4. Buddhist monuments (Introduction)

[Full title: 4. Buddhist monuments in South Vietnam and South East Asia]

Buddhist art consisting, cult images, saintly figures, symbols, stupa and so on; there is no reason to suppose that aesthetic considerations did not play a main role in the creation of Buddhist art that the aesthetic element only plays a minimal role. To the learned monks who compiled such texts representations of Buddha, Bodhisattvas and other saintly figures were first and foremost religious icons with well-defined functions in worship, liturgy and meditation. Statues and painted icons were there to serves as objects of devotion as concrete demonstrations of the donor’s piety; as means to accumulate karmic merit for oneself and for others and as aids in practicing certain types of mental concentration they also often were believed to be endowed with protective power and other supernatural qualities. Formal beauty is seldom stressed in the Buddhist sources, and virtually no attention is paid to stylistic features such as brushwork, composition and colorite. If we shift our attention back from the ecclesiastical sphere to the appreciation of Buddhist art as found in early works dealing with the high art of painting, we are faced with a totally different perfective, even the earliest treatises concentration on ‘personalities’ their career, character and the stylistic qualities of their works. In the case of Buddhist paintings very little attention is paid to their religious function on message. Buddhist structures including two primary types:

First the various facilities needed to sustain the life of the monastery intended for such functions as the display of images and their worship or as residence halls for monks and seconds, a structure that was itself an object of worship, the stupa the latter is the best-known, most distinctive Buddhist monument and despite regional modifications was often the focal point of the monastery, befitting its customary role as container of sacred relics.

The remaining structures ranged from small cells for monks, often arranged around a courtyard, forming a plan similar to that of early Indian houses; to image halls, some of enormous size as well as facilities for group worship and instruction libraries, and specialized buildings such as drum and bell towers. This varied group of buildings was assembled into an orderly plan. In East Asia it stood within a walled compound and usually followed an axial gate. Followed by the image hall and completed with a lecture hall and rear gate. The building placement could be altered by uneven terrain as in a mountainous retreat or determined by the shape of popularity during the first millennium.

Whatever the form of the structure Buddhist worship involves circumambulation, a custom easily followed in the context of freestanding stupa or pagodas. Excavated cave shrines included a path for this purpose, however, with the emergence of esoteric school, and limited to secret ritual. This change in ritual necessitated alterations in the arrangement of building.

In Buddhist structure based on the Buddhist philosophy of universe, the centre of the universe is a mountain Meru.^[1] From the stop of which rise the various levels of the heavens. The towering mountain is surrounded by one of the seven oceans. Beyond these is the great ocean, containing the four island continents, one in each of the four regions of space, with the southernmost, the island of Jambudvipa, being the realm of humans. This entire universe is surrounded by a final, huge wall of rock. The heights of Mt Meru, Include the residence of the four rulers of the cardinal points, the thirty-three principal gods and at the peak the abode of Indra, the king of the Hindu gods, or of the celestial Buddha, Vairochana. Above all this are the layers of the sky, varying in number according to the sect and the era.

The most ambitions attempts at recreating such as cosmology may have been Cambodia, Javanese, Funanese, Thailand, and the king of there countries were representing as god-kings of mountain Meru and the monuments built in these countries as be seen as their seat of power and a replica of the centre of the universe, so the most distinctive South East Asian religious belief was the cult of the god-king, inherited from south India, but expanded beyond its original scope the concept of the divine/human king as the focus of the universe influenced the layout of temple complexes with the primary shrine being the temple of mountain, the centre of the universe. All most the monuments in South East Asia were represent with those philosophical, as Angkor vat in Cambodia, Borobudua in Indonesia, Cham stupa in South Vietnam, and Funan structures in South Vietnam, Ananda temple in Burma, Thaluong in Laos.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

W. Randolph Kloetzli, Buddhist Cosmology, rep, Delhi: 1997, p. 13.