The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

CEYLON
392
•
AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA
warfare during the seventh and eighth centuries.
It split into two principalities designated now
as Chen-la of the Land and Chen-la of the Sea. 9
There are mentions for the first time now of the
Khmers, who presumably were the Cambodian
people from northern Indo-China who asserted
their autonomy during this period of upheaval.
Hereafter it is proper to speak of Khmer art as
something replacing the earlier styles with their
heavy dependence on Indian models.
The Khmer building tradition is composed of
elements derived from an earlier indigenous
wooden architecture and forms and techniques
imported from India. According to the French
scholar, Parmentier, the original timber buildings
consisted of halls or galleries surmounted
by angular tiled roofs, often multiplied or piled
up in pyramidal fashion, as may be seen in the
modern architecture of Cambodia, Siam, and
Burma. 10 A distinction is also to be made
between northern and southern elements. In
the earlier southern style of architecture based
ultimately on wooden prototypes in ancient
Funan, the tower, either singly or in groups, is
the most important feature of temple-building.
Northern architecture, derived from indigenous
timber construction of Cambodian or Khmer
origin in Chen-la, contributed the concept of
towers joined by walled galleries. All these
elements, native and Indian, northern and
southern, merge in the last phase of architectural
development at Angkor.
There are many monuments that could be
chosen to illustrate the successive steps towards
this solution. But within the limitations of this
book we can mention only the dedications by
Yasovarman at Lolei (Roluos) near Angkor,
remarkable for the concept of grouping a
number of individual cellas on a single terrace
and for the new cruciform plan of the individual
towers [322]. This arrangement of many
separate towers containing statues of divinities
322. Lolei (Roluos), towers