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Angkor Wat Apsara Cambodia
Apsaras Khmer.
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A great example of Khmer history and
art are Apsaras and other relief art. This
relief cover parts of Angkor's temples. Cambodia
history has a long record and Khmer people
contributed a big share to the development of
south east Asia. |
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Cambodia Khmer was not always within the borders of today a few
hundred years ago the Khmer empire stretched almost until the
border of today Thailand Malaysia and Thailand Myanmar. Over the
centuries the country got bigger, smaller and so on.
Late in the eighth century the kingdom of Chen La suffered an
administrative breakdown and disintegrated into small, weak
states. At the same time contact with India was lost and trade
was interrupted. It is more than likely that the rising fortunes
of the kingdoms of Indonesia, first at Shrivijaya, and then in
central Java, eclipsed Chen La's.
The
establishment of the Khmer empire
in
Cambodia was to some extent a function of Indonesian culture.
There was, however, no invasion. The success of the Khmers was a
native success, and amounted to a complete reorganization of the
old Fou Nan- |
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Chen La
kingdom. The Khmer
people pulled the fragmented region
together, and a new capital was
eventually founded, one of the art forms
the people developed where sandstone
relief the best at Angkor are Apsara
relief and the creation of bas relief
decorating walls at Angkok Wat and
Angkor Thom plus other temples and
ruins.
The main
architect of this success of Khmer
culture was Jayavarman II, who had lived
a substantial part of his life in Java,
at the Shailendra court. He was in some
way connected with an old Cambodian
Khmer royal family, and returned to
Cambodia about AD 790, having been
steeped in Indonesian cultural
conceptions. The
Shailendra dynasty of Indonesia claimed to be the direct heirs
to the power of Fou Nan; they may in fact have been descendants
of a ruling house of Fou Nan who had fled to Java as Chen La
established its hegemony over Cambodia
Khmer. The Shailendra were an aggressive
dynasty. They ruled in Malaya, and
raided as far as Tonkin. They are best
known, however, for the large-scale
works of Buddhist art they |
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commissioned in Java, especially Borobudur. It
is even possible that the sudden appearance of the
Buddhist sculpture of Prei Kmeng may owe something to
the Indonesians, but exactly what and how is not clear.
His drive for Khmer culture power was the desire to copy
the Shailendra pattern of magnificent dynastic power,
supported by a strong religious cult expressed through
all the resources of art which later culminated in great
sandstone bas-relief such as depicting scenes of warfare
and
not only one Apsara
at today Angkor Cambodia.
One of his most significant acts of the Khmer ruler
during |
Apsara
at Angkor. |
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Modern Apsara,
Angkor Wat,
Siem Reap. |
his campaign was to establish in 802 one of his
successive capitals at Mahendraparvata on Phnom Kulen,
about twenty miles from Angkor. He did not stay there
long, for the site was unsuitable for a capital. It was
a mountain, however, and its name means 'the mountain of
the great King of the Gods'. The Shailendra dynasty
claimed the title 'Mountain Kings', and Jayavarman
clearly wished to demonstrate that he, too, was heir to
this
title by
literally living on a sacred Cambodian mountain. Like
great monuments of Javanese art, the later Khmer classic
monuments were intended to convey the image of the
sacred mountain, on whose summit dwelt the king's
divinity, in intimate communion with the gods, himself
as one of them. Jayavarman also established the basic
royal cult of the Khmers, check the Khmer and Apsara
pictures here |
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He summoned a Brahmin,
learned the appropriate
texts, and erected a lingam (phallic emblem, sacred to
Shiva) with all the correct Indian ritual. This lingam,
in which the king's own soul was held to reside, became
the source and centre of power for the Khmer dynasty.
At the same time and by that act he severed all ties of
dependence upon Indonesia. Jayavarman died in 850, and
was succeeded by his son Jayavarman III, who ruled until
877. One of Jayavarman II's Khmer capitals was at Sambor.
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Sculptures and Apsaras
were parts of Khmer temples
he built there seem to have
amounted to a revival of the old Chen La style. At
Banteay Prei Nokar and Roluos (where he died) he also
had old style temples constructed. But on Phnom Kulen,
where the sacred Khmer lingam was set up, he seems to
have ordered the first attempt to imitate the cosmic
mountain in the form of the brick pyramid of his temple.
In about AD 800 at another
of his Khmer capitals, Amarendrapura, he seems to have
made a three-tiered brick pyramid crowned by a group of
five shrines, dominating the plain. Even here the Khmer
shrine architecture represents a continuation of the old
Chen La pattern of tiers of diminishing repeats of the
basic cell. But in the elaborate sculptured ornament of
his temples Jayavarman made a radical departure.
He evidently called on
artists from both Java and Champa to assist in or
supervise the work of the Kulen. A form of makara head vomiting a deer comes from Champa, as does the style and
type of other relief, this is typical old style. A Javanese form of the head
of the kala monster is used. But the larger icon-figures
made for Jayavarman III continue the native Cambodian or
Khmer culture traditions, somewhat stylized, perhaps.
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Apsaras,
Angkor temples. |
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Apsara Dance, Angkor Thom. |
Angkor,
Khmer, Chinese and Cambodia,
The Khmer Vishnu figures
gradually dispense with the
solid aureole supporting the
arms. They show the Prasat Andet forehead-peak, but
their eyebrows gradually lose their clear bows and
condense into a single continuous line.Under Jayavarman the Khmer culture main lines of its
inspiration had been laid down. The real emergence of
Khmer art began under Indravarman (877-89). This Khmer
king is represented in the inscriptions he commissioned
as a scholar as well as a successful Khmer ruler.
He claims to have studied the monistic Vedanta
philosophy of the great Indian Shankaracharya, with a
Brahmin learned in that tradition. He pacified the Khmer
kingdom and his authority seems to have been recognized
in the most distant parts of Southeast Asia. But the
achievement for which he is remembered today is his
laying of the foundations of Angkor.It is also supposed that Jayavarman II commissioned a lesser prototype, Ak Yum.
Associated with these two great Khmer monuments are a
large number of magnificent sculptures. There are, of
course, the Khmer figures of deities in high relief,
attached to buildings, among them figures of the |
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heavenly girls or Apsaras
whose presence helps to
demonstrate the divinity of the shrine. Their postures
are far less emphatically female, far more stiff and
motionless than such Khmer images were earlier, when
they were closer to their Indian prototypes, or than
they became later.
They do, however, adumbrate
one interesting technical invention which became still
more important in later Khmer styles, an invention which
was not yet incorporated into the freestanding figures: the
ring of the top edge of the waist-cloth, where it
encircles the hips, is canted forwards, so as to present
itself almost in plan view. This greatly enhances the
three-dimensional suggestiveness of the sandstone relief.
The most important Khmer
inventions of Indravarman's artists are the
free-standing sandstone sculptures, especially the
grouped Khmer figures. The Nagas and Garudas of the
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Heavenly girls or Apsaras,
Angkor Cambodia. |
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Bakong causeways have been mentioned. They are, it is
true, clumsy compared with later similar inventions.
The Nagas stretch like thick, serpentine rails flanking the
approach roads, and the massive Garudas punctuate them
at intervals. But this very idea, that sculptures of
mythical beings should actually come down from the
building and articulate into the everyday world the
magical space of which the Khmer temple shrine is formed
- represents a major artistic achievement. |
Apsara Dance
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