Naga-enthroned Buddha

The naga-enthroned Buddha is a Khmer image of the Buddha seated in meditation on the coils of a many-headed serpent, or naga, whose hoods rise behind him. It was the most widespread image of the Buddha in 10th-century Cambodia. The Cleveland Museum of Art writes that during the reign of Jayavarman VII it was found everywhere as an image for worship. The Bayon Buddha, the huge statue found in 1933 beneath the central shrine of the Bayon, takes this form. The image is also called the naga-protected Buddha, the Buddha on naga or the Buddha sheltered by a naga.

A naga-enthroned Buddha in bronze, 12th century, in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Cultural object details
Object type	Sculpture
Material	Sandstone; bronze
Period	Angkor period
Subjects	Religion & Spiritual Life; Visual Arts & Design

The image

The Buddha sits with his hands resting in his lap in the gesture of meditation, the dhyanamudra, his eyes downcast. The coiled body of the naga makes his seat, and its many heads fan out from behind his neck to form a canopy over him. Khmer artists carved the image in sandstone, as freestanding statues and in temple reliefs, and cast it in bronze.

From the late 12th century into the early 13th, these images commonly wear a tiered crown, the mukuta. Writing of Buddha images in general, Maurice Glaize noted that some show an adorned Buddha, with a diadem and royal insignia. In this form the Buddha is seen as the "sovereign of the world." He linked this idea to the legend of Jambupati, a proud king who would not pay homage to the Buddha; the Buddha then appeared before him in full splendor.

The story

The image is most commonly read as recalling the story of the naga Mucalinda, who sheltered the Buddha at the time of his enlightenment. The story is told in the Udana, a Buddhist text in Pali. Newly awakened, the Buddha sat in meditation for seven days without rising, at the foot of the Muccalinda tree at Uruvela, on the bank of the Neranjara River. A great storm cloud rose out of season and brought seven days of rain, cold wind and deep darkness. The naga king Mucalinda (Muccalinda in the Pali) left his home, wound his coils seven times around the Buddha's body and spread his great hood above him, to keep away the cold, the heat, insects, wind and sun. When the sky cleared after seven days, the naga unwound himself, took the form of a young man and stood before the Buddha, his hands before his heart in homage. In Glaize's guide the naga appears as Mucilinda, who shelters the meditating Buddha.

Meanings

The meaning of the image in Khmer Buddhism is debated. Martin Polkinghorne, Christophe Pottier and Christian Fischer wrote in 2013 that the reading most often followed joins a long-standing Khmer worship of the naga with the Buddha Sakyamuni, sheltered by Mucalinda at his enlightenment. They noted that others seriously question this reading and favor some sort of Mahayana link instead, citing Lobo, Sharrock and Woodward for that view.

Pia Conti noted proposals that, for the Khmers, the image came to stand for the Buddha's transcendent nature. George Cœdès and Wibke Lobo saw it as the Adibuddha, the Buddha enlightened before time began. Peter Sharrock suggested that in the 10th century it came to stand for Vairocana, the central Buddha of the vajradhatu mandala. Conti noted that the earliest known depiction of the image in ancient Cambodia shows it beside the tantric deity Vajrin, and that its presence in Khmer lands could point to tantric thought. In a note, she explained her use of the name naga-enthroned rather than the usual naga-protected. Citing Sharrock, she wrote that this name sets the icon apart from the Mucalinda story, which matters in Theravada Buddhism but seems to play no part in Mahayana societies. She added that it seems to express more strongly the transcendent standing the Buddha reached in Mahayana and tantric belief.

The Cleveland Museum of Art writes that Jayavarman VII linked himself with the image as the divine form in which he would receive honor. While he ruled, it was often set up with Lokesvara, the being of compassion, and Prajnaparamita, the goddess of wisdom. In the museum's reading the king presented himself as the enlightened Buddha, "the product of the union of Compassion and Wisdom," held up by the naga, which the museum takes to stand for the Khmer people.

History

On a 10th-century caitya, a Buddhist object of veneration, from Kbal Sre Yeay Yin in Cambodia, the image appears with Vajrin, Prajnaparamita and Avalokitesvara. Avalokitesvara is the bodhisattva also known as Lokesvara. Another caitya comes from the small Buddhist temple of Prasat Ta Muean, on the route from Angkor to Phimai in the Dangrek Mountains. It shows a Prajnaparamita with a naga-enthroned Buddha above her head.

Phimai was built from 1080 to 1108, under Jayavarman VI. The southern lintel over the entrance to its central sanctuary shows the naga-enthroned Buddha with worshippers below and rows of seated Buddhas above. Researchers have suggested that the temple's central image was probably a naga Buddha as well, but the central sanctuary was empty when the first Westerner to describe Phimai saw it, so there is no definite proof of what it held. A 12th-century bronze mold from Poipet has three registers, and the top one holds a naga-enthroned Buddha above tantric deities.

Jayavarman VII reigned from 1181 or 1182 to 1216. In the Bayon style of his time, images of this kind were pre-eminent. At Banteay Chhmar, built by the king, the image has been found both in architectural relief and as freestanding images. The crypt of Wat Ratchaburana at Ayutthaya, a temple whose exact founding date is unclear but whose stucco points to the early 15th century, held 191 Cambodian-type metal and ceramic images, among them votive tablets. One type shows a naga-protected Buddha with Avalokitesvara and Prajnaparamita on either side, one of the most common Mahayana images reproduced in Jayavarman VII's time. Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer took the presence of stone images of the naga-protected Buddha in meditation at many Ayutthayan sites as evidence that Khmer artistic and religious models left a legacy and kept their significance.

In the period after Jayavarman VII, the Cleveland Museum of Art writes, followers of forms of Buddhism that became prevalent in Cambodia, Theravada among them, gave the image a new meaning. They read it as the episode in the life of the historical Buddha when a serpent shielded him from a flood. The museum adds that the crown and jewels of its own bronze mark it as a transcendent figure of another kind.

The Bayon Buddha

On August 17, 1933, Georges-Alexandre Trouvé, the conservator of Angkor, began to recover the pieces of a huge statue of the Buddha on a naga from a pit. The pit lay beneath the central shrine of the Bayon, the temple at the heart of Jayavarman VII's capital. Glaize gave the depth of the find as 14 meters (46 feet). Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer wrote that Trouvé found almost all the pieces in the first 5 meters (16 feet) and the last objects, among them two thumbs of the statue, at 12.5 meters (41 feet). In their account, Trouvé dug on until he reached the water table at 14 meters.

The statue is 3.6 meters (11.8 feet) tall and weighs 15 tonnes (16.5 short tons). In a footnote, Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer give the same height of 3.6 meters, and 4.7 meters (15.4 feet) including the pedestal. They call its white sandstone unusual, and a further footnote sets that stone apart from the sandstone typical of Bayon-style sculpture. After it was reassembled, King Sisowath Monivong had it set up and consecrated again for worship on May 17, 1935. Glaize recorded that it was solemnly presented to the king that day. As of 2013 it was at Prasat Prampil Lavaeng, a Buddhist terrace beside the Royal Way facing the Terrace of the Elephants in Angkor Thom. Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer describe similar images at Nokor Krau, on the north side of Angkor Thom's north moat toward its eastern end, and at Ta Prohm. In a footnote they record that neither image keeps its head or naga hood, and that each is about 2.1 meters (6.9 feet) tall, measured from the neck down to the bottom of the coils.

The statue was at once taken to be the original central image of Jayavarman VII's Bayon. Cœdès believed it was also a deified image of the king, and Mus and B.-P. Groslier saw in it a symbol of the king as the great spirit of the kingdom, with the earth spirits of its lands gathered at his feet. Glaize wrote that its features probably represented Jayavarman VII himself. No inscription from the Bayon or from any other monument of Jayavarman VII's time records the statue.

Its burial in the pit has conventionally been cited as evidence of a destruction of Buddhist images after Jayavarman VII's reign. Polkinghorne, Pottier and Fischer argued against that view in 2013. Comparing other octagonal structures made of several pieces, such as stupas at Angkor, they suggested that the statue's octagonal pedestal of interlocking blocks was built not before the 15th century. The pedestal was later modified again: its sandstone blocks were recarved, and small dowel holes with traces of metal suggested to the authors that it once carried a metal cladding. A small Buddha head in the early Ayutthaya style, from the early 15th century, was buried with the statue. The authors concluded that from the late 12th century until at least the mid-15th century the statue was likely the main image of the Bayon. Their reappraisal suggests a restoration of the statue in the 16th century; if so, it was dumped into the pit only after that work.

Examples in museums

The Naga-Enthroned Buddha in the Cleveland Museum of Art is a 12th-century Cambodian bronze of the Angkor Wat period with traces of gilding, 58.4 by 28 centimeters (23 by 11 inches), that shows the Buddha crowned and bejeweled. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds Buddha Sheltered by a Naga, a 12th-century bronze of the Angkor period, 16.5 centimeters (6.5 inches) high, given by Cynthia Hazen Polsky in 1987. Conti's figure captions place the Kbal Sre Yeay Yin caitya with the naga-enthroned Buddha in the Musée Guimet in Paris. A second caitya from the same site, with Vajrin and a ten-armed Prajnaparamita, is in the National Museum in Phnom Penh. The caitya from Prasat Ta Muean is in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

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