Deity

Indra

ព្រះឥន្ទ្រ

Indra is the Hindu king of the gods and lord of storms and rain, carved on many Khmer temples riding his three-headed elephant.

Indra (ព្រះឥន្ទ្រ)[1][2] is the Hindu king of the gods and lord of storms and rain, shown in Khmer temples riding a three-headed elephant.[3][4] Once a high god of the Vedic religion, he remained the first of the secondary gods of the Brahmanic pantheon.[4] His image appears on the lintels and pediments of temples such as Banteay Srei, the East Mebon and Beng Mealea.[4] In Khmer Buddhism he is also the Buddhist Indra, known by the Pali name Kosiy, and a Khmer legend makes him the founder of the city of Angkor.[5]

Iconography

Indra has his seat in paradise at the top of Mount Meru (ភ្នំព្រះសុមេរុ)[1], the cosmic mountain, where his royal palace stands.[4][6] He rules thunder and lightning.[4] Holding the thunderbolt, the vajra, he raises the storms that bring rain and, with it, life.[4] His mount is Airavana, a white elephant that rose from the Sea of Milk when it was churned, and that most often has three heads.[4] The elephant's name is also written Airavata.[3] The apsaras, flying nymphs of the sky born of the same churning, bring Indra's heaven to life with their dance.[4]

He is also called Shakra.[3] The Sanskrit word shakradhanu, Indra's bow, means both the god's weapon and the rainbow.[3] Indra is also one of nine gods who guard the directions, and his place is the east.[1] The Khmer Civilization site of Apsara Media Services suggests that the nine peaks of Angkor Wat (អង្គរវត្ត) may stand for these nine guardian gods.[1] Vamana is the fifth avatar of Vishnu (ព្រះវិស្ណុ)[1] in the form of a dwarf.[7] In his story, Vishnu asks the asura king Mahabali for three paces of land and so wins back for Indra the rule of heaven, which Mahabali had seized.[7]

In Khmer temples

Lintels and pediments

At Baksei Chamkrong, door-jamb inscriptions of the reign of Rajendravarman record that a gold statue of Shiva was set up in the temple in 947, which suggests the building dates from that time. There, Indra on his three-headed elephant marks the center of the east lintel, below a frieze of small figures.[4] At Prasat Bei, three brick towers of the 10th century, the lintel of the middle tower shows him on a three-headed elephant. The lintel of the south tower, which lies on the ground, shows him on an elephant with a single head.[4] The lintel of Prasat Leak Neang, a small brick tower whose door inscriptions give the date 960, shows the same image above a row of small praying figures.[4] On the central tower of the East Mebon, the god rides a three-headed elephant on the east lintel, with tiny riders on the branches of the carving.[4] On the north-east tower of Lolei, Indra rides an elephant above the doorway.[4]

At Banteay Srei, the pediment of the eastern entrance pavilion shows Indra on a three-headed elephant. The eastern pediment of the north library shows the Rain of Indra, the rain that does good, a scene from the Harivamsa. Parallel lines of rain fall on a stylized forest full of animals, through which the child Krishna and his brother Balarama pass. Above, the god on his three-headed elephant rules the clouds, which are carved as wavy lines.[4] Wat Preah Enkosei in Siem Reap takes its name from a carving of Indra on the temple at its eastern side, built in the second half of the 10th century.[8]

At Ek Phnom, built under Suryavarman I, who ruled early in the 11th century, the carvings include Indra seated on an elephant.[9] At Banteay Samre, from about the middle of the 12th century, the middle vestibule on the west side of the east entrance pavilion shows rakshasas, demons, attacking Indra from the air.[4] At Beng Mealea, Indra on a three-headed elephant is one of the gods usually found on the lintels.[4] Indra also appears at Buddhist temples. At Preah Palilay, two pediment pieces stand on either side of the entrance pavilion. One shows the assault of Mara and his demon army on the Buddha, whose figure is lost; the other shows Indra riding his three-headed elephant.[4]

Angkor Wat (អង្គរវត្ត)

The galleries of Angkor Wat show Indra in several scenes. On the north-west corner pavilion, he rides an elephant in a procession of nine gods who come to ask for an incarnation on earth, carved above the sleeping Vishnu.[4] On the western part of the north gallery, in a battle of the gods against the asuras, 21 gods each fight an asura, and Indra stands on Airavana, carved with four tusks.[4] In the south-west corner pavilion, Krishna lifts Mount Govardhana so that herders and their flocks are safe from the storms of Indra's anger. In the same pavilion, Ravana, in the form of a chameleon, slips into the women's rooms of Indra's palace.[4]

On the southern part of the east gallery, among the many beings that come out of the churning of the Sea of Milk is Airavana, Indra's mount.[4] The story ends when Indra is crowned king of the gods.[6] In the relief, a god flies down from above to steady the pivot, and the Digital South Asia Library essay holds that he most likely stands for Indra before his coronation. In Indian texts, Indra's coronation comes just before the rite for crowning an earthly king, at the spring equinox. The essay suggests that the relief stands for the coronation of Suryavarman II (សូរ្យវរ្ម័នទី២)[1] and the churning enacted at that time.[6]

Angkor Thom

At the gates of Angkor Thom, the inner corners at the base hold three-headed elephants whose trunks reach down to pull up lotuses and form pillars. They are Indra's mount. At the Victory gate the god himself sits between two apsaras, holding the vajra.[4] Glaize took the god's presence at the end of the causeway to confirm a suggestion by Georges Cœdès and Paul Mus. They had proposed that the naga railings were perhaps a way of showing a rainbow, and Glaize saw in them Indra's bow.[4]

At the Bayon (បាយ័ន)[2], an inscription on the northern part of the western gallery of the outer enclosure says that the king withdraws to the forest to celebrate the Indrabhisaka. Cœdès read the procession as the king's retreat before the Consecration of Indra, an old Vedic rite. He saw the games of athletes, jugglers and acrobats on the next panel, at the west end of the north gallery, as part of the festival.[4]

Preah Khan and Neak Poan

The foundation stele of Preah Khan compares Jayavarman VII to Indra twice. It likens his birth to that of Indra, born of the goddess Aditi, and shows the young prince in battle with the weapon of a hundred points, which Thomas S. Maxwell reads as Indra's thunderbolt. Later in the text, in Maxwell's reading, the king's sword flashing in battle looked like Indra's bow, the rainbow.[3] The same stele names a white sacred elephant, which in a Hindu setting stands for Indra's elephant Airavata.[3]

Neak Poan stands on an island at the center of the baray, or reservoir, of Preah Khan, aligned with the temple.[4] Three-headed elephants like those at Angkor Thom's gates fill the inner corners of its sanctuary, but a rearing lion takes the place of Indra above them.[4]

Legends of Angkor

Maurice Glaize wrote that later generations at Angkor, amazed by what their ancestors had built, held the monuments to be the work of the gods, made by Indra and his son, the heavenly architect Vishvakarman.[4] Most stone blocks of the temples carry small round holes, which probably held wooden pegs or metal lugs used to lift the stones. In legend, the holes are the marks of Indra's fingers.[4] In the legend of Prah Ket, Angkor Wat copies the palace of the heaven of the Thirty-Three. Vishvakarman built it at Indra's order for a prince whom Indra had summoned and then returned to earth for a second life.[4]

A fuller form of the legend belongs to the period after Angkor. In it, the Buddhist Indra, lord of the heaven of the Thirty-Three, adopts a human prince named Ketumala and takes him to live in his heaven. The other gods cannot bear the prince's human smell and ask that he leave. Indra, torn, sends him back to earth with the divine architect Bisnukar (Vishvakarman), who chooses the site of Angkor for the prince's city. There Bisnukar builds him a palace on the model of Indra's palace in heaven, Vaijayanta, the name from which Saveros Pou derives "Bayon".[5] Pou thought the legend the work of a poet-scholar of the early Middle Khmer period rather than of an ordinary Cambodian. She wrote in 1991 that it holds a central place in Khmer culture after Angkor and entered Khmer literature beside the Reamker (រាមកេរ្តិ៍)[2] as a minor epic. It is passed down orally in Cambodia and in Khmer communities in Thailand and southern Vietnam.[5]

Inscriptions carry the same idea. A 16th-century inscription calls Angkor Indraprastha, the city of Indra, and one of 1632 calls it Indapatth, the Pali form of the name.[5] An 11th-century Khmer village bore the name Indraparass, which Pou took as a sign that the name Indraprastha had spread under Angkor.[5] Pou also asked whether the name of Preah Enkosei echoes Kosiy, and Beng Mealea the prince Ketumala.[5] Ta Prohm Kel, a small tower near Angkor Wat, has its own legend, which Cœdès recorded. There the horse of Indra healed the stiff limbs of Pona Krek, a paralyzed beggar, and then carried him up to the sky.[4]

In Khmer life

A legend of the pinpeat (ពិណពាទ្យ) ensemble tells that Indra, bored one day, had his royal chariot made ready for a trip to the forest. On the way he heard the sounds that came from the chariot, and he had musical instruments made to copy the sounds of its parts, which became the five instruments of the ensemble.[2][10] Besides Wat Preah Enkosei, the nearby Preah Enkosa pagoda in Siem Reap, founded in 1503, also takes its name from Indra.[8]

In the Reamker, Ravana's son Enthachit, or Indrajit, fights Rama's army.[11] In the Ramayana, Indrajit, meaning conqueror of Indra, is a title of Ravana's son Meghanada.[3] As of 2012, the large shadow theater, sbaek thom, performed only episodes from the part of the Reamker called the Battle of Enthachit.[11]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 AMS Khmer Civilization, The mystery of the towers of Angkor Wat (updated July 10, 2021; in Khmer)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 AMS Khmer Civilization, The pinpeat ensemble (updated August 20, 2021; in Khmer)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 Udaya 8, Thomas S. Maxwell, The Stele Inscription of Preah Khan, Angkor: Text with Translation and Commentary (undated)
  4. ↑ 4.00 4.01 4.02 4.03 4.04 4.05 4.06 4.07 4.08 4.09 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.16 4.17 4.18 4.19 4.20 4.21 4.22 4.23 4.24 4.25 4.26 4.27 4.28 4.29 Angkor Database, Maurice Glaize, The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation of the fourth French edition)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 Saveros Pou, Les noms de monuments khmers, Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient 78 (1991)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Digital South Asia Library, University of Chicago, Angkor Wat, 1113-1150: The Role of Astronomy at Angkor Wat (undated)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Angkor National Museum, Angkor National Museum Bulletin, Volume 8 (October 2016)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Cambodianess, Isa Rohany, Meet the 12 Pagodas Along the Siem Reap Stream (October 14, 2023)
  9. ↑ Cambodianess, Nhem Chan, Ek Phnom: Battambang's Must-See 11th Century Temple (August 16, 2022)
  10. ↑ VAYO FM Radio, Tha Chanthy, Khmer children should stop calling pinpeat music Siamese music (June 11, 2021; in Khmer)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts, Robert M. Fowler, Cambodia (2012)
Retrieved from "https://khmerconnection.com/w/index.php?title=Indra&oldid=14066"
This page was last edited on 12 October 2026, at 08:34.