|
| As with most early civilizations, religion was woven into the everyday consciousness of the Khmer people, rather than forming a separate part of their lives. The Hindu religion and, later, Buddhism were the beliefs which predominated. Both were derived from India, but they were adapted by the Khmers to their own ways. The great Hindu gods Vishnu and Shiva were the favourites in Cambodia. Vishnu is always seen as a benign force, sustainer of the world order acting for the good of mankind. In sculpture or paintings he is usually shown as a finely proportioned young man with four arms. He generally wears a cylindrical head-dress and rides the mythical Garuda, a bird who slays snakes. Sometimes, however, Vishnu himself rides a serpent, in this case the symbol of the primeval waters, and in these works of art the god is in a cosmic sleep often aspired to by the mystics among his adherents. In these works of art, other gods are seen to be awakening Vishnu and urging him to save the world from evil powers. |
|
Shiva was even more important in Cambodia. He is the god of creation destruction-creation, but the Khmers emphasized his benevolent aspect as the creative male principal. He was usually represented by a phallus or linga of stone embedded in a plinth, which represented the earth itself as the female principal. The linga was thus in no way obscene, but the symbol of the original creation of the world, of the fertility of the land and of the stable axis around which the earth revolves. When artists depicted Shiva in human form, he was shown as a young man with three eyes and heavy hair gathered behind his head, grasping a thunderbolt or a trident and mounted on a white bull. He is a god of fertile light and heat, of the sun and fire. In Cambodia, Shiva was merged with the personality of the monarch during many reigns, and was worshipped as Devaraja, god-king. The third god of the supreme Hindu triad, Brahma, was unimportant in Cambodia, though those temples which take the Indian three-towered form acknowledged his position. But among the various kinds of Khmer temple, developed from Indian models, it is the temple-mountain that is the most important achievement of Angkor-especially Angkor as it survives today. In the Khmer culture before the downfall of Funan, single hills or mountains were already the most sacred places. Their importance was this. |
|
Creation
myths in many parts of the world tell of the female primeval mound floating
on the timeless waters until it is pierced by the shaft of the male principal,
fixing it in place and creating order. Hindu cosmology sees the world
as a gigantic square surrounded by continuous chains of mountains, with
the endless primeval oceans beyond. In the centre of the square of land
there rises the lofty Mount Meru, mythical world axis and dwelling place
of the gods. It is difficult for Western minds to grasp that the spiritual
truth of the model for these people made any apparent differences from
it, in the visible world, entirely unimportant. And so for them any mountain
could come to represent Mount Meru.
|
|
|
|
|