Heritage site
Phimai
ភិម៉ៃ
Phimai (ភិម៉ៃ) is a Khmer temple and walled city in Nakhon Ratchasima province in northeastern Thailand, a major center of the Angkor state.[1][2][3] The city's ancient name was Vimayapura, and the temple is known as Prasat Hin Phimai.[3] Sarah Talbot and Chutima Janthed call it the most important Khmer temple in Thailand.[3]
Setting
The temple marks the center of the town of the same name. The École française d'Extrême-Orient calls it the most important Khmer monument of the valley of the Mun River, a valley that seems to match an Angkorian province known from inscriptions as Mahidharapura.[2] A road of 225 kilometers (140 miles) linked it to Angkor Wat.[3] Unlike most Khmer temples, which face east, Phimai faces south.[4]
History
Before the sandstone temple
Talbot and Janthed write that Khmer rulers took an interest in the region from the 6th century, that several inscriptions refer to the military victories of Mahendravarman, and that one of them, K. 1106, was found at Phimai.[3] A doorjamb in the temple wall reuses an older stone: its inscription, K. 1000, dates from the 8th century and speaks of a Buddhist ruler. A Buddha image and a wheel of the law in the Dvaravati style were found at the temple early in the 20th century.[3] Pia Conti writes that an inscription of 1041 found at the site, K. 954, pays homage to both Shiva and the Buddha.[4]
An excavation in 1964 and 1965 found the foundation of a brick structure 3 meters (10 feet) beneath the central sanctuary and, 3 meters further down, three high-status burials.[3] A 1998 excavation by the Origins of Angkor Project, run by the University of Otago and the Thai Fine Arts Department, found bricks that had been reused from an earlier building. Charcoal above them was dated to 966 to 1020, and the authors suggest the 7th to 9th centuries as a fitting date for the bricks.[3]
Under Jayavarman VI and his successors
The sandstone temple was built between 1080 and 1108, in the reign of Jayavarman VI.[4][3] His family had held power for generations at Mahidharapura, which Talbot and Janthed write was perhaps Phimai itself.[3] The line of kings named after it included Suryavarman II, who built Angkor Wat, and Jayavarman VII, whose image is at Phimai.[3] Chun Chanboth names Phimai among the places where Jayavarman VI carried on building.[1]
Conti writes that Phimai was the first royal-scale sanctuary of tantric Buddhism in the Khmer Empire, and the only major Khmer temple with tantric Buddhist imagery before Jayavarman VII.[4] An inscription of 1108, K. 397, records that a local dignitary set up an image of the tantric deity Trailokyavijaya there. It calls the image a general to the Kamraten Jagat Vimaya, which Conti takes to be the temple's main image, probably a Buddha.[4] Five Buddhist lintels decorate the inner sanctuary, while most outer lintels and pediments show Hindu subjects, many of them scenes from the Ramayana.[4] One pediment shows the sanctuary itself.[3]
Conti also writes that Phimai's towers were the model for the pine-cone shaped towers of Angkor Wat, and that its cross-shaped sanctuary plan inspired later temples such as Phnom Rung and Banteay Samre.[4] Jayavarman VII added two side shrines within the first enclosure and, beyond the city walls, a chapel for a hospital. One of the shrines, called Prang Brahmathat, held portraits of the king and his wife.[4]
Talbot and Janthed write that prayers were offered at Phimai on the death of the king of Angkor in 1243.[3] They add that Angkor's control over the region effectively ended in the late 13th century.[3]
Study and restoration
The explorer Henri Mouhot described the temple during his journey of 1860 and 1861.[3] The Thai Fine Arts Department restored the temple compound in the early 1950s, before a royal visit in 1954. From 1963 to 1968, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the Fine Arts Department restored the main sanctuary.[3] Pierre Pichard's architectural study of the temple was published in 1976.[2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Radio Free Asia Khmer, Chun Chanboth, Two kings reigning at the same time in the mid-11th century, part 13 of a history series (May 14, 2014; in Khmer)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 École française d'Extrême-Orient, Pimay: Étude architecturale du temple, book page for Pierre Pichard's monograph (1976; in French)
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 Asian Perspectives, Sarah Talbot and Chutima Janthed, Northeast Thailand before Angkor: Evidence from an Archaeological Excavation at the Prasat Hin Phimai (Vol. 40, No. 2, Fall 2001)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Angkor Database, Pia Conti, Tantric Buddhism in Phimai: A New Reading of its Iconographic Message (undated)