16 - Individuals under the Glaze: Local Transformations of Indianisation in the Decorative Lintels of Angkor

Summary

When medieval Khmer artists chiselled into the sandstone lintel, components of the lintel design were entirely of their own making. The sovereign, project superintendent, and team supervisor all possessed the requisite power to tell artisans what to carve, but idiosyncratic differences in every work indicate that the majority of the specific decision-making was left to the artist. Control over every small detail of artistic creation would have been difficult to realise and administer. The patrons of the sculptural and architectural commissions apparently trusted the ability of the artists to produce work with the requisite symbolic and aesthetic power. Most of the time, artists selected and rendered iconography from a repertoire of forms known to them from training and tradition. But the medieval Khmer artistic tradition also facilitated innovation and difference between objects. The most important decorative lintels, situated on the most visible prasat and façades were often a chance for artists to demonstrate their creativity and skill by distinguishing their work. Even lintels that were carved at modest village shrines possess eccentricities in iconography and form. The recognition of the multitude differences in decorative lintels opens the way for a more exuberant and humane perspective of artistic change in the Angkorian world. When variation in the different components of artistic and material culture are assessed, change can be perceived as dynamic and constant, where medieval Khmer artists actively make novel associations of iconography and form.

The monuments of Cambodia abound with Indian derived motifs and deities. The medieval inscriptions likewise reveal a profound familiarity with the corpus of Indian Sanskrit literature. The substantial influence of Indian cultures on Southeast Asia, known as ‘Indianisation’ has framed much research on the Angkorian world. In order to understand medieval Khmer culture, repeated reference has been made to Indian meanings and texts which may have had little association with specific Southeast Asian contexts. This has created a problematic and uneasy dichotomy where the indigenous elements of medieval Khmer culture were determined by subtracting the correspondences with India. There is a body of contemporary scholarship, however, that seeks to emphasise Southeast Asian initiative through recognition of detail in the historical process.