Reconstructing God: Proposing a New Date for the West Mebon Visnu, Using Digital Reconstruction and Artefactual Analysis

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Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Prof. Roland Fletcher at the University of Sydney. This project was conducted with the permission of the Cambodian Ministry for the Arts. Many thanks to Director of the National Museum of Cambodia Kong Vireak, and Minister for Culture and Fine Arts Hab Touch. The author would like to acknowledge the excellent work of Dr Thomas Chandler, Nils Gleissenberger and Ben Alexander (all of Monash University), who, in 2007, executed the original 3D animation and images based on the primary research presented in part in this paper. As research progressed, 3D images were made by Nils Glissenberger and Greg Petchkovsky, and photogrammetric models produced by Paul Bourke. Special thanks to Sarah Kenderdine.

Notes

1. To view Animations and supplemental Figures [s], go to URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/14434318.2017.1451197

2. Maurice Glaize, ‘Rapport sur les travaux exécutés dans le groupe d'Angkor’ (unpublished material, École Française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO), Paris, 1936), 156–57.

3. Roland Fletcher et al., Greater Angkor Project 2002–2005 (GAP), Report West Mebon, University of Sydney, 2005.

4. Dr Thomas Chandler, Nils Glissenberger and Ben Alexander.

5. Glaize, ‘Rapport’; see also Marnie Feneley, Dan Penny and Roland Fletcher, ‘Claiming the Hydraulic Network of Angkor with Viṣṇu: A Multidisciplinary Approach Including the Analysis of Archaeological Remains, Digital Modelling and Radiocarbon Dating: With Evidence for a 12th Century Renovation of The West Mebon’, Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 9 (2016): 275–92.

6. Glaize, ‘Rapport’, 156–57.

7. Maurice Glaize, ‘Journal de Fouilles’ (unpublished material, EFEO, Paris, 1936), 161–62.

8. K.V. Soundara Rajan, ‘The Typology of the Anantaśayī Icon’, Artibus Asiae 29, no. 1 (1967): 67–84; T.S. Maxwell, The Gods of Asia Image, Text and Meaning (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 77.

9. The lower arms are stretched along the thighs, the right upper arm is stretched backwards and the left raised in Kaṭaka pose. Śri Devi is near the head or shoulders and Bhū Devi massages the feet of Viṣṇu. See K.V. Soundara Rajan, ‘The Typology of the Anantaśayī Icon’ (1967), 75; see also T.A. Gopinatha Rao, Elements of Hindu Iconography (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997), 92, who states that the body is slightly raised.

10. Kamaleswar Bhattacharya, Les religions brahmaniques dans l'ancien Cambodge, d'après l'epigraphie et l'iconographie (EFEO, Paris, 1961), 97.

11. George Cœdès, ‘A New Inscription from Fu-Nan’, Journal of the Greater India Society IV–VI (1937): 121.

12. This inscription also displays an early invocation of Viṣṇu through a Viṣṇupada. Written in the Tamil Grantha script, the ruler of the Tarumanagara Kingdom uses the suffix ‘varaman’, which has connections with the Pallava-Clan of Tamil Nadu. See John Guy, ‘Tamil Merchants and the Hindu-Buddhist Diaspora,’ in Early Interactions between South and Southeast Asia: Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange, eds. Pierre-Yves Manguin, A. Mani and Geoff Wade (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers, 2011), 245.

13. Jean Boisselier, ‘Notes sur l'art du bronze dans l'ancien Cambodge’, Artibus Asiae 29 (1967): 276.

14. Fletcher et al., GAP; Feneley et al., ‘Claiming the Hydraulic Network of Angkor with Viṣṇu’, 275–292.

15. Dan Penny et al., ‘Hydrological History of the West Baray, Angkor, Revealed Through Palynological Analysis of Sediments from the West Mebon’, Bulletin de l’École Française d'Extrême-Orient 92, no. 1 (2005): 497–521; Feneley et al., ‘Claiming the Hydraulic Network of Angkor With Viṣṇu’: 275–92.

16. Marnie Feneley, ‘A Viṣṇu from the Rijks Museum’, The Journal of the Asian Arts Society of Australia (TASSA Review) 26, no. 4 (2017): 18–19.

17. Helen Ibbitson Jessup and Thierry Zéphir, Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia: Millennium of Glory (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1997), 258.

18. Boisselier, ‘Notes sur l'art du bronze dans l'ancien Cambodge’, 289.

19. Jean Boisselier, ‘A Definition of the Aṅgkor Wat Sculptural Style: Studies on the Art of Ancient Cambodia’, 2008, a translation of, ‘Précisions sur la statuaire du style d'Aṅkor Vẫt’, EFEO XL(VI), 1952, in Ten Articles by Jean Boisselier, eds. Natasha Eilenberg and Robert L. Brown (Phnoṃ Penh: Reyum, 2008), 180.

20. Philippe Stern, Le Bayon d'Angkor et l'évolution de l'art khmer: étude et discussion de la chronologie des monuments khmers (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1927); Gilberte de Coral Rémusat, L'Art khmer: les grandes étapes de son évolution (Paris: Van Oest, 1951).

21. Jean Boisselier, Manuel d'archéologie d'Extreme-Orient. Première partie: Asie du sud-Est. Tome 1: Le Cambodge (Paris: A. & J. Picard, 1966).

22. Boisselier, Ten Articles, 178.

23. Donna K. Strahan, in Hiram W. Woodward Jr., Chapter 2. Bronze Casting in Thailand, The Sacred Sculpture of Thailand (Bangkok: River Books, 1997), 38.

24. Glaize, ‘Rapport’.

25. T.A. Gopinartha Rao, Elements of Hindu Iconography (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1997) (VI), 14–5.

26. Vasudha Narayanan, Cpt 13. The Monument Visnuite at the Musée , in India and Southeast Asia: Cultural Discourses, eds Anna L. Dallapiccola and Anila Verghese (Mumbai: K. R. Cama Oriental Institute, 2017), 257.

27. Feneley et al., ‘Claiming the Hydraulic Network of Angkor with Viṣṇu’, 283, Figure 16, and 287–8.

28. Mireille Bénisti, ‘Représentations khmères de Viṣṇu couché’, Arts Asiatiques 11, no. 1 (1965): 98–107; Kamaleswar Bhattacharya, ‘Notes d'iconographie khmére’, Arts Asiatiques 13 (1966): 111–3.

29. Boisselier, Manuel d'archéologie d'Extreme-Orient, 320.

30. For further details on the archaeology and visualisation of West Mebon, see Feneley et al., ‘Claiming the Hydraulic Network of Angkor with Viṣṇu’.

31. Zhou Daguan, A Record of Cambodia: The Land and Its People (1297), trans. Peter Harris (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2007), 48.

32. Boisselier, Manuel d'archéologie d'Extreme-Orient, 295.

33. Feneley et al., ‘Claiming the Hydraulic Network of Angkor with Viṣṇu’, 284.

34. Boisselier, Manuel d'archéologie d'Extreme-Orient, 255.

35. Ibid., 253.

36. Ibid., 254–5.

37. Philippe Stern, Le Bayon d'Angkor et l'évolution de l'art khmer: étude et discussion de la chronologie des monuments khmer (Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1927); Madeline Giteau, The Civilization of Angkor (New York: Rizzoli, 1976); Boisselier, ‘Notes sur l'art du bronze dans l'ancient Cambodge’; Jessup and Zéphir, Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia; Hiram W. Woodward Jr., The Art and Architecture of Thailand (Boston: Brill, 2003); Claude Jacques and Philippe Lafond, The Khmer Empire: Cities and Sanctuaries, Fifth to Thirteenth Century (Bangkok: River Books, 2007).

38. George Cœdès, Angkor: An Introduction (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1967), 138.

39. Thierry Zéphir states that ‘The start of the Angkor Wat style (end of the eleventh century to the third quarter of the twelfth century) coincides with the accession of Jayavarman VI—Paramakaivalyapada (1080–1107)’, in Helen Ibbitson Jessup and Thierry Zéphir, Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia, 237.

40. Jessup and Zéphir, Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia (1997) 237.

41. Boisselier, Ten Articles, 117. One of the first scholars to look closely at the evolution of Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin from the early evidence of this iconography and religious symbolism in Cambodia was Boisselier, who published ‘Arts du Champa et du Cambodge préangkorien: la date de Mi-so'n E-I’, in Artibus Asiae in 1955. In this article, Boisselier discusses the difficulties found by Stern in dating the early sculpture of Cham and Khmer art; namely, that epigraphic data and stele have been removed or destroyed, and that many monuments display evidence of successive foundations. Stern's initial dating of these styles of the Mi-so'n E-1 and Prei Kmeng from the seventh century to the beginning of the ninth century was eventually modified by Dupont in his ‘Les Linteau Khmers du VIIe Siecle’ in 1952 to an earlier date (for the Prei Kmeng style) of 650 CE. Boisselier primarily used his 1955 paper to point out resemblances in lintels of Tȗol Baset, Tȗol Ang and Mi-so'n E-1 (which he dates to the seventh century), and to show or suggest how these connect with the anomalous ‘variant’ of Thala Borivat. The article highlighted the fluidity of the defined ‘styles’ as outlined by Stern, and the need, even then, for constant re-evaluation of the dating of Khmer art.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid., 124.

44. Martin Polkinghorne, ‘Makers and Models: Decorative Lintels of Khmer Temples, 7th to 11th centuries’ (PhD diss., University of Sydney, 2007), 56.

45. Jessup and Zéphir, Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia, 237.

46. Bhattacharya, ‘Hari Kambujendra’, Artibus Asiae 27, no. 1 (1964): 72–8.

47. Pierre Dupont, ‘La Statuaire préangkorienne’, Artibus Asaie 15 (1955): 31–83.

48. Cœdès, Angkor: An Introduction, 30.

49. Lawrence Palmer Briggs, The Ancient Khmer Empire (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1999), 194.