are carvings of two geese. [3]
Vertical bands
The vertical strips in each of the upper part of the door posts extend up to the
lintel. The first strip, starting from the head of the naga or the nagi, is carved
in the wavy pattern of a creeper and is filled with decorations of leaves pattern.
The second band is like a lotus stem, out of which lotus leaves and different
flowers emerge; the stem is supported at the base by two pygmy shaped
figures. The third strip has embossed panels of human figures fronting
ornamental leaves. This band is crowned by a vase with drooping decorative
foliage. The vase is also decorated with a square shaped pilaster that
terminates in a capital, which has a cruciform. The capital has carvings of
a gana (attendant of Shiva). Decorative rosettees form the fourth strip.
Lintel
The lintel spanning over the door posts is 3.75 feet (1.14 m) in length and 1.25
feet (0.38 m) in breadth. The lintel is larger in size than the door-frame,
extending a little on each side of the jambs. It is richly decorated with
architectural carvings which are placed in a symmetrical form, similar to the
architectural features seen in the fifth and sixth century temples
in Pataliputra and Benares. Five Chaitya-windows (horse-shoe shaped) are
carved in the front face of the lintel – three large and two small – with the
figurine of a male with four arms carved in the extreme right window seated on
a throne; two of its arms are damaged while one arm is seen holding
Shiva's damaru. At the base of this throne there is a carving in the form of sea
waves. The central window has a Shiva carving known as "Lakulisa", meaning
Lord with the staff, a rope tied to its leg and is flanked by two mythical deities,
called "suparna", anthropomorphic figures of a bird and man. Also seen in this
window are two females figures. In another window is a depiction of man
playing the flute, and with a hooded snake feature above his head. The window
to the extreme right has carving of Surya, the Sun god, in a cross-legged
posture holding a lotus flower. Two attendants are seen next to this figure, one
is offering betel leaves (pan) while holding an ink pot in the other hand, and the
second attendant is carrying a stick.

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 CHAPTER VI
Palimpsestic Ritual of Angkor & the khmer
Architecture
Palimpsestic, is  a parchment from which earlier writing has been partially or
completely removed by scraping so that it may be used again. — palimpsestic. I
have used various words to describe in my earlier works the architectural civil-
work of both Borobudur and Angkor

1. Heterotopic Space and Design of Borobudur

2. Hetroclite Monument Borobodur
3. Didactic role of Borobudur and Ananda Stupa
4. Angkor- spiritual lighthouse
5. Heterotopic Space and Design of Angkor
6. Angkor and Norte Dame as a Heterotopic Space and Design
7. Grand iteration of Buddhist monumentation and world heritage
site. ( forthcoming paper)

A new word is added in this paper! The adjective "palimpsest" which derives
from the Latin palimpsestus, which derives from the Ancient
Greek palímpsēstos, from = "again" + "scrape", a compound word that describes
the process: "The original writing was scraped and washed off, the surface
resmoothed, and the new literary material written on the salvaged material."
The Ancient Greeks used wax-coated tablets, like scratch-pads, to write on
with a stylus, and to erase the writing by smoothing the wax surface and
writing again. This practice was adopted by Ancient Romans, who wrote
(literally scratched on letters) on wax-coated tablets, which were
reusable; Cicero's use of the term "palimpsest" confirms such a practice.

In textual studies, a palimpsest is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or

a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page
can be reused for another document.

Sometimes a Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or goat kid skin and was
expensive and not readily available, so in the interest of economy a page was
often re-used by scraping off the previous writing. In colloquial usage, the
term palimpsest is also used
in architecture, archaeology and geomorphology to denote an object made or

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worked upon for one purpose and later reused for another, for example
a monumental brass the reverse blank side of which has been re-engraved.
“What is particularly interesting about Angkor Wat is its palimpsestic
accumulation of reliefs throughout multiple centuries—a process which was
discontinued with French stewardship of the site. The decorative program of
Angkor Wat is incomplete. Though the architectural components of the temple
retain their original form, the decorative reliefs and carvings on the basic
architecture of the monument are comprised of images accumulated through
multiple centuries. Originally an unfinished temple to Vishnu doubling as an
ancestral funerary site for Khmer royalty, the memory of the eras through
which Angkor Wat has lived have left material traces on the monument in the
form of scars and damage from the period of Thai invasion at the end of the
13th century, added Brahmanical reliefs from the Khmer return to Angkor in
the 16th century, as well as added Buddhist components such as stupas in the
Angkor Wat complex from the 16th to 19th centuries. The accumulation of
historical memory at Angkor Wat takes the form of an entirely additive process
until the era of French Indochina”- says Whose Culture?The Curation and
Management of World Heritage,Department of History of Art and Architecture,
Harvard University,USA.

Jacqui Alexander conceptualizes palimpsestic time as marked by “imperfect

erasure” of pasts that remake distinctions like “here and now” and “then and
there.” A palimpsest is “something reused or altered but still bearing visible
traces of its earlier form,” and the artists in Making Marks vision the body in
precisely.This erasure is now being discovered. Not necessary that the erasure
may be man made. In case of Angkor. That erasure has been made by
adandonment, neglect,invasion of nature amonst other.

An exhibition-Angkor Wat: From Temple to Text  from 27 Nov 2010 – 20 Feb

2011-Exhibition in Gallery 4 at the Henry Moore Institute :one of the world’s
largest sculpture gallaries at  74 The Headrow, Leeds LS1 3AH, United
Kingdom explored the limits between three and two-dimensional
representations. In showing the casts, the display investigates relationships
between monument and text, and sculpture and inscription. The exhibition
evokes a complex history of cultural reappropriation across centuries and
civilisations, and the conflicted inseparable drives for preservation and
destruction at work within them.

The Agkor was a Hindu Temple in honor of the Chief diety of Hinduism
VISHNU but after its “abandonment” in the 16th century, after the 15th-
century fall of the capital at Angkor, Khmer royalty and other Buddhist
pilgrims returned to the symbolic heart of the fallen Empire.

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On their return, they repaired statues and sanctuaries, recording these acts in
'vows of truth' that were engraved on the stones of the ancient temples. Angkor
Wat was the most spectacular of these ancient temples, with its restoration a
powerful symbol of both a desired return to stability and permanent renewal of
the Khmer state..Some of the original work on Hinduism was replaced by
Buddhist sculptures but only a fraction. The returnees had no wealth or means
to get for themselves intricate carvings to fully replace the original Hindu
narrative. A Palimpsestic endeavour indeed.

In the last hundred and fifty years several projects of archaeological mapping
have been undertaken at the site of Angkor. The most recent studies,
conducted by the Greater Angkor Project, have revealed that Angkor is a vast
low-density urban complex, perhaps the largest of its kind in the entire pre-
industrial world. And yet, until now, crucial areas of the archaeological
complex have remained unmapped because vegetation has obscured the
surface traces of the civilisation from conventional remote sensing instruments.
With a view to overcoming this limitation, large-scale airborne laser scanning
(lidar) mission was carried out over Angkor in 2012. This helped not only for
understanding Angkor but also for future comparative studies of low-density
urbanism in tropical forest environments.

The Story Beneath the Canopy: an Airborne Lidar Survey Over Angkor, Phnom
Kulen and Koh Ker, Northwestern Cambodia Damian Evans The University of
Sydney, Australia Kasper Hanus The University of Sydney, Australia and
Jagiellonian University, Poland Roland Fletcher The University of Sydney,
Australia

A combination of close range and remote sensing techniques were deployed on

diverse archaeological sites, such as production and habitation areas, temples,
their enclosures, and the vast water management system. The various
locations were investigated by GPR, and a small number further identified by
excavation. All subsurface features were geo-referenced, categorised, and the
information stored in a GIS. The results, particularly the ones related to small
surveys and surveys of not previously investigated sites introduces a
classification of archaeological finds from extensive geophysical surveys at the
UNESCO World Heritage Site, and addresses the challenges to create an online
database that serves the research community.

Geophysical datasets by themselves are often seen as non-conclusive,

particularly in archaeology. New discoveries therefore request confirmation by
excavation. Angkor is certainly not the only archaeological site where data
sharing could advance archaeological research. It would be particularly helpful,
however, for large archaeological sites, where many different research teams
are working. In Cambodia, many international teams come into the country
only for their field season, which reduces the possibility for cross-
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communication. Newly gained information is stored away in survey reports,
written in languages other than English, and not easily accessible to other
research teams.

The classification of geophysical data from Angkor in Sonnemann (2011), as

shown in the survey at Doun Kaev, is only a first step to organise and make
this valuable information available to a broader research community. This data
set would have to be made readily available and, more importantly, easily
expandable. By having categorised the information, data entry by dropdown
menu should easily be arranged in an online database. The categories
introduced should be open for expansion and could as well host other scientific
methods. A platform similar to the English Heritage Geophysical Survey
Database, run by an organisation that has contact to, and to some extent also
control of, all research teams, to upload and access geophysical and
archaeological information under clear rules would prevent misuse. By
providing basic survey and contact information, data rights should be kept
with the person responsible for data entry. The information on what has been
done at a particular site may support future research and collaboration
between different international research teams.

Classification of Geophysical Data of Angkor, Cambodia and its Potential as an

Online Source Till F. Sonnemann Leiden University, The Netherlands
From- Across Space and Time Papers from the 41st Conference on Computer Applications and
Quantitative Methods in Archaeology Perth, 25-28 March 2013

As time passes and technology develops more about the 4000 temples may be
revealed and many more secrets- dark or otherwise come out.

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 CHAPTER VI
Hindu royal temples  as basis for Southeast Asian arts
Artistic styles

Hindu royal temples in Indian styles provide the basis for the architectural and

decorative elements found in the ancient monuments of Southeast Asia. But a
distinct local aesthetic emerged early on, when builders identified architectural
form with cosmological beliefs. Each Hindu temple centres on a shrine,
symbolizing heaven upon earth. The shrine is crowned by a roof tower
representing the cosmic Indian mountain, Meru, conceived as the hub of
creation. Since all the peoples of Southeast Asia already believed the natural
habitat of spirits and gods to be a mountaintop, the Indian pattern was readily
accepted. The temple usually stands upon a lofty terraced plinth (a block
serving as a base), which also symbolizes a mountain. Towered shrines could
be multiplied on the terraces, though one of them remains the principal focus.
Within the cell of this main shrine is a sacred image carved in stone or cast in
bronze. The local Hindu ruler identified the subject of this image as
his transcendent patron, or celestial alter ego. This was normally one of the
Indian high gods, Shiva (represented perhaps by a phallic emblem, the linga) or
Vishnu. In Mahayana Buddhist kingdoms, a royal bodhisattva (a being that
refrains from entering nirvana in order to save others) was sometimes adopted
to fulfill the same role; a favourite form was known as Lokanatha,
or Lokeshvara, Lord of the World. Subsidiary shrines, niches, or terraces
sometimes contain subsidiary images, including goddesses representing at the
same time wives of the god and queens of the king. These images were worked
in smooth, deeply rounded, and sensuously emphatic styles derived
from Indian art but with varying inflections characteristic of each region and
time. The whole exterior of the shrine is usually adorned with rhythmic
moldings, foliage, and scrollwork, with figures representing the inhabitants of
the heavens. Ideally, the building was constructed and carved in stone, but,
particularly where good stone was not readily available (for example, in
Burmese Pagan), it could also be brick, coated and sculptured with stucco after
northeast Indian patterns. Temple complexes tended to grow as successive
kings strove to outdo their predecessors with the magnificence of their
buildings. Hindu rulers, influenced perhaps by vestiges of tribal custom, would
sometimes retain their own family’s temples and images while destroying those
of earlier dynasties.

Buddhism, however, is a religion based on a doctrine of transcendent merit

and sustained by an order of monks who have, ultimately, no vested interest in
kings and gods. They may, however, take a great interest in the world of spirits
and in the operations of astrology, just as the local population does, even
though they regard such matters as subordinate to the ultimate Buddhist aim
of universal nirvana. Buddhist monasteries, therefore, tended to expand
around stupas (domed monuments emblematic of the Buddhist truth, also

112
called pagodas or dagabas) of ever-increasing size and number; the preaching
halls, libraries, and living quarters for monks were continually enlarged and
repeatedly rebuilt, often as a testimony to the piety of royal patrons. Although,
strictly speaking, Theravada Buddhism has no place for a “divine ruler” whose
identity an actual king may adopt, provision was made in legend and in court
and monastic ritual for the ruler of a Theravada Buddhist country to assume a
magical role as the dominant sponsor and patron of the Buddhist truth. His
legendary prototype was, therefore, usually identified not with an icon of
the enlightened Buddha but with images such as the chief disciple at the knee
of the enlightened Buddha, as Prince Siddhartha (the Buddha-to-be), or
figuring in scenes of the Buddha’s life that lined the monastery halls and
corridors.

Both Hindu and Buddhist art were produced according to theoretical

prescriptions. If the formulas were not followed, the art was believed to not
fulfill its transcendent function. In practice, however, there was room for styles
and types of images to change and develop fairly quickly. Hindu and non-
Theravada art recognizes what could be called aesthetic values as a component
in religious expression. Theravada Buddhism, however, always attempts to
preserve the closest possible connections with the Buddha’s recorded original
deeds and sayings; its art, therefore, concentrates on repeating in its main
Buddha figures the most exact possible imitations of authentic ancient images.
The Theravada Pali canon lists 32 major lakshanas—the attributes of the
Buddha—plus 80 minor anatomical characteristics. Some of these
interpretations have developed over time. Many of these attributes appear to be
Brahmanical and pre-Buddhist (pre-6th century BCE), which explains why
they are often linked to depictions of Hindu deities as well. (See
below Burma; Thailand and Laos. In the subsidiary sculptured and painted
figures, however, which illustrate scenes from sacred history, Theravada art
has greater freedom of invention. In the 20th century, Theravada Buddhism
was the only form of Indian religion to survive in Southeast Asia, save for the
modified Hinduism of Bali. Its architecture from this period is decorated with
a robust and innovative use of coloured glass, mirrored tiles, and a fantastical
array of bright colours.
General development of Southeast Asian art

Most of the works made under the inspiration of the earliest magical and
animist tradition are in perishable materials such as wood. Because the
climate is so hostile, most of the works that survive are from the last few
centuries.. There are, however, a large number
of Neolithic stone implements and prehistoric stone monuments (megaliths) as
well as bronzes, which provide a solid archaeological basis for interpretation of
Southeast Asia’s earliest art traditions.

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For the art of the classic Indianizing civilizations, the archaeology of European
countries played a major role in clearing, excavating, and reconstructing major
sites in their colonies—i.e., the French in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam; the
Dutch in Indonesia; and the British in Burma. Old bronzes were found in fair
quantities; apart from those of the early Dong Son culture (also see
below Bronze Age: Dong Son culture), all belong to one or other of the
Indianizing traditions. Many old brick and stucco buildings survive, notably
the medieval work at Pagan, Burma, and in central Thailand, though an
enormous number are known to have perished. Apart from Pagan’s murals and
a few Indianizing rock and wall paintings on plaster, very old paintings are not
known to exist. Most of the surviving Buddhist pictorial art on wooden panels
or other fragile material is less than 300 years old.

The stone of dynastic buildings of course survived the best, by far. Scholars
thus know much more about Indianizing stone architecture, with its sculpture,
than about any other Southeast Asian visual art. But where good relief
sculpture flourished, one can legitimately assume that vanished pictorial arts
also flourished. And from details carved in stone and incised on bronze as well
as from the scattered enthusiastic references in Chinese sources, one can be
sure that throughout their history the Southeast Asian peoples were intensely
creative and lived their lives surrounded by a wealth of imaginative art in many
different mediums.

There are many sites yet to be discovered and excavated. Knowledge of the
history of art in many parts of Southeast Asia, especially of important episodes
in Burma, Thailand, and Sumatra, was still scantily documented in the 21st
century.
Neolithic Period

The earliest works in Southeast Asia that can be called art are the rectangular
polished ax heads of a familiar late Neolithic type that were found at many sites
in Peninsular Malaysia, Indochina, and Indonesia. Some of the later Neolithic
(c. 2000 BCE to early centuries CE) implements are extremely beautiful and
polished with the greatest care. They include practical adzes and axes, but
some, made of semiprecious stone, are part of ritual grave goods. Ancient stone
tools often thought to have medicinal or curative properties continued to be
valued in many parts of Southeast Asia. These tools, with their fine edges,
suggest that their owners were capable of very high quality woodworking and
might well have decorated their wooden houses with intricate designs.

During the Neolithic Period, metal—both bronze and iron—came into use for

implements, bringing great change to the material culture. In many regions,
notably Cambodia, Borneo, and Sumatra, numerous megalithic works of art
survive, including menhirs (single upright monoliths), dolmens (two or more
upright monoliths supporting a horizontal slab), cist graves (Neolithic graves

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lined with stone slabs), and terraced burial mounds, all dating from the late
Neolithic. Some remarkable large stones are worked in relief with symbols and
images of animals and humans, notably in the Pasemah region of Sumatra.
Stone continued to be fashioned into tools during this period. These were often
finely polished, and some may have been for ritual use. Stone rings and some
bracelets have also been found. Many of these items are also seen at Bronze
Age sites. These and other art objects suggest a highly developed cult of a spirit
world connected with the remains of the dead (see below Cambodia and
Vietnam; Indonesia).
Bronze Age: Dong Son culture (c. 5th–1st century BCE)

By about 300 BCE a civilization with elaborate arts based on bronze working

existed, extending probably from the Tonkin region into Laos, Cambodia,
and Indonesia. This is called (for convenience, after a major site) the Dong Son
culture, though it may not have been a true cultural unity. A variety of bronze
ritual works, many decorated with human and animal figures and with masks,
were cast by the lost-wax method (metal casting using a wax model). The chief
objects were ceremonial drums, large and small; the largest was found
in Bali and is called “the Moon of Bali” (see below Indonesia). Extremely
elaborate bronze ceremonial axes were made—probably as emblems of power.
Certain relief patterns on the bronzes suggest that “ship of the dead” designs,
such as those woven in textiles in both Borneo and Sumatra, may well have
been woven even then. The spiral is a frequent Dong Son decorative motif; later
Dong Son art may have been responsible for transmitting—especially into
Vietnam, Cambodia, and Borneo—versions of the contemporary Chinese Zhou
dynasty’s asymmetrical squared-hook patterns.
1st–10th century

There is good evidence of Indian contacts from the 1st century CE. Sites in
southern Thailand have revealed a number of Indian etched beads, and early
Pyu and Mon sites have yielded coins and beads from the early centuries CE.
There is much to suggest that Hindu and Buddhist sites coexisted, with ritual
objects associated with both religions having been recovered from the same
settlement. Although Hinduism preceded Buddhism in the region, Buddhism
appears to have been particularly popular among the Indian merchant classes.
Traders established coastal and river-mouth settlements, where commercial
contacts were established and spread to the hinterlands and islands. At these
larger sites, monasteries were established under the patronage of local rulers.
Images of the Buddha dating from as early as the 6th century and based upon
Indian types were found in widely dispersed locales in Burma, Thailand, and
Cambodia. Many of these images may well have been produced in the
kingdoms of the Mon people. It is because of inscriptions written in the Mon
language, which are contemporary with Dvaravati art of the 6th–11th century,
that this art style is often identified with the Mon peoples of northeast and

115
central Thailand. By the 5th century the first Hindu kingdoms were established
in western Java and Borneo. These kingdoms produced dynastic cult images,
fragments of which have been found.

Perhaps the most splendid of the earlier Indianizing kingdoms, lasting until the
9th century CE, was that of the Pyu people in the upper Irrawaddy River valley.
Of the numerous Pyu sites identified, the fortified cities of Beikthano, Shri
Kshetra (modern Hmawza, Burma), and Halin were three of the largest
excavated by the 21st century. At Beikthano (200 BCE–300 CE) the general
absence of Buddhist statuary and relics and of Pyu inscriptions reflects an
early phase of Buddhist development, whereas in Shri Kshetra a wealth of
excavated objects assign the main period of occupation to the 5th–8th
century CE and testify to a flowering of Buddhist development. (See
below Burma.)

In the 1st century CE the predominantly Hindu kingdom known as Funan (the

name given it by Chinese historians) was established in Cambodia. It seems to
have controlled an empire that included kingdoms in what is now Peninsular
Malaysia and even parts of southern Burma. Its population was
probably Mon and shared the culture of the Mon in the lower Irrawaddy basin.
(The Funan kingdom really represents the earliest phase of what became, in
the 9th century, the great Cambodian Khmer empire.) Between about 550 and
680 the kingdom retreated from the coast up to the Mekong River into Laos,
where it was called by the Chinese Chenla. This joint Funan-Chenla tradition
produced some of the world’s most magnificent stone cult images. Though
Buddhist icons are known, these images principally represent Hindu deities
including Vishnu, his incarnation Krishna, Shiva, and a combined Shiva-
Vishnu figure called Harihara. The images were housed in wooden or brick
shrines, now vanished.

During the Chenla retreat a number of Theravada Buddhist city-states

of Dvaravati flourished in central and northeast Thailand. The historical record
of Dvaravati is very limited and provides a somewhat shaky basis for referring
to it as a kingdom. Its wider geographical extent is not known. It is likely that a
number of Thai city-states existed, one of which went by the name of
Dvaravati. This entity flourished until the 11th century, when the Khmer
captured it. What little of its art is known is close to that of eastern India and
provided the basis for later Buddhist art in the Khmer empire as well as for
some of the later forms of Thai art.

Almost contemporary with Chenla was the rise of the central Javanese
kingdom. Soon after 600 CE the earliest surviving Hindu temples were built.
About 770 the Shailendra dynasty began its long series of superb stone-cut
monuments, both Hindu and Buddhist, which culminated in two enormous
symbolic architectural complexes: the Mahayana Buddhist Borobudur (c. 800)

116
and the Hindu Lara Jonggrang, at Prambanam (c. 900–930). These monuments
were decorated in an individual and exceptionally accomplished style of full-
round and relief sculpture. Many small bronze religious images have survived.
The art of the Shailendra dynasty testifies to the imperial and maritime power
of the central Javanese kingdom, which seems to have influenced politics and
art in Khmer Cambodia. It also took over the possessions of a
major Theravada Buddhist kingdom called Shrivijaya, which had flourished in
what is now Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra and was centred at Palembang.
The Javanese Shailendra ruled most of Peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra and
installed themselves there in the mid-9th century, when their home terrain in
Java was taken over by the Mataram dynasty, heralding the eastern Javanese
period, which began in 927. Shrivijaya, under Shailendra rule, declined in the
mid-11th century, and most of its remains still await discovery.

Prambanam Temple, Java, Indonesia

Prambanam Temple (also called Lara Jonggrang), built c. 900–930; part of a
complex in Java, Indonesia.
© swisshippo/stock.adobe.com
In Vietnam about the 2nd century CE the predominantly Hindu kingdom
of Champa was founded. Its capital was at My Son, where many temples have
been found. This kingdom suffered much from attacks by the Chinese, and,
after it began to lose the north to the Sinicized Vietnamese, the Cham capital
moved in 1069 to Vijaya (Binh Dinh), in the south. There it was involved in
continual warfare with the Khmer, who finally annexed southern Vietnam in
1203. The art of the northern Vietnamese as a whole was always so strongly
under the influence of China that it can best be characterized as a provincial
Chinese style.
10th century to the present

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In Cambodia the Khmer empire succeeded to the old territories of Funan-
Chenla. About 790 the first major Khmer ruler, Jayavarman II, who was
related to the old Funan royal family, went to Cambodia from
the Shailendra court in Java. In 802 he set up a religious capital on a hill at
Phnom Kulen. He seems to have called in artists from Champa and Java, thus
giving to Khmer art a distinct new impetus. At another site, Sambhupura
(Sambor), he built temples with sculpture based upon the old Funan-Chenla
tradition. At Amarendrapura, about 800, he built a brick pyramid—an artificial
mountain—to support a quincunx of temples.

It was Indravarman I (877–889) who laid the foundations of the fabulous

temple complex known as Angkor. His plan was based on a rectangular grid
of reservoirs, canals, and irrigation channels to control the waters of the river
system. Later kings elaborated this original design to a colossal scale.
Indravarman built the first great works of Khmer architecture: the Preah Ko, at
Roluos, and at Angkor his temple mountain, the Bakong, ornamented with
sculpture. Successive kings built their own temple mountains there, including
the Bakheng (c. 893), the Pre Rup (c. 961), the Ta Keo (c. 1000), and the
Baphuon (c. 1050–66), culminating in Angkor Wat, built in the first half of the
12th century by Suryavarman II. After a disastrous invasion by the
Cham, Jayavarman VII undertook the most ambitious scheme of all,
the Mahayana Buddhist Angkor Thom and the Bayon (c. 1200). Thereafter, for
a variety of reasons, including conquest by the Thai, no more large-scale work
was done by Angkor, and the country became Theravada Buddhist. The
modern dynasty adapted remnants of traditional splendour, and the
craftspeople of Cambodia remained capable of work in the same vein.

Hindu Javanese art continued to be made under the eastern

Javanese dynasties (1222–14th century), although their structures were not
nearly as ambitious as the central Javanese works. There are many temple
enclosures and volcanic bathing places with modest stone-cut architecture.
Some of the stone sculptures from these sites, however, are now world famous.
In the 21st century the east Javanese tradition still survives, modified by folk
elements, in Bali, to which the east Javanese Hindu kings retreated in the 16th
century to maintain their religious independence in the face of Muslim
expansion. Muslim monuments in the form of mosques and tombs are found in
various parts of Indonesia. They adapt older forms of Indonesian art.

In 1056 the great Burmese king Anawrahta decreed Theravada Buddhism to be

the religion of his country, replacing earlier cults. He removed the Mon monks
and artists from the capital of the old Mon kingdom in southern Burma,
transporting them to his own northern capital, Pagan. There they built a city,
with many large brick and stucco temples (pagodas) based on Indian patterns,
that remains one of the most impressive sites in Asia. The Mongol invasion of
1287 put a stop to work there.

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The Mon city-states of northeast and central Thailand were annexed to the
Khmer empire in the 11th century, and Khmer imperial shrines were built
there. After the decline of the Khmer and the Mongol invasion of 1287, a
powerful alliance of Thai kings established the first major Thai empire,
retaining Theravada Buddhism as the state religion. Thailand was divided into
two principal regions, northern and southern, with capitals respectively
at Chiang Mai and Ayutthaya, possession of the trade city of Sukhothai being
an issue between them. In all the Thai cities, brick and stucco temples were
built on variants of Indian and Burmese patterns. Many fine bronze Buddha
figures, large and small, were cast in canonical Theravada Buddhist styles.
Most of these figures were accommodated in monastery halls built in
impermanent materials.

In both Burma and Thailand a very large number of monasteries, usually

surrounding one or two principal pagodas, were constructed during the
later Middle Ages and into modern times. The major cities of Rangoon
(now Yangon), Mandalay, and Bangkok contain the most elaborate examples,
although there are many elsewhere. Because the pagodas were repeatedly
enlarged and redecorated and the wooden monastic buildings and their many
smaller stupas continuously reconstructed and renovated, no absolute
chronology has been established for the arts of this epoch.

In Laos and Vietnam, Theravada monasteries, with brick stupas, were similarly
built and rebuilt of wood. An outstanding stupa is the That Luang at Vientiane,
in Laos, founded in 1566 but much restored in the 18th–19th century. In
Vietnam local variants of Chinese styles were adapted during the Middle Ages
to the planning and decoration of palaces and of Confucian, Daoist, and
Buddhist temples.

The ancient styles that prevailed in the Philippines were modified by the

conversion of various groups—the Moro people, especially—to Islam in the
15th–16th century. When, in 1571, the Spanish took control, Manila became
the capital of a Spanish colony, and Roman Catholic Spanish art was adopted
via Mexico. A local school of Baroque church architecture and figurative
sculpture flourished until the 20th century, when architecture embraced a
classical revival. The Philippine Revolution (1896–98), which led to
independence from Spain, was followed by an American colonial presence until
the end of World War II. Architecture consequently mirrored Western stylistic
developments throughout the 20th century. A number of Filipino architects,
however, espoused a style that reflected local traditions and culture, and their
innovative works reshaped the urban landscape. Meanwhile, cross-cultural
Christian iconography and scenes of urban life were just two of the significant
themes pursued by artists in the visual arts.

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Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, spontaneous modern art movements were
temporarily halted with the Japanese occupation of the entire region
during World War II. The occupation led to regional developments
characterized by a search for national and cultural identities, as opposed to
the modernism associated with Western art. Subsequently, the 1960s and ’70s
were marked by intense political crises. Those years represented a period of
experimentation and the search for new types of media, styles, and techniques.
Visual artists chose to seek out new forms of expression; their works of
social realism and activism were an attempt to engage with a wider public. The
1980s ushered in the advent of conceptual art, mixed media,
installation, collage, fibre, video, and performance art.

In the late 20th century some parts of Southeast Asia witnessed the emergence
of a dynamic contemporary art market, characterized by a rapid rise in
international sales and supported by a burgeoning gallery scene. The growth of
major regional art competitions and multicultural biennials and triennials
around the Pacific Rim in the 21st century provided opportunities for artists to
interact and make their mark. Contemporary works from such countries as
Burma, Cambodia, and Laos became more accessible, in part because of
research publications and the cultural interaction that became a main focus of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), an international
organization established in 1967.
Burma

One date is crucial in the art history of Burma: 1056 CE. In that year

King Anawrahta of Pagan decreed Theravada Buddhism to be the state religion
of all Burma. This signaled the unity of what had been a divided
country, consummating tendencies apparent in earlier Burmese history.
6th–11th century

The only major Burmese art known to scholars is based upon Indian and Sri
Lankan Buddhist art. In the period preceding Anawrahta’s decree there had
been three major historical eras in Burma, the first two of which produced
Indianized art known to scholars only fragmentarily: the rule of the Mon
kingdom of the lower Irrawaddy (9th–11th century),
the contemporaneous dominion of the Pyu people in central and Upper Burma,
and the subsequent decisive incursion of Burmese people from the northeast
(11th century).

The earliest concrete evidence of Indian culture in Burma is a Buddhist

inscription from Pyè (Prome) dated c. 500 CE. This and later inscriptions from
the same area were cut probably in the western Mon kingdom, which followed
Theravada Buddhism and was confederated with the Theravada Buddhist

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eastern Dvaravati city-states (see below Thailand and Laos) in southern
Thailand and part of Cambodia (6th–12th century CE).

During this same period in Upper Burma, the people called Pyu, speaking
a Tibeto-Burman language and perhaps originating in Central Asia, built cities
whose magnificence was known to contemporary compilers of the Chinese Tang
dynasty history. In the 8th century one city was recorded as being some 50-
odd miles (80 km) in circumference, containing 100 Buddhist monasteries
lavishly painted and decorated with gold and silver. The Pyu were in direct
contact with northeast India, where various forms of Mahayana Buddhism,
which embraced philosophies and rituals unacceptable to the Theravada,
flourished; their Ari priesthood was later proscribed by Anawrahta. Their
capital city, Shri Kshetra (modern Hmawza, near Pyè), which was once larger
than even Pagan or Mandalay, was partly excavated. Three huge Buddhist
stupas—one 150 feet (about 46 metres) high—survive there. They illustrate the
pattern from which all later Burmese stupas were developed. Enshrining
revered relics of Buddhist saints, they consist of tall solid brick cylinders
mounted on shallow circular stepped plinths and crowned by what was
probably a tapering bell-like pinnacle. Other excavated halls, one on a square
plinth with four entrance doors, follow Indian examples. A few Hindu fragments
survive as well.

The Pyu were conquered by a neighbouring kingdom, probably before 900 CE.

During the following century their terrain and cities were infiltrated by the
Burmese people. These people were of common ancestry with the Thai and
northern Vietnamese and were probably on the move under pressure of the
Chinese colonization of their home terrain around the Gulf of Tonkin. They
were converted to Buddhism by the Pyu and later by the western Mon, but they
never completely abandoned their own original cult of nature spirits, known
today as the nats. The nats are a mixed collection of spirits that act
supernaturally, each according to its character. They were worshipped with
orgiastic ceremonies and trance rites of spiritual possession. Certain
mountaintops were sacred to them. Even in the 21st century the nats exerted a
powerful influence on the lives of the ordinary people. Every village had its
own nat house—a fragile pavilion built into a tree after the pattern of the tribal
house, and adorned with shreds of coloured cloth, glass, and other offerings.
The Buddhist temple in Burma is conceived essentially as an
enormous nat house, a section of the domain of the spiritual located upon
earth. And, since the Buddha was adopted as the last and greatest of the nats,
the same symbols of supernatural splendour that adorn the nats adorn the
Buddha’s images, and a nat-like spirituality attaches to the ubiquitous monks
in whom the presence of Buddhism is experienced as an everyday reality.
11th century to the present

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When King Anawrahta ascended to the throne, he captured the Mon
city Thaton in Lower Burma and carried off its royal family, many skilled
craftspeople, and most of the Theravada monks to his own northern city
of Pagan. The king recognized the superior culture of the Mon captives; he
established their main form of Buddhism by decree and gave them the task of
organizing and civilizing the new united Burmese kingdom and producing for it
a Buddhist art. Under Anawrahta’s successor, links with the Buddhist
homeland were forged. Embassies were sent to Bodh Gaya, in Indian Bihar,
and the Mahabodhi temple there—marking the spot where the Buddha
achieved enlightenment—was restored with Burmese money and somewhat in
Burmese taste. A smaller copy, with its large rectangular block crowned by the
characteristic pyramidal storied tower, was built at Anawrahta’s Pagan. It is
there that the greatest achievements of western Mon art—a splendid profusion
of architecture and decorative work—are probably to be found. After 1287,
when Burma was sacked and garrisoned by the Mongols, new construction at
Pagan was virtually abandoned.

In Pagan (founded c. 849), architecture is the dominant art. Except for the big
brick icons, mostly ruined, sculpture and painting play a subordinate role.
Pagan contains the largest surviving group of buildings in brick and plaster of
the many thousands that once stood in various parts of Southeast Asia. The
remains at the site are a variety of religious buildings in varying states of
preservation. The inscriptions they bear indicate that royal devotees often
turned their palaces over for religious use, so it is likely that palace and
monastic architecture were very close in style. A few standing structures
belong to the period before Anawrahta. Some were inspired by Mahayana
Buddhism and one—the Nat Hlaung Gyaung (c. 931)—by Hinduism. Flanking
the Sarabha Gate is a pair of small nat shrines with pointed open windows,
which may be the earliest of their kind in Burma.

The library, built during Anawrahta’s reign to house the books of one of the
Buddhist monasteries, is one of the most important buildings in Pagan. It is
rectangular with a series of five sloping stone roofs crowned by a rectangular
tower finial. The concave contours of the roofs are characteristic of much
Burmese architecture. The eaves and corners of all the tiers are adorned with
the typical Pagan flame ornament, or antefix.

There are other buildings of the same general type among the ruins of Pagan.
By far the most numerous and important, however, are the buildings—
called cetiyas—that combine the attributes of stupa and shrine. These have a
history and a line of evolution of their own, which can be traced from the Pyu
stupa to the huge structural temple. The typical stupa, derived from the
early medieval Indian form, is a tall structure consisting of a solid dome set on
a tiered square plinth (often with miniature stupas at the corners), around
which the faithful may perambulate. The dome is surmounted by a harmika,

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which resembles the small railed enclosure found on the oldest Indian stupas.
In Burmese stupas, however, the harmika becomes a decorated cubical die,
above which is a circular pointed spire. In memory of its distant origin in India,
the spire is horizontally flanged (rimmed) with moldings in a series of honorific
umbrellas of decreasing size. In later practice, harmika and umbrella spire
become a single architectural unit. The Burmese stupa dome, based on the tall
cylindrical Pyu prototype, has a spreading concave foot resembling a bell rim.
The Lokananda and Shwesandaw at Pagan are two well-known examples.
Because they were later coated with plaster, the finely detailed brick carving
characteristic of early Pagan architecture was obscured. Such carving is
beautifully exemplified in the Seinnyet temple at Myinpagan (11th century).

Shwesandaw cetiya, Pagan, Myanmar (Burma)

Shwesandaw cetiya in Pagan, Myanmar (Burma).
© beibaoke/Shutterstock.com
Anawrahta’s type of cetiya followed the general form of the early Pyu stupa. The
main point of evolution was in the progressive elaboration of the terraced
plinths on which the dome stands. The plinths became virtually sacred
mountains, with a series of staircases running from terrace to terrace up each
of the four sides. Perhaps inspired by vanished work in contemporary late
11th-century India, the Burmese began to open up the interior of the terraced
base of the stupas with wide corridors and porticos, converting it into a roofed
temple. The cylinder of the stupa dome was carried down through this temple
space to its floor. Four large Buddha icons were added to the lower part of the
dome, facing the four directions. Once this conception had evolved, it was
possible to create around the central stupa a broad circuit of roofed enclosures,
which from the outside would still suggest the traditional pattern of the stupa
standing on its raised terraces, while the interior could be used for ceremonial

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rites, as in a true temple. Sculpture and painting, decorating the internal halls,
corridors, and doorways, recounted the life of the Buddha and presented the
example of his previous virtuous incarnations. The most famous example of
this type of cetiya is the great Ananda temple at Pagan (dedicated 1090). It is
still in use, unlike most of the old temples there, and so is kept in repair; it is
painted a blazing white with lime stucco, which obscured the finer detail of its
old architecture. Its plan is square, with a broad four-pillared porch hall added
to all four doors in the four faces of the square. Its tower is a curvilinear
pyramid resembling eastern Indian Hindu temple towers, and its enormous
brick mass is pierced with two circuits of vaulted corridors. The sloping curved
terrace roofs have an elegant overall concave profile and flame antefixes along
all the eaves.

As time went on, Burmese brick and stucco architecture developed principally
through the stiffening of masses into rectangular blocks and through the
elaboration of its ornament. The 13th-century Gawdawpalin temple at Pagan,
for example, consists of a rectangular hall with a large closed entrance porch,
The hall is surmounted by a tall but narrow second story whose decoration
repeats that of the lower story. The whole building is crowned by a four-faced
tower with a curved profile. Multiple moldings and decorative motifs are used
as outlining elements and the doors are framed in elaborate upward-flaring
hooded porches.

Ananda Temple and Thatpyinnyu Temple

Ananda Temple (left) and Thatpyinnyu Temple (centre), Pagan, Myanmar.
Tim Hall/Getty Images
Until the Mongol conquest in 1287, much excellent work seems to have been
done at Pagan. It is, however, impossible to form an adequate idea of the older
styles of temple architecture at other sites in Burma, such

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as Yangon or Mandalay. Whereas most of the temples of Pagan were
abandoned early on, so that even though ruined they show their original
characteristics, temples in modern cities were repeatedly and drastically
restored. Old stupas may have as many as eight successive casings of brick
and stucco, temple walls and doors were constantly torn down and rebuilt, and
stucco surfaces may be renewed almost annually. At the big stupa sites huge
numbers of pagodas were constantly falling into decay, and new ones were
built at great speed. Among them are variants, whose evolution cannot at be
traced, on the basic pattern of the long tapering bell, with a variety of
transverse moldings, standing perhaps on a recessed plinth. Many were
covered quickly with stucco ornament. Ornate flaring porches and flame finials
were added to gates, wall ends, and eaves corners. A tapering slenderness is
the outstanding characteristic of all the different types.

The monastic architecture—patterned on the hall, with its elaborate doors—

that surrounds the great stupa sites of Yangon and Mandalay is mainly in
wood, built by simple pillar and architrave construction. The roofs are
steeply gabled, with multiple gables riding over each other on immense carved
pillars in the larger halls. The angles between pillar and architrave and the
edges of roof gables, tiers, and terraces are filled with cartouches (scroll-shaped
ornaments) of pierced work, often lacquered and gilt; thus, the whole building
may be decorated in repetitive curlicues. All this ornament has an otherworldly
or spiritual significance. Throughout Burma similar buildings can be found,
but, while many have been listed, they have yet to be surveyed. There may well
be a substantial Chinese influence in the construction of some of the wooden
halls and pavilions.

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Shwe Dagon (Golden Pagoda), Yangon, Myanmar, c. 15th century.
R. Manley/Shostal Associates
Pagan contains the largest corpus of mural paintings found in Southeast Asia.
Although the prime purpose of murals was didactic, decorative elements and
the placement of sculptured Buddha images blend in architectural terms to
define a space. Reasonably well-preserved examples of mural painting based on
Theravadan texts include the Myinkaba Kubyauk-gyi, Loka-hteik-pan,
Nagayon, and Wetkyi-in Kubyauk-gyi. A few temples with murals that testify
to Mahayana and Vajrayana influences—e.g., Abe-ya-dana-hpaya, Nanda-ma-
nya-hpaya, and Tha-man-hpaya—are evidence that supports a picture of
syncretism with the varying sects coexisting throughout the period.

Large numbers of high-fired earthenware, lead-glazed Jataka plaques and tiles

for the period also follow Indian artistic conventions. An impressive series of
plaques depicting some 550 Jataka tales can be found on the Ananda temple
built by Kyanzittha. Each plaque portrays a core event or episode in the story
with the legend written in Mon, or Old Burmese, identifying both the scene and
Jataka number.

Pagan Buddha and religious images—like the mural paintings of the 11th

century—were guided by the canons established in the 8th–12th century art
of Pala in eastern India. At its peak, the Pala style evinces a boldness of form
and profusion of ornamental detail. Pagan Buddha images in bronze are widely
considered the masterpieces of Burmese art. The bhumisparsha (earth-witness
or earth-touching) mudra, symbolizing the moment of enlightenment, becomes

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the pervasive iconographic attribute of images during the period. The colossal
Buddha images enshrined in the temples were usually built of brick and
finished in stucco, gilded, and ornamented. Such work was still carried out in
the Mandalay area in the 21st century and exported throughout the region.
About the 17th century a new style of representing the Buddha emerged.
Referred to as the Mandalay style, it was often rendered in marble, and its form
continues to dominate.

From the 14th to the 19th century, despite Burma’s complex dynastic history,
the king and his court provided the main source of patronage for royal and
religious architecture. From about 1700 to 1850 Burma excelled in decorative
court arts. These are usually ornate and elaborate—a characteristic that
continued into the 21st century. Among the greatest artistic
achievements, lacquerware in particular was highly prized in the West;
decorative gold and silver wares were a testament to the opulence of the courts;
and Burmese woodcarving was highly praised for its technical skill, freedom,
and spatial ordering.

In architecture, the multitiered spirelike roofs (pyathat) that replicate the

Buddhist cosmos were reserved for monasteries, palaces, and royal barges. By
the early 17th century, intricate wood carved pediments and pilasters of
doorways also came to be adorned with pyathat and ornate foliage (kanok)
carving. The 19th-century wooden Shwenandaw monastery in Mandalay
reveals a wide range of Burmese motifs and ornamentation, many of which
may date to the 18th century. The carved wooden screens, panels, and
brackets used inside temple halls are often decorated with carved depictions of
the last 10 Jatakas. The importance attached to imposing
gilded sadaik (manuscript chests and cabinets), found in monastery libraries
and pagodas and used to store sacred Buddhist texts, testifies to the excellence
of the sculptors’ artistry. The gilt gesso (paste used for making reliefs) facings
of those chests carry the schematic style of relief sculpture.

Wood carvings for devotional use include Buddha images and figures from
Buddhist lore, such as the Buddha’s disciples, Sariputta and Moggallana.
From Buddhist cosmology mythical kinnara and kinnari creatures, possessing
male or female human faces and torsos and the legs and wings of a bird,
continued to be widely popular. Nat propitiation forms an integral part of
Burmese culture. Seen as nature spirits, mythological guardians, or humans
who have died unnatural deaths, the depiction of nat images in wood is
widespread. Although nat figures are carved to be placed mainly in
the pagoda precinct, a number of nats and guardian figures are found in the
home. Frequently depicted is Mahagiri, who holds a fan to keep at bay the
flames in which he eventually perishes. Pegu Maw Daw is the human mother, a
queen who wears a buffalo headdress in memory of the buffalo who raised her

127
son. These figures are a testimony to the enduring popularity of folklore
and legends among the Burmese people.

During the Alaungpaya dynasty (1752–1885) the techniques of European

painting were established among the court atelier, including the use of linear
perspective, chiaroscuro, and sfumato (the application of paint with an
indistinct outline). The tradition of folding books, called parabaiks, appears to
date from the 15th century, possibly earlier. Examples from the 19th century
include illustrations depicting Buddhist themes, splendid court ceremonies,
and scenes of everyday life. Noted court painters of the 19th century—Hsaya
Chone, Hsaya Myo, and Hsaya Saw—turned to watercolour and took Burmese
aristocratic life as their subject. It is probable that Western art made its impact
by way of illustrations in British books and magazines as well as through
Indian artists trained by British instructors.

In the 1920s the artists U Ba Nyan and U Ba Zaw studied Western-style oil

paintingin London, influencing a generation on their return in the 1930s.
Throughout the 20th century, however, such artists as Saya Saung, U Ngwe
Gaing, U Ba Kyi, U San Win, and U Saw Maung were trained in the master-
student tradition, which stretches back to the Pagan period. Their subjects,
like most of the country’s contemporary artists, include religious life,
landscapes populated with pagodas, and portraits of the large
monastic community. In the early 1990s Min Wae Aung’s depictions of
Buddhist clergy in formation became popular in the West.

Interesting regional types of Burmese art are those of

the Shan and Karen peoples, who live in the relatively remote northern hills.
These areas have often produced extremely beautiful types of domestic and
religious architecture, made of wood, on stone bases. They are a simpler and
more austere version of the ancient pattern that underlies the halls and
pavilions of southern temple buildings, with their steep gabled roofs. The
peoples of the north also produce a variety of decorative arts. Notable among
them are the textiles, which are characterized by banding, checkering, and
triangular counterchanging of brilliant colours set off against black. The woven
shoulder bags, particularly, are well known in the West.
Thailand and Laos

Dvaravati Mon kingdom: 6th–11th century

Archaeology has recovered in central Thailand substantial glimpses of the

magnificent early layer of Indianized culture, which includes a religious art
that was produced between the 6th and 11th centuries by the eastern Mon
city-states known as Dvaravati. The art was created predominantly to
serve Theravada Buddhism. Remains of Dvaravati architecture include stupa

128
bases: notable examples include the Wat Phra Meru in Nagara Pathama
(Nakhon Pathom) and others at Ku Bua and U Thong, some of which have
sculpted elephants supporting their bases, following a pattern that originated
in Sri Lanka. The plinths of Buddhist assembly halls, which existed near the
solid monumental structures, have also been discovered. Many terra-cotta and
stucco fragments of decorative surface designs and celestial figures have also
been found. The Wat Pra Meru, on a plan similar to that of the Ananda temple
at Pagan in Burma (see above Burma), probably antedates the latter’s
foundation (c. 1090). It is likely that many other ancient monuments are
encased in later stupas that are still being used for religious purposes, for it
was probably customary not to destroy an old sacred monument but to encase
it in a new shell, maybe several times over, and perhaps to construct a small
external replica of the encased original alongside.

Nakhon Pathom: Phra Pathom

Phra Pathom stupa, Nakhon Pathom, Thai.
Ahoerstemeier
At many sites, especially Lop Buri, Ayutthaya, and U Thong, fine Dvaravati
sculptures have been found among the architectural remains. Particularly
important are the seated and standing Buddha figures in stone and bronze.
Many of the faces have characteristic Mon features, with lips turned outward
(everted) and downward-curved eyelids marked by double channels. Some of
these Dvaravati images may well have furnished models for later Khmer art in
Cambodia.

129
Dvaravati sculpture shows close relations with several Indian styles, notably
those of Amaravati, Gupta, post-Gupta, and Pala Bihar. It also was probably
influenced strongly by the art of the enigmatic kingdom
of Shrivijaya in Sumatra as well as by central Javanese types (see
below Indonesia). One outstanding masterpiece from Chaiya, of Dvaravati date,
may well be a work produced in Shrivijaya. It is a bronze torso and head of
a bodhisattva, for which a mid-8th-century date is suggested. The body and
face are modeled with a plastic and delicate sensuousness, and the elaborate
necklaces, crowns, earrings, and armlets are beautifully chased (decoratively
indented by hammering). The Shrivijaya origin is made more likely by stylistic
reminiscences of the sculpture of contemporary Indonesia, which was also
under Sumatran inspiration.
Khmer conquest and Tai immigration: 11th–13th century

In the 11th century Dvaravati was captured by the Khmer of Cambodia and
became a province of their empire. A number of Khmer shrines, probably
intended as focuses of the Khmer Hindu dynastic cult, were built in Siam
(Thailand). At Phimai (Bimaya) was the most important full-fledged Khmer
temple, where one of the personal cult statues of the Khmer king Jayavarman
II (see below Cambodia and Vietnam) was found, together with bronze images,
some of Vajrayana Buddhist deities. At Lop Buri the Phra Prang Sam Yot is
perhaps the best surviving example in brick and stucco of Khmer provincial art
in Thailand, its tall towers having complex rebated (blunted) corners and its
porticoes high ornate pediments (the triangular gable over porticoes, doors,
and windows). Wat Kukut, at Lamphun, built by a Dvaravati Mon king about
1130, represents an adaptation of the Khmer stepped-pyramid temple base as
pattern for the temple itself. The niches on its terraces are filled with images in
a deliberately archaistic revival of the old Mon style.

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bronze finial
Angkorian-style bronze finial from Cambodia, c. 1200; in the Honolulu
Academy of Arts.
Photograph by honolulu0919. Honolulu Academy of Arts, gift of the Academy's
Volunteer Fund, 1989 (5804.1)
During the period when the Khmer were taking over the southern Mon region
of Thailand, the northern region was falling under the domination of
immigrant Tai peoples. The Tai were a branch of the migrating population who
invaded Burma as the Burmese and of the Sinicized Vietnamese who were then
pushing southward into what is now Vietnam. The Tai seem to have professed
an animist nature religion, resembling the early form of the Burmese cult of
the nats (see above Burma). This whole group of peoples originated most
probably as a tribal population in the region of Tonkin and Guangzhou
(Canton). In the course of their southward migrations, they probably played an
important role, as yet unclear, in a kingdom called Nanchao, in what is now
the Chinese province of Yunnan. The rulers of this kingdom seem to have
followed a Mahayana form of Buddhism, including the cult of a bodhisattva as
personal patron of the king. Several smallish bronze icons of a bodhisattva with
a nude torso and a strap round the upper belly are known from Nanchao, in a
style reminiscent of the later Pallava art of the east coast of peninsular India.
The date of these images is still uncertain. Tai kingdoms were gradually
established farther and farther south. Some of their tribes gained experience of
administrative techniques by living within the boundaries of the Khmer empire,
with their own chieftains under Khmer officials. When the Khmer power was
broken in the 13th century, the Tai moved into central and southern Siam,
intermarrying with the Mon.

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Bodhisattva from Nanchao, an ancient Tai kingdom (now in Yunnan province,
China), bronze, 13th century; in the British Museum, London. Height 44 cm.
Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum
The Tai people normally built with perishable materials, wood and bamboo in
particular. Their animist religion, which has no canonical group resembling the
Burmese nats, was still alive in the 21st century. The spirits of trees needed to
be pacified, and the ancestors could be powerful helpers. Shamans, in a state
of trance, make contact with the spirit world to perform good or evil magic. In
the wooden high-gabled houses of the northern Tai (Chiengmai province),
ornate lintels are carved with floral relief designs to sanctify and potentiate the
inner domestic part of the house where the domestic spirits live. The animist
religion gave ground partially to Buddhism, which was
gradually assimilated among the people, and at some date, as yet uncertain,
was adopted by the greater Tai kings as a dynastic religion. With the spread of
Buddhism a special religious architecture in brick and stucco was established.
The Thai kingdom: 13th–17th century

During most of its history, Thailand was divided into two fairly distinct regions,
a northern and a southern, the capital of the north at Chiang Mai, the capital
of the south at Ayutthaya. Between the two lies the great trade-route city
of Sukhothai, possession of which fluctuated between the north and the south.
Sukhothai seems to have been the principal focus and source of
Buddhist culture in Siam, for it retained direct touch with Sri Lanka, which,
after the decline of Buddhism in India in the 12th century, became the
principal home of Theravada Buddhism. By the 15th century the difficult art of
casting large-scale Buddha figures in bronze had been mastered in the north of
Siam as well as in the south.

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seated Buddha
Seated Buddha, gilt bronze sculpture from Sukhothai, Thailand, 14th–early
15th century; in the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Photograph by L. Mandle. Honolulu Academy of Arts, gift of John Young, 1991
(6723.1)
Sculpture

The Thai kings made repeated attempts to “purify”

their conservative Theravada strain of Buddhism, importing patterns of art
along with texts and learned monks from Sri Lanka and trying to wean their
people from worship of the spirits. To retain the greatest spiritual potency,
Buddha icons in Thai temples had to be as close in type as possible to a great
original prototype that Buddhist tradition believed had been made during the
lifetime of the Buddha—in practice, this meant the types the local craftspeople
knew as the oldest and most authentic. There were at least three major
successive efforts by Thai kings to establish and distribute an “authentic”
canon for the Buddha icons, which were their prime artistic concern. Each type
that became canonical and was known to be magically effective was imitated
repeatedly. For it was regarded as an act of merit simply to multiply images of
the Buddha, whether they were to be installed in temples or not; hence, in
addition to icons, enormous numbers of small images—made of many
materials, from bronze, silver, stone, and wood to terra-cotta—were kept in
temple storehouses. The images followed canonical patterns established for the
major temple icons.

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Since their work had to be as similar as possible to the oldest sacred images of
which they knew, the Buddhist sculptors in Siam adhered to strict formulas
and diagrams. Artistic development was never a part of their purpose, though
of course gradual change did occur. There is no tradition in Theravada Siam in
any way resembling the traditions of Mahayana art in, say, Cambodia or
Indonesia, which encouraged artists to explore the possibilities of their
mediums to express developing religious conceptions. Thus, Thai
Buddhist sculpture consisted almost entirely of careful repetitions of the
standardized types, which tended naturally, despite the artist’s desire to
capture an authentic sense of style, to lose their older vitality. It also happened
that the three main canonical patterns often lost their individuality, blending
into each other.

The first canonical types were the Sukhothai, which seem to have been evolved
in Sukhothai as an attempt to capture the quality of early-medieval Sri Lankan
images and elements from Dvaravati sculpture. The developed versions of these
types are marked by an extremely smooth, rounded modeling of the body and
face, without any clearly defined planes. The outlines of hair, eyebrows, lips,
and fingers are elegantly recurved, or S-curved, and the head is crowned by a
tall pointed flame finial. The entire figure gives an impression of great elegance.
Full-fledged Sukhothai images of the full-round walking Buddha—a Sukhothai
invention—emphasize a kind of swaying, sinuous, boneless grace in the
execution of the legs and arms. One of the most impressive colossal images of
the type is the brick and stucco icon at the Wat Mahathat, Sawankhalok,
another Sukhothai technical forte, dating probably to the 14th century. This
type of image remained the most popular in Siam, and an enormous number of
imitations, of all dates, are preserved, many in Western collections.

Buddha statue, Wat Mahathat, Sukhothai, Thailand

Buddha statue at Wat Mahathat, Sukhothai, Thailand.

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Top Photo Group/Thinkstock
Perhaps the Buddha types most successful aesthetically were those called
after U Thong. They were produced originally in the southern capital
of Ayutthaya, which took over Sukhothai in 1349, and represent a fusion of the
Sukhothai types with vestiges of Khmer and Theravada Dvaravati traditions,
whose Buddha types had been marked by a strong Mon sense of squared-off
design and cubic volume. The latter may have been influential because they
seemed to incorporate an older and more authentic tradition, since they were
based upon patterns developed in eastern India, the homeland of Buddhism. In
the U Thong style the sinuous linear curves, loops, and dry ridges of the pure
Sukhothai patterns are suppressed, and genuine modeling, with clearly defined
planes and volumes, appears. In the northern kingdom a version of the
Sukhothai type gained currency in the late 14th century. When, in the middle
of the 15th century, King Tiloka of the northern kingdom reestablished contact
with Sri Lanka, images seem to have been imported directly from that country.
They must have shown clearly how far the Sukhothai types had departed from
the type used in the Buddhist homeland, because the third Siamese icon
pattern, known as the lion type, attempted to recapture the stern simplicity of
the genuine Sinhalese images. Most of the best examples were made between
1470 and 1565. Limbs and bodies are given a massive cylindrical strength, and
the Sukhothai elegance is eliminated. It seems, however, that the native Thai
genius is for the sinuous and unplastic curve, which may have expressed for
them the same spiritual unworldliness as it did in Burmese ornament. Thus, in
later examples reminiscent of the lion type, the curvilinear patterns of
the Sukhothai style reassert themselves with more or less emphasis, and by
the end of the 16th century the lion type had lost its distinguishing features
and merged into the run of Sukhothai patterns.
Architecture and painting

In the beginning of the 21st century, research concerning the history

of architecture during the early period of Thai supremacy was in its formative
stages. Many monasteries that either originated or were renewed about the
13th century contain stupas, or cheddis, but most of the monasteries
themselves have been repeatedly overworked. Building complexes seem to have
developed by accretion rather than by the studied working out of space
articulations. The oldest building in Ayutthaya, dating from the early 13th
century, is the Wat Bhuddai Svarya, a towered shrine, approached by a
columned hall. From the late 14th century onward, Sukhothai influence seems
to have predominated everywhere. The architectural types included a bell-
shaped reliquary stupa with a circular flanged base and onion finials,
reminiscent of combined Sri Lankan and Burmese patterns; a stupa raised
upon a cylindrical shrine as its drum; and a shrine with a plinth faced with
images (usually later additions) above which rise one or more pyramidal towers
reminiscent of the tower of the Mahabodhi temple at Bodh Gaya in Bihar,
India. An example of the third architectural type is King Tiloka’s late 15th-

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century Wat Chet Yot at Chiang Mai, which has one large and four smaller
pyramids mounted on a main block. The Thai kings also adopted something of
the personal funeral cult of Khmer Angkor (see below Cambodia and Vietnam),
for a custom grew of building bell-shaped brick stupas—which had earlier been
used only for the relics of Buddhist saints—as the kings’ tombs, each
approached by a colonnaded hall and surrounded by smaller stupas or
shrines. In many of the brick and plaster or wooden monastic buildings of
more recent centuries, such as the Wat Po in Bangkok, one can trace the
distant influence of the Khmer styles of Angkor. Tall gabled roofs, with steps
and overlaps, the gables adorned with flame finials, are typical, exemplified by
the Water Pavilion at Bang Pa-in.

Wat Chet Yot, Chiang Mai, Thailand

Wat Chet Yot at Chiang Mai, Thailand, late 15th century.
© John Elk—The Image Bank/Getty Images
Thai painting of the early period (13th–16th century) was devoted to the
canonical iconography of the Theravada, its fluent and relatively unschematic
outline showing that it retained much of the original inspiration visible in the
earlier work at Burmese Pagan (see above Burma). The oldest examples of Thai
painting are the much-ruined frescoes in the Silpa cave, Yala, and some
engraved panels from Wat Si Chum, Sukhothai, dated to 1287. Later paintings
(dating to the 1420s) in the inner chambers of the Wat Rat Burana and Wat
Mahathat at Ayutthaya show strong Chinese and perhaps Khmer influence in
their high perspectives and landscape backgrounds with animals, combined
with the native Thai clear outlines and bright, flat colours. By the 17th century
at, for example, the Wat Yai Suwannaram at Phet Buri, large mural
compositions—such as an elaborate scene of demons worshipping the Buddha
—were being undertaken. In this later painting, theatrical stereotypes from the
Thai dance-drama exert a strong influence in the rendering of figures.

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Water pavilion, Bang Pa-in, Thailand
Water pavilion at Bang Pa-in, Thailand, 1294.
© l3ankadi—iStock/Getty Images
18th century to the present

In the 18th century the Burmese invaded and conquered Siam. The Burmese
king—in expiation, it is said, of his war guilt—ordered the construction of many
Buddhist buildings in the current Burmese style (see above Burma). These
made their impact on Thai art, and the lustrous gilding and inlay characteristic
of late Burmese ornament were widely adopted. When the capital was moved to
the present Bangkok, in 1782, large pagodas were built and filled with rows of
images, many in gilt wood. A highly ornate interpretation of older Burmese
decorative styles, featuring curved “oxhorn” projections, blunted the edge of
architectural and sculptural quality. In the painting of wooden panels, some of
them votive, and of historical manuscripts, the Thai retained a good deal of
their older vigour. The figures illustrating legend and history are based upon
the unworldly stereotypes of the court dance.

137
Thai painted lacquer panel of a court scene, Bangkok style, mid-19th century;
in the collection of Prince Piya Rangsit, Bangkok. Height 50 cm.
Holle Bildarchiv, Baden-Baden
In addition to the incorporation of European motives, many buildings and their
ornamentation in Bangkok have a strongly Chinese flavour. This is attributable
partly to the influence of the large expatriate Chinese population living there
and partly to the influence of earlier expatriate Chinese craftspeople. The early
20th-century Pathamacetiya at Nagara Pathama (Nakhon Pathom), which is
entirely orange, is a fine example of the many cheddis. Some tiles were
probably imported from China, but others were descendants of the fine pottery
that was produced at the kilns of Sawankhalok during the 14th and 15th
centuries by expatriate Chinese craftspeople. This pottery replicated in its own
materials Chinese Yuan dynasty (1279–1368) Cizhou and celadon wares
(stonewares and porcelain with a glaze developed by the Chinese) with
underglaze ornament and blue or brown painted decoration. Similar wares
were made in the 15th century at kilns at Sukhothai and at Chiang Mai. Later,
during the 18th and 19th centuries, brilliant Ayutthaya figure designs in
polychrome were applied to rice bowls and other vessels.

Vessel and cover in the shape of a sacred bird, gold decorated with filigree work
and inlaid with rubies and imitation emeralds, 19th century; in the Victoria
and Albert Museum, London. Height 41.5 cm.
A.C. Cooper/The Victoria and Albert Museum, London

138
Temple painting in Thailand was considered to be the highest form of
Thai graphic art until the end of the 19th century, when it went into decline.
From the reign of King Mongkut (1851–68), Thailand embarked upon a
program of modernization, in part a ploy to avoid European colonization.
King Chulalongkorn (1868–1910) traveled to Europe in 1897 and 1907, and
this led to a number of Western architects and artists working in Bangkok.
Phra Soralaklikit accompanied the king on his second European visit and
became the first Thai artist to study abroad, specializing in portraiture in a
Western academic style.

At the School of Fine Arts (later Silpakorn University), Corrado Feroci, an

Italian who traveled to Thailand in 1924 and adopted Thai nationality and the
name Silpa Bhirasri, taught along classical European lines. His teachings were
subsequently challenged and debated in Thai art circles, producing the first
generation of modern artists from the 1930s to the 1950s. Though their art
was dismissed as awkward and derivative, some pieces, particularly the
figurative sculptural works by Paitoon Muangsomboon and Chailood
Nimsamer, display both innovation and technical virtuosity.

In the 1970s many Thai artists produced socialist and activist art in response

to the troubled events of the decade. In the early 1970s Pratuang Emjaroen
founded the Dhamma Group, which attempted to incorporate Buddhist
philosophy into their visual repertoire. Thawan Duchanee’s visual
reinterpretation of Buddhist scriptures established his international reputation
and considerable notoriety at home. The interior murals of Chalermchai
Kositpipat and Pany Vijinthanasarn at Wat Buddhapadipa in London were
painted between 1984 and 1992 and are the first of their kind in their
recreation of traditional Buddhist iconographic themes in a modern setting.
Although their allegorical interpretations largely adhere to existing
iconographic conventions, the depiction of Buddha caused some reaction from
the monks. Nirvana—which is “nothing yet everything”—is traditionally not
physically portrayed. Both artists use a wide range of multicultural imagery
employing a colour scheme not seen in traditional wat painting. Their works
represent a shift away from the styles of the previous decades, which were
dominated by abstraction and modernism. Among the many artists who
embraced this revivalist art form, sometimes called “neo-traditional,” were
Chalood Nimsamer, Angkarn Kalayanapongsa, Preecha Thaothong, and Surasit
Saowakong. Since the 1980s, diversity and eclecticism have marked Thai
artists’ response to their environment, with the poet-painter Vasan Sitthiket
typical of artists who choose to redefine tradition by focusing
on peripheral concepts within contemporary society.
Laos

The kingdom of Lan Xang (Laos) was founded in the mid-14th century and was
ruled by Buddhist Thai. At the northern capital, Luang Prabang, the influence

139
of the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai predominated; in the southern
capital, Vientiane, a mixture of Ayutthaya and Khmer motives prevailed.
Laotian painting and architecture remain an under-researched area of
Southeast Asian culture. Only a few temples in stucco and brick survived into
the 21st century, with wood being the most widely used architectural medium.
The most impressive single monument, the brick and stucco That Luang in
Vientiane, founded in 1566 but much restored, is a stupa, shaped as a tall
four-faced dome on a square plinth enclosed in a court. The dome is crowned
with an ornate spire and encircled by a row of similarly shaped spires. The
architecture of monastic halls also follows the Thai pattern; very steep
multiple-gabled roofs, gently curved and overhung with long eaves, are carried
on brick or wooden pillars and adorned with flame finials. Buddha figures,
preserved in some of the monasteries, are based on northern Thai versions
of Sukhothai types. Some may be as early as the 17th century. The schematic
paintings on monastery walls are in versions of the later Thai styles. In the
northwest a strong influence from late Burmese art can be found in Buddhist
images made to serve a religion that was far closer to the original Thai animism
than to true Buddhism. Fine examples of Lao Buddha images dating from the
15th to the 19th century can be found in Wat Phra Kaeo in Bangkok and Wat
Sisaket in Vientiane. Certain mudras appear unique to Lao Buddhist
sculpture. In one renowned gesture, known as “Calling for Rain,” both arms are
held stiffly at the side of the body with fingers pointing downward.

That Luang stupa, Vientiane, Laos

That Luang stupa, Vientiane, Laos.
© Ratnakorn Piyasirisorost—Moment/Getty Images

140
Cambodia and Vietnam

Paleolithic tools similar to types found in India have been found

in Cambodia and Vietnam, and it is possible to trace the movement of
population or culture groups, some of whom probably migrated onward by sea
from Southeast Asia into the islands. The important group of speakers of Mon-
Khmer languages may conceivably have been the people who produced
the megalithic monuments in Cambodia and Laos, which include colossal
stone burial urns, dolmens, and menhirs, perhaps associated with the many
circular earth platforms awaiting excavation (see above General development of
Southeast Asian art). Probably contemporaneous, at least in part, with
the Neolithic Mon-Khmer culture is the culture known by the name of its
richest, most northerly site, Dong Son, on the coast of the Gulf of Tonkin in
northern Vietnam. It seems probable that the chief influences on this culture
came from southern China. Many sites, ranging in date from about the 4th to
the 1st century BCE, stretch southward from the coast of Vietnam, as far as
northern New Guinea. The islands of Indonesia and parts of what is now
Malaysia may have been the principal location of the Dong Son culture.

The most impressive bronze objects produced by this culture are large drums,
which seem sometimes to have been buried with the dead. Splendid examples
have been found in Java and Bali (see below Indonesia). These and many other
bronze objects, such as superb funeral urns with relief ornament based on
squared hooks, lamp holders, dagger hilts in the form of human figures, and
other weapons, are of extremely high quality. Their ornament was produced by
the Chinese casting technique of incising the patterns into the negative mold
that was to receive the molten bronze. Much of it suggests a parallel version of
contemporary Chinese ornament of the Qin period (221–206 BCE). From the
figures and objects represented in this bronze work, it seems that the Dong
Son culture had much in common with that of some of the peoples of
the Melanesian islands today. The culture knew large seagoing canoes, houses
similar in structure to those still common among peoples of Melanesia, and
ceremonies that the Melanesians might recognize. It is probable that one group
of their descendants, which retained its identity, is known to the history of this
region as the Cham (see below Vietnam kingdom of Champa).

Although many peoples isolated in the densely forested uplands also retained
an ancestral identity, by far the most important art was produced in the two
Indianizing empires: Khmer, in Cambodia, with its linear predecessors the
kingdoms of Funan and of Chenla (names they were given by Chinese
historians), and the Cham, in Vietnam.
Cambodian kingdoms of Funan and Chenla: 1st–9th century

141
Funan, which was in existence by the 1st century CE, was the earliest of the
kingdoms that arose along the lower reaches of the Mekong River in response
to Indian ideas. Its influence probably extended over long stretches of the coast
of the Gulf of Siam, even as far as southern Burma, and corresponded with the
range of the Mon peoples. Lying on the natural focus of land and sea routes
linking eastern India and southern China to the islands of the South Seas, its
geographical situation was ideal for a kingdom whose wealth was based on
trade. At Funan sites, even Roman, Ptolemaic Egyptian, and Sasanian
Persian objects have been found, giving an idea of the extent of its trading
interests.

The founder was probably a Brahman trader from western India, for a

local legend describes how the first king, a Brahman, married the daughter of a
local serpent deity, so establishing the ruling family. Serpents (nagas) in Indian
mythology are the spiritual patrons of water, and the basis this kingdom laid
for later kingdoms in the same area was an elaborate system of waterworks,
canals, and irrigation channels controlling and distributing the waters of
the Mekong River. Contemporary Chinese accounts refer to cities with splendid
wooden buildings, carved, painted, and gilded. But nothing remains save a few
foundation piles. Probably during the 6th century CE the kingdom
called Chenla was established in the upper-middle reaches of the Mekong
River, in what is now Laos. The kings who ruled in Chenla were descended
from the kings of Funan and took over much of the Funan domain. It seems
that disastrous floods finally ruined Funan, which had previously suffered from
Indonesian aggression, and that the shift of power to Chenla represented a
recognition of temporarily insuperable geographical difficulties.

Culturally, Funan and Chenla are continuous. Their artists produced some of
the world’s greatest stone sculptures, most of which are large freestanding
icons carved in sandstone. Intended to be installed in brick-built shrines, none
of which survive, they usually represent the two major deities
of Hinduism, Shiva and Vishnu. Sometimes both deities are combined into a
single figure called Harihara; the right half of the body is characterized as
Shiva, the left as Vishnu. A few examples of other figures are known, including
some magnificent images of goddesses. The style of these sculptures is marked
by an extremely smooth, continuously undulating surface, given strength by a
system of clear, broad frontal planes and side recessions related to the
foursquare block. Such images were meant to demonstrate the power and
charm of a heavenly prototype to whom an earthly king appealed for his
authority. The earliest images belong to the 6th century, and the series
continues into the 9th century.

In later Khmer times each king and sometimes each member of a royal house
had statues of himself or herself in the guise of a patron deity set up in the
family temple precinct. That the same custom prevailed in 6th-century India,

142
particularly in the southeast, suggests that some of the early Funan and
Chenla sculptures may have served the same function. A number of figures are
Indian in style—some more markedly than others, which is probably more than
a matter of date; for it is quite likely that Indian craftsmen occasionally
traveled into this region to work. The style of the greatest of these early
sculptures, however, is not Indian at all.

Similarly non-Indian are the magnificent sandstone lintels made for the

doorways of the vanished brick shrines. Although distantly related to
Indian prototypes of the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, they appear as full-fledged
Indo-Chinese inventions and may well have been developed in combination
with a native conception of the lintel as a special attribute of the spirit shrine
(see above Thailand and Laos). They are carved in relief with designs based on
a pair of monsters, one at each end, which are linked by an ornate arched or
lobed beam. The beam is adorned with figures inside foliate plaques, a long
sequence of elaborately carved swags of jewels hanging beneath them.

Among the Funan-Chenla sculptures are a few Buddhist icons executed in

sandstone, markedly less sensuous than the Hindu figures and close to the
styles of Dvaravati (see above Thailand and Laos), though a number of small
Buddhist bronzes representing bodhisattvas approach the delicacy of the
Hindu work.
Kingdom of Khmer: 9th–13th century

Late in the 8th century the kingdom of Chenla declined politically, perhaps
because of dynastic disputes with the rising power of Indonesian kings, who
were themselves also descended from the original royal dynasty of Funan. It
seems that the Indonesians gave some assistance in establishing a new
kingdom in the northern part of what had been the territory of Funan. In 802
a Khmer king, who took the title of Jayavarman II, established his capital near
Phnom Kulen, about 20 miles (30 km) from Angkor. It was a rather unsuitable
place for an administrative capital, but it was a mountain, and the peoples
of Southeast Asia have always believed that gods and spirits dwell on
mountaintops. The image of the sacred mountain thereafter remained the
inspiration for all the later architecture of the Khmer around Angkor.
Jayavarman, who built other temples in the vicinity, seemed to have revived
the Chenla style. A distinctively Khmer art, however, began to emerge
under Indravarman I (877–889), who expanded the boundaries of the Khmer
kingdom and finally settled its administration. Most important of all, he
developed the initial plan of the colossal city of Angkor, whose mysterious
ruins, lost in dense jungle until the 19th century, tantalized Western travelers
for centuries.

Angkor was not only a city; more important, it was an immense technological
achievement, from which the agricultural prosperity of the whole Cambodian

143
plain derived. This plain was well watered naturally, but its rivers were subject
to strong seasonal fluctuations. Controlled, they were capable of producing an
enormous increase in fertility. Angkor was thus essentially an elaborate system
of artificial lakes, canals, and radiating irrigation channels that watered a huge
acreage of rice paddy; and it was the basis for the strength and prosperity of
the Khmer empire. Since Angkor itself was the technical source of the life-
giving agricultural water controlled by the king, it was regarded by the Khmer
with religious reverence. Its temples and palaces were an expression of that
reverence and at the same time an essential part of its supernatural
mechanism. Royal intercession by numerous ceremonies, some of which
reenacted the primal marriage of Hindu divinity and native earth spirit on the
pattern of ancient folk cult, ensured the continuing gift of the waters of heaven.
The king, an earthly image of his god, was the intermediary who ensured that
his kingdom would continue to receive divine benevolence in the form of water
in controlled quantities. Courtiers played roles at once religious and
administrative for the king, who believed that after his death he would be
united with his patron deity. Dedicatory statues were often set up in his chief
temple to commemorate his divinization.

Towers of Angkor Wat reflected in a pond, Angkor, Cambodia.

© Josef Beck/FPG
In order to conform with mountain mythology, the Khmer kings built
themselves a series of artificial mountains on the Cambodian plain at Angkor,
each crowned by shrines containing images of gods and of themselves, their
family, and their ancestors. The huge platforms of earth on which these
buildings were founded probably consist of the soil excavated in forming the
lakes, moats, and channels that not only divided up the city but also provided
an easy means of transport. The temple mountains, like the city itself, are
oriented east to west, the main gates facing east. Each king strove to outdo his
predecessor in the height, size, and splendour of his temple mountain. The
earlier ones, therefore, are relatively small, though beautiful, and the later
ones, such as Angkor Wat and the Bayon, are of stupendous size.

144
In the basic pattern of the Khmer temple mountain, the principal overall
enclosure, which is square or rectangular, is at ground level. Within it the
artificial mountain rises through a series of terraces and at least one further
enclosure wall toward a flat summit. On the summit stands either a single
shrine or a group of shrines, often a quincunx—five shrines, one at each corner
and one in the middle of a square. Arranged along the terraces or within the
enclosures there may be further shrines, whose arched doorway pediments
refer to the rainbow bridge between heaven and earth. There may be other long
buildings, perhaps used as libraries or administrative offices. A principal
staircase runs directly up from the east gate to the summit, and sometimes
subsidiary staircases run up from other gates at the cardinal directions.

The architecture of the shrines themselves is relatively simple; it is based upon

patterns invented in India, though the ornament of the shrines is often highly
developed and characteristically Cambodian. Fundamentally, each shrine
consists of a cell whose internal space is cubic and whose external walls are
marked by moldings at the top and bottom. The shrine is roofed by a pyramidal
tower composed of a series of similar but diminishing tiers, each of them a
compressed version of the exterior pattern of the main shrine volume.
Depending on which Indian pattern is followed, the cell has one main door with
an elaborately carved portal or, if the plan is cruciform, four entrances. The
earlier shrines were built of brick, most commonly with stucco ornament and
figures on the outside. The later shrines were built of stone, with all their
ornament and figurative sculpture carved in relief. The moldings on the roofs of
the shrines and the decoration of the roofs of many of the subsidiary buildings
are extremely elaborate. There are long panels of dense foliate ornament, and
the niches in which the sculptured relief figures of celestials are set and framed
in flamboyant ogival (contoured like a pointed arch) moldings crowned by no
less flamboyant foliate ornament; the smaller architectural features, such
as niche pilasters, are elaborately carved and molded. The figures themselves
wear gorgeous jewelry and chignons. The massive stone icons that survive in
some of the shrines have a massiveness probably intended to make them awe-
inspiring. Among the lesser relief figures of celestials, which decorate the walls
of the shrines, one finds a more sensuous touch. Many of these celestials
represent apsaras, the celestial singers and dancers of Indian mythology.

On some of the temple mountains there are also relief panels illustrating
various aspects of the royal mythology. Episodic relief sculpture first appears
on Banteay Srei (10th century). The relief centres on a series of
Indian legends dealing with the cosmic mountain Meru as the source of all
creation and with the divine origin of water. The chief artistic achievement of
its architecture is the way in which it conceives and coordinates the spaces
between the walls of the enclosures, the faces of the terraces, and the volumes
of the shrine buildings. A most sophisticated architecture of full and empty

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space, it seems to have been influenced by that of the Hindu Pallava dynasty in
southeastern India.

The earliest more or less complete example of a shrine complex devoted to

deifying the ancestors of a king is the Preah Ko at Roluos, near Angkor,
completed in 879. The earliest surviving temple mountain at Angkor itself is
the Bakong, probably finished in 881. In the central shrine at the summit was
a linga, the phallic emblem sacred to Shiva. Around the base of the terraced
pyramid stood eight large shrines inside the main enclosure, with a series of
moats, causeways, and auxiliary sculptures guarding the approaches to the
exterior. The Bakheng, begun in 893, had an enormous series of 108 tower
shrines arranged on the terraces around the central pyramid, which was
crowned by a quincunx of principal shrines. The whole was intended to
illustrate a mystical conception of the cosmos, very much on the lines of the
great temple mountain at Borobudur in Java (see below Indonesia). Pre Rup,
dedicated in 961, was probably the first of the temple mountains intended as a
permanent shrine for the divine spirit of a king after his death. It, too, has a
quincunx of principal shrines, but it is distinguished by the large number of
auxiliary pavilions arranged along both sides of the inner enclosure wall.

From roughly the same period is perhaps the most beautiful—and most
beautifully preserved—of the early Khmer temples, Banteay Srei. It was
actually a private foundation, built some 12 miles from Angkor by a Brahman
of royal descent. Its auxiliary buildings, all of sandstone, are adorned with a
profusion of elaborate ornament and relief figure sculpture. The roof gables, in
particular, are treated with antefixes of fantastic invention. Its principal icon, a
huge sandstone sculpture of the god Shiva, seated with his wife Uma on his left
knee, is perhaps the most impressive full-round sculpture from the whole
Khmer epoch. It differs from the 10th-century Khmer official sculpture, which
began to take on a conventional and relatively insensitive massiveness.

Shiva and Uma, sandstone, from Banteay Srei, Angkor, Cambodia, late 10th
century; in the National Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Height 60 cm.
Holle Bildarchiv, Baden-Baden
The Baphuon temple mountain (1050–66) is unfortunately almost completely
destroyed. It was a vast monument 480 yards (440 metres) long and 140 yards
(130 metres) wide, approached by a 200-yard (180-metre) causeway raised on
pillars. Its ground plan shows that it was no mere assemblage of buildings but

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a fully articulated structure. In this it must rank as the
immediate prototype for the great Angkor Wat. Built by Suryavarman II in the
early 12th century, Angkor Wat is the crowning work of Khmer architecture,
the culmination of all the features of earlier styles.

The enormous structure of the Wat is some 1,700 yards (1,550 metres) long by
1,500 yards (1,400 metres) wide. Surrounded by a vast external cloister, it is
approached from the west by a magnificent road, which is built on a causeway
and lined with colossal balustrades carved in the likeness of the cosmic serpent
associated with the sources of life-giving water. The Wat rises in three
concentric enclosures. The western gate complex itself is nearly as large as the
complex of central shrines, and both are subdivided into smaller, beautifully
decorated courts. Only five of the original nine towers still stand at the summit;
although they follow the basic pattern of the Khmer roof tower composed of
diminishing imitative stories, the contour of the towers is not rectilinear but
curved, so as to suggest that the stories grow one out of another like a
sprouting shoot. All the courtyards, with their molded plinths, staircases,
porticoes, and eaves moldings, are perfectly articulated enclosed spaces. The
symbolic meaning of the Wat is clear. Its central shrine indicates the hub of the
universe, but its surroundings—the gate complex, the cloister, the city of
Angkor itself, and, finally, the whole visible world—represent the successive
outer envelopes of cosmic reality. That it is oriented toward the west—and not
to the east, as was customary—indicates that its builder, Suryavarman II,
intended it as his own mortuary shrine; for, according to Indo-Chinese
mythology, the west is the direction in which the dead depart.

Sculptures at the Wat include some full-rounded figures—the guardians on the

terraces, for example—and relief sculpture, which is magnificent and full of
vitality. The open-colonnaded gallery on the first story contains over a mile of
relief carving six feet (two metres) high. Much of it was originally painted and
gilded, which strongly suggests that there must have been a Khmer style
of painting of which nothing is known. The subject matter of the carvings is
taken principally from the Hindu epics, but there are also many scenes
representing Suryavarman’s earthly glory. Working in relief only about an inch
deep, the sculptors were able to depict an extraordinary complex of scenes of
figures in vigorous action, full of complex overlaps to suggest deep space. The
solid bodies are created mainly out of groups of convex curves, and everywhere
there is the typical regional feeling for decorative spirals. Perhaps the most
interesting group of figures are the apsaras, carved in relief, either singly or in
groups, on the plain walls of the courtyards. These celestial beings, whom
Indian tradition describes as rewarding with their charms the kings, heroes,
and saints who attain heaven, are carved with sinuous sensuality; but the
most important part of their charm is their elaborate clothing, jewelry,
and hairdressing or ornate, towering, jeweled crowns. Apparently, deep
downward-drooping curves standing far out from the body represented the

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height of Khmer chic. Skirts, stoles, and the long sidelocks of hair all follow
these curves, laid out flat on the ground of the relief. Symbolizing the erotic
joys that are essential attributes of heaven, the apsaras were natural
possessions of the king.

The effort demanded of the people in constructing the colossal stone Angkor

Wat, along with its 4 miles (6 km) of stone-lined moat 200 yards (180 metres)
wide, was great. The irrigation system itself may well have been neglected in
favour not only of shifting the building stone—as much in quantity as there is
in the Pyramid of Khafre in Egypt—but also of dressing, carving, and
ornamenting it. After Suryavarman’s death, the Cham, from the neighbouring
kingdom of Champa (see below Vietnam kingdom of Champa), seized and
sacked Angkor for the first time in its history (1177), thus shattering the
confidence of the Khmer people in the protective powers of their Hindu deities.
When Suryavarman’s son, Jayavarman VII, came to the throne he inherited a
ravaged kingdom. In 1181 he succeeded in driving out the Cham. He invaded
their country and seized their capital, thereby making Champa a province of
the Khmer. Then, more than 60 years old, he embarked on a series of
campaigns that extended the borders of the Khmer empire farther than ever
before—into Malaya, Burma, and Annam.

Angkor Wat, Angkor, Cambodia.

© Getty Images
The ruler of this empire naturally believed himself to be the greatest of the
Khmer, and he set about demonstrating the truth of his belief by building his

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own city, Angkor Thom (c. 1200), and, at the centre of it, the biggest temple
complex of them all—the Bayon (c. 1200). Breaking with all previous Khmer
traditions, he took as his patron deity not one of the Hindu gods, but one of the
Buddhist bodhisattvas. Although Buddhism had flourished for several
centuries in the whole of Indochina, it had not been adopted by the Khmer as
an imperial cult. Now that the Hindu gods had been discredited by defeat,
Jayavarman placed himself under the patronage of Mahayana Buddhism. The
mythology according to which the Bayon was designed was thus another
version of the old mythology of the celestial mountain and the divine origin of
water. Only the central figure of his mythology, Lokeshvara, Lord of the World,
was specifically Buddhist. The colossal masks that look out over the four
directions of the world from the towers of the Bayon and from the gates of
Angkor Thom are there to demonstrate the compassionate, all-seeing power of
Lokeshvara and the king.

Prajnaparamita, the Mother of All Buddhas

Prajnaparamita, sandstone sculpture from Cambodia, Bayon style, c. 1200; in
the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Photograph by L. Mandle. Honolulu Academy of Arts, purchase, Seldon
Washington Bequest, 2003, 12,596.1
When Jayavarman VII set out to create Angkor Thom, he had to raze the fine
older work of his predecessors, for the site at Angkor had become choked with
nearly four centuries of grandiose temple building. Within Angkor Thom’s 10
miles (16 km) of moats, he constructed huge complexes of buildings and made
his city the focus of a final system of canals and irrigation, with additional
lakes.

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Angkor Thom’s achievement lay with Jayavarman’s scholastic architects, who
conceived and laid out a complex of mythical imagery in massive architectural
symbols. Their stupendous overall plan illustrates the creation of the world, a
cosmos spreading outward from the central mountain tower. The two roads
leading from the tower are lined with mile-long rows of gigantic deities who are
pulling on the body of the serpent naga. According to Hindu legend, the gods
use the magical mountain Meru, symbolized by the mountain tower, as a
churning stick and the body of the cosmic serpent as a churning rope to churn
the world out of the milk of nothingness. Lake-sized fountains represent the
healing waters of the Buddhist paradise, and allegories of salvation are realized
in carved architecture. Perhaps the most impressive works of art associated
with this last period of Angkor are some stone icons, such as the famous Leper
King, in the Angkor Thom complex. Many excellent smaller bronze figures of
deities have also been found among the ruins.

Ruined temples at the Angkor Thom complex, Angkor, Cambodia.

© happystock/Fotolia

150
Angkor Thom
Ruins at Angkor Thom, Angkor, Cambodia.
© Ron Gatepain (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
13th century to the present

After the death of Jayavarman VII, c. 1215, possibly as late as 1219, Angkor

declined. The Thai population of Siam gradually pushed the Khmer down
toward the Mekong delta. Theravada Buddhism became the religion of the
people, and the grandiose vision of a cultural unity based on sacred
kingship disappeared. In the 15th century Angkor was retaken from the Thai,
and a few buildings were restored by the ancestors of the modern (now
abdicated) Cambodian kings. Some of the buildings were used as monasteries,
but the city, with its essential irrigation system, had fallen into ruin.
Vietnam kingdom of Champa: c. 2nd–15th century

The kingdom of Champa existed alongside the Khmer kingdom, sometimes

passing under its rule, sometimes maintaining a precarious independence.
From the north it was continually subject to the pressure of the advancing
Vietnamese, a people racially related to the Burmese and Thai, who were
themselves under pressure from the Chinese. The Hinduizing dynasties who
ruled Champa from the 6th century were obliged to pay heavy tribute to the
Chinese empire. After 980 they were forced by the Vietnamese to abandon their
northern sacred capital, My Son; thereafter, except for a brief return to My Son

151
in the 11th century, their southern capital at Vijaya (Binh Dinh) became their
centre. Under such disruptive circumstances, it is perhaps surprising that the
Cham succeeded in creating and maintaining a dynastic art of their own. It
was, however, always on a relatively modest scale, devoted to
a conception of divine kingship similar to but far less ambitious than that of
the Khmer.

Champa
Artifact of the Champa kingdom.
© Trinh Le Ngyen/Shutterstock.com
The evolution of Cham art falls naturally into two epochs, the first when the
capital was in the north, the second when it was removed to the south.
Art of the northern capital: 4th–11th century

The form of the earliest temple at My Son, built by King Bhadravarman in the
late 4th century, is not known. The earliest surviving fragments of art come
from the second half of the 7th century, when the king was a descendant of the
royal house at Chenla. The remains of the many dynastic temples built in My
Son up until 980 follow a common pattern with only minor variations. It is a
relatively simple one, with no attempt at the elaborate architecture of space
evolved by the Khmer. Each tower shrine is based upon the central rectangular
volume of the cell. The faces are marked by central porticoes that are blind on
all but the western face, where the entrance door is situated. The blind
porticoes seem to have contained figures of deities—perhaps armed guardians
standing in a threatening posture. The porticoes are set in a tall narrow frame
of pilasters (columns projecting a third of their width or less from the wall),
crowned with horizontally molded capitals that step out upward. They support

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a tall double-ogival blind arch, crowned by another stepped in behind it. The
arches are based on an Indian pattern and are carved with a design of slowly
undulating foliage springing from the mouth of a monster whose head forms
the apex of the arch. The faces of the walls are formed of pilasters framing tall
recesses. The pilasters are carved with foliate relief, and elaborate recessed and
stepped-out horizontal moldings mark their bases. The height of the pilasters
and recesses gives a strong vertical accent to the body of the shrine. The
principal architrave is carried on stepped-out false capitals to the pilasters. The
roof of the tower is composed of three diminishing, compressed stories, each
marked by little pavilions on the faces above the main porticoes. Inside the
tower is a high space created by a simple corbel vault with its stepped courses
of masonry. The chief portico was extended to include a porch, and the whole
structure stood upon a plinth whose faces bore molded dwarfed columns (small
columns) and recesses.

These temples have one distinguishing internal feature: a pedestal altar within

the cell, upon which statues were set, sometimes, it seems, in groups. The
pedestals themselves are often beautifully adorned with reliefs, and some of the
best Cham sculpture appears upon them. The subjects are usually based on
Indian imagery of the celestial court. The fact that the pedestal altars carried
their sculptures in the space of the cell, away from the wall, meant that the
Cham sculptors could think in terms of three-dimensional plasticity as well as
relief.

Panel of a pedestal altar showing a Cham ascetic playing a flute, sandstone,

from My Son E1, Vietnam, second half of the 7th century; in the Cham
Museum, Da Nang, Vietnam. Height 60 cm.
Holle Bildarchiv, Baden-Baden
The glory of Cham art is the sculpture of the whole of the first period. Much of
what survives consists of lesser figures that formed part of an architectural
decor: heads of monsters, for example, which decorated the corners of
architraves, and figures of lions, which supported bases and plinths. These
figures reflect the heavy ornateness of the Cham decorative style at its most
aggressive, and many of them effloresce into the solid wormlike ornament that
is the Cham version of Indo-Khmer foliage carving and carries strong
reminiscences of Dong Son work. The remaining fragments of the large icons
suggest a double origin for Cham art traditions. On many of the capitals and
altar pedestals are series of figures carved in relief in a sensuous style, which is

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nevertheless strictly conceptualized. This sophisticated work is reminiscent
both of late Chenla art (see above Cambodia and Vietnam) and of Indonesian
decoration, especially during the 11th-century return. Other figures are more
emphatic in style, with the defined cubic volumes of Melanesian sculpture. It is
thus probable that artists trained in the sophisticated Cambodian tradition
worked for the Cham kings at one time or another, while Champa’s own native
craftsmen emulated the work of the foreigners in their own fashion.

Apart from My Son there are one or two other sites in north and central
Vietnam where Cham art was made in quantity. The most important of these
is Dong Duong, in Quang Nam. It is a ruined Buddhist monastery complex of
the late 9th century, conceived on the most beautifully elaborated plan of
structured space in Champa. The architectural detail is distinguished from the
My Son work by its greater emphasis upon the plasticity of architectural
elements such as angle pilasters and porticoes. The circuit wall was about half
a mile (one kilometre) long and once contained many shrines dedicated to
Buddhist deities. It is possible that, when this complex of brick courts, halls,
and gate pavilions was intact, it may have resembled very closely the
contemporary Buddhist monasteries of northeastern India.
Art of the southern capital: 11th–15th century

After 980, when the northern provinces were taken over by the Vietnamese and
the Cham capital was established at Binh Dinh in 1069, the kings maintained
a gradually diminishing splendour. After the Khmer attack of 1145 they could
claim little in the way of royal glory.

Although the Cham kings made a brief return to My Son from 1074 to 1080,
most of their artistic effort was spent on shrines at Vijaya (Binh Dinh) and a
few other sites in the south. The early 12th-century Silver Towers at Binh Dinh
are simplified versions of the older northern towers, with corner pavilions
added to the roofing stories and arches of pointed horseshoe shape.
Throughout the 13th and early 14th centuries the building of successive
shrines gradually declined. The plasticity of the old pilasters and architraves
became simpler, and the beauty of the buildings became largely a matter of
proportion. By the mid-14th century the temples erected at Binh
Dinh articulated only reminiscences of the classic Cham style.

Sculpture shows a parallel change. One or two reliefs at the Silver Towers
convey a sense of tranquility and splendour, but an indigenous style of cubical
emphasis came progressively to dominate the iconic Hindu figures at southern
sites. The curlicued design of earlier figures was gradually converted into a
style of massive blocks that convey an impression of strength, but without the
refinement of preceding art.

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As was the case in Cambodia, this change in art by the mid-14th century may
be attributed to the people’s loss of confidence in the concept—and, with it, the
imagery—of divine kingship. Theravada Buddhism, as a popular religion based
upon numerous small local monasteries, adopted probably from the Tai, was
spreading all over the region. The northern Vietnamese, who had originally
been organized in self-contained kingdoms without any concept of royal
divinity, owing an intermittent administrative allegiance only to the distant
Chinese emperor, found this ultimately suitable as a state religion after the
final eclipse of Confucianism in the 17th century. They did incorporate echoes
of older Hindu architecture, however, in details of the dramatic ornament used
on eaves and gables of their wooden monastery buildings.
Vietnam: 2nd–19th century

The great achievement of Vietnamese art, at least during the Le period (15th–
18th centuries), seems to have been in architectural planning, incorporating
Confucian, Daoist, or Buddhist temples into the landscape environment. The
plans themselves include halls for a multitude of images in the South Chinese
vein and provision for a variety of rituals. There are no intact monuments of
early Vietnamese architecture that are unrestored. Numerous fragments exist,
however—either isolated stone bases, columns, stairways, and bridges or
carved wooden members incorporated into later buildings—all of which are
influenced to some degree by Chinese styles.

Tombs of generically Chinese type from the 2nd to the 7th century contain
bronze furnishings, in many of which, such as lampstands, the influence of
the Dong Son style is clearly visible. There are no spirit images so typical of Six
Dynasties (220–589 CE) and Tang (618–907 CE) Chinese tombs. The Chua
Mot-cot, Hanoi, has vestiges of a stone shrine probably dated 1049. The only
old paintings, on rock, at Tuyen Quang (9th century), represent the Buddha,
bodhisattvas, and donors. The Van-mieu at Hanoi (built 1070 but frequently
restored) contains ritual bronzes in a Chinese style.

Perhaps the most interesting early sculptures to survive are the stone
fragments from the Van-phuc temple (9th–11th centuries), which are based on
Chinese Buddhist imagery but in a style strongly Indianized, perhaps by Cham
influence. The most important piece of old work still virtually intact is the
portable octagonal wooden stupa kept in the hall of the But-thap, at Bac Ninh,
east of Hanoi. It has wooden panels carved in an ornate 14th-century Chinese
style; part of it bears a representation of the Buddhist paradise of Amitabha.
Incorporated in many Buddhist temples of the Le period (15th–18th centuries),
as well as in stone terraces, bridges, and gateways, is extremely elaborate
carved and coloured woodwork in a style based upon the coiling dragon-and-
cloud decoration of Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) China, but with a
characteristically Vietnamese emphasis on weight and curve.

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At Tho Ha there was a potters’ village where the glazed ceramic figures used on
many types of Chinese temple were manufactured. The remains of many
tombs, palaces, bridges, and Confucian and Daoist temples decorated in
similar vein are known everywhere.
19th–21st century

The imperial courts of Vietnam’s last ruling dynasty at Hue (constructed in

1805–32) were selectively modeled after the Beijing courts using the ancient
theory of geomancy (fengshui), with the city facing the Huong (Perfume) River
and the Ngu Binh mountain protecting the imperial gates from evil spirits. It
consisted of a series of simple rectangular one-story pavilions, laid out among
trees inside a group of courts. These buildings were southern Chinese in their
basic conception. Following the devastation caused by the Vietnam War in
1968, work began in the 1990s—under the auspices of UNESCO—to restore
and preserve this important urban cultural site.

The establishment in 1925 of a fine arts school by the French administration

led to a first generation of Vietnamese painters. Their training adhered to
Western conventions, but they consciously aimed to produce works that drew
on a Vietnamese cultural background, such as local scenes in the celebrated
ancient capital of Hue. At the time of independence from France in 1945, some
128 artists had graduated from the school. From the outset, students were
encouraged to choose traditional painting mediums, such as silk and lacquer,
and to develop an indigenous style, albeit using Western styles. Masters of
Vietnamese painting included Nguyen Gia Tri, Mai Trung Thu, Nguyen Phan
Chanh, Vu Cao Dam. Nguyen Tu Nghiem, Bui Xuan Phai, and Nguyen Sang.

From the separation of North and South Vietnam in 1954 to the 1970s, artists
in the north, such as Nguyen Thi Kim and Pham Van Don, were influenced by
the current of Socialist Realism prevailing in both China and the U.S.S.R.,
while artists in the south followed Western trends. Faced with political and
social divisions, artists shared a common longing for national unification. A
popular symbol used in folktales and legend of three figures representing the
south, central, and north of the country became a regular metaphorical device
in their work. Since the 1990s the emergence of new patrons and markets
resulted in considerable innovation and variety of styles and techniques in
Vietnamese contemporary visual art.
Indonesia

The islands that in the 21st century compose Indonesia probably once shared
in the complex Neolithic heritage of artistic tradition, which also spread
farther, into the islands of Melanesia and Micronesia. Beautifully ground
Neolithic axes of semiprecious stone continued to be treasured in some
countries. In many parts of Indonesia there are quantities

156
of megalithic monuments—menhirs, dolmens, terraced burial mounds, stone
skull troughs, and other objects. Some of these are undoubtedly of Neolithic
date, but megaliths continued to be made in much more recent times. One
stone, sarcophagus, in eastern Java, for example, is dated post-9th century.
On Nias island megaliths were revered and continued to be erected
on Sumba and Flores islands in the 21st century. Thus, in Indonesia
especially, different layers of Southeast Asian culture existed side by side. The
most impressive and important collection of megaliths is in the Pasemah
region, in south Sumatra, where there are also many large stones roughly
carved into the shape of animals, such as the buffalo and elephant, and
human figures—some with swords, helmets, and ornaments and some
apparently carrying drums.

These drums immediately suggest the drums characteristic of the mainland

Southeast Asian Dong Son culture, which flourished c. 4th–1st
century BCE (see above General development of Southeast Asian art). This
culture may well have helped to diffuse throughout the region styles related to
Chinese Zhou and pre-Han ornamental work. Certainly, the Dong Son
influence is clear in many of the ceremonial axes as well as many of the
ornamented bronze drums that have been found in the islands. The bronzes
were cast by a lost-wax process, resembling that used in parts of the Asian
mainland. The largest and most famous drum is “the Moon of Bali,” found
on that island near Pedjeng. It has molded flanges, and cast onto its faces is
extremely elaborate relief ornament consisting of stylized masks with ears
pierced and lengthened by large earrings. Such drums were probably originally
used in ritual—by the rainmaker, perhaps—and they may have been buried
with the distinguished dead. No one knows the exact age of these bronzes. “The
Moon of Bali,” for example, was thought to be anywhere between 1,000 and
2,000 years old. In the 21st century similar small drums were used as bride
prices, and many of the islands continued to produce textile designs and
ceremonial bronzes that were strikingly reminiscent of Dong Son ornament.
Central Javanese period: 7th–13th century

Sometime between the 3rd and 6th centuries CE, Indianized principalities

existed in Java. The chieftains who lived in their kratons (fortified villages)
seemed to have derived great inspiration, prestige, and practical assistance
from the skills and ideas imported from India. In Sumatra there was the
important but so far enigmatic Indianized kingdom of Shrivijaya, which, from
its strategic position on the Strait of Malacca, exercised a powerful artistic
influence in the whole region. Its great Buddhist centre, Palembang, might
have had direct connections with the monasteries of southeastern India; fine
bronze Buddhas and bodhisattvas in a style reminiscent of Amaravati (2nd
century CE) have been found in many regions where the influence of Shrivijaya
might have been felt, including Mon Dvaravati (see above Thailand and Laos)
and distant Celebes.

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The local dynasties of the kratons competed among themselves for power, and
eventually the principal dynasties known to history came to the fore. The
earliest major cultural assimilations from India took place probably during the
7th century, when the Hindu Pallava form of southeast Indian script was
adopted for inscriptions in west Java. Thereafter, a central
Javanese dynasty that worshipped Shiva made the oldest surviving artworks in
stone. The last king of this dynasty retreated to east Java in the face of the
rising power of another central Javanese dynasty, the Shailendra (775–
864 CE). The Shailendra were followers of Mahayana and Vajrayana forms of
Buddhism, although Hinduism, as manifested in the worship of Shiva and
Vishnu, was by no means eliminated. This dynasty created far the larger part
of the immense wealth of first-class art known today in Java.
Hindu and Buddhist candis

In Indonesia the word candi refers to any religious structure based on an

Indianized shrine with a pyramidal tower. This was the essential form on which
virtually all the stone Indianizing architecture of Southeast Asia was originally
based. The Javanese, like the Khmer, evolved an elaborate architecture of their
own around the basic Indian prototype.

Central Javanese stone architecture did not use structural pillars, nor did its
major stone monuments conceptualize hollow space in the way Khmer
architecture did. Like Indian stonework, central Javanese stonework is
fundamentally conceived as a solid mass, serving as a vehicle for figurative and
symbolic sculpture. Its temples are centralized, with enclosures radiating
around the central shrine. In eastern Java and Bali, however, the pattern of the
shrine was influenced by older traditions and was usually conceived as an
enclosure, the walled area of ground being the sacred element, while the
buildings in it were of secondary importance. Old wooden buildings do not
survive, but representations of wooden architecture in stone reliefs and later
architecture of Bali show that eastern Indonesia was influenced by the ancient
Southeast Asian tradition of constructing wooden pillared halls with tiered,
sloping, and gabled roofs.

Because there are no inscriptions to supply dating points, the exact dates of
the earliest Indonesian architectural monuments are not certain. The group of
shrines generally believed to be the earliest is situated on the Dijeng Plateau.
This is a high volcanic region, about 6,000 feet (2,000 metres) above sea level,
where there are sulfur springs and lakes. The whole mountain seems to have
been sacred to the Hindu deity Shiva, for all temples on the Dijeng are
dedicated to him. There can be little doubt that during the 8th and 9th
centuries the Javanese, who traditionally had interpreted the volcanic
turbulence of their landscape as a manifestation of divine power, identified this
power with the terrifying Shiva. On other Javanese volcanic mountains, also,
groups of shrines are dedicated to him.

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The temples on the Dijeng are single-cell shrines, roofed with diminishing
stories. The exteriors of the temples are relatively plain; only around door
frames and window frames are there distinctive passages of central Javanese
ornament. Around the niches of Candi Puntadewa are perhaps the earliest
surviving examples of the characteristic Javanese door frame: across its lintel
is carved a mask of the Indian Kala monster, which represents time; and down
the jambs, as if vomited from his open mouth, run string panels of foliage. The
foot of each jamb terminates in an elaborately carved scrollwork cartouche,
which is itself a makara (water monster) head seen in profile. This candi, like
others on the Dijeng, has a single approach stairway rising between curved
balusters. A few stone images of Shiva from these temples have been found. In
broad, vigorous forms they express the dangerous power of the god.

Two of the very finest early Javanese sculptures—virtually in the full round—
come from yet another Shiva temple, Chandi Banon, near Borobudur (see
below Borobudur). One, representing the god Vishnu (no stranger in syncretic
Javanese temples of Shiva), has the extremely smooth,
faintly amorphous suavity, the absolute convexity, and the lack of definition
between planes characteristic of the classical central Javanese sculptural style;
the garment he wears, with its assortment of girdles, is closely reminiscent of
late Pallava–early Chola Hindu styles of southeast India. Another icon,
sometimes called Agastya but more likely the third deity of the Hindu
trinity, Brahma, represents the god in the form of a bearded Brahman sage. He
has a large and splendid potbelly. This icon was indigenous to southeast India.
The great depth of the side recessions of these figures, although perhaps not so
clearly defined as in the great Funan-Chenla style (see above Cambodia and
Vietnam), gives them a bland massiveness. The lack of movement in the figures
and the regularity of the designs, the impassive faces, and the slowness of the
lines must have been part of the central
Javanese conception of transcendent glory.

The Hindu temples of central Java are conceived simply as shrines to contain
icons of deities for worship. The Mahayana and especially the
Vajrayana candis, however, were called upon to do far more. They were
designed to express complex metaphysical theories. The challenge this
presented to the central Javanese architects was met in a series of splendid
monuments, completely original in conception. The culminating work of the
series, Borobudur, is a highly evolved architectural image, whose subtlety and
refinement were never matched, even at Angkor in Cambodia.

The first work of this Buddhist series is Candi Ngawen, near Muntilan.
This candi consists of five shrines facing east, 12 feet (4 metres) apart in a row
from north to south. Each shrine contained one of the five Buddhas who,
according to Vajrayana theory, presides over one of the five major psychological
categories under which ultimate reality reveals itself. The shrines themselves

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are based on but more developed than those used for Hindu deities elsewhere
in Java. Roughly square in plan and roofed with diminishing stories, they have
pilastered projections on three faces and a portico on the east. Along the
architrave are small triangular antefixes, and reliefs of Kala monsters emitting
floral scrolls hood the niches and portals.

The group of five Buddhas is familiar in the art of Tibet, Japan, and northeast
India. Among them they compose what is called the vajra-dhatu, which means,
roughly speaking, “the realm of total reality.” According to the old Javanese
theology, above this group is another, called the deities of the garbha-
dhatu. Garbha means “womb” or “innermost secret,” and its three deities
personify the most esoteric realms of Buddhist speculation. At the centre of the
group is the image of the single, undivided Buddha nature, which symbolizes
the ultimate reality of the entire universe. From his right side emanates the
bodhisattva Lokeshvara (Lord of the World), who is both compassionate and
possessed of all power. From the left emanates the bodhisattva Vajrapani, who
is the personification of the most secret doctrines and practices of Vajrayana.
One of Java’s greatest monuments, Candi Mendut, is a shrine expressly
created to illustrate the combined doctrine of garbha-dhatu and vajra-dhatu.

Candi Mendut
Candi Mendut, near Borobudur, Java, c. 800 CE.
© Premium Collection/Fotolia
Mendut dates from about 800 CE and is thus, generally speaking,
contemporary with Borobudur. It is formed as a single large square chamber,

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roofed with the usual diminishing stories, and mounted on a high broad plinth,
which is approached on its northwestern face by a staircase with recurved
balustrades. The exterior is in every way more ornate than that of any shrine
so far discussed. In addition to floral diaper (an allover pattern consisting of
one or more small repeated units of design connecting with or growing out of
one another) and scrolls, there are numerous figures in relief representing male
and female deities, the subsidiary principles of the combined doctrine
of garbha-dhatu and vajra-dhatu. Cut into the fine ashlar (squared-stone)
masonry are many relief panels with scenes from Buddhist literature, each
panel self-contained and placed with consummate aesthetic judgment. Some
represent mythical ideas, such as the wish-granting tree, others narratives
from Buddhist legend.

The principal images were placed inside the cell chamber. Apparently, there
were originally seven huge stone icons, but only three remain: the central
Buddha, who also represented the ultimate Buddha nature of the garbha-
dhatu, and his two emanations in the garbha-dhatu, Lokeshvara and
Vajrapani. When completed, the interior of Mendut must have been an awe-
inspiring and spiritually moving place. The three great statues are seated on
elaborate thrones, backed against walls, but the figures are carved virtually in
the full round. The inflated, gently inflected forms of the figures give them a
majestic presence. The types and carving technique, as well as the
monumental scale of the figures, are reminiscent of contemporary work in the
cave temples of the western Deccan in India.

On the west-east road from Candi Mendut to Borobudur stands a small,

relatively plain temple called Candi Pawon, dedicated to the god of wealth.
Pawon was probably a kind of anteroom to Borobudur, catering to the more
worldly interest of pilgrims. The outside has fine reliefs of female figures, and
the roof bears towers of small stupas. On the reliefs are wish-granting trees
surrounded by pots of money, and bearded dwarfs over the entrance pour out
jewels from sacks.
Borobudur

Borobudur is one of the most impressive monuments ever created by humans.

It is both a temple and a complete exposition of doctrine, designed as a whole,
and completed as it was designed, with only one major afterthought. It seems
to have provided a pattern for Hindu temple mountains at Angkor (see
above Cambodia and Vietnam), and in its own day it must have been one of the
wonders of the Asian world. Built about 800, it probably fell into neglect
by c. 1000 and was overgrown. It was excavated and restored by the Dutch
between 1907 and 1911. It now appears as a large square plinth (the
processional path) upon which stand five terraces gradually diminishing in
size. The plans of the squares are stepped out twice to a central projection.
Above the fifth terrace stands a series of three diminishing circular terraces

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carrying small stupas, crowned at the centre of the summit by a large circular
bell-shaped stupa. Running up the centre of each face is a long staircase; all
four are given equal importance. There are no internal cell shrines, and the
terraces are solid. Borobudur is thus a Buddhist stupa in the Indian sense.
Each of the square terraces is enclosed in a high wall with pavilions
and niches along the whole perimeter, which prevents the visitor on one level
from seeing into any of the other levels. All of these terraces are lined with relief
sculptures, and the niches contain Buddha figures. The top three circular
terraces are open and unwalled, and the 72 lesser bell-shaped stupas they
support are of open stone latticework; inside each was a huge stone Buddha
figure. The convex contour of the whole monument is steepest near the ground,
flattening as it reaches the summit. The bottom plinth, the processional path,
was the major afterthought. It consists of a massive heap of stone pressed up
against the original bottom story of the designed structure so that it obscures
an entire series of reliefs—a few of which have been uncovered in modern
times. It was probably added to hold together the bottom story, which began to
spread under the pressure of the immense weight of earth and stone
accumulated above.

The stupa complex at Borobudur in Java, Indonesia.

Robert Harding Picture Library/Photobank BKK

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Borobudur: Buddha sculpture and stupas
Buddha sculpture and stupas at Borobudur, central Java, Indonesia.
© Luciano Mortula-LGM/stock.adobe.com
The whole building symbolizes a Buddhist transition from the
lowest manifestations of reality at the base, through a series of regions
representing psychological states, toward the ultimate condition of spiritual
enlightenment at the summit. The unity of the monument effectively proclaims
the unity of the cosmos permeated by the light of truth. The visitor was meant
to be transformed while climbing through the levels of Borobudur,
encountering illustrations of progressively more profound doctrines nearer to
the summit. The topmost terrace, whose main stupa contained an unfinished
image of Buddha that was hidden from the spectator’s view, symbolized the
indefinable ultimate spiritual state. The 72 openwork stupas on the circular
terraces, with their barely visible internal Buddhas, symbolize incomplete
states of enlightenment on the borders of manifestation. The usual way for a
pilgrim to pay reverence to a Buddhist stupa is to walk around it, keeping it on
his right hand. The vast series of reliefs about three feet (one metre) high on
the exterior walls of the terraces would thus be read by the visitor in series
from right to left. Between the reliefs are decorative scroll panels, and a
hundred monster-head waterspouts carry off the tropical rainwater. The gates
on the stairways between terraces are of the standard Indonesian type, with
the face of the Kala monster at the apex spouting his scrolls.

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Stupas at Borobudur, central Java, Indonesia.
© Anna Zhuk/stock.adobe.com

Stupas at Borobudur, central Java, Indonesia.

© Medioimages—Photodisc/Getty Images

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The reliefs of the lowest level illustrate scenes that show the causal workings of
good and bad deeds through successive reincarnations. They show, for
example, how those who hunt, kill, and cook living creatures, such
as tortoises and fish, are themselves cooked in hells or die as children in their
next life. They show how foolish people waste their time at entertainments.
From these scenes of everyday life, one moves to the terraces above, where the
subject matter becomes more profound and metaphysical. It illustrates
important Mahayana texts dealing with the self-discovery and education of
the bodhisattva, conceived as being possessed by compassion for and devoted
wholly to the salvation of all creatures. The reliefs on the uppermost terraces
gradually become more static. The sensuous roundness of the forms of the
figures is not abated, but, in the design, great emphasis is laid upon
horizontals and verticals and upon static, formal enclosures of repeated figures
and gestures. At the summit all movement disappears, and the design is
entirely subordinated to the circle enclosing the stupa.

The iconography of Borobudur suggests that the legend of the royal

bodhisattva recounted in many of the reliefs was meant to “authenticate” some
king or dynasty. Yet, it hardly seems possible that Borobudur was the focus of
a specific royal cult, as there is no provision at all for the performance of royal
ritual. It must have been, then, in some sense a monument for the whole
people, the focus for their religion and life, and a perpetual reminder of the
doctrines of their religion.

A considerable number of bronzes, some small, some large, have been found in
Indonesia in a style close to that of the sculptures of Borobudur and Mendut.
One fine, large standing image comes from Kotabangun in Borneo, but some
come from Java. Many small cult images of the Buddha and Buddhist deities
exist. Some are close in type to the early Pala images of Indian Bihar, the
homeland of Buddhism, with which the Javanese must have maintained close
touch. A few small but extremely fine gold figurines of undoubted Javanese
workmanship have also turned up. For all their small size they must rate as
first-class works of art. As well as images, there are many beautiful bronze
ceremonial objects, such as lamps, trays, and bells. These objects are
decorated with the same kinds of ornament, although on a miniature scale, as
the architectural monuments: scrolled leaves, swags, and bands of jewels.
Post-Borobudur candis

Post-Borobudur candis illustrate the Buddhist doctrine in different

ways. Kalasan, for example, built in the second half of the 8th century, was a
large square shrine on a plinth, with projecting porticoes at the centre of each
face. The roof was surmounted by a high circular stupa mounted on an
octagonal drum, the faces of which bear reliefs of divinities. Topping each
portico was a group of five small stupas, and another large stupa stood at each
disengaged corner of the main shrine. The moldings were restrained and

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elegantly profiled. Each section of the exterior wall contains a niche meant for
a figure sculpture. The decorative scroll carving is especially fine.

Another shrine from this period, Candi Sewu, consisted of a large cruciform
shrine surrounded by smaller temples, only one of which has been restored. All
of the temples seem to have had roofs in the form of tiered stupas, compressing
the overall Borobudur scheme into the scope of a storied shrine tower. From
Candi Plaosan came many beautiful sculptures, donor figures,
and iconic images of bodhisattvas.

Perhaps the most interesting of the post-Borobudur Buddhist shrines of the

9th century is Candi Sari. It is an outstanding architectural invention. From
the outside it appears as a large rectangular three-storied block, with the main
entrance piercing the centre of one of the longer sides. The third story stands
above a substantial architrave with horizontal moldings and antefixes. Two
windows on each short side, three on each long, open into each story, though
at the rear they are blind. The windows are crowned by large antefix-like
cartouches of ornamental carving based on curvilinear pavilions hung with
strings of gems. The uppermost windows are hooded with the Kala-monster
motif. The roof bears rows of small stupas, and perhaps there was once a large
central stupa. Inside, Candi Sari contains a processional corridor around three
interior shrines that were possibly intended for images of the garbha-
dhatu deities, as at Candi Mendut.

The last great monument of the central Javanese period, Lara Jonggrang, at

Prambanan, is indeed a colossal work, rivaling Borobudur. It was probably
built soon after 900. Not Buddhist but Hindu, the shrine represents the cosmic
mountain. There were originally 232 temples incorporated into the design. The
plan was centred on a square court with four gates containing the eight
principal temples. Facing east, the central and largest temple, some 120 feet
(40 metres) high, was devoted to the image of Shiva. To the north and south it
is flanked by slightly smaller temples devoted to the two other members of the
Hindu trinity, Vishnu and Brahma. The smaller shrines contained many
subsidiary images. The whole complex was enclosed, far off-centre, in an
extremely large walled courtyard.

Although these are Hindu buildings, their high-terraced shrine roofs bear tiers
of elongated and gadrooned stupas. The reliefs on these structures are
especially beautiful. One series, representing the guardians of the
directions, integrates the ornamental motifs with the plastic forms of the
bodies in a most original way. The balustrades and inset panels abound with
lively reliefs portraying various deities or scenes taken from the great Hindu
classics, especially the Ramayana.
East Javanese period: 927–16th century

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During the east Javanese period a very large number of monuments were
produced at the eastern end of the island (after 1222) and in Bali
(after c. 1050). Few single structures, however, are as impressive and as
comprehensively planned as are the monuments of Borobudur or Lara
Jonggrang.

Around the strange natural mountain with tiered peaks cut and built in stone,
called Mount Penanggungan, there were 81 structures (10th century) of
different kinds (now mostly in ruins). Prominent among these structures were
bathing places. This mountain was identified by the people with the
sacred Mount Meru, and its natural springs were believed to have a magical
healing power and a mystical purifying capacity. Another such bathing place
is Belahan (11th century). Made of brick, it too has extensive ruined temples.
Belahan is supposed to have been the burial place of King Airlangga, who
probably died about 1049. One of the greatest east Javanese icons formed the
central figure against the back wall of the tank. Carved of red tufa (a porous
rock), it shows the god Vishnu seated at peace on the back of his violently
dramatic bird-vehicle, Garuda. It is said that the image represents the king
himself in divine guise. Beside this image was a sculpture of a type associated
with many of these sacred bathing sites. It is a relief of a four-armed goddess of
abundance, her two lower hands holding jars pierced with holes, her two upper
hands squeezing her breasts, which are also pierced. Through the holes the
sacred water flowed into the basin. There are many variants of this idea at the
springs of Mount Penanggungan. On Bali the same kind of fountain sculpture
appears at the Goa Gadjah, at Bedulu, in a spring-fed tank below a cave.

In both Java and Bali there are many rock-face relief carvings from this period
(there are no secure dates). Some represent legendary scenes, while others
represent candis. The shallow chambers of others are thought to be royal
tombs.

The structure that gives the best ideas of what the typical east Javanese shrine
of the mid-13th century was like is Candi Kidal. The nucleus of the building is
a square cell, with slightly projecting porticoes each hooded by an enormous
Kala-monster head. But the cell itself is dwarfed both by the massive molded
plinth upon which it stands and by the huge tower with which it is
surmounted. The tower stands above an architrave stepped far out on tiered
moldings. It is no longer composed of diminishing stories, as earlier towers
were, but is conceived as a massive pyramidal obelisk made up of double
bands of ornament spaced by stumpy pilasters and bands of recessed panels.
The architectural projections and moldings distinguish Candi Kidal from earlier
Javanese architecture, with its plain wall surfaces.

Many masterpieces of sculpture belong to the east Javanese period. Among

them are some superb icons of Shiva and of a goddess of Buddhist wisdom

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from Singhasari and a splendid image of the elephant-headed god of wealth
from Bara, Blitar.

From the late 13th century onward a whole series of candis was created in
eastern Java. As time went on, the candis lost their monumental scale and
became simply shrines within a series of courtyards on a pre-Indian pattern.
From Candi Djago through Candi Panataran at Blitar (14th century) and Candi
Surawana it is possible to trace the line of descent of the modern Balinese
temple enclosures.

By the end of the 14th century, the figures in the relief sculpture at these
shrines had come more and more to resemble the shadow puppets of the
popular wayang drama. They adopt the stiff profile stance that presents both
shoulders, whereas the trees and houses resemble the silhouette leather and
wood cutouts used as properties in the shadow plays. The art of carving in the
near-full round, however, did not follow the same course of modification as the
reliefs. Such work did become softer and more delicate in style, with accretions
of broad floral forms, but well into the 15th century the icons retain something
of the strength of older sculptural conceptions. Another plastic tradition that
seems to have escaped domination by the wayang formula resulted in the
production of beautiful small terra-cotta figures as part of the revetment (stone
facing sustaining the embankment) of the east Javanese capital city
of Majapahit. Like the reliefs, the many small excavated bronzes of Hindu
scenes are under the wayang influence, three-dimensional though they may
be. Curlicues proliferate, and the plasticity of bodies is virtually ignored.
16th century to the present

The earliest manifestation of Islam’s arrival in Indonesia is the Javanese

congregational mosques and tombs that were established within the north
coastal Javanese Muslim communities about the mid-15th century. The main
congregational mosque located on the west side of public squares (alun-alun)
was sited directly in front of the court centre (kraton). This combination can be
seen at Yogyakarta, Surakarta, Cirebon, Banten, and Surabaya and also at
Java’s holiest mosque, Demak, believed to be the oldest extant mosque in the
Indonesian archipelago. Whereas the mosque evolved as the principal unit of
Indonesian Islamic architecture, the value of other architectural and
archaeological remains—such as kratons, tamans (gardens), and grave sites—
must be considered equally important in reconstructing and understanding
this transitional stage in Indonesia’s history.

Javanese mosques from this transitional period are arguably not

quintessentially Islamic, with certain distinct elements of design, use, and
decoration. Of particular note is the open pillared pavilion (pendopo) and the
multitiered roof forms (meru), both of which are evident in the architecture of
pre-Islamic Hindu Javanese temples. Royal courts with east Javanese reliefs of

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the 14th and 15th centuries also widely depict this monument type. It is
appropriate that a building with a tiered roof—multiplied vertically—would be
reserved for functions associated with ritual and cosmological symbolic
functions. The imagery of tapering tiered roofs was a reference to the
symbolism of the cosmic mountain. Additionally, the tiered roof had a practical
function and was essential for keeping the enclosed area cool and dry in Java’s
equatorial climate. Around the mosque, and also at court complexes, are
walled areas with ceremonial gateways that give access to the sequence of
concealed courts. The gateways are in the form of candi bentar and kori agung,
respectively, the traditional split portals and the covered gateways, seen in
such pre-Islamic east Javanese sanctuaries as Trowulan—the Majapahit
capital. Within these courts are a number of smaller pavilions which were
intended for religious educational use. This gateway and courtyard layout was
still being used in Balinese temple complexes in the 21st century.

The mosque at Mantingan is one of the few places where reliefs of the early
Islamic period survive. In the shape of round or oblong medallions, the
sculptures depict naturalistic scenes in flora and fauna in a rhythmic and
highly stylized manner. Decorations derive from Java’s classical period and
radiate the same animated and vivid atmosphere as the relief panels from the
14th-century temple at Panataran, East Java. Significantly, the Islamic
injunction against the representation of humans and animals does not appear
to have limited the Mantingan artists, who depicted animals such
as elephants, tigers, crabs, and monkeys, all composed entirely of floral
components. Relief sculpture is more substantial at Mantingan than at any
other Javanese mosque, excepting the contemporary carved wood reliefs of
Sendang Duwur. At Sendeng Duwur, which dates from about 1561, there are
two splendid elaborately carved gateways of spreading Garuda wings—Garuda
being the giant mythical bird mount of Vishnu. Other decorative motifs, which
continue from the Hindu Javanese repertoire, are the kala-
makara combination of monster head and mythical dolphin-snakelike creature
with its head composed of an elephant trunk and tusks and crocodile jaws.
These appear in a wide range of architectural features, including archways over
external gateways and as decoration over the sacred mihrab, which indicates
the direction of Mecca.

During the 18th century—as a consequence of trade from India, Europe,

China, the Middle East, and the rest of the region—a wide range of new
decorative motifs came to be applied to doors, windows, and internal walls.
Many fine examples exist in Sumatran mosques constructed from this time.
Later, in the 1920s and ’30s, a large number of mosques in Sumatra, Madura,
and Java received official refurbishment support from the Netherlands Indies
government, and this encouraged the introduction of freestanding minarets.
Meanwhile, new educational and theological developments throughout
the Islamic world introduced alternative architectural styles.

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These innovations were resisted by some, but, in the latter half of the century,
solidarity among Muslim nations encouraged the adoption of a wide range of
styles. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries there was a revival of
traditional teak mosque building, a source of national pride.
Bali

The rajas of eastern Java retreated before the Muslim invaders during the 16th
century and departed to the island of Bali, where they remained. The old
Javanese Indianized culture they brought with them survived and combined
with animist folk elements. In Bali that culture bred a widespread popular art.
There are many hundreds of temples in Bali of varying age. Each family group
has its own temple, dedicated to the ancestors; each village, too, has its temple,
in which special attention is paid to a rich fertility goddess identified with the
ancient Indian goddess of bounty, Shri. Special temples dedicated to the
goddess of death stand near the cremation ground. There are numerous major
temples—many associated with volcanic peaks—dedicated to different deities
and spirits; they range in size and importance from Besakih on Mount
Agung (where a megalith is incorporated as a phallic Shiva-emblem) to
Panataram Sasih of Pedjeng (where the bronze drum called “the Moon of Bali”
is preserved).

Pura Besakih Temple

Pura Besakih Temple, Bali, Indonesia.
© MuYeeTing—iStock/Getty Images

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Balinese temples are conceived as multiple courts raised on terraces. The tall
stone or brick and plaster gates are shaped like a candi-tower split down the
centre. They are usually encrusted with ornament based upon deep multiple
curlicues interspersed with simplified two-dimensional relief figure sculpture.
Fantastic three-dimensional guardians sometimes stand at the foot of the
access staircase. Beyond the gates are one or two courts within which various
ceremonies (including sacrifices and cockfights) may take place. The rearmost
court backs onto the mountain, whence spirits descend temporarily
when invoked. The court has no icons; at most, there is a seat for invisible
deities. The structures in the court, mostly of wood and thatch, may be of
many stories. (Such structures are called merus.) Sometimes the treasuries are
ornamented with carving, and a few older stone meru towers in local shrines
are carved with mythological figures.

Temple ceremonials, especially the cremation of distinguished people, evoked

elaborate ritual art objects in precious metals as well as in wood or fabric. All
were characterized by exuberant and repetitive curvilinear floral ornament and
by figures based on Indian legend, especially the Ramayana and parts of
the Mahabharata. In the 21st-century villages, music, dance, sculpture,
and painting are focused on the shrines and are practiced with an intensity
unknown elsewhere in the world. Art is woven intimately into the life of the
people. The masks carved of wood for the dances are specially refined,
sometimes ornate versions of the masks used in the animist rituals of other
Southeast Asian peoples.

Historically, painting was less important in Bali than music,

dance, drama, architecture, and sculpture. The older tradition of painting for
temples, which had almost died out by the 1930s, survived as the Kamasan
school. Other Balinese painting traditions included palm leaf manuscripts
(lontar) and cloth hangings, painted mostly for wayang kulit, puppet plays
held within the temple enclosure. The painter I Gusti Nyoman Lempad, who
during his very long career also practiced architecture and sculpting, created
original works from traditional subject matter.

In 1936 Russian-born German painter Walter Spies and Dutch artist Rudolf
Bonnet founded the Pita Maha (“Great Shining”) cooperative. Bonnet, in
particular, guided and developed artists, introducing them to new materials,
encouraging new subject matter, and promoting their works in the West. The
Pita Maha was the catalyst for the establishment of a number of painters’
groups, such as the Bantuan painters movement, in the 1940s and ’50s. The
majority of works dating from this period were painted by foreigners, such as
Willem Gerard Hofker (Dutch), Adrien-Jean Le Mayeur de Merprès
(Belgian), Miguel Covarrubias (Mexican), Romualdo Locatelli (Italian), and Theo
Meier (Swiss). Their romantic subjects depicted only certain elements of
Balinese life, presenting Westerners a misleading representation. The Western

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view came to inform local artists and was a factor limiting their artistic
interpretations. The cousins Anak Agung Gede Soberat and Anak Agung Gede
Meregeg were early members of the Pita Maha, and their enchanting
landscapes were much influenced by Spies’s work. Bonnet’s paintings included
elongated figures and depictions of Balinese music-making, dance, and literary
themes. These subjects continued to influence local artists into the 21st
century. Bantuan painters, such as Ida Bagus Made Wija and I Wayan Bendi,
depicted human forms in a highly animated setting. In 1956 Dutch artist Arie
Smit went to Bali, where he developed and promoted the Penestanan group of
young artists. Since the 1970s, artists such as I Gusti Nyoman Nodia, Nyoman
Erawan, and I Ketut Budiana created works embracing traditional themes.
Java: 20th and 21st centuries

The 19th-century Javanese artist Raden Saleh, although acclaimed as the first
Indonesian painter, had little influence on the art that came after. The
Western-style painting that followed was called Mooie Indie (“Beautiful Indies”).
This style was characterized by naturalistic landscapes and portraiture, and it
came to dominate modern Indonesian art during the first decades of the 20th
century. In the late 1930s the growing nationalist debate led artists to
challenge the traditional aesthetics of the Mooie Indie School. In 1938 Agus
Djaya and S. Sudjojono founded the Persatuan Ahli-Ahli Gambar (Union of
Indonesian Painters), which encouraged artists to experiment stylistically and
to question the representation of Indonesian identity and social concerns.

After Java achieved independence from the Dutch (1949), two art schools
emerged, whose differing styles and art theories helped to polarize modern art
into the 1960s. The fine arts faculty at Bandung Institute of Technology
espoused aesthetic formalism and abstraction, believing that art should be
pursued for its own sake, but in Yogyakarta the Indonesian Academy of Fine
Art encouraged artists to work in a more Social Realist style, advocating the
active role of arts in the nationalist struggle. Artists working outside this
academic system—most of whom were in the Yogyakarta area—formed
themselves into small groups (sanggar) based on the master-student tradition.
They became the primary organizers of group exhibitions before the emergence
of commercial galleries in the late 1950s and early ’60s.

During the Sukarno years (1945–65) artists’ guilds and organizations were

created. They were dominated by the Institute of People’s Culture (Lembaga
Kebudajaan Rakjat; Lekra), the cultural arm of the Indonesian communist
party. Lekra’s cultural aims, while initially progressive, became oppressive,
rejecting and suppressing any art that did not fit with its Social Realist style.
Contemporary with Sudjojono and also depicting social themes were the
painters Affandi and Hendra Gunawan. Affandi, the first Southeast Asian artist
to achieve a worldwide reputation, is considered the father of modern painting
in Indonesia. His Expressionist style of portraiture is characterized by a

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thick impasto built up of paint applied with his fingers. Gunawan painted
scenes of everyday life using swirling brushstrokes, brilliant hues, and
elongated figures in sensual poses.

In the mid-1970s the New Art Movement (Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru) was
established by a group of young conceptual artists to challenge the established
order and the conservatism of older artists. This led the way in the 1980s and
’90s to an internationalization of Indonesian art with photorealism, Islamic
painting, activist art, installation, and performance art, all marked by greater
regional engagement.
Singapore and Malaysia: 20th and 21st centuries

Despite Britain’s gradual colonization of Malaysia in the 18th and 19th

centuries, 19th-century British landscape conventions had only a limited
impact on the country’s artists and was largely ignored by the chroniclers of
modern Malaysian art history. Between 1920 and 1939 in Penang, such artists
as Yong Mun Sen, Abdullah Ariff, and Chuah Thean Teng mainly produced
representational works interpreting national identity. At the end of World War
II, the Nanyang School, based in Singapore, made a conscious effort to fuse
Western techniques with Eastern aesthetic principles. Well known among this
group are Georgette Chen, Cheong Soo Pieng, and Lim Yew Kuan.

Following Malaysian independence (1963), artists principally expressed their

newfound freedom with landscapes. Malay artists such as Ariff set about
developing a repertoire of imagery embodying ideal worlds in which nature and
humans are unified, while Chinese artists such as Teng attempted to convey a
more cosmopolitan impression of the region using traditional batik techniques.
In the late 1950s and ’60s the return of the first generation of artists who had
trained overseas led to the development of a distinctly Malaysian aesthetic
that encapsulated inherited tradition with a cosmopolitan appeal. Later
acknowledged as the founding fathers of Malaysian Abstract Espressionism,
this group included Latiff Mohidin, Syed Ahmad Jamal, Jolly Koh, Ibrahim
Hussein, Joseph Tan, and Yeoh Jin Leng. The works of these artists
experimented with geometric lines and symmetry representative of classical
Islamic art methods. Their efforts and approaches came to fuel a considerable
debate about Malaysian national and Islamic identity and the future direction
of contemporary art. A dominant trend to emerge was the exploration of
Islamic consciousness, signaling a reexamination of medium and
representation.
The Philippines

The population of this island group contains a number of different ethnic

strata, the oldest of which shares in the general folk culture and its associated
folk arts of the islands of Southeast Asia (see above Indonesia), with an

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emphasis on geometric simplification. An element in the Tagalog (a people of
central Luzon) is perhaps descended from the oldest level of immigrants with
a Paleolithic background. The Moro are Muslims who converted to Islam during
the 15th and 16th centuries. In the 21st century they produced a decorative
art in which old Muslim geometric motifs were combined with strong Chinese
decorative influences (from Song times, when Chinese ceramics and textiles
were imported). The decoration is applied primarily to textiles, weapons, and
containers to hold the betel nuts that are chewed throughout Southeast Asia.
The traditional motifs (okir) used in wood carving by the Maranao peoples
on Mindanao were replicated in the 20th and 21st centuries in
their brass wares. The Maranao were the largest manufacturers of brass wares,
an art that can be traced to early Chinese contacts before the arrival of the
Spanish.

The most important departure in Philippine art was the result of the Spanish
conquest of 1571. Thereafter, the bishopric of Manila and all of Luzon became
the focus for an elaborate development of Spanish colonial art, primarily
devoted to the construction and decoration of Roman Catholic churches in the
highly ornate and colourful colonial style. There is good colonial architecture
on other islands, including Bohol and Cebu. A large quantity of religious
sculpture of the canonical Christian subjects was imported from Mexico and
from Spain itself. Sculptors and missionary painters also immigrated, and a
powerful local school developed under the direct influence of the 17th-century
Spanish artists Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and Alonso Cano. Local arts were
encouraged in 1785 by the remission of taxes for religious artists. Because of
the close colonial ties, the stylistic developments corresponded substantially
with those elsewhere in the Spanish empire, and European prints served as
models for local artists. Of the major early churches for which this sculpture
and painting was executed, only San Agustin (1599–1614), in Manila, still
stood in the 21st century. It was designed by Fray Antonio de Herrera, son or
nephew of the great Spanish architect Juan de Herrera. During the 19th
century the Neo-Gothic style was imported, mainly through the Philippine
architect Felipe Roxas, who had traveled in Europe and England. San
Sebastian in Manila is a notable example of this style. The Spaniard Juan
Hervas, Manila’s municipal architect from 1887 to 1893, favoured neo-
Byzantine forms—e.g., Manila Cathedral (1878–79).

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San Agustin, Manila
San Agustin, Manila, 1599–1614.
© Richie Chan/Dreamstime.com

interior of San Agustin, Manila

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Interior of San Agustin, Manila, 1599–1614.

Until the 19th century the Spanish friars enforced strict supervision of artistic
production and its use. By the mid-19th century a new elite economic and
social class—the illustrados—emerged as the new patrons of the arts. This later
led to more secular subjects, including portraiture and the unique letras y
figuras—a style developed by José Honorato Lonzano, which combines
ornamental figures forming the letters of the patron’s name with familial motifs
and a personalized background landscape. Schools of fine art modeled on the
European academies were set up from 1821. Throughout the 19th century,
painters such as Simon Flores, Lorenzo Guerrero, Juan Luna, Felix
Resurrección Hidalgo, Antonio Malantic, and Fabián de la Rosa secured fame
and patronage with such popular subject matter as
portraiture, genre, landscape, and still life.

At the end of the Spanish-American War, in 1898, the United States acquired

the Philippines as a territory. Following two years of insurgency, the U.S.
federal government sought to impose its authority through such efforts as
remaking Manila, the country’s capital, according to Western ideals. It
commissioned architect and city planner Daniel Burnham, but only some of
his extensive plans were realized. With the end of World War II, the Republic of
the Philippines was proclaimed, but the war’s devastation required that Manila
and other cities be rebuilt, virtually anew. The architects who set about the
task, including Pablo Antonio, Carlos Arguelles, Cesar Concio, Juan Nakpil,
and Leandro Locsin, embraced modern international styles combined with a
Filipino aesthetic.

In 20th-century Philippine art, the influence of painter Fernando Cueto

Amorsolo was immense. His romanticized scenes of Filipino landscape and
rural life were so popular that they were copied by younger artists, giving rise
to the so-called Amorsolo school. In the 1920s Victorio Edades, Galo Ocampo,
and Carlos V. Francisco formed the Triumvirate group, which used modernist
techniques and themes drawn from a Filipino cultural perspective. The
Triumvirate’s staunch advocacy of modern art led to the formation of a core
group of artists known as the Thirteen Moderns, whose adoption of abstract
and Expressionist styles laid down the principles for those who followed. In
sculpture, the classical and romantic style of Guillermo Tolentino
runs antecedent to the Modernist agenda set by Napoleon Abueva, whose
works have widespread international recognition—e.g., The Sculpture (1984) at
the United Nations building in New York City.
Folk arts

The arts of many regions in Southeast Asia remained either untouched or only

slightly influenced by the Indianized arts of other regions. Such influence is

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found especially in regions where the gold trade flourished.
In Sarawak (Bonkisam), for example, the remains of buildings similar to late
Vajrayana east Javanese candis have been discovered. Among a few people—
e.g., the Hmong of highland Vietnam—vestiges of Indian erotic temple imagery
were adapted to local fertility ceremonies, and most of the religious ideas of the
region showed at least faint traces of Indian influence.

Save for the megaliths and Dong Son bronzes, most of the known folk

art objects are relatively recent, although their inspiration and types belong to
traditions far older and geographically more far-reaching than the Indianized
traditions.

The two main non-Indian art styles in the whole region have been provisionally
named the “monumental” and the “ornamental-fanciful.” They coexist virtually
everywhere, though they probably represent two evolutionary phases. The
principal manifestations of the monumental style are the megalithic
monuments, although there is great variety among the megalithic customs of
the many different populations in Sumatra, Laos, Indonesia, Borneo, and the
Philippines. The influence of the ornamental-fanciful style, which is
characterized especially by the scrolled spiral, insinuates itself even into many
of the decorative arts, particularly in the curvilinear inflection given to
ornamental motives in the major Indianizing styles.

The link between the two styles is probably the ubiquitous squatting ancestor

figure, cocked knees supporting elbows, carved in soft wood or woven in cane
or fibre. These figures may be either male or female. From about the 19th
century, under special social circumstances, very large wooden versions of the
figure were used as substitutes for more conventional,
standing megalithic ancestral monuments (Sumatra and Sabah). The custom is
probably an old one. There can be little doubt, for example, that
the Theravada Buddhist images of Burma, Thailand, and Laos were accepted
as special modifications of the ancestor image. The transition from revering
numinous ancestor images whose identity had been forgotten to worshipping
an Indianizing icon was easy for the native populations.

Ancestor figure from the Tanimbar Islands, Indonesia; in the Royal Tropical
Institute Museum, Amsterdam. Height 38 cm.
Courtesy of the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam
The complex significance of the original squatting ancestor figure enabled it to
be used in a variety of contexts. It might have combined associations of
the fetus, the fetal burial position, and female birth and intercourse positions,

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as well as a ceremonial posture assumed by the living. It came to be used
primarily in wooden sculpture on all scales, but also in woven textiles (e.g.,
Iban), to represent the continuing power informing human existence, both in
the purely ancestral sense of family continuity and identity and in the sense of
the fertility of the land. Its earliest recorded appearance may be on
Chinese Yangshao painted pottery (c. 2000 BCE), but it appears in essentially
the same form over a range of territory
including Sumatra, Nias and Sunda islands, Java, Borneo, New
Guinea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and out into
northern Australia and Melanesia. It may be used purely as an ancestral image
in a family shrine house or as a motif added to any one of a variety
of implements to potentiate them—for example, large bowls (Sumatra), kris or
sword handles (Java, Sumatra, and Borneo), spoons (Timor and the
Philippines), musical instruments (Borneo), and magicians’ staves (Borneo).

The treatment of such figures may be invested with more or fewer of the
characteristics of the ornamental-fanciful style in those regions where this style
prevails—e.g., Batak, Dayak. There are also special versions of the squatting
figure that seem to belong especially to important magical crafts, such as the
Javanese kris handle, on which miniature carvings can give an extraordinarily
monumental effect. Sumatran Dayak hereditary magical staves may be carved
with a “tower” or “tree” of such ancestor figures. On Nias, for example, along
with the squatting figure, a standing figure in the bent-knee posture common
in Polynesia also appears as a variant. In the Philippines similar variants are
sometimes interpreted as vestiges from a remote Indian mythology, adopted
probably for the sake of their cultural prestige. In southern Borneo the figure
appears carved in the full round and as a pattern for woven textiles. It often
has a protruding tongue and sometimes antlers—a combined motif known in
the Changsha art of southern China (c. 300 BCE). Antlers also appear on
certain Sumatran knife hilt figures. A variety of designs, some of them abstract,
are based on this figure. Among the Jarai of Vietnam, for example, a pattern of
lozenges represents an abstraction from a group of these figures. Especially in
the textiles of Sumba and other Indonesian islands, similar patterns, often
referred to as decorated triangles, represent the same phenomenon. When, as
in textiles, the anthropomorphic reference of the abstract pattern is lost, the
male genitals may remain to assert the ancestor significance.

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Gold kris, embossed scabbard and grip, from southern Celebes, Indonesia; in
the Royal Tropical Institute Museum, Amsterdam. Overall length 40.5 cm.
Courtesy of the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam
The association between the squatting figure and the widely practiced cult of
the skull is manifested in the combined cult of ancestors, headhunting, and
head worship. Among the Wa of Burma, for example, the squatting figure in a
lozenge abstraction decorates the chests in which the severed heads of enemies
are stored. Virtually everywhere among the early farmers of Southeast Asia,
such heads were regarded as repositories of great spiritual power. The cult of
the skull has produced a version of the squatting figure that is commonly
known by the Indonesian word korvar. It is a figure with an ancestral skull in
place of a carved head. Such figures are especially common in the more
easterly island cultures. The ghostly power of the deceased ancestor can thus
become present and available to the descendants—to give oracular advice, for
example. A related idea is incorporated in the masks used in a wide variety of
rituals and dance-dramas throughout Southeast Asia—for example, among
the Batak of Sumatra and the Dayak of Borneo, where especially fine examples
are made. There can be little doubt that the same idea (blended with imagery
from the imported Hindu epics) underlies the range of elaborate masks that
were once used in the Javanese and now can be seen in the
Balinese wayang dances. It is possible that the flame skull protuberances and
winglike flanges ornamenting the head in so much of the Buddhist art
produced in Burma and Thailand reflect a persistent but submerged interest in
the cult of the skull.

Another major motif is the snake, which (even in areas where direct Indianizing
influence was not strong) is frequently combined with imagery derived from the
cult of the powerful, magical Hindu naga. Often many-headed, this serpent is
the patron and guardian of water and treasure, both material and spiritual.
The snake motif has also been blended with images of the Chinese dragon,
going back perhaps to Chinese Han ornamental designs. Outstanding examples
are found on the elaborate relief-carved doors of Sumatran Batak houses;
“flying” roof finials in many parts of Indonesia; and in much Borneo Dayak
ornament, from tattoos to carved bamboos and bronze body ornaments. The
snake is the magico-mythical creature that gives both its bodily shape (either
straight or undulant) and its metaphysical power to the kris. Distributed from
Malacca to Celebes, these swords (the earliest known dated 1342) reached their
high point of artistic development in Java. A variety of other motifs originating
on the mainland of Asia is found in many of the surviving folk arts of
Indonesia. Among them are the “man in the embrace of an animal” (Dayak kris
handles) and animals “stacked” one above the other (Timor and Indonesia).

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naga
Brass receptacle from Krui, Sumatra, in the shape of a naga (mythical
serpent); in the Royal Tropical Institute Museum, Amsterdam. Height 5 cm.
Courtesy of the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam
The ornamental-fantastic style

The styles in which these variations on basic motifs are carried out vary
principally according to the preponderance of the sinuous curves and spirals of
the ornamental-fantastic style. This style serves as the basis for decoration and
as a method of artistic phrasing. It may have made its way into Southeast Asia
as late as the 1st millennium BCE, being formally related to the spirals used in
Chinese Neolithic, Shang, and Zhou bronze art. Probably connoting
spirituality, the spiral imagery appears in Southeast Asian magical art at all
levels, from the textiles of Java and the incised bamboo implements or carved
doors of Dayak Borneo to the ornament on the costumes of sculptured dancers
or deities at every major city site. Given a fiery upward inflection, it appears in
the finials on major Indianized stone architecture and on the carved wooden
gables of Burmese and Thai Buddhist halls. There is not always complete
stylistic consistency within any one cultural group. For example, the fantastic
snake-dragon creatures carved in deep relief on the house doors of the Batak
may be extravagantly sinuous, with many spirals, while their figure sculpture
adheres to the sterner plastic idiom, virtually without any linear sinuosity.
Among the Dayak of Borneo the fantastic style may be confined entirely to
surface ornament. On Indonesian islands, ancestral figures may be relatively

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static and foursquare, while the decorative carving and textiles may display
considerable linear fantasy. A special version of the ornamental-fantastic style
characterizes the surviving Indianized arts of Bali and Java, intruding even into
sculptural inventions derived from strongly three-
dimensional medieval Indianizing patterns. Thus, the decoration on
the wayang cutout leather puppets, with its somewhat stereotyped curlicues,
has proliferated at the expense of the three-dimensional sense (see
above Indonesia). Balinese wayang masks may be carved entirely out of
curling surfaces and completed in paint with sinuous eyebrows and
mustaches. In many parts of Southeast Asia, including Thailand, Vietnam,
Burma, Sumatra, and Indonesia, designs originally based upon Indian
flowering-scroll patterns can be found in architecture,
textiles, theatre costumes, musical instruments, and wooden utensils, all
efflorescing with extravagant curling ornament. In its most serious
manifestations this kind of ornament displays substantial artistic invention,
with carefully varied, asymmetrical, complementary, and counterchanged
curves.

door
Door, wood and shell from Kayan or Kenyah, Kalimantan, Borneo, 19th
century; in the Honolulu Academy of Arts.
Photograph by L. Mandle. Honolulu Academy of Arts, gift of The Christensen
Fund, 2001 (10183.1a,b)
Textiles

Perhaps the types of folk art best known in the West are the textiles,
especially batik and ikat. Both names refer to techniques practiced by different
groups of people, who must have learned it from each other. Essentially
Javanese but known in other islands, batik may have resulted from
the imitation with dyes of South Indian painted cloths, probably before 1700.

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The essence of the technique is that melted wax is poured from a small metal
kettle onto areas of a plain cotton cloth, which is then dyed, only the unwaxed
parts taking the colour. The process can be repeated with several different
colours. The oldest basic colours are indigo and brown; red and yellow were
used later. The possible patterns range from lozenges and circlets through a
large repertoire of cursive animal and plant forms. The batik technique can
produce sumptuous and complex designs that not even the most elaborate
weaving techniques can duplicate. It was encouraged by the Muslim rulers as a
major element of social expression in garments and hangings.

Javanese batik textile accented with gilding; in the Royal Tropical Institute
Museum, Amsterdam.Courtesy of the Royal Tropical Institute, Amsterdam

Ikat is known among the Batak, in Cambodia, and especially among the
dispersed Dayak people. It, too, probably originated in India. The
extraordinarily difficult ikat textiles (woven cotton and occasionally silk,
especially in Cambodia) are made primarily for use in important ceremonials
and were regarded by their makers as major works of art. Before being woven,
the thread is tightly tied at carefully calculated points in the hank (coiled or
looped bundle). This is then dyed, the tied parts not taking up dye. The process
may be repeated for different colours. As a consequence of the predyeing,
designs appear as the thread is woven. In most ikat, only the warp (the series
of yarns extended lengthwise in the loom and crossed by the weft) is so treated,
but in southern Sumatra a tie-dyed floating weft is added to the plain weft.
Naturally, ikat designs tend to be static and more or less rectilinear. In the
finest ikat, however, birds and animals, spirits and houses, and, in Cambodia,
a vestigial iconography of royal Buddhism may be formalized into extremely
beautiful banded compositions.

Ikat cloth from Sumba Timur, Lesser Sunda Islands; in the J. and R. Langewis
Collection, Castricum, The Netherlands.

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Construction of Angkor Wat likely began in the year 1116 C.E.—three years
after King Suryavarman II came to the throne—with construction ending in
1150, shortly after the king’s death. Evidence for these dates comes in part
from inscriptions, which are vague, but also from the architectural design and
artistic style of the temple and its associated sculptures.

The building of temples by Khmer kings was a means of legitimizing their

claim to political office and also to lay claim to the protection and powers of the
gods. Hindu temples are not a place for religious congregation; instead; they
are homes of the god. In order for a king to lay claim to his political office he
had prove that the gods did not support his predecessors or his enemies. To
this end, the king had to build the grandest temple/palace for the gods, one
that proved to be more lavish than any previous temples. In doing so, the king
could make visible his ability to harness the energy and resources to construct
the temple, and assert that his temple was the only place that a god would
consider residing in on earth.

The building of Angkor Wat is likely to have necessitated some 300,000

workers, which included architects, construction workers, masons, sculptors
and the servants to feed these workers. Construction of the site took over 30
years and was never completely finished. The site is built entirely out of stone,
which is incredible as close examination of the temple demonstrates that
almost every surface is treated and carved with narrative or decorative details.
An aerial view of Angkor Wat demonstrates that the temple is made up of an
expansive enclosure wall, which separates the sacred temple grounds from the
protective moat that surrounds the entire complex (the moat is visible in the
photograph at the top of the page). The temple proper is comprised of three
galleries (a passageway running along the length of the temple) with a central
sanctuary, marked by five stone towers.

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Gallery, Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia, 1116-1150 (photo: fmpgoh, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The five stone towers are intended to mimic the five mountain ranges of Mt.
Meru—the mythical home of the gods, for both Hindus and Buddhists. The
temple mountain as an architectural design was invented in Southeast Asia.
Southeast Asian architects quite literally envisioned temples dedicated to
Hindu gods on earth as a representation of Mt. Meru. The galleries and the
empty spaces that they created between one another and the moat are
envisioned as the mountain ranges and oceans that surround Mt. Meru. Mt.
Meru is not only home to the gods, it is also considered an axis-mundi. An
axis-mundi is a cosmic or world axis that connects heaven and earth. In
designing Angkor Wat in this way, King Suryavarman II and his architects
intended for the temple to serve as the supreme abode for Vishnu. Similarly,
the symbolism of Angkor Wat serving as an axis mundi was intended to
demonstrate the Angkor Kingdom’s and the king’s central place in the
universe. In addition to envisioning Angkor Wat as Mt. Meru on earth, the
temple’s architects, of whom we know nothing, also ingeniously designed the
temple so that embedded in the temple’s construction is a map of the cosmos
(mandala) as well as a historical record of the temple’s patron.
Angkor Wat as a Mandala

According to ancient Sanskrit and Khmer texts, religious monuments and

specifically temples must be organized in such a way that they are in harmony
with the universe, meaning that the temple should be planned according to the
rising sun and moon, in addition to symbolizing the recurrent time sequences
of the days, months and years. The central axis of these temples should also be
aligned with the planets, thus connecting the structure to the cosmos so that
temples become spiritual, political, cosmological, astronomical and geo-

184
physical centers. They are, in other words, intended to represent microcosms of
the universe and are organized as mandalas—diagrams of the universe.
Mount Meru, in Hindu mythology, a golden mountain that stands in the centre
of the universe and is the axis of the world. It is the abode of gods, and its
foothills are the Himalayas, to the south of which extends Bhāratavarṣa (“Land
of the Sons of Bharata”), the ancient name for India. The roof tower crowning
the shrine in a Hindu temple represents Meru. As the world axis, Mount
Meru reaches down below the ground, into the nether regions, as far as it
extends into the heavens. All of the principal deities have their own celestial
kingdoms on or near it, where their devotees reside with them after death,
while awaiting their next reincarnation.
QuizzesGamesOn This Day

Post-Borobudur candis

Post-Borobudur candis illustrate the Buddhist doctrine in different

ways. Kalasan, for example, built in the second half of the 8th century, was a
large square shrine on a plinth, with projecting porticoes at the centre of each
face. The roof was surmounted by a high circular stupa mounted on an
octagonal drum, the faces of which bear reliefs of divinities. Topping each
portico was a group of five small stupas, and another large stupa stood at each
disengaged corner of the main shrine. The moldings were restrained and
elegantly profiled. Each section of the exterior wall contains a niche meant for
a figure sculpture. The decorative scroll carving is especially fine.

Another shrine from this period, Candi Sewu, consisted of a large cruciform
shrine surrounded by smaller temples, only one of which has been restored. All
of the temples seem to have had roofs in the form of tiered stupas, compressing
the overall Borobudur scheme into the scope of a storied shrine tower. From
Candi Plaosan came many beautiful sculptures, donor figures,
and iconic images of bodhisattvas.

Perhaps the most interesting of the post-Borobudur Buddhist shrines of the

9th century is Candi Sari. It is an outstanding architectural invention. From
the outside it appears as a large rectangular three-storied block, with the main
entrance piercing the centre of one of the longer sides. The third story stands
above a substantial architrave with horizontal moldings and antefixes. Two
windows on each short side, three on each long, open into each story, though
at the rear they are blind. The windows are crowned by large antefix-like
cartouches of ornamental carving based on curvilinear pavilions hung with
strings of gems. The uppermost windows are hooded with the Kala-monster
motif. The roof bears rows of small stupas, and perhaps there was once a large
central stupa. Inside, Candi Sari contains a processional corridor around three
interior shrines that were possibly intended for images of the garbha-
dhatu deities, as at Candi Mendut.

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The last great monument of the central Javanese period, Lara Jonggrang, at
Prambanan, is indeed a colossal work, rivaling Borobudur. It was probably
built soon after 900. Not Buddhist but Hindu, the shrine represents the cosmic
mountain. There were originally 232 temples incorporated into the design. The
plan was centred on a square court with four gates containing the eight
principal temples. Facing east, the central and largest temple, some 120 feet
(40 metres) high, was devoted to the image of Shiva. To the north and south it
is flanked by slightly smaller temples devoted to the two other members of the
Hindu trinity, Vishnu and Brahma. The smaller shrines contained many
subsidiary images. The whole complex was enclosed, far off-centre, in an
extremely large walled courtyard.

Although these are Hindu buildings, their high-terraced shrine roofs bear tiers
of elongated and gadrooned stupas. The reliefs on these structures are
especially beautiful. One series, representing the guardians of the
directions, integrates the ornamental motifs with the plastic forms of the
bodies in a most original way. The balustrades and inset panels abound with
lively reliefs portraying various deities or scenes taken from the great Hindu
classics, especially the Ramayana.
East Javanese period: 927–16th century

During the east Javanese period a very large number of monuments were
produced at the eastern end of the island (after 1222) and in Bali
(after c. 1050). Few single structures, however, are as impressive and as
comprehensively planned as are the monuments of Borobudur or Lara
Jonggrang.

Around the strange natural mountain with tiered peaks cut and built in stone,
called Mount Penanggungan, there were 81 structures (10th century) of
different kinds (now mostly in ruins). Prominent among these structures were
bathing places. This mountain was identified by the people with the
sacred Mount Meru, and its natural springs were believed to have a magical
healing power and a mystical purifying capacity. Another such bathing place
is Belahan (11th century). Made of brick, it too has extensive ruined temples.
Belahan is supposed to have been the burial place of King Airlangga, who
probably died about 1049. One of the greatest east Javanese icons formed the
central figure against the back wall of the tank. Carved of red tufa (a porous
rock), it shows the god Vishnu seated at peace on the back of his violently
dramatic bird-vehicle, Garuda. It is said that the image represents the king
himself in divine guise. Beside this image was a sculpture of a type associated
with many of these sacred bathing sites. It is a relief of a four-armed goddess of
abundance, her two lower hands holding jars pierced with holes, her two upper
hands squeezing her breasts, which are also pierced. Through the holes the
sacred water flowed into the basin. There are many variants of this idea at the

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springs of Mount Penanggungan. On Bali the same kind of fountain sculpture
appears at the Goa Gadjah, at Bedulu, in a spring-fed tank below a cave.

In both Java and Bali there are many rock-face relief carvings from this period
(there are no secure dates). Some represent legendary scenes, while others
represent candis. The shallow chambers of others are thought to be royal
tombs.

The structure that gives the best ideas of what the typical east Javanese shrine
of the mid-13th century was like is Candi Kidal. The nucleus of the building is
a square cell, with slightly projecting porticoes each hooded by an enormous
Kala-monster head. But the cell itself is dwarfed both by the massive molded
plinth upon which it stands and by the huge tower with which it is
surmounted. The tower stands above an architrave stepped far out on tiered
moldings. It is no longer composed of diminishing stories, as earlier towers
were, but is conceived as a massive pyramidal obelisk made up of double
bands of ornament spaced by stumpy pilasters and bands of recessed panels.
The architectural projections and moldings distinguish Candi Kidal from earlier
Javanese architecture, with its plain wall surfaces.

Many masterpieces of sculpture belong to the east Javanese period. Among

them are some superb icons of Shiva and of a goddess of Buddhist wisdom
from Singhasari and a splendid image of the elephant-headed god of wealth
from Bara, Blitar.

From the late 13th century onward a whole series of candis was created in
eastern Java. As time went on, the candis lost their monumental scale and
became simply shrines within a series of courtyards on a pre-Indian pattern.
From Candi Djago through Candi Panataran at Blitar (14th century) and Candi
Surawana it is possible to trace the line of descent of the modern Balinese
temple enclosures.

By the end of the 14th century, the figures in the relief sculpture at these
shrines had come more and more to resemble the shadow puppets of the
popular wayang drama. They adopt the stiff profile stance that presents both
shoulders, whereas the trees and houses resemble the silhouette leather and
wood cutouts used as properties in the shadow plays. The art of carving in the
near-full round, however, did not follow the same course of modification as the
reliefs. Such work did become softer and more delicate in style, with accretions
of broad floral forms, but well into the 15th century the icons retain something
of the strength of older sculptural conceptions. Another plastic tradition that
seems to have escaped domination by the wayang formula resulted in the
production of beautiful small terra-cotta figures as part of the revetment (stone
facing sustaining the embankment) of the east Javanese capital city
of Majapahit. Like the reliefs, the many small excavated bronzes of Hindu

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scenes are under the wayang influence, three-dimensional though they may
be. Curlicues proliferate, and the plasticity of bodies is virtually ignored.
16th century to the present

The earliest manifestation of Islam’s arrival in Indonesia is the Javanese

congregational mosques and tombs that were established within the north
coastal Javanese Muslim communities about the mid-15th century. The main
congregational mosque located on the west side of public squares (alun-alun)
was sited directly in front of the court centre (kraton). This combination can be
seen at Yogyakarta, Surakarta, Cirebon, Banten, and Surabaya and also at
Java’s holiest mosque, Demak, believed to be the oldest extant mosque in the
Indonesian archipelago. Whereas the mosque evolved as the principal unit of
Indonesian Islamic architecture, the value of other architectural and
archaeological remains—such as kratons, tamans (gardens), and grave sites—
must be considered equally important in reconstructing and understanding
this transitional stage in Indonesia’s history.

Javanese mosques from this transitional period are arguably not

quintessentially Islamic, with certain distinct elements of design, use, and
decoration. Of particular note is the open pillared pavilion (pendopo) and the
multitiered roof forms (meru), both of which are evident in the architecture of
pre-Islamic Hindu Javanese temples. Royal courts with east Javanese reliefs of
the 14th and 15th centuries also widely depict this monument type. It is
appropriate that a building with a tiered roof—multiplied vertically—would be
reserved for functions associated with ritual and cosmological symbolic
functions. The imagery of tapering tiered roofs was a reference to the
symbolism of the cosmic mountain. Additionally, the tiered roof had a practical
function and was essential for keeping the enclosed area cool and dry in Java’s
equatorial climate. Around the mosque, and also at court complexes, are
walled areas with ceremonial gateways that give access to the sequence of
concealed courts. The gateways are in the form of candi bentar and kori agung,
respectively, the traditional split portals and the covered gateways, seen in
such pre-Islamic east Javanese sanctuaries as Trowulan—the Majapahit
capital. Within these courts are a number of smaller pavilions which were
intended for religious educational use. This gateway and courtyard layout was
still being used in Balinese temple complexes in the 21st century.

The mosque at Mantingan is one of the few places where reliefs of the early
Islamic period survive. In the shape of round or oblong medallions, the
sculptures depict naturalistic scenes in flora and fauna in a rhythmic and
highly stylized manner. Decorations derive from Java’s classical period and
radiate the same animated and vivid atmosphere as the relief panels from the
14th-century temple at Panataran, East Java. Significantly, the Islamic
injunction against the representation of humans and animals does not appear
to have limited the Mantingan artists, who depicted animals such

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as elephants, tigers, crabs, and monkeys, all composed entirely of floral
components. Relief sculpture is more substantial at Mantingan than at any
other Javanese mosque, excepting the contemporary carved wood reliefs of
Sendang Duwur. At Sendeng Duwur, which dates from about 1561, there are
two splendid elaborately carved gateways of spreading Garuda wings—Garuda
being the giant mythical bird mount of Vishnu. Other decorative motifs, which
continue from the Hindu Javanese repertoire, are the kala-
makara combination of monster head and mythical dolphin-snakelike creature
with its head composed of an elephant trunk and tusks and crocodile jaws.
These appear in a wide range of architectural features, including archways over
external gateways and as decoration over the sacred mihrab, which indicates
the direction of Mecca.

During the 18th century—as a consequence of trade from India, Europe,

China, the Middle East, and the rest of the region—a wide range of new
decorative motifs came to be applied to doors, windows, and internal walls.
Many fine examples exist in Sumatran mosques constructed from this time.
Later, in the 1920s and ’30s, a large number of mosques in Sumatra, Madura,
and Java received official refurbishment support from the Netherlands Indies
government, and this encouraged the introduction of freestanding minarets.
Meanwhile, new educational and theological developments throughout
the Islamic world introduced alternative architectural styles.
These innovations were resisted by some, but, in the latter half of the century,
solidarity among Muslim nations encouraged the adoption of a wide range of
styles. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries there was a revival of
traditional teak mosque building, a source of national pride.
Bali

The rajas of eastern Java retreated before the Muslim invaders during the 16th
century and departed to the island of Bali, where they remained. The old
Javanese Indianized culture they brought with them survived and combined
with animist folk elements. In Bali that culture bred a widespread popular art.
There are many hundreds of temples in Bali of varying age. Each family group
has its own temple, dedicated to the ancestors; each village, too, has its temple,
in which special attention is paid to a rich fertility goddess identified with the
ancient Indian goddess of bounty, Shri. Special temples dedicated to the
goddess of death stand near the cremation ground. There are numerous major
temples—many associated with volcanic peaks—dedicated to different deities
and spirits; they range in size and importance from Besakih on Mount
Agung (where a megalith is incorporated as a phallic Shiva-emblem) to
Panataram Sasih of Pedjeng (where the bronze drum called “the Moon of Bali”
is preserved).

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Pura Besakih Temple-Pura Besakih Temple, Bali, Indonesia.© MuYeeTing—iStock/Getty Images

Balinese temples are conceived as multiple courts raised on terraces. The tall
stone or brick and plaster gates are shaped like a candi-tower split down the
centre. They are usually encrusted with ornament based upon deep multiple
curlicues interspersed with simplified two-dimensional relief figure sculpture.
Fantastic three-dimensional guardians sometimes stand at the foot of the
access staircase. Beyond the gates are one or two courts within which various
ceremonies (including sacrifices and cockfights) may take place. The rearmost
court backs onto the mountain, whence spirits descend temporarily
when invoked. The court has no icons; at most, there is a seat for invisible
deities. The structures in the court, mostly of wood and thatch, may be of
many stories. (Such structures are called merus.) Sometimes the treasuries are
ornamented with carving, and a few older stone meru towers in local shrines
are carved with mythological figures.

Temple ceremonials, especially the cremation of distinguished people, evoked

elaborate ritual art objects in precious metals as well as in wood or fabric. All
were characterized by exuberant and repetitive curvilinear floral ornament and
by figures based on Indian legend, especially the Ramayana and parts of
the Mahabharata. In the 21st-century villages, music, dance, sculpture,
and painting are focused on the shrines and are practiced with an intensity
unknown elsewhere in the world. Art is woven intimately into the life of the
people. The masks carved of wood for the dances are specially refined,
sometimes ornate versions of the masks used in the animist rituals of other
Southeast Asian peoples.

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MORE about MERU

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 Dr Uday Dokras

Once I read in kadambini that sumeru parvat situated in any where above
laddakh and near russia ,tajakhisan.

Jain theorum say as below:

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source Muni kshma sagarji Jain darshan

And tatva Gyan and kadambini

Pamir Range .Tian shan range is Kumud Parvata.Kailash are Himalaya
range.Natural beauty,Roof of the World (Bam I Duniya) or Swarg Loka with
precious gemstones(Ex Clinohumite) ,centre of Treasury hunt between
Deva(Central Asians) n Asuras(Mediterraneans).

It's name connect the civilization of Harappan s with Sumerians

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You mean Meru? It is on Brahmaloka.

1. Sumeru is a cultural and historical concept that has no exact physical

mountain equivalent. It’s like an archetype of male or female, one, zero or
infinity.

2. The real mount Meru is not some physical mountain but the subtle
Merudand/spinal column within all beings and containing spiritual life
force. It was also called mount Olympus in Greek culture.

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It represents the axis of the cosmos in one way of thinking.

As it’s an abstraction and we can’t say exactly where it is, it currently exists in
the minds of people who share this idea.
ent
There is no mount Sumeru on earth. It is imagined to be on earth by Iron Age
Indians but was a purely fictional idea. In Buddhist cosmology the mountain
sits at the centre of a flat earth surrounded by four symmetrical continents.
That is to say, it is not real.
Where is Mount Meru located?
·

The Meru of Mahabharata Era - 1

[1] Let’s look for Meru upon the pages of Mahabharata and let’s see what this
great epic has to say about this topographical entity. It may be noted that we
have already, though cursorily, proposed the Bhubaneswar Model of Meru
Parvata in the Article “Scenario : The Sida River of Buddha Era”, one of the
series “Easternization and The Brown Arya”. So, our findings on Meru upon the
pages of Mahabharata would have to be seen with reference to this Meru Model
as well.

Firstly, we shall lay down the actual Mahabharata-Meru findings one by one
along with some collateral classical and/or plausibly-historical information,
and short remarks, if necessary, which will be later reflected upon and
analyzed in steps, in order to elicit surer historical implications and inferences.

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[2] In Mahabharata Khanda-1 / Adi Parva / Adhyaya-17 / Sloka-5-6,
Ugrashrava replies Saunaka’s certain question thus :

“There is a radiant mountain, named Meru, shining uniquely, reflecting sun’s

rays upon own bright golden peaks. This mountain, that thus looks to be
adorned with golden ornaments, is inhabited by Devas and Gandharvas. Its
extents are immeasurable and happens to be a region where no impious person
can really stay on.”

In Sloka-7-8, he further tells Saunaka about this mountain :

“Snakes and divine medicinal plants are plentiful in this region. The latter adds
to its beauty. The Meru Mountain covers (includes) Svarga. It remains
unthinkable (unreachable) for common men. This tract is crossed by several
rivers and endowed with thick plantations. Its natural beauty includes great
flocks of twittering birds of numerous species.”

In Sloka-9 he further adds :

“Its peaks are ingrained with jewels.”

[3] In Mahabharata Khanda-1 / Adi Parva / Adhyaya-62 / Sloka-48,

Mahabharata is being extolled as the receptacle of gem-like matters through
analogies which describe Ocean and Meru as great sources of gems. It is a
revelation about Meru’s status with respect to wealth.

[4] In Mahabharata Khanda-1 / Adi Parva / Adhyaya-85 / Sloka-7-10, King

Yayati is seen romancing with Visvachi, an Apsaras (race). The Alaka Puri
(palace) and the mount on the northern part of Meru were their favorite
meeting places. It may be noted that Yayati was an ancestor of the Pandavas.

[5] In Mahabharata Khanda-1 / Adi Parva / Adhyaya-99 / Sloka-5-7, Ganga

tells Santanu, her husband that Vasistha, aka Apava, son of Varuna had his
Ashram upon Meru, the Mountain King. She also describes the attractive
characteristics of the Ashram. These were abundance of deers, variegated
birds, all-season flowers, fruits, roots and water.

It may be noted that Vasistha “is one of the oldest and most revered Vedic
rishis. He is one of the Saptarishis (seven great Rishis) of Ancient India.
Vasishtha is credited as the chief author of Mandala 7 of Rigveda. Vasishtha
and his family are mentioned in Rigvedic verse 10.167.4 and in other Rigvedic
mandalas and in many Vedic texts. … Yoga Vasishtha, Vasishtha Samhita, as
well as some versions of the Agni Purana and Vishnu Purana are attributed to
him” [wikipedia].

[6] In Mahabharata Khanda-1 / Adi Parva / Adhyaya-175 / Sloka-45,

Vasishtha is seen jumping off the peak of Meru in a suicidal bid, though the

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rocky fall-point turns as soft as cotton for him. Vasishtha had acceded to such
a severe mental state following death of his sons at the hand of King
Visvamitra.

It may be noted that “Brahmarshi Vishvamitra is one of the most venerated

rishis or sages of ancient India. He is also credited as the author of most of
Mandala 3 of the Rigveda, including Gayatri Mantra. … Vishvamitra was
originally a king, also called Kaushika (descendant of Kusha) and belonged to
Amavasu Dynasty. He was the Chandravanshi (Somavanshi) King of
Kanyakubja. He was a valiant warrior and the great-grandson of a great king
named Kusha (a brainchild of Brahma, father of Kushabhadra and grandfather
of Gaadhi.” [wikipedia]

[7] In Mahabharata Khanda-3 / Vana Parva / Adhyaya-82 / Sloka-111,

Pulastya tells Bhishma about Vinasana Tirtha, where River Sarasvati flows
upon the breast/ surface of Meru (Meru-Prishtha) “latently”.

This fact about this great river contradicts and undoes the rumor that
“Sarasvati dried up in a desert”.

In Sloka-112, the narration on Sarasvati is extended to include the facts that

the Tirthas of Chamasodveda, Shivodveda and Nagodveda are situated upon
this river. In Sloka-113, Nagodveda Tirtha has been connected to Nagaloka
insofar as ablution at his site situated upon Sarasvati would facilitate a
believer’s accession to Naga-Loka.

Consideration of this possible connection is important in view of the fact that

Naga-Loka is likely to emerge through further discussion as a real geographical
site of historical importance.

The other mentions about Sarasvati in the same Parva need to be noted as
these are too important clues to Meru’s topology. Sloka-60-61 of the same
Parva talks about the Tirtha incident at the confluence of Sarasvati and Sagara
(Ocean). This Tirtha has been connected to Svarga-Loka.

Like Naga-Loka, Svarga-Loka too is likely to emerge through further discussion

as a geographical locality of great historical importance.

Slokas-114-116 describe the Shashayana Tirtha on Sarasvati which gathers

special importance on Kartika Purnima (Kartika Fullmoon Day). The story of
Puskara Tirtha is interlaced with this one inasmuch as the believers tend to be
reminded of the outline of Puskara by the marks on the full moon they witness
at Shashayana on Karika Purnima.

Sloka-126 returns to Sarasvati Samgama, the confluence of Sarasvati and

Sagar (Ocean), a Tirtha, which is connected to special worship of Kesava

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(Krishna) in general and is related to a special Tithi (calendar day), viz. Chaitra
Sukla Chaturdashi (the 14th day of Bright Fortnight of the month of Chaitra).

We are noting down these bits of information for possible future use in settling
Meru-Sarasvati topology with respect to Bhubaneswar Model of Meru Parvata
(Meru Mountain).

The following excerpts represent short classical descriptions of these two giant
topological elements of the ancient-most part of Modern India.

“Sarasvati River was one of the rivers mentioned in the Rig Veda and later
Vedic and post-Vedic texts. The Sarasvati River played an important role in
Hinduism since Vedic Sanskrit. The first part of the Rig Veda is believed to
have originated when the Vedic people lived on its banks.” [wikipedia]

“Mount Meru is the sacred five-peaked mountain of Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist
cosmology and is considered to be the center of all the physical, metaphysical
and spiritual universes.” [wikipedia]

Coming back to the Parva-82, the sequence of the numerous Tirthas that
Pulastya reckons one by one and narrates before Bhishma couldn’t include
ones separated by very great distances. The style of narration implies that
these Tirthas could belong to one geographical domain of a diameter not
exceeding a hundred miles or so.

We may take this opportunity to note down these Pulastya-enumerated Tirthas

for future reference. These are : Puskara, Jambumarga, Tandulika-ashram,
Agastya Sarovara, Kanva-ashram, Dharmaranya, Yayati-patana, Mahakala-
tirtha, Koti-tirtha, Bhadra-vata, Narmada River, Dakshina Samudra,
Charmanvati River, Arbuda aka Himalaya-putra, Vasishtha-ashram, Pinga-
tirtha, Prabhasa-tirtha, Sarasvati Samgama aka Varuna-tirtha
(Samudra/Ocean), Varadana-tirtha, Dvaraka, Pindaraka-tirtha, Sindhu
Samgama aka Varuna-tirtha, Dami-tirtha, Vasudhara-tirtha, Sindhuttama-
tirtha, Bhadratunga-tirtha, Shakra-Kumarika-tirtha, Renuka-tirtha, Pancha-
Nada-tirtha, Yoni-tirtha, Vimala-tirtha, Vitasta-tirtha, Vadava-tirtha aka
Sapta-Charu-tirtha, Maniman-tirtha, Devika-tirtha, Kama-tirtha, Dirgha-
Satra-tirtha, Vinasana-tirtha, Chamasodveda, Shivodveda, Nagodveda,
Shashayana, Kumarakoti-tirtha, Rudrakoti-tirtha.

Tracking down geographical locations of these Tirthas individually would help

us improve accuracy of positioning of erstwhile Meru upon Indian topography.

Out of this cluster of Tirthas, as many as six Tirthas, viz. Vinasan,

Chamasodveda, Shivodveda, Nagodveda, Shashayana and Sarasvati Samgama,
fall along the length of Sarasvati intercepted by Meru. Multilateral interlacing
of the other Tirthas lurks in the finer details, when available. Could the whole
lot form a single cluster superposing Meru locality?

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The two Tithis (calendar days of ceremonial observance), viz. Kartika Purnima
(Fullmoon of the month of Kartika) and Chaitra Sukla Chaturdasi (14th day of
the bright fortnight of the month of Chaitra), that we came across in the
narrations about the various Tirthas are too noteworthy. These could serve as
clues in our endeavor to finetune the identity of Meru.

The Bhunaneswar Meru Model is heavily supported by at least the Kartika

Purnima legacy.

The features of Meru that have surfaced in this section of our discussion
invites Kuakhai-Daya River of Bhubaneswar, a distributary of Mahanadi-
Kathajodi River of Modern Odisha, to be the erstwhile Sarasvati in the
Bhubaneswar Model of Mount Meru. We are not in a haste to conclude
anything now. We shall continue to gather evidences.

It is a cosmic mountain emerging from cosmic ocean Garbodaka. Vedic

Scriptures clearly state that it is there in the middle of Bhuloka planetary
system but is not seen there. Mt. Meru isn’t a physical mountain that can be
seen with human eyes. Mt. Meru links Bhuloka to Swarga Loka. All the
heavenly bodies in the universe somehow revolve around Mt. Meru.

When Lord Shiva destroyed Tripur, Mt. Meru was his bow and serpent Vasuki
his strings.

Mt. Meru is mostly described as five peaked mountain which are abode of
devas. In modern cosmology, Mt. Meru doesnot exist but is there in Jain,
Buddhist and hindu Scriptures as a mountain with height that is more than
80,000 yojans (75 times the earth’s diameter).

A mountain named Mt. Meru is also there in Tanzania but clearly that’s not the
one I’m talking about :)
Mount Meru is situated a mere 40 kilometers southwest from Kilimanjaro in
the northern Arusha Park in Tanzania. Because Meru is so close to the famed
Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, it is often literally overshadowed
by its brother. Mount Meru is in no way an alternative to climbing Kilimanjaro,
but make no mistake, Meru offers a very enjoyable climb, with the uniqueness
of the best ridge walk in Africa. Meru can definitely hold its own as an extinct
volcano.

It is the second highest mountain in the country, and considered to be the

fourth highest mountain in Africa. Meru Peak is a mountain that lies in
the Garhwal Himalayas, in the Uttarakhand region of India. It lies between
Thalay Sagar and Shivling, and has some highly challenging routes. The name
"Meru" likely originated from Sanskrit word for spine, attributing to the shape
of the mountain.

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मे रु, means mountain is a sacred cosmological mountain with five peaks
in Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist cosmology and is considered to be the center of
all the physical, metaphysical and spiritual universes.Meru to which is added
the approbatory prefix su-, results in the meaning "Excellent Meru",
"Wonderful Meru" or "Great Meru".

Many famous Hindu and similar Jain as well as Buddhist temples have been

built as symbolic representations of this mountain. The "Sumeru Throne" 須彌
座 xūmízuò style base is a common feature of Chinese pagodas.
Mt. Meru is a shark Fin shape mountain located in gangotri valley. Mt. Meru is
one of the toughest mountain to climb on earth. The ratio of climbing attempt
and successful climb is very low. First of all you should reach gangotri and
then from there you have have to trek to mt. meru via Gomukh.
dd Comment

Mount Meru is the conceptual (spiritual)Centre of the universe in Indian

Cosmology. As the cosmic centre of the the physical(what we see and obsreve
around us) Universe remains unknown, so does the
physical/geographical/astronomical/cosmological location of Mount Meru. As
it is a spiritual location, so it can be reached through sufficient spiritual
endeavour.

I assume purely from a mythological perspective and some research using

google earth Mt Meru is not in Himalaya but in Tanzania in Africa, The
Mt.Meru is 70 Kms west of Mt Kilimanjaro, The problem with Hinduism and
specially Hindus is the religion was never propagated or the followers never
tried to propagate it or impose it on others, it was seen as a way of life a path of
dharma than the only way of life, I assume if mythology is purely true then this
mountain is in Africa it is a dormant volcano matching most depictions and
diagrams of Hindu scriptures has changed shape Much of its bulk wa
 assume purely from a mythological perspective and some research using
google earth Mt Meru is not in Himalaya but in Tanzania in Africa, The
Mt.Meru is 70 Kms west of Mt Kilimanjaro, Ancient scriptures say this :

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Zoom in and you will see the Tortoise lifting the elephants and earth and the
mountain located on earth, on its back which itself is standing on the snake.

One description in the Vishnu Purana of the mountain states that its four faces
are made of crystal, ruby, gold, and lapis lazuli where can such minerals be
found…Now lets see the mountain itself on the right with the slops and the
mountain depicting light probably sunlight from the East.Lets see the modern
Mt.Meru images from Google earth and few modern images The topography of
Mount Meru and the Remote sensing satellite images :

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To some one who has hiked Mt Meru and is standing on the West side facing
East, the summit would look exactly like the depiction in the scriptures
specially during sun rise, Is it me or do the images from space look like the
entire mountain and crescent behind it is on a green tortoise facing east
towards sunrise, if you look at the google images the mountain conveniently is
pointing east with engineering precision.

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I am seriously not sure how right I am about this but by logic if minor deities
had to travel from one location to another to meet the three big/major gods and
had to spend time doing so Mt.Meru really cant be located in or near Kailash.

I hope this was an exciting or an interesting thing for you.

Meru Peak is a mountain that lies in the Garhwal Himalayas, in the
Uttarakhand region of India. It lies between Thalay Sagar and Shivling, and
has some highly challenging routes. The name "Meru" likely originated from
Sanskrit word for spine, attributing to the shape of the mountain. Mount
Kailash:
Anyone knowing about Hinduism knows about Lord Shiva, Lord Bishnu and
Lord Brahma (TRIMURTI, three Deity of Hinduism) even though we mention
the number of Indian Gods and Goddess as 33 Koti. Mount Kailash is sacred to
Hindus, Jains, Budhists and Bon religion. In Hindu mythology it has been
referred to as abode of Lord Shiva.

It lies in Tibet (Kailash Range) near lake Rakas and Mansarovar. As far as
question regarding ascent of Kailash obviously reason is beyond human
perception because Mt Everst (8850m) has been climbed several times and
Kailash despite being 6638m has never being climbed so It can be inferred that
a supernatural force is in play as testimony of many professional climber also
point in this direction.

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Hugh Ruttledge studied the north face, which he estimated was 6,000 ft (1,800
m) high and "utterly unclimbable". Herbert Tichy when asked one of the
Garpons of Ngari whether Kailash was climbable, the Garpon replied, "Only a
man entirely free of sin could climb Kailash. And he wouldn't have to actually
scale the sheer walls of ice to do it – he'd just turn himself into a bird and fly to
the summit."

According to ancient Tibetan legends and writings, “No mortal ever be allowed
to walk atop Mount Kailash, where, among the clouds, is the abode of the gods.
He who dares to start the top of Mount holy and see the faces of the gods will
be put to death!”

1. Colonel Wilson, one of the many mountaineers who tried to climb the
summit of Mount Kailash explained, “Just when I discovered an easy
walk to the summit of the mountain, heavy snow began to fall, making
the ascent impossible.”
2. Sergei Cistiakov, a Russian climber gives an explanation to not being
able to finish the summit which will stun you – “When we approached
the foot of the mountain, my heart was pounding. I was in front of the
sacred mountain, Mount which says it cannot be beat. I felt extremely
emaciated and suddenly I became captivated by the thought that I do
not belong on this mountain, it must necessarily come back! As soon
as we started the descent, I felt liberated.”
Those who visit the area around the mountain have seen their nails and hair
grow to a length in 12 hours, which in normal conditions would happen in 2
weeks! The mountain has an air that causes rapid ageing.

In 2001 Chinese govt. gave permission to a Spanish team to climb the peak,
but in the face of international disapproval the Chinese decided to ban all
attempts to climb the mountain.

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Some Russian scientists have studied the mountain to a great extent and have
put forward an idea that Mount Kailash could be a man-made pyramid, and
might be the ultimate paranormal phenomenon that connects all the other
such monuments in the world where similar things have been observed. It is
believed to be the centre of this world-wide system. Mt. Kailash is believed to
be the Axis Mundi, literally the ‘Axis’ of the world that provides a connection
between the earth and heaven, between the physical world and the spiritual
worlds, the celestial centre of the world where heaven meets earth.

According to legends a Tibetan Monk and mystic Milarepa is said to have

climbed atop mount Kailash around 900 years ago from now.

Not everything in this world can be equated with science and rationality, some
phenomenons are beyond human reasoning.

I am just back from Mount Kailash Parikrama, we were planned to do the outer
kora, however, at Dirra Phuk we changed the plan and managed to go to
Charan Sparsh. Charan Sparsh is believed to be the nearest point of Kailash
one can go. Let us not discuss the religious and Political issues for which
Mount Kailash is difficult to climb in here; those aspects have already been
addressed in other answers.

One of the main reasons why we chose to go to Charan Sparsh, is to get

technical clues about climbing mount Kailash. Supported with some research,
I am of the opinion that, Mount Kailash is very very dificult to summit with the
mountaineering techniques available till date. Let me get some facts to explain
the same.

A. The rock structure of Mt. Kailash is very different from the same of the
narby mountains. Some believe that the Mount has been there before
formation of the Himalayays, i.e. since the time of the Tethys Sea. Metamorphic
rocks of the mountain are very hard and have a smooth surface. For the same
reason, deposition of ice on the mount is also not very stable, which is again
aggravated by lower altitude of the peak (6638 m). On an unstable ice
formation, the risk of climbing becomes very high.

B. Mount Kailash has four distinct sides( Resembling a pyramid), and we are
lucky to have a very clear view of South, West and the popular Northern Face.
At some altitude, all the faces have almost vertical planes raising upto a few
hundred meters. For any mountaineer, those vertical wall will be something
impossible to conquer (Remember what happened with Hillary Step in Mount
Everest; these walls are much higher than the Hillary step, and the rock faces
will be very smooth)

C. Mount Kailash is illusive, it happenes with all mountains, but I feel it is a bit
more illusive than others.

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Therefore, I believe, though not impossible, it will be a technically very difficult
and risky business to try to summit the Mount Kailash.

And because of these technical difficulties, combined with Religious and

Political issues, Mount Kailash has remained un defeated, and I am sure it will
remain so for quite sometime in the future.

NB:- These are my personal views, sorry if they hurt someones sentiment, it is
purely un-intended.

pic- At Charan Sparsh Place.

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 CHAPTER VII
Art of the Indigenous Mon-Khmer
civilizations, China, and Indonesia
Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia

Although their individual political histories differ, the music of Thailand, Laos,

and Cambodia is almost identical. The musical instruments and forms of this
region spring from the same sources: India, the indigenous Mon-Khmer
civilizations, China, and Indonesia. In Thailand, three types of orchestras,
called pi phat, kruang sai, and mahori, exist. The pi phat, which plays for court
ceremonies and theatrical presentations, uses melodic percussion (gongs in a
circle, xylophones, metallophones) and a blown reed. The kruang sai performs
in popular village affairs and combines strings (monochords, lutes, and fiddles
with two and three strings) and wind instruments (oboes and flutes); while
the mahori, as accompaniment of solo and choral singing, mixes strings (floor
zithers, three-stringed fiddles, and lutes) and melodic percussion (gongs and
xylophones) with the winds (flutes and oboes). All three ensembles are provided
with a rhythmic group of drums, cymbals, and a gong to punctuate the melody
parts. Some of the above musical instruments and their functions may best be
illustrated in the pi phat ensemble below.

A slow-moving theme is played by gongs arranged in a circle (khong wong yai)

with variations in smaller gongs (khong wong lek), two wooden xylophones
(ranat ek, ranat thum), and two box-shaped metallophones (ranat thong
ek, ranat thong thum). The last three pairs of instruments vary the theme by
playing twice as fast or by repeating, anticipating, and revolving around it. A
double-reed oboe (pi nai) hovers above the melodic percussion, providing the
only blown sound in the ensemble. Together with the punctuating gongs and
drums, the whole orchestra displays a polyphonic (many-voiced) stratification
of instrumental parts, using unisons and octaves mainly in the strong beats.

A melody may be broken down into phrase units consisting of two or four
measures that may be joined by four other phrase units to make a phrase
block, and a given number of blocks constitutes one musical composition.
Three speeds of rendition—slow, medium, fast—in either duple or quadruple
time are marked by two alternating strokes in a pair of cymbals; a dampened
clap marks a strong beat, and a ringing vibration denotes a weak beat.

The tuning system is made up of seven tempered (approximately equidistant)

tones to an octave. But the melodies constructed out of this system use only
five tones out of seven—which sound close to a Chinese pentatonic scale. This

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scale may be constructed in any of seven levels or tones of the Thai tuning
system. Further, through a process called metabole, melodies may move from
one level to another.

In the Cambodian shadow play (nang sbek) two narrators alternate in chanted

recitative to explain the role of the leather puppets. Dancers parading these
figures across the screen and simulating their actions are accompanied by an
orchestra. A limited number of tunes is played to eight dance positions (walk,
flight or military march, combat, meditation, sorrow or pain, promenade,
reunion, and metamorphosis). In the play these poses are assumed by princes,
princesses, monkeys, demons, peasants, or ascetics.

Among different ethnic groups, such as the Khmer Chung (Saoch), Pwo Karen,
Bu Nuer, Kae Lisu, Kuay, and Samre, a rural music related to that of the
ancient Khmer peoples is played by aerophones (buffalo horns, mouth organs,
vertical flutes), idiophones (flat gongs, gongs with boss, cymbals, jew’s harps),
chordophones (bamboo zithers), and membranophones (circle of drums). Other
important instruments for solo performance or as accompaniment to songs are
the three-stringed crocodile zither (chakhe), a four-stringed lute (grajappi), a
plucked monochord with a gourd resonator (phin nam tao), and a
bamboo whistle flute (khlui).

Vietnam

Although Vietnamese music belongs to the great Chinese musical tradition,

which includes the music of Korea, Mongolia, and Japan, some of its musical
elements are indigenous or come from other parts of Southeast Asia, and some
derive from Champa, an ancient Hinduized kingdom of Vietnam. Archaeological
finds in the village of Dong Son revealed that the ancient Vietnamese used
kettle gongs, mouth organs, wooden clappers, and the conch trumpet. From
the 10th to the 15th century a joint Indian and Chinese element left its musical
imprint. The Chinese seven-stringed zither (qin) and a double-headed drum
were played together, or a Champa melody was accompanied by a drum. It was
at this time that two traditional Chinese ensembles—Great Music and Little
Music—and an elementary Chinese theatrical art were introduced. From the
15th to the 18th century the Chinese influence reached its height. Court music
(nha nhac) was played by two orchestras. One, located in the Upper Hall of the
court, consisted of a chime of 12 stones, a series of 12 bells, a zither of 25
strings (Chinese se), a zither with 7 strings (Chinese qin), flutes, panpipes, a
scraper in the shape of a tiger, a double-headed drum, a mouth organ, and a
globular whistle. The second orchestra in the Lower Hall used 16 iron chimes,
a harp with 20 strings, a lute with 4 strings (Chinese pipa), a double flute, a
double-headed drum, and a mouth organ. Ceremonial music, almost
nonexistent in the 20th century, was patterned after court music.

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In Buddhist ceremonies, prayers were recited in three ways: as recitation in a
low voice, as a cantillation (sung, inflected recitation) following the six tones of
the Vietnamese language, and as chant accompanied by an orchestra of two
drums, bell, gong, cymbals, and fiddles.

Music as entertainment is mostly a vocal art played without ritual outside the
court and still enjoyed by many people. The hat a dao found in the north is the
oldest form. It is a woman’s art song with different instrumental
accompaniments, dances, a varied repertoire, and a long history of evolution.

From the 19th century to World War II, Vietnamese music reaffirmed its
character. Although the playing of court music was restricted, popular
music was encouraged, leading to northern and southern styles that
were patronized by both the aristocracy and commoners. Western musical
influence in this period was manifest in the use of the mandolin, the
Spanish guitar, and the violin, as well as by the introduction of European
classical music and composition following Western forms. In the later 20th
century traditional Vietnamese music began to disappear, but attempts to
revive it began in the early 1970s.

Vietnamese rural folk music is built on the same musical principles as court

music. The main difference lies in its application to village activities—work,
games, courting, marriage, cure for the sick, entertainment, feasts.

Common elements characterize and unify all Vietnamese music. It is based on

an oral tradition, with written notation serving only as a reading guide.
Melodies are generally built out of a pentatonic system (for example, C, D, F, G,
A) to which two auxiliary tones (E, B) may be added to make other pentatonic
melodies. A song, usually preceded by a prelude, may be sung in slow,
moderate, or fast tempo divisible by two or four, with a simple contrapuntal
(countermelody) accompaniment using unisons and octaves at beginning
points of phrases. Outside of the first beats, intervals of fifths, fourths, thirds,
and even seconds are allowed. An important aspect of melodies is the idea of
mode (dieu), the elements of which do not essentially differ from those
of Javanese and Burmese music.

Indonesia and Malaysia/Java

The saron barung, one of the instruments that carry the main melody in
Javanese gamelan music.

A Javanese philosophical concept based on mysticism, the state of being

refined (alus, Indonesian halus), and the inner life as related to Hindu, Islamic,
and Indonesian thought may best be represented in music by the

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Javanese gamelan, an orchestra made up mostly of bronze instruments
producing homogeneous blended sounds. The instruments in the ensemble
may be divided into three groups of musical function. The first
group comprises thick bronze slabs (saron demung, saron barung, saron
panerus) on trough resonators playing the theme usually in regular note values
without ornamentation. The second group consists of elaborating
or panerusan instruments, which add ornaments to the main theme. In this
group gongs in double rows (bonang panembang, bonang barung, bonang
panerus) play variations with the same ratio of speed as the saron group. In
softer sounding music for indoor performance, other panerusan instruments
with very mellow sounds come in. These are three sizes of thin bronze slabs
with bamboo resonators—gender panembung or slentem, gender barung,
and gender panerus. Other elaborating instruments are the wooden xylophone
(gambang), the zither (celempung) with 26 strings tuned in pairs, an end-blown
flute (suling), and a 2-stringed lute (called a rebab by the Javanese), which
leads the orchestra. In loud-sounding music, the soft-sounding instruments
are not played, and the drum (kendang) leads the orchestra. The third group
provides “colotomic,” or punctuating beats in four rhythmic patterns played
separately by four types of heavy, suspended, or horizontally laid gongs.

bonang

celempung

The celempung, one of the instruments that elaborate the main melody in

Javanese gamelan music.

Two tuning systems prevail. The slendro tends to have five equidistant but

flexible (or varying) pitches in an octave, while the pelog, with seven equally
flexible tones, has a more varied structure. One tuning with intervals expressed
in cents (140, 143, 275, 127, 116, 204, 222) may roughly be represented by the
following notes in a descending scale: C↑, A ♯, G ♯, G↓, F↑, D ♯↓, C ♯↑, and C.
(Arrows up are tones slightly higher than Western tempered tuning [in which a
semitone is equivalent to 100 cents] and vice versa for arrows down.) Melodies
from these tunings are governed by a modal structure (patet) the elements of
which are similar to those of Vietnamese and Burmese music.

celempung

Side view of a celempung, one of the instruments that elaborate the main
melody in Javanese gamelan music.

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In West Java the most popular ensembles use a vocal part, a two-stringed
fiddle (rebab) or a bamboo flute (suling), and a box zither (kacapi). In the
gamelan, submodes (surupan) are formed by the use of vocal tones—sung or
played on the suling or rebab—which amplify the number of scales in both
the pelog and slendro systems.

suling on a kacapi

Bali

In contrast to the introspection of Javanese music, the Balinese gamelan

exudes a music of brilliant sounds with syncopations (displaced accents) and
sudden changes, as well as gradual increase and decrease in volume and speed
and feats of fast, precise playing. The tuning system, musical instruments, and
polyphonic stratification are similar to those of the Javanese gamelan,
although in Bali the seven-tone pelog is not popular. Most gamelan are tuned
to a five- or four-tone system, and the concept of modes is not as clearly
developed as in Java. A variety of gamelan exists, each with a special function,
instrumentation, repertoire, and tuning system. The gamelan gong orchestra is
among the most extensive in its number of instruments. A modern
version, gong kebyar, omits the trompong (gongs in a row) and saron (bronze
slabs over a trough resonator) and replaces them with gangsa
gantung (metallophone with bamboo resonators) and reyong of four gongs to
produce exuberant outbursts of sound. The gamelan gambuh, now rare,
comprises four end-blown flutes, one rebab, and a group of percussion.
The gamelan semar pegulingan, played formerly in royal courts but now almost
disappeared, emphasizes the trompong as a solo instrument. The gamelan
pelegongan is a virtuoso orchestra that accompanies legong dances, while
the gamelan pejogedan is an orchestra of xylophones for dance (joged) and
entertainment in the marketplace. The gender wayang is a quartet
of slendro tuned metallophones specially employed for shadow plays.
The gamelan angklung, a village orchestra assembled during ceremonies,
anniversaries, and cremations, originally consisted of rattling tubes that are
now replaced by metallophones. The gamelan arja is characterized by a soft
timbre (tone colour) and the use of a one-stringed bamboo zither, the guntang,
to accompany musical comedy and popular plays.
Other parts of Indonesia

In the islands of Flores, Nias, New Guinea, Celebes, and Borneo, idiophones

make up perhaps the most varied collection of musical instruments—gongs of
various profiles, slit drums, jew’s harps pulled with a string, clappers, bells,
xylophones, percussion sticks, bull-roarers, and stamping tubes. Particularly
interesting are idiophones made of bones, shells, skulls, fruits, seeds, planks,
pellets, crab claws, clogs, coconut, and shark bones. Membranophones are
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represented by drums shaped like a cylinder, goblet, vase, round frame,
hourglass, cone, cup, barrel, or a tube. Aerophones present an array of vertical
and transverse (horizontally played) flutes, panpipes, ring flutes, shawms,
clarinets, gourd trumpets, conch shells, ocarinas, and flutes with different
mouthpieces. Chordophones include bamboo zithers, spike fiddles (in which
the neck skewers the body), one- and two-stringed lutes, musical bows,
monochords, guitars, rebabs, bar zithers, and sago zithers. In Flores, part
singing with a sustained drone is frequent. Songs in Nias use diatonic (whole
and half steps), chromatic (half steps), and gapped melodies largely less than
an octave in range. In Borneo descending melodies often make up a tetrachord
(four adjacent tones forming the interval of a fourth). In Indonesian New
Guinea departures from songs with gapped scales include fanfare, stair
descent, and tiled melodies (the last consisting of short phrases repeated at
different pitch levels).
Malaysia

At least three principal cultural influences—Indonesian, Hindu, and Islamic—

left their musical marks in Malaysia. The Indonesian influence is seen
principally in musical forms, participants, and paraphernalia of the
Malaysian shadow play (wayang kulit). It is said that the Indian epics and,
especially, the Panji tales of Java came to Malaysia via Indonesia, but there are
songs in certain plays and musical instruments (e.g., the double-headed drum
and oboe) that could have reached Malaysia from India through other routes.
Islamic traces are evident in melismatic songs among the Malay groups in
songs connected with religious rituals and in choral singing in the mak
yong plays. Chinese music, a more recent development, is largely practiced
among the Chinese communities, principally in Singapore.

Before Malaysian independence, the nobat, an old royal instrumental ensemble

dating back to about the 16th century, played exclusively for important court
ceremonies in the palaces of the sultans of Perak, Kedah, Selangor,
and Trengganu. Today, in Kedah, the ensemble consists of five instruments:
one big goblet drum (negara), two double-headed drums (gendang), one long
oboe (nafiri), one small oboe (nafiri), and one gong. The music, which consists
of 10 surviving pieces, is broadcast today and performed live.

Three shadow plays exist, principally in the state of Kelantan. The wayang

gedek is the Thai form; wayang Jawa, a Malay form, is almost extinct; and
the wayang Siam, which is a combination of Thai and Malay influences, is the
most popular form of puppet shadow play. The operator of the performance is
the narrator (dalang), who manipulates the leather figures, introduces
important characters, and describes different scenes with the accompaniment
of the orchestra. The music is led by a two-stringed lute (rehab) in
the Ramayana, or an oboe (serunai) in the Mahabharata and Panji cycles. The
melodic instruments are supported by a percussion group consisting of pairs of

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goblet-shaped drums (gedombak), cylindrical drums (gendang), barrel drums
(geduk), gongs lying on a support (canang), suspended gongs (gong) or,
sometimes, a row of gongs played by two or three men, and one pair of cymbals
(kesi). The music usually begins with a prelude followed by a list of pieces the
sequences of which are dictated by the narrator.

The mak yong, a dance drama that probably dates back more than 1,000

years, was introduced in Kelantan under the patronage of the royal courts. In
the 20th century it existed as a folk theatre with an all-female cast. The music
that accompanies 12 surviving stories is played by an orchestra of one bowed
lute (rebab), two suspended gongs, and a pair of double-headed drums
(gendang). A heterophony (simultaneous variation of the same melody) between
a solo voice, a chorus, and the rebab creates a music with a Middle Eastern
flavour.

A rich musical heritage in the rural sections of Malaysia is shown in musical

instruments used by Malay, Thai, Semang,
and Senoi groups. Idiophones include shell and coconut rattles, the jew’s harp
(mostly pulled by a string, rather than plucked), bull-roarers, bamboo clappers,
and the bamboo slit drum. Aerophones include the buffalo horn, wooden and
clay whistles, nose flutes, end-blown flutes, and the oboe. Chordophones are
two- and three-stringed fiddles with coconut resonators, monochords, and tube
zithers. One membranophone is a double-headed cylindrical drum.

In Borneo among the Malay, Kadazan, and Iban groups, the principal

instruments are gongs in a row (gulintangan) played with suspended gongs of
different types (canang, gong, tawak-tawak). Among the Murut, Kenyah, and
Iban the mouth organ with a calabash resonator (sompoton) plays a melody
with a drone accompaniment. The jew’s harp (ruding), bamboo zither
(tongkungon), nose flute (tuali), hourglass drum (ketubong), and vertical flute
(suling) may be heard among different ethnic groups. Iban ceremonial songs
are sung in connection with rice festivals and rituals to prevent sickness, while
mourning songs make up a rich repertoire of solo and leader–chorus singing.
The Kenyah are particularly adept at blending low voices of men singing a
melody supported by a drone.
The Philippines

Two musical cultures—Western and Southeast Asian—prevail in the

Philippines. Western music is practiced by some 90 percent of the population,
while Southeast Asian examples are heard only in mountain and inland
regions, among about 10 percent of the people.

The Western tradition dates back to the 17th century, when the first Spanish
friars taught plainchant and musical theory and introduced such European
musical instruments as the flute, oboe, guitar, and harp. There subsequently

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arose a new music related to Christian practices but not connected with the
liturgy. Processional songs, hymns in honour of the Blessed Virgin, Easter
songs, and songs for May (Mary’s month) are still sung in different sections of
the country. A secular music tradition also developed. Guitars, string
ensembles (rondalla), flute, drum, harps, and brass bands flourished in the
provinces among the principal linguistic groups and still appear during town
fiestas and important gatherings. Competing bands played overtures of
Italian operas, marches, and light music. Young men, like their counterparts
throughout the Hispanic world, sang love songs (kundiman) in nightly
serenades beneath the windows of their beloved. It was not uncommon in
family gatherings for someone to be asked to sing an aria, play the harp, or
declaim a poem. Orchestral music accompanied operas
and operettas (zarzuelas), while solo recitals and concerts were organized in
clubs or music associations. With the advent of formal music instruction in
schools, performance and composition rose to professional levels. Beginning in
the 20th century, several symphony orchestras, choral groups, ballet
companies, and instrumental ensembles performed with varying regularity.

A Southeast Asian musical tradition exists completely apart from the Western
tradition. In the north, flat gongs are played in different instrumental
combinations (six gongs; two gongs, two drums and a pair of sticks; three
gongs). In the ensemble with six gongs, four are treated as “melody”
instruments, one as ostinato, and another as a freer layer of improvisation. The
melody consists of scattered tones produced by strokes, slaps, and slides of the
hands against the flat side of the gong. Other musical instruments in the
northern Philippines are bamboo. These are the nose flute (kalleleng), lip-valley
or notched flute (paldong), whistle flute (olimong), panpipes (diwdiwas), buzzer
(balingbing), half-tube percussion (palangug), stamping tube (tongatong), tube
zither (kolitong), and jew’s harp (giwong). Leader–chorus singing among the
Ibaloi is smooth and sung freely without a metric beat, while the same form
among the Bontoc is emphatic, loud, and metric. Scales in songs and musical
instruments use from two to several tones within and beyond an octave and
are arranged as gapped, diatonic, and pentatonic varieties.

In the southern Philippines (particularly the Sulu archipelago and the western

portion of the island of Mindanao), the more-developed ensemble is
the kulintang, which, in its most common form, consists of seven or
eight gongs in a row as melody instruments accompanied by three other gong
types (a wide-rimmed pair; two narrow-rimmed pairs; one with turned-in rim)
and a cylindrical drum. The kulintang scale is made up of flexible tones with
combinations of wide and narrow gaps sometimes approaching a Chinese
pentatonic variety and oftentimes not. Its melody is built on nuclear tones
consisting of two, three, or more tones to form a phrase. Several phrases may
be built, repeated, and elongated to complete one rendition lasting two to three

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minutes. Pieces of music are played continuously for a long period during the
night.

In the central west Philippines on the island of Mindoro, love songs are sung
that are based on reciting tones with interludes played by a miniature copy of
the Western guitar or a small violin with three strings played like a cello.
José Maceda

The performing arts

In variety of dance and theatrical forms and in the number of performing

groups, no area in the world except India and Pakistan compares to Southeast
Asia. Some form of the performing arts is a normal part of life throughout the
several nations. Sophisticated performing groups cluster in and around the
present and former court cities—Yogyakarta and Surakarta in Java, Ubud and
Gianyar in Bali, Bangkok in Thailand, Mandalay in Myanmar, Siĕmréab near
Angkor and Phnom Penh in Cambodia, Hue in Vietnam—where drama,
puppetry, dance, and music have been cultivated for 10 centuries or more.
Hundreds of commercial theatrical and dance groups perform in such newer
centres as Yangon, Saigon, and Jakarta and in scores of provincial cities and
towns. Wandering troupes of actors, puppeteers, singers, and dancers travel
from village to village in areas adjacent to these population centres. There are
few communities in which some form of folk dance is not performed by local
people.

In the West, music, dance, and drama are usually separate arts, whereas in all
areas of Southeast Asia, drama, dance, mime, music, song, and narrative
are integrated into composite forms, often with masks or in the form of
puppetry. The spectator’s senses, emotions, and intellect are bombarded
simultaneously with colour, movement, and sound. The result is a richness
and a vividness in the theatre that is absent in most Western drama, so much
of which rests on a literary basis.

More than 100 distinct forms or genres of performing arts can be distinguished
in Southeast Asia. These can be grouped, according to which of the various
stage arts is emphasized, into (1) masked dance and masked dance-mime, (2)
unmasked dance and dance-drama, (3) drama with music and dance, (4)
opera, (5) shadow-puppet plays, and (6) doll- or stick-puppet plays.
Diverse traditions in the performing arts

Four relatively distinct traditions exist in the performing arts: folk, court,

popular, and Western.
The folk tradition

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Dances in the folk tradition are exceptionally numerous and widespread. Some
are performed as religious ritual, others, particularly on the Indonesian island
of Bali, by highly trained and respected artists, and still another kind as
entertainment in which the community participates. Folk theatre is more
complex than folk dance and thus less widespread, but it has deep connections
with religious ritual. Although the origins of most folk performing arts lie in
remote times, later court forms exerted important influence on many of the folk
forms. Conversely, folk forms have been a source of inspiration to court artists.
The court tradition

The shadow play and masked and unmasked dance are court arts reflecting

centuries of subtle refinement under the patronage of kings and princes.
In Southeast Asia the shadow theatre is a major classic art. Leather puppets of
mythological figures, the bodies intricately incised to allow light to pass
through, are attached to sticks for manipulation. A lacy shadow is created by a
flaming lamp as the puppet is pressed against the back of a vertical screen of
white cloth. The flickering and insubstantial shadow seen from the other side
creates for the understanding viewer a mystic world with deep symbolic
meaning. In Java, Bali, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Thailand shadow plays and
their techniques have been emulated by human actors and dancers and have
been the models for marionette and doll-puppet theatre.

Dance troupes have been a part of court life at least since recorded history
began. In the mainland courts of Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Burma,
concubines of the ruler’s harem who performed female dances were segregated
from male performers, giving rise to separate forms of female unmasked dance
and male masked dance-mime. Although certain dances traditionally are
performed only by men or only by women in Indonesia and Vietnam, mixed
casts have a long history, especially in dramatic pieces. Court dance on the
mainland and in Indonesia has been influenced by Indian dance style, and
Vietnamese dance by the dance styles of Chinese opera, but they have acquired
a distinctly Southeast Asian character. Court dance reached its greatest
development when applied to mythological and legendary themes, often taken
from the shadow theatre. The resulting dance-dramas and masked dance-
mimes of Thailand, Cambodia, and Java are world famous for their magnificent
scale and elegance of execution. Some of these court arts are no longer
performed, and others face increasing difficulty securing financial support, yet
they remain important.
The popular and Western traditions

In the popular traditions are those 400 to 500 professional troupes who
perform, except in the Philippines, in commercial theatre buildings of major
cities for an urban ticket-buying audience. Some forms of popular theatre are
directly modeled on court dance-drama, but most are spoken drama in which
court-derived music, song, and dance movements have been inserted.

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Local legend and history provide the subject matter for many of these plays. As
in much of Asia, the performer in the popular tradition is seldom accorded
status and may be despised as a vagabond.

The spoken drama, the ballet, and the modern dances are known only
superficially in Southeast Asia. The sole exception is the Philippines, where
amateur performances of Western plays constitute the country’s main
theatrical tradition. Southeast Asian audiences generally find Western plays
based mainly on dialogue to be uninteresting and deficient in artistic qualities.
European and American films and television programs, however, are widely
shown and appreciated, and popular Western dances are found in major urban
areas. Undoubtedly the impact of these forms on local audiences will continue
to increase, possibly to the detriment of the indigenous traditions.
Characteristics of dance

Dramatic and nondramatic forms

In the parts of Southeast Asia influenced by Indian forms—everywhere except

for Vietnam and the Philippines—nondramatic and dramatic dance are both
known. Nondramatic, or “pure,” dances that do not express emotional states of
characters are numerous in both folk and court traditions. Among court
dances, the Javanese bedaja is typical. Nine dancers move in unison, without
emotional expression, in precisely fixed choreographic patterns designed to
demonstrate sheer grace of movement. The maebot, composed as a Thai
“alphabet of dance,” is used to train pupils in the basic movements of court
dance. Other dances that include character impersonation yet are not explicitly
storytelling dances lie between nondramatic and dramatic dance. In the
Thai praleng, two performers wearing god masks and holding peacock feathers
in both hands perform an offertory dance to the god before the main dance-
play begins. The Balinese legong, danced by a pair of preadolescent girls, may
have only the most tenuous dramatic content. Its interest lies in the girls’
unison rapid foot movements and fluttering movements of eyes and hands.
Dramatic dance is seen at its best in full dance-dramas and in the excerpts
from them that are sometimes danced in concert form.
Styles and conventions of movement and costuming

General characteristics of both dramatic and nondramatic dance are (1)

slowness of tempo except in battle scenes, (2) controlled and reserved
movements rather than expansive ones, (3) little of the leaping typical of
Western ballet but, instead, a feeling of closeness to the ground, and (4)
extensive use of arm and hand gestures. From Indian dance has come an open
and flexed position of the legs, a side-to-side sliding movement of the head and
neck, and a rigidly codified vocabulary of hand and finger gestures known
as mudras or hastas in India. In most cases the Indian elements have been

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altered greatly over their 1,000-year period of assimilation. In Thai,
Cambodian, and Lao dance, the 24 to 32 Indian mudras have been reduced to
9; in Javanese dance 7 can be recognized, and in Bali only 1 or 2. They have
also been altered in their shape, and the many specific meanings attached to
each in India have become fewer, while in some cases a gesture has no specific
meaning. Such hand gestures as shading the eyes and tying the sash, which
appear in Javanese dances, are unknown in India. Foot movements in India
typically follow the rhythm of a drum, often with vigorous stamping sounds
that are emphasized by bells on the ankles, but such movements are virtually
absent in Southeast Asia. The exaggerated eye, eyebrow, cheek, mouth, and
chin movements through which the Indian dancer expresses a broad gamut of
emotions are nowhere to be seen. Balinese dancers use darting eye movements,
but the court dancer’s face is composed into an almost unchanging expression
of aloof gentility. Close contact between neighbouring countries has led to the
development of two regional Indian-influenced dance styles, one for Thailand,
Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar and one for Indonesia and Malaysia.
Characteristics of the former style include the soft pi phat music of bamboo
xylophones, drums, gongs, and oboe as accompaniment, bent-back finger
positions not seen elsewhere in Asia, similar and often identical movements for
male and female roles, courtship dances in which lovers touch each other and
move in unison, and, in dance-drama, lengthy pure-dance pieces inserted
solely for their beauty. In the latter style, the performance is accompanied by
music of the gongs and metal bars of the gamelan orchestra. Scarves draped
from the waist or neck are flicked for effect and manipulated to indicate
strength or flying, and male and female dance are clearly distinguished by the
powerful masculine lunges of the men and the tiny steps of the women, who
also dexterously manipulate the train of the skirt with their feet. Visually, the
mainland dance sparkles. Costumes of brilliant silk are covered with sequins
and even jewels, and golden crowns and sparkling body ornaments glitter with
reflected light. The male dancer in Indonesia wears a soft batik skirt of brown
and white, the female a black velvet bodice. Arms and shoulders are bare and
powdered golden brown, creating a subdued and warm effect.

The main style in Vietnam, apart from folk dance, is dramatic and highly
pantomimic, like the movements of Chinese opera. In classical opera, the
flowing white sleeves and the pheasant feathers bobbing from the general’s
headdress are twirled and flicked by the actor in many conventionalized
movements derived from Chinese forms. Battle scenes are choreographed into
precise dance patterns, but the acrobatic movements common in Chinese
opera are seldom seen.
Characteristics of drama

Thematic origins and materials

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Most traditional plays and dramatic dances are derived from mythological and
legendary sources. The tribal epics that relate the origin of the Ifugao and the
Bicolano peoples in the Philippines and a number of animistic stories in
Indonesian shadow theatre are indigenous myths of great age, while the widely
used, romantic Pandji cycle from Java and the Thai King Abhai Mani and Khun
Chang Khun Phan are more recent local legends. The most important dramatic
sources, however, are borrowed from the
Indian Ramayana and Mahabharata epics, from the Jataka Buddhist birth
stories, from Chinese novels (such as The Romance of the Three Kingdoms) and
Chinese operas, and from a host of Islamic stories, including the Thousand
and One Nights and the Amīr Ḥamzah tales. These foreign stories are turned
into local legends. For example, the Indian Prince Rama becomes a Thai, a
Balinese, or a Javanese prince, embodying the heroic traits admired in each of
these countries.

Plays are invariably extensive and have many scenes. It is not unusual for a
play to present action over several generations, an indication of the value
placed on cultural continuity. A recurring theme concerns restoration of
harmony on earth by a ruler acting in accord with divine law. A kingdom is
restored, a prince unjustly exiled returns to assume his throne, a usurper is
punished, or the prosperity of the land is assured by consummating a
particularly desirable marriage. As in Western drama, the hero gains his ends
through struggle. Because he acts as the human representative on earth of the
known cosmic will, however, his actions exhibit a natural sweetness and
serenity, even in the midst of violence, that is foreign to Western drama.
Meditation is often the means whereby the hero gains the power to achieve his
goal. In more recent plays based on local history and on contemporary events,
the assumption of cosmic harmony has been muted, and emphasis has shifted
to depicting human conflicts—nationalist versus Western colonialist, modern
daughter versus conservative parents, for example—that may or may not
resolve happily.
Characters

Gods, demigods, kings descended from the gods, and princes and princesses
are the heroes and heroines of traditional drama and dance. Powerful religious
seers advise them, allies and ministers serve them, crude foreign ogres oppose
them, and grotesque, slapstick clown-servants are their attendants.
The clowns have been the subject of much speculation. Like
the vidushaka clown of Indian Sanskrit drama, they are gluttons, practical and
even cynical, and confidants to their masters’ passions and weaknesses.
Scholars have theorized that the chief Javanese clown figure, Semar, is derived
from an ancient Javanese god who was deposed from his supreme position by
the introduction into the drama of the later Hindu gods. In the midst of
mythological plays, the clowns comment irreverently on political or social

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issues of the day, seemingly as spokesmen for the common man in an
otherwise aristocratic world. Comic and serious scenes alternate.
Dramatic materials

A written script may be used as the starting point for performance, but usually
actors, dancers, musicians, and stage crew improvise from a brief scenario.
Specific musical selections are matched to certain kinds of scenes, characters,
or actions, and standard movements for entrances and exits are known.
Standard descriptive phrases of the kind common in all oral literature are used
to introduce the hero and his kingdom, and more than a dozen types of
recurring scenes are identifiable. A major interest in playgoing lies in perceiving
the skill with which performers rearrange and subtly vary these familiar
elements from play to play. Narrative commentary accompanying the dances
often interprets a specific action in its broad context, thus helping to
universalize the theatrical experience.
Costumes, makeup, and settings

Costume and makeup have great importance in plays and dances. By means of
elaborate systems of changing the cut, colour, and ornamentation of costume,
the shape of the hairdress, the configuration of the crown, or the facial
delineation and colour of masks, at least 300 different dance and dramatic
characters can be identified. Doll- and shadow-puppet figures are carved
according to similarly elaborate means of identification. Persons familiar with a
dance or theatrical form can identify most characters by name or by type.
Costumes, masks, and puppets may be works of art highly prized in
themselves. Court and folk performances once used no scenery at all. Canvas
scenery depicting stock scenes is now used by most popular troupes, but
unfortunately it is often as inartistic as it is inexpensive. Only the Thai
National Theatre, major troupes performing the popular cai luong drama in
Vietnam, and troupes performing in the Western tradition
throughout Southeast Asia attempt to design three-dimensional scenery for
each play.
Origins and development of the performing arts

Prehistory and links to the present

Knowledge of prehistoric performing arts is necessarily slight. That the

performing arts were known and apparently widely practiced by the prehistoric
peoples who had settled the mainland and the island archipelagoes is
suggested by large bronze drums cast before the Common Era, numerous pre-
Hindu tribal myths in remote areas of the Philippines and
elsewhere, masked dances of many types still performed by isolated tribes in
Kalimantan (Borneo) and in New Guinea, and descriptions
of music and dance by Chinese visitors beginning as early as the 1st

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century AD. Simple dances were almost certainly accompanied by rhythmic
percussion sounds and probably by the tuned metal bars or gongs thought to
be indigenous to Southeast Asia. Some scholars suggest that tribal ancestors,
animistic spirits, and animals were represented, perhaps in shadow form.
Whatever their nature, these were folk performances, in part religious rites
connected with seasonal festivals and in part joyful entertainment.

A number of existing dances and dramatic forms show prehistoric links. In

the trott, a Cambodian deer-hunting dance, masked dancers representing
hunter, demon, bull, girls, and deer enact the ritual of a deer hunt to ensure
its success in real life. The Dayak of Kalimantan perform a dance to exorcise
sickness. The barong dance-drama of Bali is staged by a village in
which malicious spiritual forces are believed to have gained dominance over
protective ones. By enacting the stand-off battle between the protective Barong
lion figure and the destructive Rangda witch figure, the village ritually restores
an equilibrium between the contending forces. A local nat, or animistic spirit,
of which there are 37 in Myanmar, can be invoked by the dance of a
professional “spirit wife,” or natkadaw, through whom the nat communicates
with the living. A disputed theory holds that the shadow play began as a ritual
in which the spirits of magically powerful tribal ancestors were called to earth,
in their natural form as shadows or shades, for advice.
Spreading of styles

Between about AD 100 and 1000, dance and drama in Southeast Asia were

profoundly affected by the introduction of dance style and the vast Hindu
historical epics of India. First in Cambodia, then in turn in Thailand, Laos, and
Burma, the epic Ramayana became the source of dance and shadow plays. In
Java the Mahabharata dominated, whereas in Bali and Malaysia both epics
were popular. Indian influence, however, can be exaggerated. There is no
evidence that Sanskrit play texts or written dramatic treatises such as
the Natya-Shastra became known. Strong local performing traditions made it
possible to assimilate elements of Indian dance and Hindu stories, and, in
subsequent development, Southeast Asian dance and theatre grew ever further
away from Indian styles.

Copper inscriptions from Java identify clowns, actors, musicians, and possibly
puppeteers in the 9th century, and epic literature of succeeding centuries
contains numerous descriptions of shadow plays that were popular and
emotionally gripping. By at least the 4th century, epic recitations were a part of
the Brahmanic worship of ancient Cambodia. Carvings of the
beautiful apsaras, or heavenly dancing girls, adorning the temples of Angkor
attest to the importance of court dance in Cambodia between the 10th and
13th centuries.

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Apsaras, heavenly dancing girls, bas-relief from Angkor Wat, Angkor,
Cambodia, early 12th century.

Josephine Powell, Rome

Accidents of history often carried the performing arts across national

boundaries. It is believed King Jayavarman II took dancers and musicians from
Java when he left there in 802 to establish the Khmer dynasty in Cambodia,
and shadow puppeteers may have accompanied him as well. Another theory
suggests that Cambodia received the shadow play from India by way of
Malaysia, through conquest by a Malay prince in 1002. Accidents of war took
Khmer dance (and perhaps shadow theatre) first to Laos, when in 1353 a
prince who had been raised at Angkor established an independent Lao court
at Luang Prabang. Next, it reached the Thai capital at Ayutthaya in 1431, when
Angkor fell to invading Thai armies. These returned to their court with the
Cambodian court-dance troupe, thereby beginning the traditions of Thai court
dance and dance-drama. In 1767 the Thai court was captured, in turn, by the
Burmese, who brought to Burma the Thai-modified Khmer dance and created
Burmese court drama. By this time, also, Javanese shadow theatre had been
taken by colonists to Bali and to Malaysia, from whence it later entered
southern Thailand.

When Indonesia was converted to Islam and Chinese influence became strong
in the northern tier of mainland states beginning in the 13th and 14th
centuries, existing court dance and dramatic forms were scarcely affected.
Instead, new Islamic plays were devised in Indonesia and Malaysia for shadow
presentation and for the doll-puppet theatre. Islamic influence was very strong
in Malaysia, however, and even such pre-Islamic forms as the shadow play
absorbed Islamic prayers, characters, and themes. Bali was never converted to
Islam, and its performing arts are thought to reflect, even today, an older
tradition than is seen in Java.

Chinese performing arts came to dominate Vietnam during the 1,000-year rule

of northern Vietnam by the Chinese. Long after the Chinese were expelled,
Vietnamese kings patterned their dances and opera on Chinese models. In
time, however, local Vietnamese melodies and stories took their place alongside
those of Chinese origin; and play scripts, at first filled with Chinese loan words,
were rewritten in more colloquial Vietnamese.
Popular theatre and Western rule

From the 19th century onward, the incursion of Western culture brought about

a variety of developments. A steady decline in the power of the royal courts
precipitated the death of court drama in Burma; the shifting of support for
dance and drama from the court to national bureaus of education and culture
in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam; and the movement of the court dance-

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drama into the popular theatre tradition in Java. In every country, new popular
forms of theatre were created. These were based on historical events, on
Islamic and Chinese stories (but romances rather than Hindu and Buddhist
myths), on national heroes fighting colonial rule, and on stories about
contemporary events. It was not Western drama that sparked the burgeoning of
popular theatre, though these plays were largely spoken dramas interspersed
with music and dances. Rather, it was more of an indirect response
to colonial rule, which caused an upsurge of nationalist feelings, and to the
rapid growth of cities that created large populations without access to either
folk or court theatre yet eager for some form of entertainment.
Diverse national forms and traditions

Although most of the dance and dramatic forms of Southeast Asia are related

at least in the distant past, except in Vietnam and the Philippines, they
acquired a very distinctive national and local character over the centuries. An
examination of a few of these myriad forms will provide a more precise picture
of the dense texture of the performing arts in Southeast Asia.
Cambodia

Court performing arts that had flourished during the Angkor period (802–1431)

almost ceased in the centuries following the fall of the Khmer dynasty. Whether
there was an organized court life or not is uncertain because of the scarcity of
records, but in the 18th and 19th centuries performances in Thai form were
produced by the Thai rulers of the western provinces of Cambodia. At Phnom
Penh a classical ballet troupe was established by the royal family in the 19th
century.
Court styles

The chief court forms are nang sbek shadow theatre, lakon female dance and

dance-drama, and lakon kawl male masked pantomime. The puppets of nang
sbek stand four to five feet in height, have no movable arms, and are
manipulated from beneath by two fixed handles or sticks. The standing
puppeteer either sways the puppet with his arms or he dances with it. In
processional scenes, as many as 10 puppeteers parade completely around the
screen, front and back. An entire tableau may be carved on one puppet,
including several figures, forest scenery, or palace buildings, as if to bring to
life the epic scenes carved in relief on the temples of Angkor Wat. Two
narrators alternate a slow chant with dialogue. During dance sections, the
large pi phat ensemble, augmented by a large drum, is played. Only plays
based on the Ramayana are performed, and major puppet figures represent
Rama, his consort Sita, the monkey Hanuman, and Ravana, a 10-headed
demon king who kidnaps Sita. Khmer peasant figures have been inserted as
rustic clowns in every nang sbek play. Performance has religious significance,
the gods being invoked and honoured, and a performance may be arranged to

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assure rain or to halt an epidemic. It is not certain when and how nang
sbek originated, but it seems probable that it was taken to Thailand in the
15th century and then brought back. This would explain the details of costume
and headdress of today’s puppets that are in Thai style.

The lithe apsaras carved in Angkor’s stone show details of the lakon style of

female dance, but neither these nor other records are evidence that their lively
dance was used in relating the epic stories. The 19th-century Thai rulers of
western Cambodia reintroduced lakon dance and dance-drama, which
was indigenous to Thailand as well. At the same time, Thailand’s male masked
pantomime was brought to Cambodia, as far as is known for the first time, and
it became known as lakon kawl. Both male and female dance-plays were
translated into Cambodian. In modern times, costumes and headdresses were
redesigned in the style of the Angkor carvings. The stories, music, dance, and
dramatic styles of lakon and lakon kawl are much like their Thai counterparts.
Popular forms

Lakon bassac, performed by some 20 professional troupes in Cambodia, is a

highly eclectic form. Musical selections, dances for female characters, and
costuming are borrowed from court lakon. The form was created by Khmers
living in the Bassac River region of Vietnam. Villains wear Vietnamese
costumes and move with Vietnamese opera movements, an evidence of the
historical conflicts of the two peoples. Chinese, Jataka, or Khmer stories may
be performed. Pi phat music alternates with Chinese and Vietnamese
instruments and with the Western saxophone and piano. Prince
Sihanouk, chief of state between 1941 and 1970, encouraged a few French
dramatic productions, but such drama is scarcely known outside the Western-
educated elite.
Thailand

Folk lakon jatri, lakon nai female dance and dance-drama, khon masked

pantomime, and likay popular theatre are Thailand’s chief performing arts.
Folk performance

Lakon jatri began in the south, when male dancer-sorcerers performed, in

simple folk style, the Manora Buddhist birth story as a dance-play. A troupe of
three players was usual. One played the beautiful half-bird, half-human
princess, Manora; a second played the hero, Prince Suton; and the third, often
masked, played clown, ogre, or animal as needed. Flute, bell cymbal, and
drums provided the music. The full Manora cycle of plays, staged in a village in
the open, could last for two weeks. Probably after the 14th century,
some jatri troupes moved to the Thai capital, where they established
commercial theatres and staged a new all-male drama, lakon nok nok,
“outside” [the palace], that emphasized plot and an often obscene humour.

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Advances in dramatic form were accomplished by court writers of lakon
nok between 1800 and 1909. Likay troupes succeeded and completely
supplanted lakon nok troupes in the early decades of the 20th century, but
such popular lakon nok plays as Sang Thong (“The Prince of the Golden
Conch”) are presented today in modified form by the Thai National Theatre.
Female court dance-dramas

The lakon nai nai, “inside” [the palace], female dance-drama of the court was
created in the mid-18th century from a confluence of three previously separate
elements: female court dance, the lakon nok drama, and the
Javanese Pandji stories as subject matter. Romantic episodes from the
long Pandji tale were ideal for staging in the elegant and delicate style of female
court dance, accompanied by songs and the music of a large pi phat ensemble.
In the unhurried court atmosphere, dance scenes lasted an hour or more, and
dance figures might be repeated many times. In time, other stories came to be
staged in lakon nai and were given other names, but the Pandji plays composed
by the daughters of King Boromokot (1733–58), by Rama I (1782–1809), and
by Rama II (1809–24) remain favourites. In this form, lakon nai was introduced
into Cambodia within the 18th and 19th centuries.
Masked mime

Until recent years, a Thai version of the Khmer nang sbek shadow play, nang

yai, occupied an important place in court as a Brahmanic-related ritual
performance of the Ramayana. Thai scholars describe it as the source
of khon masked pantomime, citing celebrations for King Ramathibodi II in 1515
that included a nang yai performance without puppets. Wearing heavy
makeup, the puppeteers themselves danced the usual Ramayana episode as
narrators told the story and spoke dialogue. Later, masks took the place of
makeup, the screen was eliminated, and khon was born. In present-day
Cambodia, one troupe can perform both forms. A number of lakon nai elements
entered khon in later years, so that today a khon performance mixes the
vigorous, masculine khon with gentle lakon nai singing style and female dance.
All of the Thai dance-drama traditions (lakon jatri, lakon nok, lakon nai,
and khon) are taught at the Department of Fine Arts in Bangkok, and
representative plays from them are staged, often mixing traditions, at the Thai
National Theatre.

Ravana, the demon king, fighting the white monkey Hanuman, in khon masked
pantomime, Thailand.

Marie Mattson/Black Star

Popular plays and puppets

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The major popular theatre form is likay, which evolved in part out of lakon nok.
It is now performed by more than 100 troupes in most parts of Thailand.
Actors are skilled in improvising not only the dialogue and lyrics but also the
plot of a play as well, weaving romantic scenes and fragments of lakon
nai dance, set to pi phat music, into a story from a well-known Jataka, history,
or court play. Likay plays are set to music of the Lao khen, a reed organ, in
northeast Thailand. A type of shadow play called nang talung, in which a
single, seated puppeteer moves small puppets of individual figures with
movable arms, is very popular in southern Thailand. The performance
technique undoubtedly came from Malaysia, while the plays and the identifying
features of the puppet figures, mostly from the Ramayana, are from
Thai khon and lakon nai. A similar shadow play exists in Cambodia, suggesting
that the form traveled from southern Thailand to Cambodia, perhaps in the
19th century.
Laos

From the time Laos became a kingdom in 1353, the performing arts at the
relatively small Lao court at Luang Prabang followed those of the more
illustrious courts to the south, Angkor in Cambodia and then Ayutthaya and
Bangkok in Thailand. Today, Lao dancers study in Bangkok, and the style of
dance, music, and drama of the Royal Lao Ballet, the only remaining court
troupe in Southeast Asia, is almost identical with that of lakon nai in Thailand.
It is usual to perform excerpts from the very long dance-plays, the staging of a
full-length spectacle being beyond the means of the court at present.
Male khon dance is known but seldom performed. A number of Lao folk dances
are studied and performed by the royal ballet troupe.

Scores of popular troupes perform plays derived from Thai likay and set to the
lively and melodic Lao folk song style known as mohlam. Mohlam balladeers,
accompanied by the khen (a complex reed organ), have for centuries traveled
the Lao-speaking countryside, which includes Laos and northeast Thailand,
singing bawdy songs of physical love and weaving into their performance local
gossip and bits from the epics and court plays. When likay troupes from
Bangkok played in northeast Thailand, the pi phat music and court dancing
were not popular, although the plays themselves were.
Enterprising mohlam performers then set the likay plays to the
familiar mohlam song style, thereby creating a new popular theatre
form, mohlam luong, or “story mohlam.” Of the mohlam troupes, a few large
ones are located in major cities in the two countries, but most are small and
travel from village to village, performing for a few days or weeks in each.
Burma

In spite of an old Burmese tradition of spirit dances stemming from animism

and early contact with Indian culture, formal theatre did not begin until 1767,
with the introduction of Thai khon and lakon nai to Burma following the

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capture and sack of Ayutthaya. Burmese courtiers and dancing girls
immediately learned the two forms, and the plays were translated into
Burmese. Because Rama was viewed as a previous incarnation of Buddha,
pious Burmese were reluctant to alter khon scripts. For a time Jataka plays,
including Ramayana episodes, were forbidden to live actors. Instead,
marionette troupes doing plays based on khon brought the Rama stories to the
Burmese countryside. But the Pandji plays were not considered Jatakas, and
even the first Burmese version, by U Sa under the title Inao, departed from its
Thai model, thus setting the stage for the creation of court drama, or zat pwe,
based on myth and legend but capable of being independently developed. The
three zat written by U Kyin U portray the futility of political strife and urge a
life of Buddhist renunciation. U Pon Nya created a freer form of dramatic verse,
and his Water Seller is noted for its comparatively realistic treatment of court
life.

Court drama ceased after 1866, when the British conquered Burma.
Thereafter, drama was staged by professionals in public theatres, primarily in
Rangoon (now Yangon). U Pok Ni in Konmara (c. 1875), U Ku in The
Orangoutan Brother and Sister (1875), and others created a new type of
drama, pya zat, that mixed royalty and commoners, emphasized humour, and
added songs to appeal to a popular city audience. Hundreds of these works
were published. Popular troupes in contemporary Myanmar perform a long bill
of attractions that lasts most of the night. It comprises songs and dances, a
new contemporary play, and, as a final number, a classic zat in which
remnants of old court music and dance are preserved. British touring
companies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought examples of
contemporary European melodrama and some classics to Burma.
Subsequently a number of plays were written in Burmese and in English,
following Western conventions and without songs or dance. Of these, The
People Win Through (1950), by former prime minister U Nu, is among the most
interesting examples.
Indonesia

The sober, majestic, and profound court arts of eastern and central Java,
where Javanese is spoken, include wayang kulit shadow theatre, wayang
orang unmasked dance, and wayang topeng masked dance.
Shadow-puppet theatre

It is uncertain whether the shadow theatre is indigenous to Java or was

brought from India, but the wayang kulit technique of having a single seated
puppeteer who manipulates puppets, sings, chants narration, and
speaks dialogue seems to be an Indonesian invention. Unlike most court
arts, wayang kulit has had centuries of performance in the folk tradition as
well, so that today, with several thousand puppeteers active, it is the strongest
traditional theatre form in Southeast Asia.

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Plays are set in mythological times, some relating to indigenous animistic
festivals and worship of local spirits, some directly dramatizing episodes from
the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics, while the majority—the Pandawa
(Pāṇḍav in Sanskrit) cycle of about 100 plays—are essentially Javanese
creations in which the five heroic Pandawa brothers are placed in different
situations. Three and sometimes four god-clown-servants and a set of ogre-
antagonists who are not in the epics at all suggest how far removed the shadow
plays are from the epics.

The wayang puppeteer works within one of the world’s most carefully

organized performing arts, making possible a virtually solo performance
without intermission, from around nine at night until the gray before dawn.
Each play is in three parts, coordinated with three keys of music played by
the gamelan ensemble. Certain standard scenes appear in a standard order,
though some may be dropped. “Opening Audience” introduces the play’s
conflict, “Inner Palace” shows the king meeting his queen(s), and in “Outer
Audience” the army is dispatched. In “Forest Clearing” the first battle scene
occurs, and in “Foreign Audience” the antagonist kingdom, usually one of
overseas ogres, is introduced. Concluding part one are “Foreign Outer
Audience,” in which the second army marches forth, and “Opening Skirmish,”
a battle scene between the two armies. The puppeteer chooses from among 150
musical selections, matched to scene type, character, mood, or action. The
puppet figures are carved to indicate character type and status according to
fixed patterns for nose, eyes, gaze, stance, body build, and costume. The
puppeteer can choose one or another puppet of the same character, coloured
gold or black or with a stern or relaxed countenance, to indicate the mood of
the figure in a particular scene. In battle scenes, he develops individual
encounters between opponents, drawing upon a repertory of 119 movements
that are classified for use by god, female, refined hero, muscular hero, ogre, or
monkey. Formula narrative phrases describe famous kingdoms and characters,
and battles are preceded by challenges couched in standard phrases. Although
the puppeteer works only from a brief scenario, he is able to extemporize each
performance, adding contemporary jokes for the clowns and molding the
performance to suit the occasion and the audience. He and his supporting
musicians and female singers are improvising within completely known,
although exceptionally complex and subtle, artistic conventions.

This artistic system, developed within the shadow theatre for performance of
Pandawa plays, has proven to work so well that it has been widely imitated.
The entire body of wayang kulit drama was adopted in Bali and in Malaysia. At
least 25 other play cycles have been performed in Indonesia as shadow drama
within this system, including the Pandji cycle (wayang gedog), Islamic Amīr
Ḥamzah plays (wayang menak), and plays dramatizing the revolutionary
struggle against the Dutch (wayang suluh). The Pandawa wayang
kulit repertory was transposed to the doll-puppet theatre (wayang golek) in

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Sunda, the western part of Java, and to dance-drama in eastern and central
Java (wayang orang) and in Bali (wayang wong).

Performances are commissioned for special occasions and usually can be

interpreted in religious or mystical fashion. There may be offertory plays at
harvest time or animistic, ritualistic exorcisms protecting children from being
devoured by the voracious god Kala. In The Reincarnation of Rama the divine
attributes of the god Wisnu (Vishnu in Sanskrit) reincarnate in Ardjuna
(Arjuna), hero of the Pandawa cycle and ancestor of the Javanese race. The
translucent screen can be interpreted as heaven, the banana-log stage as
earth, the puppets as man, and the puppeteer as god, and the Pandawas can
symbolize the manifold attributes of righteous behaviour.
Wayang topeng

Masked dance was also popular at the eastern Javanese courts (c. 1000–1400)

and may be related to ancient animistic masked dance seen throughout the
Pacific islands. Later, Indian dance style was assimilated, and sometime after
the 15th century at the earliest, the Pandji story was dramatized. This
is wayang topeng, widely performed as both a sophisticated and a folk
art throughout Indonesia. Unlike the large-scale unmasked dance-
drama, topeng dance focuses on interpreting character through solo dance.
Wayang orang

Java’s spectacular dance-drama, wayang orang, grew out of the strong

unmasked dance tradition that is illustrated in reliefs of female dancers carved
on the 9th-century Borobudur and Prambanan temples in central Java and
that produced the carefully cultivated female group dances of the Surakarta
and Yogyakarta courts after their establishment in the 16th century. Of the
latter dances, two stand out, the almost sacred bedaja, which even today is
danced only in court surroundings, and the srimpi, in which two pairs of girls
execute a delicate slow-motion duel with daggers and bows. In the middle of
the 18th century, wayang kulit’s Rama and Pandawa plays were set to court
dance to form wayang orang, or “human” wayang. The music, narrative, and
dramatic organization of the shadow play was kept largely intact, and many of
the actors’ movements mimicked the stiff actions of the puppets, though new
dance sections were added. Court performances stopped with World War II,
but wayang orang continues to be performed by some 20 to 30 professional
troupes in major cities. In popular performances, attractive actresses play the
roles of such refined heroes as Ardjuna, and humour and spectacle
take precedence over dance.
Ketoprak and ludruk

Two other types of popular theatre, ketoprak and ludruk, were performed in

Java by 150 to 200 professional troupes. Ketoprak, created by a Surakarta

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court official in 1914, evolved into a spoken drama of Javanese and Islamic
history in which the clown figure is a spokesman for the common man.
Whereas ketoprak is performed primarily in central Java, ludruk, a spoken
drama that handles mainly contemporary subject matter, is performed in
eastern Java by both amateur and professional troupes. Though ludruk is
relatively realistic, male actors play all roles. Songs and dances, accompanied
by gamelan music, are performed between acts in both forms.
Sundanese performing arts

There are three main performing arts in the Sundanese area of western
Java. Reog, a kind of urban folk performance, can be seen especially in the
streets of Jakarta: two or three men improvise popular songs, dances, and
dramatic sketches for a neighbourhood audience in this type of
entertainment. Wayang golek is a performance based on wayang kulit but
using doll puppets without a screen. Approximately 500 Sundanese puppeteers
perform wayang golek. Female singers, who are almost as important as the
puppeteer, respond to requests and gifts of money by singing song after song
and virtually stopping the play. Sandiwara troupes in Jakarta, Bandung, and a
score of other cities perform both wayang stories in the form of Sundanese
dance-drama and spoken historical and contemporary dramas for popular
audiences. Sundanese-style court dances and topeng masked dances are often
performed solo at festivals and for circumcision or wedding celebrations in
private homes. Sundanese dance is more sensuous than Javanese and broader
in style.
Balinese dance-drama

Of the many factors that have contributed to the remarkable flourishing of

dance and drama on the island of Bali for more than a millennium, three are of
particular note. First, Bali remained isolated from both Islam and the West.
Second, there was a merging of folk and court performance styles into a single
communal tradition appreciated by all. Third, dances and plays are
indissolubly linked to the recurring cycles of local festivals and rituals whereby
the well-being of the community is maintained against constantly
threatening malicious forces in the spirit world. From the verve and brilliance
of Balinese performances it is clear not only that the people like to perform but
also that there exists some culturally determined compulsion to do so.

Balinese dance and dramatic forms are so numerous that only a few can be
noted. Balinese villagers playing in the barong exorcism dance-drama are not
merely actors exercising theatrical skills. The actors’ bodies, going into a
trance, are believed to receive the spirits of Rangda and the Barong, and it is
the spirits themselves that do battle. Thus the performance is actually more a
ritual than a piece of theatre. The sanghyang dance is usually performed by
two young girls who gradually go into a state of trance as women sing in
chorus and incense is wafted about them. Supposedly entered by the spirit of

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the nymph Supraba, the girls rise and dance, often acrobatically, though they
have been chosen from among girls untrained in dance. The dance’s purpose is
to entice Supraba to the village to gain her blessing when evil forces threaten.
In the ketjak, or monkey dance, as many as 150 village men, sitting in
concentric circles around a flaming lamp, chant and gesticulate in unison
until, in trance, they appear to have become ecstatically possessed by the
spirits of monkeys. This performance, however, has no ritual function of
altering an earthly condition.

Ketjak, or monkey dance, Bali.

Tor Eigeland/Black Star

That the Balinese wayang kulit may represent the older style of wayang,

known on Java before the coming of Islam, is suggested by the less stylized
shape of the puppets, by the shorter performing time of four to five hours, and
by the simple music of only four gender, a bronze instrument similar to a
xylophone with resonance chambers underneath, from the gamelan ensemble.
In one type of shadow play having a special religious significance, the puppets
perform before a screen during the daytime, and the puppeteer is seen in his
role as a Brahman priest, bare to the waist. In the redjang processional dance,
village women symbolically offer their bodies to their temple gods.

Because Balinese performing arts are vitally alive, they change from decade to
decade, even from year to year. The gambuh, respected for its age, contains
elements of dramatic dance, song, narrative, and characterization found in
later forms. It is thought dull, however, and is seldom performed, though it is
believed to have provided the model for the singing style of popular ardja opera
troupes and the dance style of the lovely girls’ legong. Wayang
wong is analogous to the Javanese wayang orang, but masks are worn and the
repertory is limited to Rama plays. Pandawa plays are staged in identical style
but are called parwa. It has been suggested that these forms also stem, at least
in part, from gambuh. Wayang topeng masked-dance plays are ancient, being
mentioned in a palm-leaf document of 1058. The Javanese chronicle of the
Majapahit period (c. 1293–1520), the Pararaton, in which Ken Angrok is the
hero, is a favourite tapeng story. This points to the strong influence exerted by
Javanese on Balinese arts after the Majapahit court was transferred to Bali in
the 16th century to escape Islamic domination.
Malaysia

The Malay peninsula, in the geographical centre of Southeast Asia, has

assimilated repeated intrusions of neighbouring cultures. The dances of the

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former princely states on the east coast show the influence of Indian
nondramatic dance.
The multiform wayang

Rulers from Java in the 13th and 14th centuries and later large colonies of
Javanese introduced their wayang kulit shadow theatre. The puppets
of wayang Djawa, or “Javanese” wayang, are identical with the two-armed,
long-nosed, highly stylized puppets of today’s Javanese wayang kulit. Those
of wayang Melayu, or “Malayan” wayang, have only a single movable arm and
are less sophisticated in conception, which suggests that they are either
descended from old Javanese puppets, before both arms were made movable,
or are a degeneration of the more complex form. Rama, Pandawa,
and Pandji plays are staged. The puppets of wayang Siam, or
“Siamese” wayang, though manipulated by a single seated puppeteer,
represent a Thai conception of the figures from the Ramayana; and costumes,
headdresses, ornamentation, and facial features follow those of khon. The plays
include Islamic elements as well, while the chief clown figure, Pak Dogol, is
thought to be a recent Malay creation that has supplanted Semar, the
Javanese clown of wayang kulit.

In a performance, puppets of all types may appear together. Either such Thai
instruments as the lakon jatri drum and small bell cymbals or gamelan
instruments play the accompanying music. Song lyrics can be in ancient
Javanese; animistic, Islamic, and Hindu-derived invocations to the gods are
offered in the Thai and Malay languages; and the play proper is
in colloquial Malay. Puppeteers once performed throughout the peninsula,
including the five Malay-speaking provinces of southern Thailand, but today
puppeteers are found primarily in northeast Malaysia.
Chinese and popular entertainments

Chinese immigrants introduced various forms of opera during the 19th

century. Troupes perform for Chinese Buddhist temple festivals, for local fairs,
or on national holidays. In Singapore troupes occasionally perform in public
theatres as well. Young people of Chinese descent in both Malaysia and
Singapore have little interest in the opera, however, because their Chinese is
limited. Occasionally troupes import star performers from Hong Kong or tour
Chinese communities in Thailand.

Bangsawan was created by professional Malay-speaking actors in the 1920s as

light, popular entertainment. Songs and contemporary dances were added to a
repertory of dramatic pieces drawn from Islamic romances and adventure
stories. Troupes traveled to Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sunda, and Java, where
their melodramatic plays found large audiences and influenced local
performers of sandiwara, ketoprak, and ludruk. The cinema and television,
however, have captured much of this audience.

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Vietnam

An indication of the antiquity of the performing arts in Vietnam is a large

bronze drum of the 3rd century BC found near Haiphong, in northern Vietnam,
which is ornamented with instruments and musicians playing for
dancers. Chinese performing arts presumably were a part of court life in
northern Vietnam during the period of Chinese rule (111 BC–AD 939), and
between the 10th and 13th centuries the dances and music of the
Hinduized Cham peoples, living in what is now central Vietnam, were
welcomed there. The melancholy Cham songs were particularly popular, and
most authorities believe that the sad southern style of Vietnamese singing is
derived from them.
Satirical drama

Hat cheo is a popular, satirical folk play of northern Vietnam that combines
folk songs and dances with humorous sketches criticizing the people’s rulers.
Some scholars theorize that it is an indigenous folk art, whereas others, to
show that it reached the people from the court, cite the legend of a Chinese
actor who in 1005 was hired by the Vietnamese king to teach “Chinese satirical
theatre” to his courtiers. Hat cheo is widely encouraged by the government.
The opera

The classic opera, known as hat boi, hat bo, or hat tuong, is a

Vietnamese adaptation of the Chinese opera long supported by kings and
provincial mandarins as a court art and performed for popular audiences as
well, especially in central Vietnam. The introduction of Chinese opera is
attributed to the capture of a troupe of performers attached to the Mongol army
that invaded northern Vietnam in 1285. The actors’ lives were spared in return
for teaching their art to the Vietnamese. In 1350 another Chinese performer
was engaged by the northern court as an instructor. Almost exclusively a court
art in the north, hat boi was made a form of popular entertainment in central
Vietnam by the playwright Dao Duy Tu in the 16th century. It was introduced
to southern Vietnam under the Nguyen dynasty in the 18th and 19th
centuries, but its future was jeopardized by the decades of war in the mid-20th
century. The last large troupe of court musicians, dancers, and actors at Hue
in southern Vietnam disbanded in 1945. The postwar government of the late
20th century did not provide hat boi with strong support, and the popular
troupes lacked audiences.

In form and content, hat boi is a blend of China and Vietnam.

Direct imitation of Chinese costume and acting techniques was encouraged
under the reign (1847–83) of Emperor Tu Duc, and it is probable that the
present form of hat boi dates from this period. At Tu Duc’s court in Hue, the
playwright and scholar Dao Tan gathered 300 actors and with them wrote out

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texts of the standard repertory that previously had been preserved orally. He
then had the texts published and distributed them to actors and troupe
managers. In the 20th century there was a movement to loosen the rigid
structure of hat boi and to reduce the high proportion of Chinese loanwords
that makes the operas difficult for the ordinary Vietnamese to appreciate.

Following Chinese practice, the operas are classified as military or domestic.

The former, which may be derived from Chinese and Vietnamese legend or
history or may be purely fictional, concern struggles for power between kings.
The Chinese novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms furnishes material for
many military plays. The latter, dealing with the lives of commoners, contain
humorous scenes alternating with scenes of suffering that are played to the
accompaniment of sad southern-style songs. The Confucian ethic of obligation
to one’s superior—of wife to husband, of son to father, or of subject to king—
underlies plays of both types.

Hat boi staging is modeled on conventions of Chinese opera. Actors perform on

a stage that is bare except for a table and two chairs. These can serve as a
castle, a cave, or a bed as well as for sitting and eating. A single embroidered
drop at the rear has an entrance right and an exit left. Costume and makeup
indicate character type: black for boldness, red for anger or rashness, white for
treachery, and gold as the colour of the gods. Conventionalized mime may be
used alone or in conjunction with symbolic properties. The actor mimes
stepping over an imaginary threshold or sewing without needle and thread, but
he indicates riding a horse by gestures with a riding crop and travels in a
carriage when a stage assistant holds flags with wheels painted on them at
each side of his body. Percussion instruments accompany stage action, and
songs—which may be in falsetto Chinese style, in soft southern Vietnamese
style, or in a form of prose recitative—are accompanied by stringed
instruments.
The popular stage

Southern-style singing is the basis of another type of theatre, cai luong, begun

in the 1920s by popular singers who performed plays in which they sang the
love lament “Vong Co.” Today, regardless of whether a historical or
contemporary play is being performed as cai luong or which of many troupes is
staging it, this melody will be heard throughout the play many times,
underlying different lyrics. Cai luong stars are lionized, and the best troupes
maintain high artistic standards. Among popular theatre forms in Southeast
Asia, only cai luong plays are fully scripted and directed as they would be in
the Western theatre. In contrast to the operetta form of cai luong, modern
spoken drama is known as kich. It is a young dramatic form performed mostly
by amateurs who are trying to put Western dramatic conventions into practice.
The Philippines

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Whatever indigenous theatrical forms may have existed in the Philippines,
other than tribal epic recitations, were obliterated by the Spanish
to facilitate the spread of Christianity.
The comedia

The earliest known form of organized theatre is the comedia, or moro-moro,

created by Spanish priests. In 1637 a play was written to dramatize the recent
capture by a Christian Filipino army of an Islamic stronghold. It was so
popular that other plays were written and staged as folk dramas in
Christianized villages throughout the Philippines. All told similar stories of
Christian armies defeating the hated Moors. With the decline of Spanish
influence, the comedia, too, declined in popularity. Some professional troupes
performed comedia in Manila and provincial capitals prior to World War II.
Today it can still be seen at a number of church festivals in villages, where it
remains a major social and religious event of the year. Much in the manner of
the medieval European mystery-play performances, hundreds of local people
donate time and money over several months to mount an impressive
performance.

moro-moro, or comedia

Moro-moro, or comedia, a folk drama based on the battles between Christians

and the Muslim Moros in the Philippines.

Courtesy of Philippine Embassy

Styles from Europe

Dances and dramas from Spain were brought in, some of which took root.
The María Clara, a stately minuet, and the Rigodón de Honor, a quadrille, were
adopted by local European society for its formal balls. Spain’s sprightly
operetta, the zarzuela, became the favourite light entertainment in Manila and
other cities. Professional zarzuela troupes continued to flourish in the early
decades of the 20th century but had disappeared by World War II. New plays
with original music were produced in profusion. A number of them based on
topical themes and criticizing American colonial policies were banned.

Western drama is studied and widely performed in both English and Tagalog.
There are no professional companies, but amateur university
and community groups abound. Western classics and recent popular
successes are staged, and in recent years many original plays have been
written to celebrate the Filipino heritage.
James R. Brandon

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Visual arts

General considerations

Religious-aesthetic traditions

The visual arts in Southeast Asia have followed two major traditions.

Buddhist temples in Pagan, Myan.

© Index Open

Indigenous and animist tradition

The first is a complex inheritance of magical and animist art shared by the

different tribal peoples of insular and mainland Southeast Asia, where it
evolved from Paleolithic origins. Such art gave the peoples who made it a sense
of their identity in relation to the forces of their natural environment, to the
structure of their society, and to time. It consists of types of potent
emblem, masks, and ancestral figures broadly similar to those that hunters
and early farmers the world over have used in connection with seasonal
ceremonies, life and death rituals, and ecstatic shamanism (belief in an unseen
world of gods, demons, and ancestral spirits responsive only to the shamans,
or priests). The spiritual powers that the arts name and invoke are local and
vary from group to group of the population. The rich formal artistic languages
were subject to successive episodes of influence from inland Asia, but each of
Southeast Asia’s habitation groups developed its own artistic language.
Indian tradition

The second major tradition was initially received in various parts of the region
from the Indian subcontinent about the 1st millennium CE. The influence of
Indian Hindu-Buddhist civilization came to be found almost everywhere except
for the remote and forested mainland interior, most of Borneo and Celebes, the
eastern Indonesian islands, and the Philippines. Despite the abundant
evidence of Indian culture, the precise ways in which it was introduced
to Southeast Asia remains something of a mystery. The archaeological record
points to trade as the primary factor. By the 1st century CE, demand in the
West, particularly from the Roman world, stimulated an expansion of Indian
trade with Southeast Asia. Journeys between India and Southeast Asian ports
were made in accordance with the prevailing summer and
winter monsoon winds. Traders would often pass many months in port, waiting
for the winds to change. At least one and a half years commonly passed
between the start and return trip, and traders may well have married locally.

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Missionary activity on the part of Indian Buddhists resulted in the
establishment of Buddhist monasteries and communities. However, one of the
characteristics of Hinduism and Buddhism in Southeast Asia is their peaceful
coexistence and the blending of these religions with preexisting ancestral cults.
This would indicate that those responsible for bringing Indian culture to
Southeast Asia had a wider mission than religious conversion.

The impact of Indian culture was profound, especially in parts of Burma

(Myanmar), Thailand, Cambodia, and the Indonesian archipelago. Local rulers
adopted concepts of state and kingship as well as urban development and
hydraulic engingeering. They also embraced a script and literature in
the Sanskrit language. Indic elements were integrated and authenticated by
both Hindu and Buddhist metaphysical ideologies. Those ideologies claimed to
be universal, embracing all human diversity within a cosmic frame of
reference. That probably explains why the culture was adopted, for there was
no Indian conquest of terrain and no imposition of a populace or doctrine.
India never established colonies in Southeast Asia, and the transmission was
more a movement of ideas rather than peoples.

Furthermore, the decision was in the hands of the Southeast Asian rulers, and
the adoption of Indic elements represented a clear choice on their part based
on preexisting priorities. The many Indian concepts of state and kingship
adopted by these rulers reflect the extensive political power held by religious
figures in the royal courts. In many cases, native rulers may have invited
revered Hindu priests or Buddhist scholars to take up posts of power. Indian
ideals of royalty legitimated the rulers’ positions, and the fusing of foreign
and indigenous concepts became a mutually beneficiary liaison for both the
king and the religious adviser.

In the case of Southeast Asia’s Hindu states, the essence of kingship is

expressed in the concept of the devaraja, a Sanskrit word meaning “god who is
king.” The ruler was thereby consecrated as an incarnation of a Hindu god,
such as Vishnu or Shiva. Temples and statues dedicated to these and other
deities embodied the ruler and his power in both earthly and immortal terms.
Relations between traditions

The blending of foreign and indigenous styles transformed Southeast Asia’s art
during the rise of Hindu and Buddhist states in the beginning of the 1st
century CE. Even in those regions where Indian influence became strongly
entrenched—namely, Cambodia, Burma, and Thailand—the older layers of
ancient religion and artistic consciousness remained alive. Indian deities were
readily identified with local spirits. The local populations retained
their animist customs, especially those connected with fertility and
practical magic, often with art (in perishable materials). Those arts were
influenced by and exercised a reciprocal influence upon the Indian forms. On

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the Indonesian island of Bali, which remains nominally Hindu, Indian and folk
elements were thoroughly assimilated, producing a unique religious culture
and art.

In many remote parts of the region, art was used to link village life with
the supernatural, and people continued to follow the ways of their ancestors,
with local art styles demonstrating the resilience of indigenous traditions.
Interregional artistic influences in art, such as of the Indonesian archipelago,
were less easy to assess, and certain common symbols, motifs, and art objects
underwent a transformation both in function and meaning. Each region often
interpreted and represented these motifs differently, so caution must be
exercised in interpreting them.

The form and intensity of each foreign cultural influence changed with time.
China’s geographical proximity to the region greatly impacted the culture of
Vietnam and Laos. But the stylistic elements of Chinese art are also found in
the art and architecture of Java’s north coast, northern Thailand, Cambodia,
and Burma.

Islam became a religious constituent in Southeast Asia in the 15th century.

Muslim traders from India, Persia, China, and the Middle East spread Islam
to Sumatra, Java, and the Malay Peninsula, where it became a dominant
political—and distinctive cultural—force from the 15th century onward. The
cult of the ancestors was revived and encouraged by Muslim rulers, with folk
versions of denatured Hindu art adapted to it. Decorative styles based on this
art flourished in Sumatra and Java especially and were officially revived in the
late 20th century. European political and economic expansion into the region
from the 16th century gradually became a dominant factor in the art of the
region. In the Philippines, notably in and around Manila, Spanish Roman
Catholic art flourished after the Spanish colonization. Elsewhere, European
academy painting conventions made a steady incursion from the mid-19th
century onward. The postwar period of nationalism, which marked the end of
European colonial domination, significantly influenced culture and
contemporary art development.
Artistic styles

Hindu royal temples in Indian styles provide the basis for the architectural and

decorative elements found in the ancient monuments of Southeast Asia. But a
distinct local aesthetic emerged early on, when builders identified architectural
form with cosmological beliefs. Each Hindu temple centres on a shrine,
symbolizing heaven upon earth. The shrine is crowned by a roof tower
representing the cosmic Indian mountain, Meru, conceived as the hub of
creation. Since all the peoples of Southeast Asia already believed the natural
habitat of spirits and gods to be a mountaintop, the Indian pattern was readily
accepted. The temple usually stands upon a lofty terraced plinth (a block

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serving as a base), which also symbolizes a mountain. Towered shrines could
be multiplied on the terraces, though one of them remains the principal focus.
Within the cell of this main shrine is a sacred image carved in stone or cast in
bronze. The local Hindu ruler identified the subject of this image as
his transcendent patron, or celestial alter ego. This was normally one of the
Indian high gods, Shiva (represented perhaps by a phallic emblem, the linga) or
Vishnu. In Mahayana Buddhist kingdoms, a royal bodhisattva (a being that
refrains from entering nirvana in order to save others) was sometimes adopted
to fulfill the same role; a favourite form was known as Lokanatha,
or Lokeshvara, Lord of the World. Subsidiary shrines, niches, or terraces
sometimes contain subsidiary images, including goddesses representing at the
same time wives of the god and queens of the king. These images were worked
in smooth, deeply rounded, and sensuously emphatic styles derived
from Indian art but with varying inflections characteristic of each region and
time. The whole exterior of the shrine is usually adorned with rhythmic
moldings, foliage, and scrollwork, with figures representing the inhabitants of
the heavens. Ideally, the building was constructed and carved in stone, but,
particularly where good stone was not readily available (for example, in
Burmese Pagan), it could also be brick, coated and sculptured with stucco after
northeast Indian patterns. Temple complexes tended to grow as successive
kings strove to outdo their predecessors with the magnificence of their
buildings. Hindu rulers, influenced perhaps by vestiges of tribal custom, would
sometimes retain their own family’s temples and images while destroying those
of earlier dynasties.

Buddhism, however, is a religion based on a doctrine of transcendent merit

and sustained by an order of monks who have, ultimately, no vested interest in
kings and gods. They may, however, take a great interest in the world of spirits
and in the operations of astrology, just as the local population does, even
though they regard such matters as subordinate to the ultimate Buddhist aim
of universal nirvana. Buddhist monasteries, therefore, tended to expand
around stupas (domed monuments emblematic of the Buddhist truth, also
called pagodas or dagabas) of ever-increasing size and number; the preaching
halls, libraries, and living quarters for monks were continually enlarged and
repeatedly rebuilt, often as a testimony to the piety of royal patrons. Although,
strictly speaking, Theravada Buddhism has no place for a “divine ruler” whose
identity an actual king may adopt, provision was made in legend and in court
and monastic ritual for the ruler of a Theravada Buddhist country to assume a
magical role as the dominant sponsor and patron of the Buddhist truth. His
legendary prototype was, therefore, usually identified not with an icon of
the enlightened Buddha but with images such as the chief disciple at the knee
of the enlightened Buddha, as Prince Siddhartha (the Buddha-to-be), or
figuring in scenes of the Buddha’s life that lined the monastery halls and
corridors.

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Both Hindu and Buddhist art were produced according to theoretical
prescriptions. If the formulas were not followed, the art was believed to not
fulfill its transcendent function. In practice, however, there was room for styles
and types of images to change and develop fairly quickly. Hindu and non-
Theravada art recognizes what could be called aesthetic values as a component
in religious expression. Theravada Buddhism, however, always attempts to
preserve the closest possible connections with the Buddha’s recorded original
deeds and sayings; its art, therefore, concentrates on repeating in its main
Buddha figures the most exact possible imitations of authentic ancient images.
The Theravada Pali canon lists 32 major lakshanas—the attributes of the
Buddha—plus 80 minor anatomical characteristics. Some of these
interpretations have developed over time. Many of these attributes appear to be
Brahmanical and pre-Buddhist (pre-6th century BCE), which explains why
they are often linked to depictions of Hindu deities as well. (See
below Burma; Thailand and Laos. In the subsidiary sculptured and painted
figures, however, which illustrate scenes from sacred history, Theravada art
has greater freedom of invention. In the 20th century, Theravada Buddhism
was the only form of Indian religion to survive in Southeast Asia, save for the
modified Hinduism of Bali. Its architecture from this period is decorated with
a robust and innovative use of coloured glass, mirrored tiles, and a fantastical
array of bright colours.
General development of Southeast Asian art

Most of the works made under the inspiration of the earliest magical and
animist tradition are in perishable materials such as wood. Because the
climate is so hostile, most of the works that survive are from the last few
centuries.. There are, however, a large number
of Neolithic stone implements and prehistoric stone monuments (megaliths) as
well as bronzes, which provide a solid archaeological basis for interpretation of
Southeast Asia’s earliest art traditions.

For the art of the classic Indianizing civilizations, the archaeology of European
countries played a major role in clearing, excavating, and reconstructing major
sites in their colonies—i.e., the French in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam; the
Dutch in Indonesia; and the British in Burma. Old bronzes were found in fair
quantities; apart from those of the early Dong Son culture (also see
below Bronze Age: Dong Son culture), all belong to one or other of the
Indianizing traditions. Many old brick and stucco buildings survive, notably
the medieval work at Pagan, Burma, and in central Thailand, though an
enormous number are known to have perished. Apart from Pagan’s murals and
a few Indianizing rock and wall paintings on plaster, very old paintings are not
known to exist. Most of the surviving Buddhist pictorial art on wooden panels
or other fragile material is less than 300 years old.

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The stone of dynastic buildings of course survived the best, by far. Scholars
thus know much more about Indianizing stone architecture, with its sculpture,
than about any other Southeast Asian visual art. But where good relief
sculpture flourished, one can legitimately assume that vanished pictorial arts
also flourished. And from details carved in stone and incised on bronze as well
as from the scattered enthusiastic references in Chinese sources, one can be
sure that throughout their history the Southeast Asian peoples were intensely
creative and lived their lives surrounded by a wealth of imaginative art in many
different mediums.

There are many sites yet to be discovered and excavated. Knowledge of the
history of art in many parts of Southeast Asia, especially of important episodes
in Burma, Thailand, and Sumatra, was still scantily documented in the 21st
century.
Neolithic Period

The earliest works in Southeast Asia that can be called art are the rectangular
polished ax heads of a familiar late Neolithic type that were found at many sites
in Peninsular Malaysia, Indochina, and Indonesia. Some of the later Neolithic
(c. 2000 BCE to early centuries CE) implements are extremely beautiful and
polished with the greatest care. They include practical adzes and axes, but
some, made of semiprecious stone, are part of ritual grave goods. Ancient stone
tools often thought to have medicinal or curative properties continued to be
valued in many parts of Southeast Asia. These tools, with their fine edges,
suggest that their owners were capable of very high quality woodworking and
might well have decorated their wooden houses with intricate designs.

During the Neolithic Period, metal—both bronze and iron—came into use for

implements, bringing great change to the material culture. In many regions,
notably Cambodia, Borneo, and Sumatra, numerous megalithic works of art
survive, including menhirs (single upright monoliths), dolmens (two or more
upright monoliths supporting a horizontal slab), cist graves (Neolithic graves
lined with stone slabs), and terraced burial mounds, all dating from the late
Neolithic. Some remarkable large stones are worked in relief with symbols and
images of animals and humans, notably in the Pasemah region of Sumatra.
Stone continued to be fashioned into tools during this period. These were often
finely polished, and some may have been for ritual use. Stone rings and some
bracelets have also been found. Many of these items are also seen at Bronze
Age sites. These and other art objects suggest a highly developed cult of a spirit
world connected with the remains of the dead (see below Cambodia and
Vietnam; Indonesia).
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Post-Borobudur candis

250
Post-Borobudur candis illustrate the Buddhist doctrine in different
ways. Kalasan, for example, built in the second half of the 8th century, was a
large square shrine on a plinth, with projecting porticoes at the centre of each
face. The roof was surmounted by a high circular stupa mounted on an
octagonal drum, the faces of which bear reliefs of divinities. Topping each
portico was a group of five small stupas, and another large stupa stood at each
disengaged corner of the main shrine. The moldings were restrained and
elegantly profiled. Each section of the exterior wall contains a niche meant for
a figure sculpture. The decorative scroll carving is especially fine.

Another shrine from this period, Candi Sewu, consisted of a large cruciform
shrine surrounded by smaller temples, only one of which has been restored. All
of the temples seem to have had roofs in the form of tiered stupas, compressing
the overall Borobudur scheme into the scope of a storied shrine tower. From
Candi Plaosan came many beautiful sculptures, donor figures,
and iconic images of bodhisattvas.

Perhaps the most interesting of the post-Borobudur Buddhist shrines of the

9th century is Candi Sari. It is an outstanding architectural invention. From
the outside it appears as a large rectangular three-storied block, with the main
entrance piercing the centre of one of the longer sides. The third story stands
above a substantial architrave with horizontal moldings and antefixes. Two
windows on each short side, three on each long, open into each story, though
at the rear they are blind. The windows are crowned by large antefix-like
cartouches of ornamental carving based on curvilinear pavilions hung with
strings of gems. The uppermost windows are hooded with the Kala-monster
motif. The roof bears rows of small stupas, and perhaps there was once a large
central stupa. Inside, Candi Sari contains a processional corridor around three
interior shrines that were possibly intended for images of the garbha-
dhatu deities, as at Candi Mendut.

The last great monument of the central Javanese period, Lara Jonggrang, at

Prambanan, is indeed a colossal work, rivaling Borobudur. It was probably
built soon after 900. Not Buddhist but Hindu, the shrine represents the cosmic
mountain. There were originally 232 temples incorporated into the design. The
plan was centred on a square court with four gates containing the eight
principal temples. Facing east, the central and largest temple, some 120 feet
(40 metres) high, was devoted to the image of Shiva. To the north and south it
is flanked by slightly smaller temples devoted to the two other members of the
Hindu trinity, Vishnu and Brahma. The smaller shrines contained many
subsidiary images. The whole complex was enclosed, far off-centre, in an
extremely large walled courtyard.

Although these are Hindu buildings, their high-terraced shrine roofs bear tiers
of elongated and gadrooned stupas. The reliefs on these structures are

251
especially beautiful. One series, representing the guardians of the
directions, integrates the ornamental motifs with the plastic forms of the
bodies in a most original way. The balustrades and inset panels abound with
lively reliefs portraying various deities or scenes taken from the great Hindu
classics, especially the Ramayana.
East Javanese period: 927–16th century

During the east Javanese period a very large number of monuments were
produced at the eastern end of the island (after 1222) and in Bali
(after c. 1050). Few single structures, however, are as impressive and as
comprehensively planned as are the monuments of Borobudur or Lara
Jonggrang.

Around the strange natural mountain with tiered peaks cut and built in stone,
called Mount Penanggungan, there were 81 structures (10th century) of
different kinds (now mostly in ruins). Prominent among these structures were
bathing places. This mountain was identified by the people with the
sacred Mount Meru, and its natural springs were believed to have a magical
healing power and a mystical purifying capacity. Another such bathing place
is Belahan (11th century). Made of brick, it too has extensive ruined temples.
Belahan is supposed to have been the burial place of King Airlangga, who
probably died about 1049. One of the greatest east Javanese icons formed the
central figure against the back wall of the tank. Carved of red tufa (a porous
rock), it shows the god Vishnu seated at peace on the back of his violently
dramatic bird-vehicle, Garuda. It is said that the image represents the king
himself in divine guise. Beside this image was a sculpture of a type associated
with many of these sacred bathing sites. It is a relief of a four-armed goddess of
abundance, her two lower hands holding jars pierced with holes, her two upper
hands squeezing her breasts, which are also pierced. Through the holes the
sacred water flowed into the basin. There are many variants of this idea at the
springs of Mount Penanggungan. On Bali the same kind of fountain sculpture
appears at the Goa Gadjah, at Bedulu, in a spring-fed tank below a cave.

In both Java and Bali there are many rock-face relief carvings from this period
(there are no secure dates). Some represent legendary scenes, while others
represent candis. The shallow chambers of others are thought to be royal
tombs.

The structure that gives the best ideas of what the typical east Javanese shrine
of the mid-13th century was like is Candi Kidal. The nucleus of the building is
a square cell, with slightly projecting porticoes each hooded by an enormous
Kala-monster head. But the cell itself is dwarfed both by the massive molded
plinth upon which it stands and by the huge tower with which it is
surmounted. The tower stands above an architrave stepped far out on tiered
moldings. It is no longer composed of diminishing stories, as earlier towers

252
were, but is conceived as a massive pyramidal obelisk made up of double
bands of ornament spaced by stumpy pilasters and bands of recessed panels.
The architectural projections and moldings distinguish Candi Kidal from earlier
Javanese architecture, with its plain wall surfaces.

Many masterpieces of sculpture belong to the east Javanese period. Among

them are some superb icons of Shiva and of a goddess of Buddhist wisdom
from Singhasari and a splendid image of the elephant-headed god of wealth
from Bara, Blitar.

From the late 13th century onward a whole series of candis was created in
eastern Java. As time went on, the candis lost their monumental scale and
became simply shrines within a series of courtyards on a pre-Indian pattern.
From Candi Djago through Candi Panataran at Blitar (14th century) and Candi
Surawana it is possible to trace the line of descent of the modern Balinese
temple enclosures.

By the end of the 14th century, the figures in the relief sculpture at these
shrines had come more and more to resemble the shadow puppets of the
popular wayang drama. They adopt the stiff profile stance that presents both
shoulders, whereas the trees and houses resemble the silhouette leather and
wood cutouts used as properties in the shadow plays. The art of carving in the
near-full round, however, did not follow the same course of modification as the
reliefs. Such work did become softer and more delicate in style, with accretions
of broad floral forms, but well into the 15th century the icons retain something
of the strength of older sculptural conceptions. Another plastic tradition that
seems to have escaped domination by the wayang formula resulted in the
production of beautiful small terra-cotta figures as part of the revetment (stone
facing sustaining the embankment) of the east Javanese capital city
of Majapahit. Like the reliefs, the many small excavated bronzes of Hindu
scenes are under the wayang influence, three-dimensional though they may
be. Curlicues proliferate, and the plasticity of bodies is virtually ignored.
16th century to the present

The earliest manifestation of Islam’s arrival in Indonesia is the Javanese

congregational mosques and tombs that were established within the north
coastal Javanese Muslim communities about the mid-15th century. The main
congregational mosque located on the west side of public squares (alun-alun)
was sited directly in front of the court centre (kraton). This combination can be
seen at Yogyakarta, Surakarta, Cirebon, Banten, and Surabaya and also at
Java’s holiest mosque, Demak, believed to be the oldest extant mosque in the
Indonesian archipelago. Whereas the mosque evolved as the principal unit of
Indonesian Islamic architecture, the value of other architectural and
archaeological remains—such as kratons, tamans (gardens), and grave sites—

253
must be considered equally important in reconstructing and understanding
this transitional stage in Indonesia’s history.

Javanese mosques from this transitional period are arguably not

quintessentially Islamic, with certain distinct elements of design, use, and
decoration. Of particular note is the open pillared pavilion (pendopo) and the
multitiered roof forms (meru), both of which are evident in the architecture of
pre-Islamic Hindu Javanese temples. Royal courts with east Javanese reliefs of
the 14th and 15th centuries also widely depict this monument type. It is
appropriate that a building with a tiered roof—multiplied vertically—would be
reserved for functions associated with ritual and cosmological symbolic
functions. The imagery of tapering tiered roofs was a reference to the
symbolism of the cosmic mountain. Additionally, the tiered roof had a practical
function and was essential for keeping the enclosed area cool and dry in Java’s
equatorial climate. Around the mosque, and also at court complexes, are
walled areas with ceremonial gateways that give access to the sequence of
concealed courts. The gateways are in the form of candi bentar and kori agung,
respectively, the traditional split portals and the covered gateways, seen in
such pre-Islamic east Javanese sanctuaries as Trowulan—the Majapahit
capital. Within these courts are a number of smaller pavilions which were
intended for religious educational use. This gateway and courtyard layout was
still being used in Balinese temple complexes in the 21st century.

The mosque at Mantingan is one of the few places where reliefs of the early
Islamic period survive. In the shape of round or oblong medallions, the
sculptures depict naturalistic scenes in flora and fauna in a rhythmic and
highly stylized manner. Decorations derive from Java’s classical period and
radiate the same animated and vivid atmosphere as the relief panels from the
14th-century temple at Panataran, East Java. Significantly, the Islamic
injunction against the representation of humans and animals does not appear
to have limited the Mantingan artists, who depicted animals such
as elephants, tigers, crabs, and monkeys, all composed entirely of floral
components. Relief sculpture is more substantial at Mantingan than at any
other Javanese mosque, excepting the contemporary carved wood reliefs of
Sendang Duwur. At Sendeng Duwur, which dates from about 1561, there are
two splendid elaborately carved gateways of spreading Garuda wings—Garuda
being the giant mythical bird mount of Vishnu. Other decorative motifs, which
continue from the Hindu Javanese repertoire, are the kala-
makara combination of monster head and mythical dolphin-snakelike creature
with its head composed of an elephant trunk and tusks and crocodile jaws.
These appear in a wide range of architectural features, including archways over
external gateways and as decoration over the sacred mihrab, which indicates
the direction of Mecca.

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During the 18th century—as a consequence of trade from India, Europe,
China, the Middle East, and the rest of the region—a wide range of new
decorative motifs came to be applied to doors, windows, and internal walls.
Many fine examples exist in Sumatran mosques constructed from this time.
Later, in the 1920s and ’30s, a large number of mosques in Sumatra, Madura,
and Java received official refurbishment support from the Netherlands Indies
government, and this encouraged the introduction of freestanding minarets.
Meanwhile, new educational and theological developments throughout
the Islamic world introduced alternative architectural styles.
These innovations were resisted by some, but, in the latter half of the century,
solidarity among Muslim nations encouraged the adoption of a wide range of
styles. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries there was a revival of
traditional teak mosque building, a source of national pride.

About the Author-Dr.UdayDokras

The author has worked for 30 years in the human resources arena in India and abroad. He
was Group Vice -President of MZI Group in New Delhi and has anchored Human
Relations in Go Air and Hotel Holiday Inn;was General Manager-Health Human
Resources at the Lata Mangeshkar Hospital amd Medical college. Is currently Consultant
to Gorewada International Zoo,Nagpur and visiting Faculty at the Central Institute of
Business Management and Research, Nagpur.

In Sweden he anchored HR in Stadbolaget RENIA, SSSB and advisor to a multi

millionaire. He has studied in Nagpur, India where he obtained degrees of Bachelor of
Science, Bachelor of Arts(Managerial Economics) and Bachelor of Laws. He has done

255
 his Graduate Studies in labour laws from Canada at the Queen's University, Kingston; a
MBA from USA, and Doctorate from Stockholm University, Sweden. Apart from that he
has done a Management Training Program in Singapore.

A scholar of the Swedish Institute, he has been an Edvard Cassel Fund and Wineroth
Fund Awardee.A scholar for the Swedish Institute for 5 years.
In 1984 he was involved with the Comparative Labour Law Project of the University of

California, Los Angeles, U.S.A. He was also visiting lecturer there. In 1985 he was
invited by the President of Seychelles to do a study of the efficacy of the labour laws of
Seychelles.

Author of a book on a Swedish human resource law, his brief life sketch is part of the
English study text book of 7 th Class Students in Sweden -“Studying English.
SPOTLIGHT 7”- and 8th Class students in Iceland - “SPOTLIGHT 8- Lausnir.”

RESEARCH PAPERS-320 + in Researchgate and academia.edu & scribd

Followers(readers) 65,000 consolidated as on 26 th September,2020.

Dr. Uday Dokras

B.Sc., B.A. (Managerial Economics), LL.B., Nagpur University, India

256
 Certificat'e en Droit, Queen’s University. Ontario, Canada,
Ph.D. Stockholm University, Sweden,
Management and Efficacy Consultant, India

Reviews of the Book PROJECT HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

257
The authors highlight the benefits of paying attention to human resources and offer success and
failure factors guideline for a variety of potential practitioners and students in global project
marketplace.
Ms.Ylva Arnold, Head HR- Norstedts Publishers, Stockholm SWEDEN

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From the Newspaper Times of India March
24, 2018

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Iceland Sweden both countries use the English Text SPOTLIGHT-one of the lessons
in which is about Dr Uday Dokras

Prof. S.Deshpande,President of the Indian Instituye of Architects, New Delhi INDIA

releasing the book of Dr Dokras HINDU TEMPLES on the web in CARONA
gimes( May 2010)

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Some of my books

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 Unravelling the

SCIENTIFIC
BORUBUDUR
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 51 of the 101 BOOKS BY DR UDAY DOKRAS
Published by
The Indo Swedish Author’s Collective Stockholm
The Indo Swedish Author’s Collective Finland

Dr. Uday Dokras

Tamil People as Traders and Voyagers

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 The Cambodian Trilogy

I.HINDU CAMBODIA

II.HYDROLOGY of ANGKOR
ANGKOR is known as a Hydraulic city- full or canals and river and waterways. It
is this water system they say that brought the downfall of this intrinsic kingdom.
But is that TRUE?

III.ENTER…… THE KINGDOM THAT

VANISHED- Angkor
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Building Materials of the Hindu Temple
In depth study of how Building Materials of the Hindu Temple was used in
India,Indonesia and Cambodia and India

The Art & Architecture of THE GOLDEN TEMPLE

COMPLEX, AMRITSAR

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Mathematics in Temple Designs

Jain ART
Book on Jain Art and Iconography

Jain Temples- Part I -Complete Compendium-Book I

A to Z of the architecture, Design,Cosmology,Philosophy of Jain temples in

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 Jain Temples II
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF JAIN TEMPLES AND THE
ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPHS(ORIGINAL) OF 3JAIN TEMPLES of Nagpur

DWARKA- CELESTIAL MYSTERIES of the Lost

CITY of KRISHNA

TIRUPATI TEMPLE Book part I

TIRUPATI TemplePart II

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Vahanas- the vehicles of Hindu Gods
Vahanas- the vehicles of Hindu Gods. Animals in Hinduism. demi Gods

SATYANARAYAN PUJA-The Complete Compendium

Satyanarayan Puja or 9 Graha Puja( a puja of 9 planets) has been performed by
most Hindus not only now but for 1,000’s of years.

MAHALAXMI Puja
Hindu Goddess MAHALAXMI Puja

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ARCHITECTURE OF PALESTINE

Palestine my Love
Palestine my Love is about the culture arts and crafts of palestine so we recognize
it as a entity that is fighting for recognition of not only its legitimacy but also its
cultural heritage

QUINTET (5) BOOKS ON MANDALA

Unravelling the MAZE of the MANDALA BOOK I

First part of a two book treatise on MANDALAS. This introductory phase
introduces mandalas

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Maze of MANDALA BOOK II
Advanced Mandala routine for those who want to know more about MANDALAS

Mandala BOOK III on Nakshatra

BOOK IV MANDALA & ARCHITECTURE

The Use of Mandalas in Building Temples and Modern Buildings

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Book V on Mandala of the Oriental Kingdoms

Islamic Architectureal Arts of of Imam Ali's 2 Shrines

Hindu Gods in Scandinavia

Did the Hindu Gods originate or live in Scandinavia once? Find out

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Book on Divinity and Architecture
What is divinity? How has man tried to harness architecture to create magic in
space

Virat Hridaya Padma-sthalam CHIDAMBARAM

Temple -Celestial Mysteries
This book is about a mysterious and revered tempe built by the Chola Kings of
South India 2000 years ago

T2- Temple Tech. A Book

How are Hindu temples built and the technology that follows this craft. From A to
Z Complete Guide.

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Rendezvous with Sri RAM Portfolio of Temple Art by
Srishti Dokras, Architect Special section on Hindu
Foods by Karan Dokras, Product Guru

Best Foot Forward

The story of Footwear through the ages up to COVID times

Hindu Temple Panorama-Celestial Mysteries

A to Z of Temples. A total Panoramic View of design and architecture of Hindu
temples in 350 page...

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 DUOLOGY (2) on JAINISM
Ativir
ATIVIR means Very Brave and is the name given to Lord Mahavir the 24 th
Saint(TIRTHANKAR) Contains rare translations of the Dialogue of the Mahavir
with his disciples called GHANDHARVAVAD

Vardhaman-वर्धमान
IThis book is about Jainism- written by a non-

THE TRILOGY(3) on DEVRAJA The God

kIngs of Khemer

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Book I DEVRAJ- The God Kings of Indo China-
Cambodia.
This is the first Book of a Trilogy that traces the growth of Hinduism in South East
Asia.

BOOK I I DEVRAJA- The Great Civilizations of South

East Asia -HINDU Era
How Hinduism reached Cambodia and how the Hindu Kings called Devraj Built
these magnificent structures

Devraja BOOK II I Devraja and Raj Dharma God King

and Kingly Religion The HINDU Era of Great
Civilizations of Khemer
Book 2 of a Trilogy that traces the advent of Hinduism on South East Asian and
Indo-Chinese

285
Vayu- Man's taming of the winds
Man's conquest of nature spans a million years. How was wind tamed by him. Here
is the full story... more 

VIMANA Ancient Conquests of Wind

Ancient flying machines of Gods and Men(?) Were they true. Did they really exist.
7000 years ago?

LIGHT HOUSES In words and pictures

BOOK Architecture of the Lighthouse of Alexandria-

BOOK
Indo Swedish Author's Collective, 2020
286
The lighthouse was built on an island off the coast of Alexandria called Pharos. Its
name, legend

Cosmology of lotus
Indo Nordic Author's Collective, 2020

The Lotus is the king of the flower world but few know it as a part of creation.
Find out the Cosmology.

Celestial Mysteries of the Borobudur Temple

Borobudur remains a mystery even today. The largest Buddhist Stupa in the world
has many unanswered...

Win with this new DIET

287
Hindu tempel of India , Cambodia and Indonesia
Hindu Temples dot India, Cambodia and Indonesia

DISRUPTION-Book

Book Architecture Creativity

Creativity and Architecture are linked and go hand in hand. This Book is a
culmination of 16 publications that have been put together as a book

Project HR Management
Indo Swedish Author's Collective

288
PROJECT HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT/'Dr UDAY DOKRAS The
project sphere has not been valued appropriately

Human Resource Engineering in Theme Parks.

by Dr. Uday Dokras and Mansse Bhandari

As theme parks evolve into facilitating for greater thrill seeking audience,the role
of human res... more 

Health Human Resource Management

Management of Health care workers in hospitals and the human resource practices
to be followed in hospitals.

289
WIN DIET Lose fat-Diet and Exercise Book ONLY
BODY SHAPING GUIDE YOU NEED

The Act on Co-determination at Work – an Efficacy study

Thesis of the Author for the degree of Doctor of Law

Stockholm University, SWEDEN 1990

INTRODUCTION
The Integration of a symbolic form with the
natural landscape to create a physical
manifestation of a Hindu cosmological
template of a perfect universe

290
 Hindu cosmology in
ANGKOR
Dr Uday Dokras Ph.D Stockholm,SWEDEN

291