4. Thailand Sculptures (d): Khmer Period

[Full title: Style and the Dating of Sculpture (2): South East Asia (b): Thailand (iv): Khmer Period]

When Angkor once again extended its political control westward, it established outposts in Plateau communities that had previously gained prominence because of their favorable situation along the trade routes connecting the Lower Mekong region and the Central Plains. Now, in the tenth century, these ancient communities acquired Khmer-style temples and along with them political and religious prestige unlike anything they had previously known. Plateau and Angkorean styles and iconographies intermingled, reflecting both local Khmer traditions and remarkable artistic and iconographic contributions from Angkor.

The upper Mun area, which was pivotally located on Mainland South East Asia’s east-west and north-south trade routes, was a likely target for Angkorean expansion. The upper Mun had been settled during the early centuries of the first millennium BC and was the site of some of the area’s largest and most elaborate Iron Period moated settlements. Its distinctively polished black pottery and profusion of elaborate bronze jewelry testified to its economic importance. As evidenced by several bronze images of the Buddha, stone images of deer, and a Dharmacakra, Muang Sima was at least for a while, in the seventh century, an important Dvaravati community. Thus there were complex, multi-layered traditions - Plateau and Angkorean Khmer, Mon, Buddhist, and Hindu–on which the Upper Mun relied, and tenth–century Muang Sima’s buildings reflected its multicultural roots. Unlike Angkor’s temple–mountains, Prasat Bo Eka, located at the center of Muang Sima, was Mahayana Buddhist, while small temples such as Prasat Hin Muang Khaek and Prasat Non Ku, a few kilometers east of Muang Sima, were dedicated to Shiva or Vishnu.

In 1080 a local Khmer chieftain, Jayavarman VI, whose homeland was the western Plateau, seized the throne from the Angkfrean kings and established what is known today as the Mahidharapura dynasty. Jayavarman VI’s reign (until c. 1107) there wereno royal temples built at Angkor, while conversely, in the Upper Mun region building was spectacular.

There no inscriptional evidence to provide details of the brief Mahidharapura period, but architectural remains suggest that Jayavarman VI could only have established his capital at Vimayapura, present-day Phimai, located amidst three branches of the Upper Mun River, thirtyfour kilometers northeast of Prasat Phnom Wan. A magnificent temple, Prasat Phimai, was built near the center of the city and is the region’s only possible contender for royal temple status.^[1] Not only does its design suggest the temple-mountain symbolism of Angkor’s royal temples but the predominance of crowned images depicting conquering and violence seem to reflect a transfer of power from Angkor to the Upper Mun area of the Plateau.

With political control established at Phimai, the importation of sculpture in the round Angkor ceased and local artisans began to produce numerous images of their own. Images that can be attributed to Phimai workshops (such as Phimai’s central naga protected image) are no longer in situ and some are widely scattered in museums and private collection. While only a few of these images can be traced with any certainly to the Upper Mun area, on iconographic and stylistic grounds, art historians have ascribed a number of them to Phimai workshops.

In spite of the reestablishment of Hinduism as a state religion at Angkor and at Prasat Phnom Rung^[2], Phimai-style Buddha images continued to be made at Angkor, on the Plateau, and in Thailand’s Central Plains into the late twelfth century. Stylistic and iconographic elements that had begun to arrive at Phimai from India and Myanmar continued to make their appearance.^[3] Some images appeared in bhumisparsa mudra, and in the late twelfth century there were elaborate altar pieces with images seated beneath a north-Indian style tabernacle. One of Thailand’s most important bronze masterpieces, a two-meter altar piece, most likely from the Upper Mun area and dated to the late twelfth century, was cast in thirteen segments and shows the Buddha with Khmer style crown, in bhumisparsa mudra beneath an ornate tabernacle surmounted by a bodhi tree.

Like Phimai’s Jayavarman VI, Jayavarman VII adopted Buddhism as his state religion, and like his predecessor at Phimai, he installed a Naga protected Buddha in the royal temple as his sacred counterpart. While Angkor Wat’s royal image, like Phimai’s had been supported by numbers of unidentifiable ferocious deities, the Bayon Naga image was accompanied by two gods of special significance; Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, and Prajnaparamita, the goddess of wisdom, the destroyer of ignorance and evil both bodhisattva images would soon abound in the Central Plains. By far the most important site in the southern peripheries of the Central Plains was Muang Singh, located near the confluence of the Kwae Noi and Maeklong Rivers, not far from the old Neolithic site of Ban Kao. Muang Singh was a large city built in Angkorean style: a large square area with several temple complexes enclosed within concentric moats and walls. Because of the ruined condition of the buildings, it is difficult to reconstruct their appearance, but the city is noted for its abundance of Jayavarman VII style sculpture that included both locally made and imported images of Avalokitesvara and Prajnaparamita.

While areas along the perimeters of the Central Plains appear to have been crucially important to Jayavarman VII’s occupation, the king chose Lopburi, located in what was once the core of the Dvaravati heartland, as his provincial capital. Lopburi’s previous history was a lengthy one and linked the new Khmer presence with the region’s ancient past. This had been an important pottery and rice growing area in Neolithic times, and inscriptional evidence suggests that it had been an independent chiefdom before it was incorporated as an important center within the Dvaravati network. Sometime after 1181, Jayavarman VII installed one of his sons as governor at Lopburi, and the Angkorean presence became overwhelming, all but obscuring the city’s earlier periods of habitation. Jayavarman VII’s buildings at Lopburi contrasted decisively with those that he had built in his provincial areas. Many of his temples on the fringes of the Plains appear to have been hastily built by local craftsmen, and constructed of large, roughly hewn, locally mined laterite blocks that were unsuited to carving, their exteriors were embellished with stucco rather than stone reliefs. In contrast, Jayavarman VII’s major Lopburi temple, known today by its Thai name, Phra Prang Sam Yot, was constructed of sandstone and brick rather than laterite, and expert Angkorean workmanship is evident.^[4]

The images that were once enshrined in the Phra Prang Sam Yot towers are no longer there, but their identification is supported not only by Angkorean ideology but also by extant Lopburi images and votive tablets, both of which portray the naga protected Buddha-Avalokitesvara-Prajnaparamita triad.^[5] The Lopburi sculpture included both imported and locally made images of Avalokitesvara and Prajnaparamita executed in the Angkorean style and, more commonly, Naga protected and crowned, double Mudra standing images rendered in Phimai fashion. Crowned and Naga protected Buddha images were now symbolic of both Jayavarman VI’s and Jayavarman VII’s rule, and although the inclusion of the Phimai style images among the all-invasive Angkorean artistic and cultural milieu might seem surprising, there appears to have been a conscious effort on Jayavarman VII’s part to link Phimai as well as Angkor to his new Central Plains capital.

Lopburi’s Phimai-related sculpture is easily identifiable. Some pieces were executed in stone, apparently the result of Angkorean practices, but others were made of high-tin-content bronze that suggests the work of Plateau bronze workers. In either stone or not only with Jayavarman VII’s heavy, stocky pieces but were closer in style to those at Phimai than to similar, chronologically intervening, sculpture at Angkor Wat.

Angkor’s withdrawal from the Plains left the area politically and culturally undefined. Lopburi, as well as Suphanburi, which had superseded U Thong as a major city in the southern Plains, had sometimes functioned as a political center of a few small subsidiary communities. Now, however, free of both strong Angkorean leadership and widespread chiefdom alliances, most communities were acting independently, apparently without unifying leadership, political ideology, or religious doctrines.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

J. Dumarcay & M. Smithies, Cultural Sites of Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia, Kuala Lumpur: 1995, p. 46.

[2]:

S. Van Beek & L. I nvernizzi Tettoni, The Arts of Thailand, Periplus: 1999, p. 85.

[3]:

J. Dumarcay & M. Smithies, Cultural Sites of Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia, Kuala Lumpur: 1995, p. 51.

[4]:

S. Van Beek, & L. I nvernizzi Tettoni, The Arts of Thailand, Periplus: 1999, p. 86.

[5]:

Ibid, p. 93.