Harihara

Harihara is a Hindu god who unites Vishnu and Shiva in one figure, whose cult was popular in Cambodia in the pre-Angkorian period.

A sandstone Harihara from southern Cambodia, late 7th to early 8th century, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Deity details
Also known as	Sankaranarayana
Religion	Hinduism
Figure type	God
Sites	Phnom Da, Prasat Andet, Sambor Prei Kuk
Subjects	Religion & Spiritual Life; Visual Arts & Design

Harihara is a Hindu god who unites Vishnu and Shiva in one figure. In Cambodia his cult was popular in the pre-Angkorian period and became less revered in the Angkorian period. In Khmer culture he came to prominence during the seventh century. Statues of him from the sixth to the eighth century have been found at temples in Cambodia, and the royal city of Hariharalaya (ហរិហរាល័យ) carried his name.

Name and iconography

The name joins Hari, a name of Vishnu, with Hara, a name of Shiva. The same figure is also known as Sankaranarayana. In Khmer art the god is shown divided into two sides: the proper right side, the figure's own right, carries the attributes of Shiva, and the proper left side those of Vishnu. Piphal Heng and Paul Lavy described the Shiva side as hierarchically superior.

The god generally has one head and four arms. On the Shiva half, the face has a moustache and half of a third eye on the forehead, and the hair rises in a crown of matted locks (jatamakuta) with a crescent moon. The Vishnu half has no decoration and wears a cylindrical miter (kiritamakuta). In the usual arrangement, Shiva's two hands hold a trident and a drum, and Vishnu's hold a disc and a mace. The Angkor National Museum bulletin likens Harihara to the goddess Durga, formed by a combination of energies to protect the world and destroy evil.

History

In Indian art, Harihara was sculpted on the walls of some temples from the sixth century. In Khmer art the god appeared in the middle of the sixth century, in the Phnom Da style. A statue at the temple of Asram Moharishi is one example, and one found at Ba The is probably older. A head of the god, probably also in the Phnom Da style, was found at Prei Krabas.

Harihara came to prominence in Khmer culture during the seventh century, as part of the rising popularity of Shaivism. Two inscriptions at Sambor Prei Kuk, K. 440 and K. 442, praise King Ishanavarman and say that he installed a number of images, among them several forms of Shiva, perhaps including Harihara. An image of Harihara found near temple N10 there had broken into some 60 fragments and has been restored. It stands 166 centimeters high and is held at the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh. Heng and Lavy dated it to about the first half of the seventh century, probably to the reign of Ishanavarman I or Bhavavarman II.

Heng and Lavy also pointed to evidence that Shaiva elites dedicated images of Harihara both as acts of devotion and as a visual sign of their effort to control the coastal south. This included the Angkor Borei area, whose elite religious orientation had been predominantly Vaishnava for perhaps two centuries. In their view, the northern kings at Sambor Prei Kuk may have used an icon of the union of both gods to help achieve and legitimize their territorial and political aims.

Sok Keosovannara, writing for the Angkor National Museum, found that from the end of the seventh to the early eighth century Harihara seems to have gained more popularity and been broadly worshipped. The bulletin judges this by the number of his statues found at temples. They include figures from Prasat Andet temple and Trapeang Phong temple, and another from Kampong Cham province. One sandstone Harihara in the Angkor National Museum came from Kampong Cham province, from a temple that is not known. It has features of the Prei Khmeng style of the seventh to eighth century. Large parts of its legs below the knees are broken off, its two right arms are broken from the elbow to the fingers, and its two left arms are broken off completely. Statues of Harihara in the Kampong Preah style, dated 706 to 800, include those of Trapeang Phong and Phoum Prasat and another found in Kampong Cham province.

In the Angkorian period there were fewer statues of Harihara. Two heads from that time are known: one, thought to be in the Bakheng style of 893 to 925, on display at the Guimet Museum, and one in the Pre Rup style. From these two heads, Sok Keosovannara concluded that Harihara became less worshipped in the middle of the 10th century. Maurice Glaize wrote that Vishnu and Shiva had been joined in one image in the pre-Angkorian period, split in half vertically in the form of Harihara, and that Shiva initially clearly prevailed. In his view, Shiva would seem to have been ousted by Vishnu from toward the close of the 11th century to the time of Angkor Wat.

Hariharalaya (ហរិហរាល័យ)

Hariharalaya means "abode of Harihara." It was a capital of Jayavarman II, in the area of Roluos (រលួស) in Siem Reap province, where the royal temples of Preah Ko, Bakong and Lolei stand. The Angkor Database gives it as founded by Jayavarman II at the end of the eighth century. The Angkor National Museum bulletin says it is thought to have been built in his reign, which it dates 802 to 850. The name of Lolei temple itself comes from the Sanskrit hariharalaya. Jayavarman II occupied Hariharalaya before his stay at Mahendraparvata on Phnom Kulen, and toward the end of his life he moved the capital back to it. It remained the capital until Yashovarman I established Yashodharapura (Angkor). Inscriptions of the early 10th and 11th centuries name Hariharalaya at least four times.

The Phnom Da statue

A Harihara from the hilltop temple of Phnom Da, in Takeo province, is carved in sandstone, stands 190 centimeters (nearly six feet) tall and dates to the sixth to seventh century. Its upper arms are broken off, and its lower hands hold a rosary and a mace. In 1882 Etienne Aymonier, a French scholar and colonial administrator, collected the head from the temple and, with the permission of King Norodom, sent it to France with other objects. It was shown at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889 and then deposited with the collection of the Guimet Museum in Paris.

The body stayed at the ruined temple until it was moved in 1944 to the National Museum of Cambodia for safekeeping. A decade later, Pierre Dupont, a former curator of the museum, suggested that the body in Phnom Penh might match the head in the Guimet; more than 50 years passed before the idea was tested and proved correct. After ten years of talks between the two museums, the head arrived at the National Museum at the start of 2016 and was joined again to its body. Technically, the head is on a five-year loan to Cambodia, and a pedestal and the feet of a dancing goddess Uma from Koh Ker were sent to France in the opposite direction. As of 2021 the reunited statue was on display at the National Museum of Cambodia, cataloged as Ka.1614.

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