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

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CEYLON
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AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA
the military defeat by the Siamese in the
fifteenth century, the culture it supported
vanished forever.
eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries that types of
Buddhist and Hindu images completely Khmer
in character are gradually evolved.
Although the history of relief sculpture in
During this
Cambodia must properly form a part of the
discussion of the architecture it decorates, the
development of the cult image, generally freestanding,
can be taken up as a separate topic.
We have already examined the types of sculpture
that flourished in the so-called Pre-Khmer
Period, works under the strongest possible
Indian influence, and a group of statues typified
by the Harihara of Phnom Penh [320], in which
signs of a completely native originality are
apparent. It is in the period following the
establishment of Khmer supremacy in the
period Brahmanic figures prolonging
the style of the pre-Khmer Period
continued to be carved, but, as early as the tenth
century, in the sculpture found at the sites of
Phnom Bakheng and Koh Ker there are signs
of the evolution of definite Khmer traits that
remain more or less fixed for the entire later
development. Taking as an example a fourarmed
statue from Phnom Bakheng [348]
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probably the royal donor Yasovarman in Saivite
apotheosis - we notice first of all a tendency
towards generalization. There is a certain
rigidity and heaviness about the plastic conception.
The modelling of the body is now little
more than a definition of the main architectural
348. Angkor, Phnom Bakheng, Siva (?)
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mass of the strictly columnar form with a
disappearance of the extraordinary sensivity
and vital surface quality that distinguished the
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pre-Khmer statues.
The costume has undergone certain modifications,
too; instead of the dhoti of the seventhcentury
images we have a pleated skirt supported
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by a belt and characterized by an anchorshaped
fold hanging down in front like a
sporran. The figured design of the cloth is still
indicated by incision, but has become rather
obtrusive and lacking the delicacy of the carving
of such details in the earlier statues.
In the Early Classic Period the heads of
images retain the essentially block-like - one is
tempted to say 'Polyclitan' - form typical of the
very earliest works [349]. The sculpture, however,
begins to assume a more hard, linear
character in the incised definition ofthe features,
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as, for example, in the double contour lines of
the eyes and lips. The brows now form an
almost straight horizontal line across the face.
The features also take on a definite Cambodian
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racial character, a degree of realism probably to
be explained in part, at least, by the fact that
many of them, although ostensibly representa-