THE FUNCTION OF THE RELIEFS - RELIEFS AND ARCHITECTURE

RELIEFS AND ARCHITECTURE

2.1. THE FUNCTION OF THE RELIEFS

The stories narrated in the reliefs may have been addressed only to members of the royalty and of the religious establishment, rather than aiming to educate and illuminate the pilgrims or the visitors to the temple. It may be, however, that people were allowed to see reliefs in some parts of the temples only during celebrations of special importance, but even then, accompanied by religious instructors. Many reliefs, particularly the ones from Angkor Wat and Bayon, must have been difficult to ‘read’ by the uninitiated.

The functions, the reasons for the creation and execution of the reliefs, has been a topic debated at length by a series of western scholars, which merits to be discussed in the following pages. What was the scope for their existence? Is their meaning related to their function? This analysis is important because the function of the reliefs may determine their meaning. Were the stories narrated in the reliefs addressed only to royalty and the brahmins? Were they part of the mechanism of merit gaining? Were they instead meant to educate and illuminate the pilgrims or visitors to the temple, ordinary people, or were they purely meant to be part of the sculptural decoration of the temple, having an aesthetic appeal? Were the reliefs subjected to norms governed by the structure and function of the monument?

I hope to address these questions at greater depth in my conclusions. It is important, however, that we assess the opinions and interpretations so far expressed in the available literature, as they should lay the ground for our understanding of the function of the reliefs. Previous authors have distinguished a few theories and function’s categories that I discuss below at some length. This because they provide the scholar with a greater understanding of Khmer idealism and religious symbolism involving the “magic” transformation of an earthly site

into a celestial palace, and introduce the possibility of a metaphysical vision of Angkor Wat.

Magic function - In his lecture on the Indian legends illustrated in Khmer reliefs, George Coedes1 was of the opinion that in Khmer monuments the role of the decorations (statues and reliefs with scenes and personages) was not aesthetic (the Khmer not having the concept of ‘art for art’s sake’), but had an ‘evocative’

function, that of bring about life into the temple. Coedes believed that the images of the gods had a ’magic’ power that would transform the temple into a real divine world. In my opinion, Coedes explicitly uses the word “magic” perhaps in the sense of the bringing into operation of some occult controlling principle of nature that would influence the course of events, or a rite producing unnatural, surprising phenomena. Similarly, this was excepted from the magic circles of mandalas. It is probable that “magic” was of fundamental importance and at the basis of Khmer motivation for the production and reception of the reliefs. Furthermore, the representation of apsaras and tevodas, celestial dancers and courtieresses, all over the walls of the temples reinforced the concept of the transformation of terrestrial stony residence into a heavenly palace. At Angkor Vat, the celestial palaces as seen in the reliefs of Heavens and Hells, are in the shape of pavilions flying in the sky supported by garudas and lions, while at the Royal Palace, robust caryatids/atlases have the task of transforming symbolically the monument into a flying palace.

It follows that this celestial transformation is enacted also by reliefs representing legendary events of gods and mythological heroes, which would give life to the temple with their real presence. Reliefs were not made to edify visitors, but to contribute to the realisation and materialisation on earth of the divine world.

The reliefs of Angkor Wat narrating the stories of Suryavarman II, and the ones of Bayon dealing with Jayavarman VII, had the objective of animating the temples with the actual presence of these kings. This is why - Coedes believed - it is essential for the images to be exact, correct in every detail, otherwise they would fail the objective, like a magic ceremony in which the essential rite was omitted or

1 CEFEO (Cahiers de l’EFEO), 6, 1936, p.24-29

wrongly performed. This resulted in the simplification and, at the same time, complication of the iconography’s task. If the sculptors knew the specific texts or were following a particular tradition they could control all the details of the image and the iconographic interpretation would be simple. If not, the identification of the scenes would be doubtful or incomplete, if not impossible. It was essential to make clear which text the reliefs referred to, or by which version the sculptor was inspired, otherwise the scenes could not be totally explained.

The importance of the flying palaces in Khmer mythology may be explained from an old local legend, probably based on an Indian tale, reported by Henry Marchal2. There was a young prince by the name of Preaj,Ket Mealea, most beautiful and perfect, son of the king of Indraprastha (old name of Cambodia). His qualities were so outstanding that the god Indra living on Mount Meru in the sky, came to earth to abduct him. After a while, the tevodas (celestial beings like the apsaras but living on M. Meru), complained about his human smell and expressed their dissatisfaction with Indra. The latter had to please the tevodas and had the prince sent back to earth. To comfort him, Indra had a palace exactly like the one in the sky that the prince appreciated so much, built by all the celestial people, including the architect of the gods, Pre^Pusnuka. The location was decided by the

bull Nacjjn to the East-South-East of the hill of Phnom Bakeng. On this story was based, according to H.Marchal, the legendary origin of Angkor Wat.

In 1943, Coedes suggested that there were reliefs meant not to be visible under normal circumstances; they would have been sculpted above the ground and subsequently covered by a layer of earth and rubble. Since the temple was equated to Mt. Meru which extended under the earth and even under the sea, some reliefs had to be under the ground to reinforce the analogy, as he believed had been done also at Borobudur (Indonesia). As a further proof, there is the example of the Bapuon temple, where reliefs were carved at the base of the central tower and subsequently covered over by a layer of building material. Another example would be the Leper King Terrace depicting mythological animals sustaining

2 Marchal H., Les temples d ’Angkor, 1955, p.9 3 see revised edition of ‘Angkor’ of 1961, p.44

celestial palaces in the sky: the same (or very similar) scene was sculpted on the other side of the wall, but hidden under the earth.

In his classic work on Bayon, Stern4 disagreed with Coedes’s theory, on the grounds that, in the case of the “Leper King Terrace”, it was improbable that the Khmers wanted to symbolically hide the reliefs underground. Rather, this would have been due to a change of plans during the building of the temple, which would have involved the creation of additions and extensions. This would have given rise to situations in which previous reliefs had to be hidden or practically masked by the new ones, as it can be clearly seen in the temples of Preah Khan and Banteay Kdei. In this event, the hiding of reliefs would have been for practical, technical reasons, and not due to religious symbolism.

Funerary function. On the basis of the epigraphic discoveries of his time, G.

Coedes5 thought that the main royal temples were funerary buildings, not public temples or places of pilgrimage. Palace-like, they were the last dwellings of the Khmer kings, where they returned to their divine aspect. The discovery of stone containers similar to sarcophagi brought Coedes to the conclusion that Angkorean monuments were both temples and mausoleums, funerary palaces where the mortal remains of the king would rest, and where a statue representing the monarch under the traits of a god was erected.

The funerary function of the temple can be related to the cult of ancestors, a common Asian cult which it is inferred to have been consolidated in Cambodia by the brahmins and Khmer royalty probably from around the 7th century. The basic concept is that the ancestors are intercessors between the supernatural and the people; they are not themselves the object of worship. A king who would build a temple to honour ancestors, and have the main statue of that deceased monarch carved to resemble the divinity he had venerated. For example, in each of the 3 towers of the temple of Preah Ko (879 AD.), built by Indravarman I, there was a statue of Shiva, flanked by his spouse, and an inscription mentioning all ancestral royal couples who preceded Indravarman. The king was thus elevated to

4StemP., LesMonumentsKhmeres du Style de Bayon, 1965 , f 5 G. Coedes, 1943 edit 1961, p.34

the rank of ancestral protector of the kingdom. Another example is the Ta' Prohm temple (mid.n^-early 13th centuries) in which king Jayavarman VII had a statue of his deceased mother sculpted in the form of Praj/naparamita, the Goddess of Perfect Wisdom; the temple’s inscription also carries a lengthy list of ancestors.

The possibility that Angkor Wat was a funerary temple raises the question of how the Khmer people and the royalty perceived death. At the time of Suryavarman II’s rule, Hinduism accepted the concept of the transmigration of the soul and the idea of karma, assuming that all beings are subject to a continuous round of endless existences, one after the other, the quality of which is determined both by the deeds of the previous lives and of the current life. Perhaps, for the royalty, transmigration could end into the essence of the god mostly venerated by the king, who would assume a divine or quasi-divine aspect after death. I believe that the Khmer rulers surrounded themselves with impressive rituals that assimilated them to gods, presenting themselves as more than human. The Suryavarman II was regarded as an avatar of Vishnu (his manifestation on earth), who returned to heaven at his death.

Glorification of the king’s function. In 1933 Bosch9 proposed a theory on the sequence and meaning of the large reliefs of Angkor Wat’s gallery of the 3rd enclosure based on an analogy between the cycle of the sun and the life of the

6 Modem scholars (C.Jacques, 1990), however, believe that the ‘god’ of this cult is unlikely to be the ruler but rather an indigenous divinity elevated to a similar rank as king (‘the god who is king’) and supreme protector of Khmer land.

7 G.Coedes, 1961, p.31

8 Le Bonheur A , O f Gods, Kings and Men, Serindia Publications, 1995, p. 18 9 BEFEO, 32, 1933, p.7-21

Vishnu10. All the relief panels followed a ‘gradation’ sequence in which the sun moving in the sky is equated to events in the life of Vishnu, the sun-king, the king who is a solar god. Since Angkor Wat was dedicated to Vishnu, the creators of the reliefs glorified the Khmer king by identifying him with the Vishnu, and at the same time attempted to make eternal his terrestrial events through Vishnu’s own legends.

This cycle would start with the ‘Churning of the Ocean of Milk’, when Vishnu entered in possession of the of the jewel Kaustubha which would allow him to govern on earth as a chakravartin. This event would be symbolic of the beginning of the rule of the Khmer king as a chakravartin. Then followed the victorious battles of the sun-god, alone or with the gods, against the forces of darkness and the dispersion of the devilish asura (panels of the ‘Victory of Vishnu over the asuras’, ‘Victory of Krishna over the asura Bana’, ‘Battle between the devas and asuras’). These great battles are comparable to the one the Khmer kings had to sustain against hostile kingdoms or princedoms, and against the fierce Chams. The climax of the cycle would be the Battle of Lanka, reflecting the military prowess of the King, while the decline has to be seen in the sinister and fratricide battle of Kurukshetra. The natural end of the cycle will have to be found in the ‘Historic procession’ which is the march towards the kingdom of the dead. From here the King will re-emerge deified as Vishnu and adored at the Vishnuloka (main Vishnu’s shrine) in the central tower of Angkor Wat.

I find this theory interesting because it is the first effort to construct a narrative cycle for the 8 large panels of the 3rd enclosure. However, Bosch himself was aware it has two weak points. Firstly, that it is difficult not to consider secular the content of the relief of the ‘Historic procession’, unless it is seen as an idealised procession ordered by the deceased king (hence the inscription of his posthumous name Paramavishnuloka under his image) going towards the last judgement represented in the next panel, that of the ‘Heavens and Hells’, which ends the cycle. The other problem was the contemporaneity of execution of the 8

10Vishnu is the Vedic god of solar light, energy and expansion, whose quality the king was regarded as embodying in his person and activities.

reliefs. Bosch admitted that if 2 of these reliefs were not contemporaneous to the rest, having been completed in the 16th century by Chinese artisans as Goloubew had hypothesised11, then his interpretation would collapse. However - he argued - it was possible that the original drawings had been done at the time of the building of the temple. It is well known that Goloubew’s intuition proved correct by the epigraphic study of Coedes, who was able to date accurately the completion of the 2 reliefs of the NE quadrant to the year 1563/64 of our era12.

Decorative function. Gilberte Coral de Remusat13 had a much simpler conception: she believed that the ‘low-reliefs with scenes’, equivalent to what I call narrative reliefs, had a purely decorative function, like the reliefs with ornamental motifs taken from animal and vegetal kingdoms, and from jewellery.

Furthermore, in the author’s opinion, they were conceived by themselves, without taking into account the architectural elements to which they belong.

Religious function. Maurice Glaize14 was of the opinion that Khmer temples were not places of public cult (like in the West), but personal monuments of kings or aristocrats, pious foundations aiming at obtaining ‘merits’ for those who contributed to its building. In Glaize’s quite fantastic vision, the Khmer faithful, assembled in the exterior enclosures, would bow down at the passing idols and the relics shown by the priests. They could then walk in procession around the sanctuary in the ritual direction of the ‘pradakshina’, by keeping to the right, or in the opposite ‘prasavya’ direction, reserved for funerary processions.

From Glaize’s opinion one could assume that the famous reliefs of the galleries of the 3rd enclosure may have had a religious function - being visible to the pilgrims - a fact not mentioned in any Khmer inscriptions and of which we do not have proofs. However, considering that they were sculpted on the exterior walls of the gallery, facing the outside of the temple and the large surrounding

11 Goloubew V., Artisans chinois a Angkor Vat, BEFEO, 14,1914, p- ™

12 G.Coedes, La date d ’execution de deux bas-reliefs tardifs d'Angkor Vat, J.A., 1962, fasc.2, p.235

13 Coral de Remusat G., L ’art khmer, les grandes etapes de son evolution, Vanoest, Paris, 1951, p.75

14 Les Monuments du groupe d Angkor, 1944,1993 edition, p. 33

courtyard, it is possible that they were meant to be seen and studied by the faithful. Perhaps the access may have been possible only during festivities or special occasions, and under the guidance of brahmins, as in modern practice. It is more likely, however, that the pilgrims were not allowed to go beyond the 3rd enclosure, inside the temple, and get closer to the main sanctuary. In the past, in India the devotee was not permitted to enter the shrine, nor did he need to do so do: when the priest invoked a deity in the image that stood inside the garbhagrha (‘sanctum sanctorum’), the layman stood at the threshold to witness the god’s presence. This experience of the divine was called darshana = seeing15.

Astrological/numerological function. The first author to perceive the significant numerological meaning and possibly astronomical function of Khmer temples has been Filliozat16 in his study on the Baling, the central monument of the first town of Angkor founded by Yashavarman at the end of the 9th century.

The architecture of this temple followed a numeric plan with the result that there are 33 towers at each cardinal point, recalling the 33 gods (Trayastrimsha) which inhabit M. Meru. Furthermore, seen from any side, the monument presents 33 divine residences like M. Meru. The total of all the temple’s towers is 109 and refers to the central tower in the axial pole and 108 surrounding towers representing the cosmic revolutions around this axle, resulting from the product of 27 lunar houses multiplied by 4 lunar phases. Moreover, 108 is the basic number of the Great Year, and the sacred number of Indian tradition. In general, the function of the monument conforms to the Indian ideal of royalty and the exaltation of the merits (panegyric) of Yashovarman (see the inscription from Sdok Kak Thom, for example).

In 1976, a group of American scholars, Stencel, Gifford and Moron17, published a paper revealing a cosmic symbolism between structures and meaning in the design of Angkor Vat. The theme was considerably expanded by

15 T.S. Maxwell, 1997, p.15

16 Le symbolism du monument de P.Bakeng, BEFEO, 44,1947-50, p.527

17 Stencel R., Gifford F., and Moron E., Astronomy and Cosmology at Angkor Wat, Science, 1976, p.281.

• 18

Mannikka (married name of Moron) in her already mentioned work of 1996 . There, on the basis of the study of a very large number of measurements of architectural elements of Angkor Wat, Mannikka reached the conclusion that numbers have been encoded with several meanings of Indian cosmology and numerology. She also noticed that some alignments of the monument’s structures are related to astronomical events. On this basis, she assumed that the temple is a sort of religious and astronomical text represented in its architecture, a text that could be read by learned people who walk along its main paths.

Following an extensive analysis of the measurements of the Khmer temple, and its relationship with Indian sacred numerology, Eleanor Mannikka put forward theories to explain their astronomical, cosmological and symbolic significance. Although it seems to me that some of her conclusions are unsubstantiated or pushed to the limit, most of her basic assumptions are a positive contribution to the study of Angkor Wat. In particular, her treatment of the stellar origin of Vishnu19, in which, at an unspecified point in Indian history, Vishnu became associated with the star Altair in the constellation of the Eagle (Aquila). From these, it follows that Garuda, who looks like an eagle, had to become his mount. The history of the Eagle constellation, which goes back to ancient Mesopotamia, explains why Vishnu and the eagle are joined together.

In document Narrative Reliefs From the SW and NW Corner Pavilions of Angkor Wat. (Page 26-35)