1 Face –tower of the Bayon temple.

State temple of Jayavarman VII, Angkor, 12th-13th century

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 Art of Cambodia: Interactions with India

Introduction
Swati Chemburkar

This special issue of Marg brings together current research and reflections on the early
interactions between Cambodia and India in the diverse fields of architecture, iconography,
textiles and the performing arts. The Hindu-Buddhist cultures of ancient Southeast Asian
states were deeply enriched by the religious movements, texts, art, philosophy, science and
scripts that originated in India; however the selections made by these people transformed the
source material with abundant creativity. On my first visit to Cambodia, I was struck by the
great affinity with India. I felt absolutely at home, yet it was not home. In the words of
Rabindranath Tagore, after his 1927 tour of Southeast Asia: Everywhere I could see India
and I could not recognize it again!
Awareness of the Angkor kingdom and its massive temple complexes first reached the
world through international colonial exhibitions held in France in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, when the colonial power’s presence in “Indochina” was at its peak. The French
name for the region reflected not only its geography but also the strong Indic and Sinic
cultural influences. More recently, exhibitions held in the 1990s in the United States, France,
Australia and Japan have reawakened international interest in Cambodia’s extraordinary art.
India, though, has yet to catch up: knowledge about Southeast Asia in general and Cambodia
in particular remains limited here. Except for a handful of area specialists, the great majority
of Indians know far more about Europe and America than they do about their neighbours in
Southeast Asia. In spite of the obvious close Hindu affinity with Angkor Wat, the largest
Vishnu temple on earth, the educated Indian’s awareness of Cambodia is lost in a vague and
proud memory of “Hindu colonies” established in some dim nationalistic historiographies.
People crossing the Bay of Bengal in either direction a thousand years ago
would have found enough linguistic and cultural connections even today between the
regions of South and Southeast Asia to consider all to be members of a large and
varied but coherent community. When an Indianist reads for the first time the Sanskrit
epigraphic poetry of Cambodia, he has the impression of being in a known terrain,
reading an “Indian” literature. He finds there the same poetic conventions, the same
taste for convoluted puns that allude to the same philosophical and technical treatises

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 circulating at the same time in Kashmir, the Tamil country or the valley of
Kathmandu.1
Similarly, a Cambodian visiting India would see some familiar figures and practices of
worship.
Peter Sharrock introduced me to the beauty of Khmer monuments during my years at
London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). My growing interest
was then sustained by Rashmi Poddar and Jnanapravaha, after my return to Mumbai,
knowing fully the constraints of studying Southeast Asia in any Indian university. Olivier
Cunin has been always gracious in sharing his breadth of knowledge on the Khmer
monuments and Centre for Khmer Studies (CKS), whose doors are open for research. I am
grateful to them.

Early Contacts between India and Cambodia

The maritime trade routes from the 3rd century CE, between the Bay of Bengal and the South
China Sea, were conduits for the introduction of Brahmanism and Buddhism to Cambodia.
Images of Shiva, Vishnu and the Buddha began to appear in Cambodia from the 4th century
onwards. The trade links grew considerably during the Pala and Chola periods, and by the
11th century Rajendra Chola and Suryavarman I were controlling the trade in the Gulf of
Siam. The epigraphic records of the period attest to the friendly trade relationship between
the two regions.2 Nagapattinam emerged as a vibrant port on the Bay of Bengal while Kedah
and Chaiya flourished on the Malay Peninsula in the 10th to 13th centuries. The Indian,
Khmer and Srivijayan kingdoms all benefited from the trade boom generated by the rise of
the prosperous Song dynasty in China, which doubled its population and promoted maritime
trade in spices, rice, forest products, luxury goods and textiles.
The rise of the Pala dynasty of the 8th to 12th centuries in northeastern India, and
their kind of Buddhism became a new bridge between India and China. The port of Puri in
Odisha established for itself a key position between India, the southern sea states and China.
It had well-developed links to Java and Sumatra. Consequently, many bronzes found in
Indonesia and northeast Thailand from the late 8th to 13th century relate stylistically to
bronzes cast in Pala Bengal.
These links are the subject of three essays in the volume. Gillian Green’s Traditional
Cambodian Textiles published in 2003 is a standard work. Her research into the antique
textiles in the collection of the National Museum of Cambodia that survived the ravages of
climate and the Khmer Rouge indicated certain common textile patterns. (figure 2) Intrigued

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by this discovery, her essay, “Khmer Traditional Dress and Textiles: Early Manifestations of
India”, argues for seeing the use of Indian textiles as luxury items in the Khmer royal courts,
with an influence on changes in the Khmer dress styles.

2 Women’s silk skirt cloth, Cambodia, mid 20th century, displaying a diamond lattice shaped
pattern with enclosed flower

Emma Bunker, an authority on ancient Chinese bronzes, has in the past decade
focused on Cambodia. Her publication with Douglas Latchford, Khmer Bronzes: New
Interpretations of the Past, is by far the most thorough and ambitious study of the subject. In
“Pala-inspired Vajrayana Buddhist Bronzes on the Khorat Plateau”, she suggests a direct

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Vajrayana link from Pala Bengal to Khorat running parallel to the already established
Bengal-Java/Sumatra link. The popularity of the Ramayana and Mahabharata epics is seen
throughout ancient Khmer art, but the stories underwent extensive modifications. Rachel
Louizeau completed her PhD on Hoysala sculpture and then expanded her research to study
Cambodian narratives of the same period. She discusses the reliefs of the popular epics in
“Indic Epics in Khmer Art, and explores the role of narrative reliefs in the socio-political
culture of Cambodia and India.

Understanding the Indic and the Indigenous

The study of Cambodian civilization from the 6th to13th centuries CE has taken a
predominantly India-centric viewpoint. The early French and Indian scholarship was written
during the colonial era and called the broad dissemination of Indic culture “Indianization”,
assuming a process of colonization. For over a century scholars such as R.C. Majumdar, H.B.
Sarkar, R.G. Bhandarkar, F.D.K. Bosch, George Cœdès, Paul Mus, Ian Mabbett, J.G. de
Casparis and O.W. Wolters discussed the dynamics of the establishment of the ancient
Southeast Asian societies. Adhir Chakravarti and D. Devahuti3 and more recently Hermann
Kulke and Sheldon Pollock have brought new depth to the subject through their research on
both sides of the Bay of Bengal. Art historians, epigraphers and archaeologists are
readdressing the concept of “Indianization” to emphasize Cambodian agency in the process.
The older narrative of a dominating Indian trilogy of priests/brahmans, warriors/kshatriyas
and traders/vaishyas is being substituted with an account of artisans in recent studies.4 The
result is a reconstruction of the social and economic landscapes in an attempt to shift the
balance of the picture to a Southeast Asian pull of selection and adaptation rather than any
external cultural imposition under a political strategy.
To improve our understanding of the term “Indianization” we need better transcultural
historiographies. Paul Mus has suggested that Cambodia and southern India, as well as what
is now Bengal, probably shared a common culture of “monsoon Asia”.5 We may perhaps
better understand how this broad cultural spread came about if we consider it to resemble the
process of globalization we observe in the world today.
The presence of Hinduism and Buddhism, the Sanskrit language, and the ancient
theories of kingship and universal monarchs, architecture, iconography, astronomy and
aesthetics show how much the ancient Khmers valued Indic culture and absorbed it into their
own. The monumental wonders of Angkor could not possibly have been built the way they

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were without the religious, technological and artistic inspiration of their neighbour to the
west: yet Angkor was never an Indian city (figure 3).6

3 Angkor Wat, Cambodia built by Suryavarman II, a 12th century Vishnu temple symbolizing
Mount Meru

The most distinctive pre-“Indianization” objects found in the region from at least the
5th century BCE are the bronze kettledrums, commonly known as Dong Son drums (figure 4),
which depict birds, boats, feathered people and dancing figures.7 Mostly found in burial sites,
these drums suggest a link between the dance and the deceased. With his extensive research
experience in Asia and background in theatre, Paul Cravath here highlights the “Indigenous
Roots of the Cambodian Dance Drama” and the unique qualities of the sacred tradition.8

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 4 Kettledrum, Dong-Son culture, Vietnam, 1st millenium BCE, bronze, 61X78 cm.
Former Moulié Collection, Musée Guimet, Paris, Acc. no. P243. Photograph: Peter
Sharrock

Issues of Acculturation and Transculturation

The Khmers certainly imported religious and scientific texts from India, including works on
astronomy and cosmology. The classic Khmer treatment of these Indic concepts can be seen
absorbed and adapted in great detail in the construction of Angkor Wat, which encodes
calendrical and cosmological themes into its architecture. Although the 12th century Khmers
worshipped Vishnu in the vast, palatial stone temple, an Indian visitor today will find a 3-
metre-high icon of Vishnu daily venerated as the principal local earth spirit Ta Reac (figure
5).

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 5 Icon of Vishnu in the Bayon style, 3 metres tall, venerated as Ta Reac at
Angkor Wat

Future research faces many open questions. When and why did Indian cultural and religious
elements come to be preferred by Khmers? What exact selection of elements was adopted,
absorbed, revised or rejected? The blending of Indic and indigenous traditions is seen, for
instance, in the construction of large stone temple-mountain or Mount Meru structures
throughout the Angkor Empire (figure 3 and 6). Yet not a single Khmer monument which
could be considered a replica of an Indian monument exists.9
Mountains, seen as the abode of the ancestor spirits, were long considered sacred in
the indigenous tradition. By incorporating Bhadreshvara, the benevolent form of Shiva, in
sacred mountain sites in the Angkor empire, the Khmer kings ritually linked themselves with
him in mountain temples (figure 7). Thus, the linga consecrated at the 9th-century Bakong
temple-mountain by Indravarman bore the name Indreshvara, and the linga erected on the
Bakheng hill in Angkor by Yashovarman was named Yashodheshvara.
The imported cult of Shiva and his linga melted into the local cults of earth gods and
territorial spirits, often perceived in rough stones. Shaivism, Vaishnavism and Mahayana
Buddhism flourished among the ruling Khmer elites until the 14th century. But the
importation of Shaivism was not a continuous process and did not keep up with the Indian

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developments. Rather the earliest form of the imported deities and rituals were preserved. It
was a Khmer version of Indian Shaivism, which included some elements that had no Indian
prototypes.10

6 The Central Prang (seven- tiered pyramid) built by Jayavarman IV rises like Mount Meru, at
Prasat Thom, Koh Ker temple group, Cambodia, 10th century

7 One of the several Shivalingas from Isanapura founded by Isanavarman (r. 616-635ce) at
Sambor Prei Kuk temple site, Cambodia

Thomas Maxwell argues that we should not expect to find Indian Hinduism or Indian
Buddhism in Cambodia. What can be seen is an eager and rapid mastery of Sanskrit along

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with the complete mastery of certain major Indian philosophical conceptions and religious
doctrines.11
The reasons for the adoption of Indic concepts and beliefs by Cambodians, and the
processes through which they were assimilated by the local societies, are extremely difficult
to pin down in detail. Khmer society was selective in adopting Indic elements and adapting
these to their own culture. The earliest pre-Angkor Vishnu images were partly Indian in style
and fully Indian in their iconographic vocabulary, but this need not mean that the symbolism
was understood only in Indic terms. The process of acculturation begins necessarily with a
perception of the relevance of the original concept, but the embedding in the local culture
entails new layers of meaning that are hard to determine.
Peter Sharrock experienced the American war in Indochina as a Reuters
correspondent, and so became familiar with Khmer culture and society. On his first visits
after the war, the long de-mining process was only beginning. In “Serpent-enthroned Buddha
of Angkor”, Sharrock disentangles the complex process whereby the Khmer icon of the
supreme Mahayana Buddha Vairochana was later overlaid by the Muchalinda Buddha
favoured by Theravada Buddhism in the 14th century.

8 Sketch map showing the extent of the Angkor Empire. Including the present day Kingdom of
Cambodia. Drawn by Deepak Anand.

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The Rise and Fall of the Angkor Empire
During the 11th to 13th centuries the borders of the Angkor empire stretched way beyond its
modern-day periphery to include the regions of central Thailand, Laos and the northern part
of the Malay Peninsula, to become the dominant power around the Gulf of Siam and across
mainland Southeast Asia (figure 8).
At this time the largest temple complexes were constructed, including the massive
12th-century Angkor Wat built by King Suryavarman II and the first state Buddhist temple of
the Bayon built 50 years later by King Jayavarman VII. Following the death of Jayavarman,
the empire gradually declined and Thai armies finally occupied Angkor in the 15th century.
The Khmers returned to seize back control of Angkor at the battle of Siem Reap (“Siam
conquered”) but the elaborate rich architectural heritage of Angkor was abandoned and
covered by forests with the gradual decline of the capital.
Until the arrival of the French in 1863, Cambodia gradually shrank under pressure from
the growing power of the neighbouring Thais and the Vietnamese, who took over the
Mekong Delta from the Khmers.

The Kingdom of Cambodia

The French School for the Far East (EFEO) was founded in 1900 in Hanoi, Vietnam, for the
study of Asian cultures. One key centre of study soon became the conservation and
restoration of the Khmer monuments. The National Museum of Cambodia was officially
inaugurated in 1920 by the artist and art historian George Groslier. Jean Boisselier, Solange
Thierry and Madeleine Giteau contributed their distinguished talents to cataloguing,
archiving and managing the Khmer treasures at the museum, which continued under Chea
Thay Seng, the first Cambodian Director of the museum.
The Kingdom of Cambodia was established under King Norodom Sihanouk in 1953,
just before the French military defeat in Vietnam in the following year. The French
restoration projects continued in Cambodia until the early 1970s, when the Vietnamese army
brought the Khmers Rouge to power in a civil war. Led by Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge forced
people to abandon the cities, killed all the monks and almost half the population in a Maoist-
inspired attempt to roll back history to a precolonial rural state. Most of Cambodia’s trained
archaeologists and technical experts disappeared during this period in the Khmer Rouge plan
to eradicate the educated from society.12
The National Museum fell into disrepair, with its building in disarray and the death of
many of its employees, but its precious collection was left largely intact.

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 When Mr Hab Touch became the Director of the museum in 1996, he brought in
many important development projects. Now that he is the Director General of the Ministry of
Culture, he is deeply involved in preserving antiquities and trying to repatriate from abroad
looted Khmer artefacts. In an interview with this writer, he delicately handles the questions
regarding the national heritage, ownership of the past and ongoing restoration projects in
Cambodia.

Preserving the Khmer Heritage: The Role of India

Only one international conservation team had the courage to work in war-torn Cambodia in
1980 – the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) which offered help to preserve the Angkor
Wat temple under the most difficult working conditions. The seven-year-long conservation
programme later drew much criticism when the chemicals from the roofs restored with
concrete began damaging the renowned reliefs of the temple. Today, among the ongoing
conservation/restoration projects in Cambodia funded by the Japanese, French, German and
Italian governments, the ASI is once again in the spotlight. But this time their hi-tech
restoration of Ta Prohm is openly avowed by all to be the best model for everyone else. Their
work is drawing plaudits from around the globe (figure 9).

9 ASI conservation team at Ta Prohm temple, led by Dr. Devinder Sood (in blue shirt), with Peter
Sharrock in front of the huge serpent-enthroned Buddha (Muchalinda Buddha) discovered at the site

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 Monuments are at the heart of Angkor. The photo essay by archaeological architect
Olivier Cunin highlights the state temple of Bayon through architectural 3D reconstructions
and addresses the difficulties that still impede our understanding of this temple. The Bayon is
remarkable for its giant face-towers, yet the identity of the Buddha here is still not resolved
(figure 10). Cunin has been working on the “Bayon-style” monuments for over a decade and
knows each and every piece of stone in Angkor. His photo essay demonstrates the need for
more scientific studies in the field.

10 Face-tower of the Bayon temple

Today, little street shops, lined up outside the Angkor temples, sell mechanical
reproductions of the monuments in drawings, photos, magnets and models. Social networking
sites are flooded with images of the monuments. Will this easy accessibility of Angkor’s
monuments detract from the “aura” of the site? Through his beautiful watercolours in “Diary
of a Modern Explorer”, Kenson Kwok, former Director of the Asian Civilisations Museum,
Singapore, preserves the aura.

Further Research

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Cambodia has progressed rapidly in the last 20 years, moving from a war-torn country to one
that is described as the next Asian “tiger”. The steady economic growth in the region is trying
to bring back the glory of Angkor. In the effort of rebuilding the economy, semi public
companies such as Artisans d’Angkor are training young rural people with professional skills
in traditional Khmer arts and crafts, and equipping them with a respectable livelihood. In the
thematic advertisement portfolio, “Artisans d’Angkor:Legends and Lives”, Anjali Devidayal,
an art consultant and independent researcher views the craftsmanship revitalization as a
potential niche training for the growing tourist industry with the guranted quality.
The earlier strong commercial and cultural ties between India and Cambodia have
been revived with the introduction of India’s Look East policy, Mekong-Ganga Cooperation
and Cambodia’s Look West stance.13 [Look West is not a policy but a stance] Once again the
maritime landscape is vibrant with the cross-cultural and trans-regional exchanges. On every
visit to the small town of Siem Reap, beside the Angkor Archaeological Park, I see a steady
trickle of Indians among the throng of tourists from around the world, visiting the Khmer
temples. To cover [adderess?] the question of “Indianization” in a single publication is
impossible, but we hope this special issue will add to a growing interest in Cambodia with
some reflections on its cultural elements shared with India. It is our hope that Indologists and
Khmerologists work increasingly closely on inter-disciplinary approaches for studying the
multitudinous links in their pasts.
*****

NOTES
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Photographs 1-3, 5-7, 9 and 10 by Swati Chemburkar

1
Dominic Goodall (until recently head of the Pondicherry Centre of the École Française
d’Extrême Orient [EFEO] “The Seasons in the Sanskrit Poetry of Cambodia”. Paris: CRAI
2014 (issue 1), p. 175.

2
Kenneth Hall, “Khmer Commercial Development and Foreign Contacts under Suryavarman
I”, Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 18, no. 3, 1975, p. 334.

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3
D. Devahuti discussed not only the Indian influence on Southeast Asia, but also what India
received from Southeast Asia, in India and Ancient Malaya (From the Earliest Times to
Circa AD 1400), Singapore: Donald Moore/Eastern University Press, 1965.

4
Pierre-Yves Manguin, “Introduction”, Early Interactions Between South and Southeast Asia:
Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange, eds. Pierre-Yves Manguin, A. Mani and Geoff
Wade, Singapore: ISEAS, 2011, p. xix.

5
Paul Mus, L’Angle de I’Asie, ed. S. Thion, Paris: Hermann,1977, pp. 109–21.

6
David Chandler, History of Cambodia, Colorado: Westview Press, 1983; 4th edition,
Thailand: Silkworm, 2008, p. 17.

7
Bernard Philippe Groslier, The Art of Indochina, trans. George Lawrence, New York: Crown
Publishers, 1962, p. 32.

8
"My sincere thanks to Kent Davis for all the co-ordination with Paul Carvath and graciously
editing his paper."
"
9
J.G. de Casparis, “Palaeography”, Early South East Asia, eds. R. Smith and W. Watson,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979, p. 282.

10
Alexis Sanderson, “Khmer Saivism”, paper presented at SOAS seminar, December 2, 2014.

11
Thomas Maxwell, “Religion at the Time of Jayavarman VII”, Bayon, New Perspectives, ed.
Joyce Clark, Bangkok: River Books, 2008, p. 74.

12
Miriam T. Stark and P. Bion Griffin, “Archaeology in the Global Age”, Marketing
Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past, eds. Yorke Rowan and Uzi Baram,
California: Alta Mira Press, 2004, p. 122.

13
Dinesh Patnaik, Indian ambassador to Cambodia, in an interview in Phnom Penh Post, July
19, 2013.

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