Shiva

Shiva is a Hindu god worshipped in the Khmer lands from the pre-Angkorian period, above all in the form of the linga, at temples such as Bakong and Preah Vihear.

A sandstone Shiva from the early 12th century, in the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Deity details
Khmer name	ព្រះឥសូរ
Also known as	Eyso; Ishvara; Hara
Religion	Hinduism
Figure type	God
Sites	Sambor Prei Kuk, Bakong, Phnom Bakheng, Koh Ker, Banteay Srei, Baphuon, Temple of Preah Vihear, Kbal Spean
Subjects	Religion & Spiritual Life; Visual Arts & Design

Shiva (ព្រះឥសូរ) is a Hindu god worshipped in the Khmer lands from the pre-Angkorian period onward, above all in the form of the linga. With Brahma and Vishnu he forms the Trimurti, the Brahmanic trinity, and Glaize wrote that within it Shiva is to be taken as the supreme god, the other two being his emanations. From the ninth century, kings of Angkor set up royal lingas of Shiva at the center of their capitals, at temples such as Bakong (ប្រាសាទបាគង), Phnom Bakheng (ភ្នំបាខែង) and the Baphuon. His other names include Ishvara and Hara.

Iconography

In human form, Shiva most often shows one face, and a third eye stands upright at the center of his forehead. His hair is gathered in a chignon that bears a crescent. At times he has several heads, and the number of his arms varies. His main attribute is the trident, and a Brahmanic cord crosses his chest. Glaize noted that the image of Shiva as the great destroyer, a spirit of storms, belongs more to India; in Cambodia he is seldom shown in a bad light. In other forms he is the protector who conceives and creates, and the first of the ascetics, who lives on alms and meditates.

His consort has a gentle and a fierce form. Gentle, she is Parvati, goddess of the earth, or Uma, who is often shown seated on his knee as he sits enthroned on Mount Kailasa or rides his mount, the sacred bull Nandin. Fierce, she is Durga, who defeats the demon buffalo with her lion. Their sons are Skanda, the god of war, and Ganesha, the elephant-headed god of wisdom, who is popular in Cambodia. A Nandin lies facing the entrance of some of Shiva's temples. At Phnom Bakheng and Bakong, where the shrines open to all four directions, a Nandin was placed on each side as a sign of the god's power over the whole world.

Shiva shapes destiny through his dance, the tandava. As a dancer he is called Nataraja, the king of dance. Khmer art shows him dancing in many forms, among them dances that create and preserve the world, a dance of death, and one that destroys the three cities. These dances can be summed up as driving out evil and creating good.

The linga

The linga, a smoothly finished cylinder of stone, expresses the creative power of Shiva. Glaize saw no need to stress its phallic character, since "for the oriental spirit" the image reaches well beyond human sexuality. The cylinder, rounded at its top corners, rises from a base that is octagonal and then square in section. In legend, the two lower parts are sheaths of Vishnu and of Brahma, which keep the earth from touching a sacred pillar of flame that came down from the sky. Only the cylinder shows above the pedestal. A linga carved with a face is called a mukhalinga.

The linga stands in a grooved stone, the snanadroni, whose spout always points north. A priest pours lustral (purifying) water over the linga, and it drains away through the spout. The rite is a symbolic one, meant to bring rain and fertility to the land.

Pre-Angkorian period

By the early seventh century, political power had moved inland to Ishanapura, at Sambor Prei Kuk. In the same period, Shiva and forms of Shaiva devotion rose in importance in Khmer culture. Heng and Lavy write that epigraphic evidence points to Gambhireshvara (Lord of the Depths), a form of Shiva, as the chief god of the site's northern group of temples. This god seems to have been linked above all with King Bhavavarman I. Two inscriptions from the southern group praise King Ishanavarman and honor Prahasiteshvara (Smiling Lord), another form of Shiva. In them the god seems to be ambiguously fused with the king. This god may have taken the form of a gold linga, quite possibly one with a face. The king is said to have also installed other images, among them several more forms of Shiva, Brahma, Sarasvati and a silver figure of Shiva's bull. None of the images named in the inscriptions has been found.

At Vat Phu, on the mountain called Lingaparvata, stood the shrine of Shiva Bhadreshvara. Dominic Goodall describes it as a key site of Khmer religion through the whole ancient period, attested by "innumerable" inscriptions, beginning with K. 365 and K. 477. In his account, K. 477 is engraved in fifth-century characters similar to those of K. 365.

In this period Shiva was also joined with Vishnu in a single figure, Harihara, divided down the middle. The right side, which ranks higher, carries the attributes of Shiva, under his name Hara. Heng and Lavy link the rise of Harihara in the seventh century to the growing popularity of Shaivism.

Angkorian period

The royal linga

In 802, Jayavarman II (ជ័យវរ្ម័នទី២) founded the cult of the devaraja and, in Glaize's account, set up the first royal linga on his pyramid at Rong Chen, on Phnom Kulen. Glaize renders the term as god-king and notes that its meaning is disputed, since others read it as king of the gods. Glaize described the cult as embodied in a linga held to be an incarnation of Shiva, raised on a temple-mountain at the heart of the capital. Piphal Heng and Paul Lavy call the devaraja a royal cult of Shiva, bound up with the founding of Angkor and with holding the Khmer kingdom together. In their view, the pairing of the pyramid temple with state power devoted to Shiva, which may have begun at Prasat Aram Rong Chen, may have set a pattern that lasted at Angkor for centuries.

Indravarman I (ឥន្ទ្រវរ្ម័នទី១) built Bakong in 881 at the center of his capital, Hariharalaya (ហរិហរាល័យ), as the first temple-mountain of sandstone, to hold a devaraja linga. Glaize gives the linga's name as Shri Indresvara and notes that the temple's stele also records eight images of Shiva set up in its court. Yasovarman I (យសោវរ្ម័នទី១) then built Yasodharapura (យសោធបុរៈ), the first Angkor, around the hill of Phnom Bakheng. The temple on its summit housed the linga Shri Yasodharesvara, the chief sacred image of the kingdom. Chun Chanboth gave 893 as the year the king built the temple and set the linga in it; Glaize dated the temple to about 900. On Phnom Krom (ភ្នំក្រោម) and Phnom Bok (ភ្នំបូក), the hills on either side, the king built temples with three towers for the Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. On Phnom Bok, a high laterite platform 150 meters west of a brick structure, which Glaize wrote must have served as a water tank, carries a single sandstone linga 4 meters high and 1.20 meters across. Glaize judged its weight to be more than 10 tons and describes it as toppled and broken.

Jayavarman IV (ជ័យវរ្ម័នទី៤) left Angkor for Koh Ker (កោះកេរ្តិ៍) and took the devaraja linga with him. Around 931 he built a temple-mountain there of seven tiers, 35 meters high, to hold it. Rajendravarman II (រាជេន្ទ្រវរ្ម័នទី២) brought the devaraja linga back to Angkor. At the East Mebon (ប្រាសាទមេបុណ្យខាងកើត), whose foundation stele is dated 952, he installed the linga Shri Rajendresvara. He also set up images of Shiva and Parvati in the likeness of his mother and father, and a group of eight lingas, one for each of eight forms of the god. At Pre Rup (ប្រាសាទប្រែរូប), founded in 961, the linga of the central sanctuary gave the temple its name, Rajendrabhadresvara.

In the middle of the 11th century, Udayadityavarman II raised the Baphuon at the center of his capital. Inscriptions from Lovek and Prah Ngok, found at its foot, allowed Georges Cœdès to identify it as the "golden mountain", where a linga of Shiva stood in a temple of gold.

Glaize wrote that Shiva clearly prevailed at first, but that Vishnu seems to have displaced him from the close of the 11th century up to the time of Angkor Wat. To him it "would seem evident" that both Indian religions, in their higher forms, reached only an elite, and that the crowds who entered the temples came to bow before their deified king rather than to worship a particular god. He also wrote that the faiths sometimes clashed, with stone images mutilated or recut to suit the rival faith, and that in the 13th century a violent Shaiva reaction was aimed at the works of Jayavarman VII.

Banteay Srei (ប្រាសាទបន្ទាយស្រី)

Banteay Srei was founded by Yajnavaraha, the guru of Jayavarman V, together with his younger brother. Its foundation stele, inscribed in 968, opens with an invocation of Shiva and his sakti and records the linga of Shiva Shri Tribhuvanamahesvara set up in the central sanctuary. One pediment of the south library shows the many-headed Ravana trying to shake Mount Kailasa, with Shiva and Parvati seated at its summit. The other shows the love god Kama aiming an arrow at Shiva, while Parvati hands Shiva a rosary and tries to break his meditation.

Temple of Preah Vihear (ប្រាសាទព្រះវិហារ)

The Temple of Preah Vihear, set at the rim of a plateau overlooking the Cambodian plain, is dedicated to Shiva. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization places the temple in the first half of the 11th century and traces its history to a hermitage founded in the ninth century. An inscription of 1024, K. 381, records offerings to Shikhareshvara, whom Hello Angkor describes as the temple's main god. Hello Angkor dates the earliest surviving parts to the early 10th century and most of the temple to the reigns of Suryavarman I (សូរ្យវរ្ម័នទី១) and Suryavarman II (សូរ្យវរ្ម័នទី២). Views on its age differ. Victorio Roveda holds that it was probably built over more than 300 years, from the reign of Yasovarman I to that of Suryavarman II. Many other researchers hold that most of it dates from the reign of Suryavarman I.

Over the entrance to the main sanctuary, at the first gateway, a carving shows Shiva dancing with ten arms. One hand holds a trident and two are raised in salute, and he dances with both feet on the head of an elephant. The carving probably dates from the reign of Suryavarman I. An inscription of 1119, K. 383, records that the Brahman Divakarapandita (ទិវាករបណ្ឌិត), royal guru of Suryavarman II, gave the temple a dancing Shiva made of gold. Another gateway shows a scene from the Mahabharata in which Shiva, disguised as a hunter, fights the hero Arjuna, then gives him a divine weapon in reward for his devotion. The dancing Shiva over the main sanctuary has been read as a sign that Preah Vihear was held to be the dwelling of the god himself.

Kbal Spean (ក្បាលស្ពាន)

At Kbal Spean, northwest of Phnom Kulen, the rock bed of a river was carved with lingas and with figures of gods, among them Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu and Uma. A larger relief on a rock face shows Shiva and Uma on the bull Nandin. The site is known as the River of a thousand lingas. Hello Angkor attributes the carvings to the 11th century, while Heng and Lavy place them in about the 11th or 12th century. Inscriptions there tell of a mandarin of Suryavarman I who retired to a hermitage on the mountain and made a sahasralinga of Ishvara. They also record a golden linga installed on the mountain, and one relates the river to the legendary Ganga. Heng and Lavy write that the presence of Shiva and Vishnu, carved on the holy mountain, sanctified the waters that ran from Phnom Kulen down to the capital at Angkor.

In Khmer life

The rice cake num kom is commonly offered at temples during Khmer New Year or Pchum Ben. The historian Sambo Manara describes num kom and num ansorm as edible forms of the linga of Shiva and the yoni of his wife Uma, and links them to a rite of respect for mother and father.

In the large shadow theater, sbaek thom, a performance of the Reamker opens with a homage to the great teachers, sampeah kru. During the rite, puppets of the ascetic Maha Eysei are set against the screen, with Eyso (Shiva) and Noreay (Vishnu) on either side. On the mask altar of the Royal Ballet of Cambodia, the god of dance is Preah Noreay (ព្រះនារាយណ៍), the Khmer Vishnu. Angkor Database notes that in the Khmer pantheon Vishnu has taken Shiva's place as Nataraja.

References