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

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484 NOTES
learned in magic lore, came from Janapada because
H. M. Paramesvara invited him to perform a ritual to
insure Cambodia's independence from Java and to the
end that there might be in this land a Cakravartin.'
13. See the excellent summary of this problem by
Gilberte de Coral Remusat in her splendid book,
LArt Khmer, Les Grandes Etapes de son Evolution
(Paris, 1940), 27-33.
14. It is sometimes suggested that the building
known as the Baphuon within the present walls of
Angkor was the centre of a capital in the tenth and
eleventh centuries.
395. 15. Chou Ta-kuan, describing this structure,
writes, 'In the palace there is a golden tower, on the
top of which the king sleeps. In the tower there is the
spirit of a nine-headed serpent, master of the earth and
of the whole kingdom. It appears every night in the
form of a woman with whom the king must sleep. If
the king fails to be there on a single night some misfortune
takes place.'
399. 16. Angkor is a corruption of the Sanskrit nagara,
'city' ; Wat is Siamese for any Buddhist building. The
name may be translated, then, as 'city temple', or -
better - 'Temple of the Capital'.
402. 17. Percy Brown, 220.
18. For an admirably detailed treatment of all the
architectural features of the Khmer style, see H.
Marchal, L' Architecture Comparee dans FInde et
r Extreme-Orient (Paris, 1944).
403. 19. There is evidence at Angkor Wat and in many
other Khmer buildings of a practice of introducing
wooden beams into the masonry for purposes of
further reinforcement. Obviously the disintegration
of these has wrought havoc on the stability of the
structures. Occasionally one finds attempts to 'dovetail'
adjacent blocks of stone in imitation of a method
suitable only for building in wood.
20. Gilberte de Coral Remusat, plate xxiv, 87-8.
406. 21. The temple is built on an earlier foundation of
a.d. 969, which used to be accepted as the date of the
complex as it now stands. The site of Banteai Srei is
about twenty-five kilometres north-east of Angkor
Thorn.
22. It is interesting to note in relation to the concept
of the temple-mountain that the Kailasa in this relief
is in the shape of a stepped pyramid.
411. 23. P. Pelliot, 'Memoires sur les Coutumes du
Cambodge', Bulletin de I'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-
Orient, 11 (1902), 141 ff. Pierre Loti has left us an
account of his visit (190 1) to Angkor Thorn : 'To reach
the Bayon, you have to cut your way with a stick
through a jumble of brambles and trailing creepers.
On all sides, the forest hems it in narrowly, smothers
and crushes it; huge fig-trees, completing the destruction,
have gained a foothold everywhere, right up to
the top of the towers that serve as its
come to the gates :
pedestal. You
like so many ancient locks of hair,
countless roots drape them with a thousand fringes.
At this rather late hour, in the darkness shed by the
trees and the cloudy sky, they are like big shadowy
holes that give you pause. By the nearest entrance, a
troop of monkeys gathered there for shelter and who
had been squatting in a circle, as though holding a
council, scamper off in a leisurely fashion and without
their usual chattering: it is as though, in a place like
this, the silence must not be broken.'
24. Before the discovery of the central Buddha
image in a well under the main tower, it used to be
thought that these faces were representations of Siva.
Lokesvara is an esoteric form of Avalokitesvara, who
himself creates or radiates the five Dhyani Buddhas
from his person.
415. 25. With the exception of the human or Buddha
head, these are the same creatures found on the
Sarnath column and on the moon stones of Ceylon.
418. 26. See G. Groslier, 'Les Collections Khmeres du
Musee Albert Sarraut', Ars Asiatica, xvi (Paris, 193 1).
420. 27. The present work omits any consideration of
Cham art. This culture, located in the region of
modern Annam, flourished for nearly 1000 years until
the ninth century a.d. The architecture and sculpture
are a provincial reflection of Cambodian forms with
some borrowings from Chinese sources. The brick
tower sanctuaries of Mi-son are a prolongation of the
isolated sikharas of pre-Khmer times. The sculpture,
although cast in Indian and Cambodian mould, is
characterized by a floridity and barbaric vigour of
decoration, such as often distinguishes the best in folk
art. Readers especially interested in this subject
should turn to Philippe Stern, L'Art du Champa,
Toulouse, 1942; Henri Parmentier, Les Monuments
Cams de /' Annam, Paris, 1909; Parmentier, 'Les
Sculptures Chames au Musee de Tourane', Ars
Asiatica, iv, Paris, 1922.
28. H. Th. Bossert, ed., Geschichte des Kunstgewerbes
(Berlin, 1930), 309-10.
29. S. E. Thiounn, 'L'epee sacree du Cambodge',
Arts et Archeologie Khmers, 192 1-3, 59 ff.
30. T. Bowie, ed., The Arts of Thailand (Bloomington,
Indiana, i960), figures 133-6.
CHAPTER 22
423. i . Possibly the statue in the Seattle Art Museum,
discussed under pre-Khmer sculpture, is a Dvaravati
image (illustration 319).
427. 2. The conical ushnisha is by no means an
infallible means of identification, since in Cambodia,
as well as Siam, such terraced top-knots were special
emblems of Lokesvara.