Deity

Vishnu

ព្រះវិស្ណុ

Vishnu is a Hindu god regarded as the preserver and protector of the universe, honored in Khmer temples and sculpture from the pre-Angkorian period to Angkor Wat.

Vishnu (ព្រះវិស្ណុ)[1] is a Hindu god regarded as the preserver and protector of the universe.[2][3] In the Mekong Delta, Sanskrit inscriptions from the end of the fifth century show local rulers founding temples to him.[4] His worship was prominent in the southern Khmer lands in the pre-Angkorian period,[5] and in the 12th century King Suryavarman II (សូរ្យវរ្ម័នទី២)[1] built Angkor Wat.[6] An essay published by the Digital South Asia Library describes its innermost gallery as dedicated to Vishnu as a supreme deity,[6] and Maurice Glaize called the temple a Vaishnava foundation.[3]

Iconography

In Khmer art Vishnu has one face and most often four arms; a few standing statues have eight.[2] His four hands generally hold a disc, a conch, a club and a ball.[2][3] Ven Sophorn, writing for the Angkor National Museum, states that these attributes represent the elements of the cosmos: water, fire, wind and earth.[2] One of his two consorts is Lakshmi, whom Glaize calls the goddess of beauty[3] and the museum bulletin the goddess of wealth.[2] His mount is Garuda, a sun bird with a man's body and an eagle's beak and talons.[3]

Between cosmic ages, while the world sleeps, Vishnu is believed to rest on the serpent Ananta, carried on the waves of the ocean. When he wakes, he is born again as a man or an animal to overcome the forces of evil, and each time a new era begins.[3] These descents to earth are his avatars. The Angkor National Museum bulletin lists ten, among them the fish Matsya, the turtle Kurma, the boar Varaha, the man-lion Narasimha, the dwarf Vamana, Rama, Krishna and the Buddha.[2] Glaize gave the number of the principal avatars as a dozen.[3] Rama is a hero of the Hindu epic Ramayana and of the Khmer Reamker.[7] Glaize wrote that Rama and Krishna in particular gave endless subjects to the sculptors who decorated the walls and pediments of Khmer temples.[3]

A 12th-century relief in the Angkor Wat style shows Vishnu standing between his two consorts, all three carved from one stone panel. Lakshmi stands on his left holding a lotus, and Bhumi-devi, the goddess of earth, stands on his right with a small ball that stands for the earth. The Angkor National Museum bulletin of October 2016 describes the relief on display in the museum's gallery D.[2] In the pre-Angkorian period Vishnu was also joined with Shiva in one figure, Harihara, split vertically in half,[3] with Vishnu (Hari) on the left half and Shiva (Hara) on the right.[2]

Pre-Angkorian period

In the southern Khmer lands, generally linked with the polity of Funan, the Vaishnava tradition tied Vishnu to cosmic kingship and to the management of water.[5] An inscription from Thap Muoi, in present-day Vietnam (K. 5), dated to about the fifth century, records the founding of a temple to Vishnu on land reclaimed from the mud.[5] Piphal Heng and Paul Lavy wrote that the coasts of southern Cambodia and southern Vietnam had a Vaishnava orientation in the sixth and seventh centuries. In their account, it shows in a tradition of four-armed Vishnu statues wearing miters and, most spectacularly, in the large stone figures of Vishnu and his avatars found at Phnom Da, close to Angkor Borei.[5] By the early seventh century, political power had moved inland to Ishanapura, at Sambor Prei Kuk, at the same time as another god, Shiva, rose in importance in Khmer culture.[5]

The Angkor National Museum bulletin records that a figure of Kalpavasudeva (Vishnu) was set up on April 13, 598, in the reign of King Bhavavarman.[2] Standing statues of Vishnu from the sixth to the early eighth century have been found in Kandal, Kampong Thom, Prey Veng and Siem Reap provinces.[2]

The Phnom Da Vishnu

An eight-armed Vishnu from Phnom Da, in Takeo province, is carved in sandstone and held at the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh (ភ្នំពេញ)[1], inventory number Ka.1639.[7][5] It measures 288.5 centimeters[7] or 270 centimeters[5] in height. Its date is debated: Andy Brouwer gives the sixth to seventh century, noting that the Phnom Da statues were first thought to be early sixth century and that more recent theories place them in the early to mid-seventh.[7] Heng and Lavy date it to around the late sixth or seventh century,[5] and Cambodianess to the sixth century.[8] The museum bulletin calls it the most magnificent of the Phnom Da sculptures and probably among the earliest.[2]

Henri Mauger found the statue, with figures of Rama and Balarama, during excavations at Phnom Da at the beginning of 1936.[7] He first identified it as Shiva. Other experts argued that it shows Vishnu, and that has since remained the prevailing view.[7] In its right hands it holds flames, a short mace, an antelope hide and a long mace, and in its left an unknown object, a sword, a vajra (thunderbolt) and a vase. Some of these attributes are not usually carried by Vishnu, which divided experts on its identity.[7] A later inscription found at the temple gives this Vishnu its own name, Hari-Kambujendra.[7] Brouwer reads the statue, with its cylindrical miter, as the god in his cosmic form as universal ruler, or chakravartin.[7]

Part of the original block was left standing as an arch that holds up the head, the arms and the objects in the hands, which Brouwer calls a new practice.[7] Cambodianess writes that Phnom Da artists steadied their statues with tenons, arches and props, a technique other styles also used, although arches and props eventually fell out of use.[8] Cambodianess writes that Phnom Da is regarded as the earliest of Cambodia's art styles,[8] and Brouwer as the earliest Brahmanic style in Khmer art.[7] All three Phnom Da statues were in fragments when they were found, and they reached the museum in 1936; Vishnu's left foot was identified only in 1990. Between 2000 and 2007, the museum's stone conservation team rebuilt the three statues.[7]

Angkorian period

Glaize wrote that Shiva at first clearly prevailed, but that Vishnu seems to have displaced him in the period from the late 11th century to the building of Angkor Wat.[3]

Seven stone Vishnus found at three temples on Phnom Kulen, Rup Arak, Damrei Krap and Thma Dap, probably date from the ninth century.[5] The bulletin describes the one from Prasat Damrei Krap, of the first half of the ninth century, as 1.79 meters high and very well preserved.[2] Phnom Kulen's link with Vishnu lasted well into the 11th and 12th centuries. Heng and Lavy set beside these the carvings at Kbal Spean, where lingas of Shiva and images of Vishnu lying on the serpent Ananta were cut into the riverbeds and banks. In their view, such images may show that Vishnu remained important for managing water. They add that the presence of both gods, carved on the holy mountain, sanctified the waters that flowed from Phnom Kulen down to Angkor (អង្គរ)[1].[5]

A huge statue of Vishnu reclining was once enshrined at the West Mebon (ប្រាសាទមេបុណ្យខាងលិច).[1] King Udayadityavarman II (ឧទ័យាទិត្យាវរ្ម័នទី២) built the temple on a small island in the middle of the West Baray (បារាយណ៍ខាងលិច).[1] As Glaize recounts, the statue's head and part of its body, from a gigantic bronze figure, were found in a well at the temple in 1936. The find followed the premonition of a local person to whom the Buddha appeared in a dream. The figure has four arms and was once gilded and set with precious stones. Glaize judged that its full length must have been more than four meters, that it was evidently of the 11th century, and that it appears to be of the same date as the temple.[3] Both Glaize and a Radio Free Asia history series write that the statue is kept at the national museum in Phnom Penh.[3][1]

Scenes of the avatar Narasimha killing the demon king Hiranyakashipu appear on lintels at Preah Einkosei, Pre Rup and the East Mebon. An inscription at Preah Khan (K. 633) refers in Sanskrit to Kamraten Jagat Narasimha, Vishnu in the form of a man-lion.[2]

Angkor Wat

Suryavarman II was anointed king in 1113,[4] and Angkor Wat was built in the first half of the 12th century.[3] Glaize wrote that the temple's unusual westward orientation was probably set by its purpose. In his account, it seemed proven, from research by Finot, George Coedès, Przyluski and Bosch, head of the archaeological service of the Dutch East Indies, that Angkor Wat was a funerary temple. In this reading it was built for the consecration of Suryavarman II, and probably to hold his ashes, and was the only such temple raised while its founder lived. Bosch held that a westward orientation was typical of Indo-Javanese funerary monuments. Glaize gave the Vishnu link as a final reason: by making the temple a Vaishnava foundation, the king identified himself with Vishnu instead of with Shiva, worshipped as a royal linga, as earlier kings had done. Since Coedès had explained Vishnu's usual association with the west, Glaize found the new orientation "quite natural".[3] The innermost gallery runs around the central tower. A Vishnu image once stood in that tower; its name is not known.[6] The Digital South Asia Library essay suggests that this image may have been carved in the likeness of the king.[6] Charles Higham wrote that a four-meter-high statue of Vishnu, housed in one of the outer buildings, may once have dominated the central tower.[4]

The king's posthumous name was Paramavishnuloka,[3][4] which Higham translates as "He who has entered the heavenly world of Vishnu".[4] From it comes Bisnulok, another name for Angkor Wat.[9]

In the east gallery, a relief nearly 50 meters long shows the Churning of the Sea of Milk. The churning yields an elixir of immortality, which the gods (devas) and the demons (asuras) dispute. Mount Mandara rests on a tortoise, one of Vishnu's forms, and serves as the pivot, with the serpent Vasuki as the rope. On the relief, 92 asuras hold the head and 88 devas the tail, while Vishnu, in human form, presides over the work.[3] In the story, hundreds of beings appeared one after another from the churning,[3] among them the goddess Lakshmi.[2] Another relief shows the four-armed Vishnu on the shoulders of Garuda, victorious over the asuras.[3] In the northwest corner pavilion, Vishnu sleeps on the serpent Ananta with his wife holding his feet, beneath a flight of apsaras.[3] A standing eight-armed Vishnu at Angkor Wat is in the Bayon style, of the late 12th to early 13th century.[2]

In Khmer dance

On the mask altar of the Royal Ballet of Cambodia, Preah Noreay (ព្រះនារាយណ៍), the god of dance and the Khmer form of Vishnu, is surrounded by tiaras and diadems.[10] A booklet on the Royal Ballet was published in about 2004 by the French cultural center and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Cambodia. Angkor Database, which reproduces the altar photograph from that booklet, adds in a note that Vishnu replaced Shiva as Nataraja, master of dramatic art, in the Khmer pantheon.[10]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Radio Free Asia Khmer, Two kings reigned at the same time in the middle of the 11th century, part 13 of a history series (May 14, 2014; in Khmer)
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 Angkor National Museum, Angkor National Museum Bulletin, Volume 8 (October 2016)
  3. ↑ 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 3.16 3.17 3.18 Angkor Database, Maurice Glaize, The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation of the fourth French edition)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Proceedings of the British Academy, Charles F. W. Higham, The Origins of the Civilisation of Angkor (2003)
  5. ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 Piphal Heng & Paul A. Lavy, Pre-Angkorian cities: Ishanapura and Mahendraparvata
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 Digital South Asia Library, University of Chicago, Angkor Wat, 1113-1150: The Role of Astronomy at Angkor Wat (undated)
  7. ↑ 7.00 7.01 7.02 7.03 7.04 7.05 7.06 7.07 7.08 7.09 7.10 7.11 Angkor Database, Andy Brouwer, Vishnu, Rama, Balarama - Phnom Da (October 25, 2021)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Cambodianess, Ky Chamna, Picture of the Day: Vishnu and the Phnom Da Art Style (March 14, 2026)
  9. ↑ Saveros Pou, Les noms de monuments khmers, Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient 78 (1991)
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Angkor Database, Le Ballet Royal (The Royal Ballet) (c. 2004)
Retrieved from "https://khmerconnection.com/w/index.php?title=Vishnu&oldid=13922"
This page was last edited on 12 October 2026, at 07:25.