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Dancing architecture at Angkor: ‘Halls with dancers’ in Jayavarman VII's temples

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2015

Swati Chemburkar
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Abstract

The spiritual power of dance in Cambodia has been valued since pre-Angkorian times, and the plentiful images of dance and music in the bas-reliefs of the great monuments of Angkor suggest that this tradition was markedly enhanced in the reign of Jayavarman VII, as a contemporary Chinese report attests. This article explores the ‘halls with dancers’ of the Ta Prohm, Preah Khan and Bayon temples built by king Jayavarman VII and concludes that here dance became a determinant in some Khmer sacred architecture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 3 , October 2015 , pp. 514 - 536
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2015 

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References

1 Claude Jacques, ‘The historical development of Khmer culture from the death of Sūryavarman II to the 16th century’, Bayon: New perspectives, ed. Joyce Clark (Bangkok: River Books, 2007), p. 30.

2 Phillipe Stern, Les monuments du style du Bàyon et Jayavarman VII, Musée Guimet, Recherches et Documents d'Art et d'Archéologie 9 (Paris: Presse Universitaires de France, 1965), pp. 52–3, 61, 68, 74. Olivier Cunin and Etsuo Uchida's work on the magnetic susceptibility of the sandstone blocks in the ‘salles aux danseuses’ confirms they were late additions in Jayavarman VII's temples. Some halls were originally built in wood and then replaced by the current stone structures as in Ta Prohm, Preah Khan and Banteay Kdei. The magnetic susceptibility tests determined which halls were built from the same quarry shipments. Cunin and Uchida, ‘Contribution of magnetic susceptibility of the sandstone to the analysis of architectural history of Bayon style monuments’, in Annual report on the technical survey of Angkor monument (Tokyo: Japan International Cooperation Center, 2002), p. 216. For an in-depth architectural analysis of Bayon-style monuments, see Olivier Cunin, ‘De Ta Prohm au Bayon: Analyse comparative de l'histoire architecturale des principaux monuments Khmers du style du Bayon’ (Ph.D. diss., Institut National Polytechnique de Lorraine, 2004).

3 The phrase ‘salle aux danseuses’ was first coined by Philippe Stern as an architectural structure common to several Bayon-style monuments; see Stern, Les monuments, pp. 52–3.

4 See Bruno Dagens, trans., Mayamatam: Treatise of housing architecture and iconography, 2 vols. (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 2007), v. 26a, p. 457. The treatise mentions different maṇḍapas for different uses such as consecration, festival celebrations, entertainment, dances and communal meals. The most remarkable of maṇḍapas are those installed in front of the temples (ibid., v. 188, 189, p. 497). See further Adam Hardy, The temple architecture of India (Chichester: John Wiley, 2007), pp. 90–105.

5 The terms dance and music are broadly used to include recitations, performances and festival entertainment. See Saveros Pou, ‘Music and dance in Ancient Cambodia as evidenced by Old Khmer epigraphy’, East and West 47, 1–4 (1997): 232.

6 This pose, with the standing leg flexed and the other drawn up against it, can also be called the ardhamaṇḍalī pose, according to the Indian dance historian Kapila Vatsyayan's Dance sculpture in Sarangapaṇi temple (Madras: Society for Archaeological, Historical and Epigraphical Research, 1982), p. 112. The origin of this pose can be traced to Bharata's Nātyaśastra, trans. Manmohan Ghosh (Calcutta: Asiatic Society, 1950), p. 48. The ardhamaṇḍalī is the 28th of the 108 karanas or dance movements mentioned in this work.

7 Olivier Cunin, ‘The Bayon: An archaeological and architectural study’, in Bayon: New perspectives, p. 222; p. 169, fig. 52–1; and p. 223, fig. 6–3–3–1.

8 Sharrock calls this third and final phase of Jayavarman VII's Buddhist architectural decoration ‘Yoginīfication’, with 6,250 dancing female figures carved into the entrance pillars and gopura friezes of the Bayon alone. He uses the term ‘yoginī’, suggesting they are emblems of a yoginī Tantra cult derived from the Hevajra-tantra and calls these structures yoginī halls. Peter D. Sharrock, ‘The mystery of the face towers’, in Bayon: New perspectives, p. 260. It is beyond the scope of this article to consider the argument for seeing these dancing female figures as ‘yoginī’. Many Hevajra and dancing female bronze icons have been found in Angkor and beyond, but the definitive reference to yoginī is found in Phimai temple carvings and some bronzes.

9 Jacques, Claude, ‘The inscriptions of Cambodia’, Nokor Khmer 2 (Jan–Mar. 1970): 22Google Scholar, 24; Cœdès, George, ‘La stèle de Ta-Prohm’, Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient (BEFEO) 6, 6 (1906): 77–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Cravath, Paul, ‘Ritual origins of the classical dance drama of Cambodia’, Asian Theatre Journal 3, 2 (1986): 184CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 The 1014 CE Tanjavur temple inscription no. 66 (on the north face of the compound wall) indicates that 700 people were on the temple payroll to perform religious and artistic functions. The inscription mentions 400 dancing girls by their names. See E. Hultzsch and V. Venkayya, eds., South Indian inscriptions (SII), vol. 2 (Madras: Suprintendent Government Press, 1891–1916), available online, http://www.whatisindia.com/inscriptions/south_indian_inscriptions/tanjavur_temple/.

12 Hardy, Temple architecture of India, pp. 93, 96.

13 Chau Ju-Kua: His work on the Chinese and Arab trade in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, entitled Chu-fan-chi, trans. F. Hirth and W.W. Rockhill (St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911), pp. 95, 100.

14 At the time when the temple as an institution was expanding, the word patra (singing and dancing), starts appearing in the inscriptions of medieval Karnataka. See Aloka Parasher and Usha Naik, ‘Temple girls of medieval Karnataka’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 23, 1 (1986): 66–7. The 1058 CE Nageśvara temple inscription no. 93 at Sudi, Karnataka, built by Nagadeva (carved on the front mandapa pillar) mentions the ‘ones acting for the god's enjoyment and dancers graced the four pillars’. See F.W. Thomas, ed., ‘Inscriptions of Sudi’, Epigraphia Indica (EI), 15 (1919–20): 75–103, and Hardy, The temple architecture of India, p. 33.

15 George Michell, Hindu art and architecture (London: Thames and Hudson, 2000), p. 89.

16 Paul Younger, ‘Srirangam’, in Temple towns of Tamilnadu, ed. George Michell (Bombay: Marg, 2003), p. 84.

17 ‘During the 6 daily rituals performed at temples, the deity is treated as a royal personage with 16 rites of adoration including music.’ Carl Gustav Diehl, ‘Instrument and purpose: Studies on rites and rituals in South India (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1956), p. 90.

18 See Ian Glover, Early trade between India and Southeast Asia: A link in the development of the world trading system (Hull: CSEAS, University of Hull, 1989); Robert Brown, The Dvaravati wheels of the law and the Indianization of South East Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1996); Herman Kulke, ‘Indian colonies, Indianization or cultural convergence? Reflections on the changing image of India's role in South-east Asia’, in Onderzoek in Zuidoost-Azië: Agenda's voor de Faren Negentig, ed. H.S. Nordholt (Leiden: Vakgroep Talen en Culturen van Zuidoost-Azië en Oceanië, Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, 1990), pp. 102–10; Mabbett, Ian, ‘The Indianization of Southeast Asia: Reflections on the prehistoric sources’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 8, 1 (1977): 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas Maxwell, ‘Religion at the time of Jayavarman VII’, in Bayon: New perspectives, pp. 74–87); Michael Vickery, Society, economics and politics in pre-Angkor Cambodia: The 7th–8th centuries (Tokyo: Centre for East Asian Cultural Studies for UNESCO, Toyo Bunko, 1998).

19 Burton Stein, A history of India (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 125.

20 We have clear evidence in the Khmer inscriptions of the presence of Indian Brahmins in the region. See inscriptions (K.809; K.904; K.438; K.910; K.923 v.14; K.300, v. 7–10) in George Cœdès, Inscriptions du Cambodge (IC), vols. I–VIII (Hanoi and Paris: École française d'Extrême-Orient [EFEO], 1937–1966); see also inscriptions (K.263 v. 30, K.95 v. 5 and K.323 v. 6), in Auguste Barth, Inscriptions sanscrites de Cambodge (ISC), Notices et extrait des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Nationale 27, 1 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1885), pp. 77–97, 391–411. See also Pelliot, Paul, ‘Le Fou-nan’, BEFEO 3 (1903): 258–303CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Pelliot states that a ‘Chinese source of the 5th century cited in the Taiping yulan, the general encyclopedia (leishu) published by Li Fang and others in 984 CE, reports that there were more than 1000 Indian Brāhmins in Dunsun, a principality in the same area and a dependency of the early kingdom of southern Kambudjadeśa that the Chinese called Funan. People of Dunsun followed the Brahmanical religion and practices.’

21 See the term ‘upādhyāya thmoṅ’ in (K.181:A:9), Cœdès, IC, VI, 140, translated as ‘a professor of percussion music’. The word upādhyāya has strong Brahmanical connotations in the Indian context and refers to the one who is well-versed in sacred texts, especially the Upaniśadas. Based on the eleventh-century Sdok Kak Thom inscription (K.235) Groslier describes the role of Brahmans as authorities on art and music in the royal court. See Bernard-Philippe Groslier, ‘The Angkor kings’ (Preface), in Royal Cambodian Ballet (Phnom Penh: Cambodian Information Department, 1963), pp. 3–5. The inscription (K.235) was first published by Cœdés, George and Dupont, Pierre, ‘Les stéles de Sdok Kak Thom, Phnom Sandak et Preah Vihar’, BEFEO 43 (1943–46): 56–154CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Sastri mentions two naval expeditions of Rājendra Chōḷa to the Malay Peninsula based on the early 11th century inscriptions. See K.A. Nilakanta Sastri, The Colas (Madras: University of Madras, rev. ed., 1955), p. 213.

23 Hall, Kenneth, ‘International trade and foreign diplomacy in early medieval South India’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (JESHO) 21 (1978): 75–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 The Puttūr copperplate inscription dated 1020 CE, of South Indian king Rājēndra Chōḷa has perplexed historians with its reference to gifts made to the Chōḷa king by the king of Kāmbōja (Annual Report on Indian Epigraphy [ARE] [1949–50]: 3–5). It is generally accepted that this king of Kāmbōja is the Khmer king of Cambodia and not the king of Kāmbhōja in northeastern India, an area with which the Chōḷas had no contact. Identifying this reference as a record of a request for Chōḷa aid, R.C. Majumdar, (‘The overseas expeditions of King Rājēndra Cōḷa’, Artibus Asiae 24 [1962]: 338–42), has interpreted it to be a Khmer response to a threat of (Srivijayan) military pressure. George Cœdès (IC, VII, 164–89) suggested that the gift of the King of Kāmbōja in the Puttūr plates corresponded in time to a Khmer military campaign into the Chao Phraya river valley and was Sūryavarman I's request for Chōḷa aid against his rival Jayavīravarman of Tambralinga.

Reference to the second gift to Rājēndra Chōḷa from the Kāmbōja king appears in an inscription of Kulōttuṅga Chōḷa I (r. 1070–1122) dated 1114 CE, which was found in Chidambaram, South Arcot district (ARE, 119 [1888]; the text is published in E. Hultzsch, ed., EI, V, 13C [1898–99], p. 106). The inscription records that Rājendra Chōḷa I placed the stone which he had received from the ‘Kamboja-raja’ in the temple. The stone had been shown to Rājendra as a curiosity; there is no mention of a request for military aid in return. The author suggests that this second inscription depicts the true nature of the gift in the Puttūr inscription, that the Khmer king sent a chariot and this stone as ‘curiosities [to] win the friendship’ of the Chōḷa in an economic rather than military sense. Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund think that in the second instance, the Cambodian king was Sūryavarman II; Kulke and Rothermund, History of India (London: Routledge, 2004 [1986]), p. 125.

25 Hall, Kenneth, ‘Khmer commercial development and foreign contacts under Sūryavarman I’, JESHO 18, 3 (1975): 334–6Google Scholar.

26 Cœdès translation of (K.262, K.263), IC, IV, 108–39; (K.987), IC, VI, 183–6, 225–7.

27 See Cœdès translation of the late 10th century Prasat Cār inscription (K.257), IC, IV, 140–50, ‘objects such as scented wood, spices, gold, silver and cloth for the deity were acquired from the merchants’; and see (K.353), IC, V, 133–42, ‘… in return the merchants were reimbursed with land, buffalo, rice and slaves’.

28 Gillian Green's study of tapestry reliefs of Angkor Wat demonstrates fragments of Indian fabric in the Khmer court. For e.g., Sūryavarman II is seated on a cloth with a four-petalled flower pattern; see Green, ‘Indic impetus? Innovation in textile usage in Angkorian period in Cambodia’, JESHO 43, 3 (2000): 277–313; Zhou Daguan's account regards the fabric from the ‘Western Seas’ (thought to refer to parts of India) as the most refined. See Peter Harris, Zhou Daguan: A record of Cambodia: The land and its people (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2007), pp. 50, 101.

29 The Preah Khan temple stele mentions the word bhogā (v. C46: 56) which literally means ‘objects of the god's enjoyment’. These objects of enjoyment are mentioned in (v. B65, 66:48, v. C 8, 9, 10, 22:51, 53). See Maxwell, Thomas, ‘The stele inscription of Preah Khan, Angkor’, UDAYA: Journal of Khmer Studies 8 (2007): 1–114Google Scholar. For the Chōḷa inscriptions, see inscriptions (no. 62, 66), SII, II.

30 My thanks to Olivier Cunin for bringing to my notice the small vestibules in front of the central sanctuaries of Ta Prohm, Preah Khan and Bayon, which are configured identically to the much larger space of the ‘halls with dancers’.

31 Maxwell, ‘The stele inscription of Preah Khan’: 31–2; Maxwell, Thomas, ‘A new Khmer and Sanskrit inscription of Banteay Chhmar’, UDAYA 10, 9 (2012): 136.Google Scholar

32 Cœdès, IC.

33 See Maxwell's translation of (v. A58, v. B5), ‘The stele inscription of Preah Khan’: 30. This must refer to three or more caṅkrama because the Sanskrit word ‘caṅkrameṣu’ is in the locative plural, not the dual, case. The hall with dancers structure does have four-pillared pathways, but there are no sanctuaries for the gods.

34 The first to identify the ‘hall with dancers’ structure with the walkways of the inscription was Christophe Pottier, ‘Préparation d'une carte archéologique de la région d'Angkor’, Mémoire de D.E.A. UFR Orient et Monde Arabe (Paris: Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris III, 1993, p. 32, n.2), followed by Cunin, ‘De Ta Prohm au Bayon’, p. 359. Both mention the ‘hall with dancers’ as a location of caṅkrama without indicating its usage. We have no idea which text Maxwell refers to, to justify the meaning of caṅkrama in stanza 39 as a place for monks to perform walking meditation. The primary meaning is established in stanza 29: a pathway leading from one place to another; in this case, possibly referring to the pathway/s connecting the ‘rice god house’ with the ‘house of fire’. See Swati Chemburkar, ‘Banteay Chhmar: Ritual space of the temple’, in Banteay Chhmar: Garrison-temple of the Khmer empire, ed. Peter D. Sharrock (Bangkok: River Books, 2015), pp. 159, 160.

35 I have assumed here ‘sanctuaries’ for the gods though the inscription neither mentions the word ‘sanctuaries’ nor the identity of the gods.

36 (D 38:158) in Maxwell, ‘The stele inscription of Preah Khan’: 72, mentions festival images being brought from other temples during the festivals. Preah Khan would have had some provision for a pedestal in the hall with dancers much like that of Ta Prohm to receive the festival images.

37 While calculating the ten sanctuaries of the caṅkrama, I have not considered the sanctuaries placed on the main axis of the temple (PK63, PK45 and PK36); as we know PK1 and PK63 are mentioned in the inscription, containing respectively one and three gods. This is one possible solution for the re-location of the ten sanctuaries.

38 For the relative chronology of the wooden structures, see Olivier Cunin, ‘A study of wooden structures: A contribution to the architectural history of the Bayon style monuments’, in Materializing Southeast Asia's past: Selected papers from the 12th International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists, vol. 2, ed. Marijke Klokke and Véronique Degroot (Singapore: NUS Press, 2013), p. 105, fig. 6.35.

39 Maurice Glaize, Les monuments du groupe d'Angkor (Paris: A. Portail, 1944); anon. English trans. of 4th ed. by Jean Boisseleier (1993), p. 177.

40 The storage space of PK146 is limited, so it is more likely to be the symbolic centre for the blessing and distribution of rice grown by the villages belonging to Preah Khan. The king presided over the annual festival when rice was symbolically burnt, for the king was seen as the source and dispenser of the harvest. The rice ritual is made clearer later in the inscription. See Maxwell's commentary on (v. B5, B6:39), ‘The stele inscription of Preah Khan’: 30–32.

41 Both these buildings belong to the third construction phase of the temple complex. Olivier Cunin, ‘Preah Khan: Architecture, functions and significance’, in Preah Khan monastic complex, Angkor, Cambodia, ed. Michael D. Coe and John H. Stubbs (London: SCALA, 2011), p. 32.

42 Toni Samantha Phim and Ashley Thompson, Dance in Cambodia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 74, 78, 80, 81.

43 Zhou Daguan's contemporary account recorded that ‘… in the seventh month of the Khmer calendar when, new rice, ready for harvesting was ceremoniously received outside the city gates and burned as an offering to all the Buddhas. Countless women in chariots and on elephants came to watch’. Harris, ‘Zhou Daguan’, p. 63.

44 Inscription (K.90) mentions offerings made during utsava or festivals; see Cœdès, IC, V, 25–7; 10th century (K.659), IC, V, 144:20; 11th century (K.989), IC, VII, 178:23. Pou (‘Music and dance in ancient Cambodia’: 232, 243) mentions inscriptions with the ‘Skt. loanword kãri’ as being ‘derived from Sanskrit kārin or actor’.

45 In the post-Angkorian tradition the great festival is called mahosrab, a corrupted form of Old Khmer mahotsava. See Pou, ibid.: 232; Inscription (K.155) mentions a female puppeteer. See Cœdès, IC, V, 66: II: 5.

46 Harris, Zhou Daguan, pp. 82–3.

47 Bernard-Philippe Groslier, The art of Indochina, trans. George Lawrence (New York: Crown, 1970), p. 32.

48 Victor Goloubew, ‘Sur l'origine et la diffusion des tambours métalliques’, in Praehistorica Asiae Orientalis (Hanoi: EFEO, 1932), pp. 137–44; this interpretation was supported by A.J. Bernet Kempers, ‘The kettledrums of Southeast Asia: A Bronze Age world and its aftermath’, Modern Quaternary Studies in Southeast Asia, 10 (Rotterdam: Balkema, 1988): 1–59; see also Loofs-Wissowa, Helmut, ‘Dongson drums: Instruments of shamanism or regalia? A new interpretation of their decoration may provide the answer’, in Arts Asiatiques 46 (1991): 39–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Evelin Maspero and Guy Porée, Moeurs et coutumes des Khmers (Paris: Pavot, 1938), p. 147.

50 Cœdès, George, ‘Etudes Cambodgiennes. La data du Bayon’, BEFEO 28 (1928): 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 Inscription (K.713), Jacques, ‘Inscriptions of Cambodia’: 28.

52 Inscriptions (K.323, A, 63), Barth, ‘Stèle de Lolei’, ISC, p. 391; for the alternative translation see, Saveros Pou, ‘Nouvelles inscriptions du Cambodge II’, in Collection de textes et documents sur I'Indochine XX (Paris: EFEO, 1996).

53 Inscription (K.282, C, 27), Barth, ‘Steles du Thnal Baray’, ISC, p. 474 and ‘Stèle de Lolei’, ISC, p. 319.

54 (K.359) was found near the Cambodian village of Veal Kantal just below the Lao border, which lists gifts from the brother-in-law of King Bhāvavarman to a Śiva temple that included copies of the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa from which daily recitation were instituted. See Barth, ISC, p. 30.

55 Inscription (K.270), Cœdès, IC, IV, 70:16, mentions the word along with the word tmon or percussion player.

56 (K.273 st. 87),Cœdès, , ‘La stèle de Ta Prohm’, BEFEO 6, 1/2 (1906): 77–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Based on the inscription (K.356) in Cœdès (IC, IV, 17) Pou translates the word vāca as a reciter performing a divine service. See Pou, ‘Music and dance in Ancient Cambodia’: 242.

58 Pou, ‘Music and dance in ancient Cambodia’: 234. Based on her studies of Nātyaśastra, Vatsyayan has demonstrated the shared architectural feature of the playhouse with the dance hall or nātyamaṇḍapa in the Indian context. See Kapila Vatsyayan, The square and the circle of the Indian arts (New Delhi: Roli Books, 1983), pp. 43–8.

59 See Maxwell's commentary on (v. A59, A 60), ‘The stele inscription of Preah Khan’: 21.

60 Ibid.: 72.

61 The 11th century Prasat Ta Keo inscription mentions ‘a palanquin in which is placed the ten-armed Lord Nātakeśvara (dancing Śiva) with all his ornaments’. See (K.276), Cœdès, IC, IV, 154–5.

62 (K.155), Cœdès, IC, V, 65; Pou, ‘Music and dance in ancient Cambodia’: 246.

63 A 7th century inscription (K.51), Cœdès, IC, V, 14–16, mentions the dancers Kandin, Ata, Tittaru and Ngamgor being donated by Indradatta.

64 (K.600), Cœdès, IC, II, 23.

65 (K.155), Cœdès, IC, V, 64–8.

66 For words such as Kinnara, Trisarī, Vīṇa, see (K.205), Cœdès, IC, III, 5:14; (K.669), IC, I, 171: 26, and (K.741), IC, V, 161:10.

67 (K.659), Cœdès IC, V, 143:20 and (K.989), IC, VII, 178: 23 mention the word kāri in connection with ceremonies. A male servant ‘bhanda’ is mentioned with respect to ceremonies in (K.78) IC, VI, 13: 19. It is not a Khmer word and Pou traces it to the Sanskrit for buffoon. Buffoonery performed by monkeys was a crucial part of Rāmāyaṇa theatre at all types and times in Cambodia. See Pou, ‘Music and dance in ancient Cambodia’: 243.

68 George Groslier made reproductions of various musical instruments from the temple reliefs; see Groslier, Recherches sur les Cambodgiens (Paris: A. Challamel, 1921), ch. 12.

69 Jacob Judith, ‘Sanskrit loanwords’ in pre-Angkor Khmer’, in Cambodian linguistics, literature and history: Collected articles, ed. D.A. Smyth (London: SOAS, University of London, 1993), pp. 129–30.

70 See inscriptions (K.137 LV), Cœdès, IC, II, 115–18; (K.557, st. 33–34), IC, VIII, 166 and (K. 155), IC, V, 64. See Judith Jacob, ‘The deliberate use of foreign vocabulary by the Khmer: Changing fashions, methods and sources’, in Cambodian linguistics, p. 151.

71 The Chōḷa dancers too bore names that were royally significant such as Rājarāji, Rājakeśari, or Śrīdevī. Tanjavur temple inscription (no. 66), SII, vol 2.

72 Pou, ‘Music and dance in ancient Cambodia’: 243–4.

73 In 1965 and 1967 there were serious droughts in a number of provinces in Cambodia. Brief announcements were made in the Kambuja magazine of these two years (a magazine started by King Norodom Sihanouk in 1965 that covered royal activities, agriculture and economic progress of the country) by delegations requesting the king to perform dance ceremonies to bring rain. On both occasions, Sihanouk offered a dance performance for the invocation of supernatural forces in the throne room of Wat Keo palace. In her study of sacred dances, Solange Thierry, Les danses sacrées au Cambodge (Paris: Editions du seuil, 1963), pp. 363, has pointed out the connection between the celestial and terrestrial worlds.

74 See (K.273, LXIV–LXVII, LXXXVII), Cœdès, ‘La stèle de Ta Prohm’: 77–8.

75 See Maxwell (v. 76), p. 51 and (v. D24), p. 69, ‘The stele inscription of Preah Khan’; and (K.908, CXLIV); George Cœdès, ‘La stèle du Praḥ Khan d'Angkor’, BEFEO 41, 2 (1941): 297.

76 A Khmer word that occurs in the inscription (K.155) is pedā, derived from Skt. peṭaka, which Pou translates as company or troop and thus pedānātaka or pedānātta is a ‘group or company of dancers’. See Pou, ‘Music and dance in ancient Cambodia’: 246.

77 See (K.831) and (K.693), Cœdès, IC, V, 147–8, 205–18; Pou, ‘Music and dance in ancient Cambodia’: 240; Mabbett thinks that in certain periods a varṇa could have been a group of individuals appointed by the king and granted with properties. Most of the varṇas were in association with boxers, sculptors, engravers, flywhisk holders and people responsible for royal pleasures. See Ian Mabbett, ‘Varnas in Angkor and the Indian Caste System’, Journal of Asian Studies 36, 3 (1977): 434, 436.

78 Tanjavur temple inscriptions in SII, vol. 2, contain: an order of the king declaring that certain villages were exempted from the tax as they had been granted to the Tanjavur temple (no. 23); records of the daily allowance of paddy for temple reciters (no. 65); records of land donations to the dancing girls and the donations made by them (no. 66).

79 See (K. 444) Coedès, IC, II, 65–8; Chakravarti, Adhir, ‘The caste system in ancient Cambodia’, Journal of Ancient Indian History 4 (1970–71): 30Google Scholar.

80 Prasat Ben stele inscription (B: 8, 9) refer to Jayavarman II and Sūryavarman I reorganising varṇas. See Cœdès, IC, VII, 175.

81 Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, p. 53.

82 Sharrock, ‘The mystery of the face towers’, p. 262.

83 Ibid, p. 262.

84 See (K.214, X), Cœdès, IC, II, 204; (K.702, 9–12), IC, V, 225; (K.356, 17–22), ‘Le site de Janadipa d'après une inscription de Pràsàt Khnà’, George Cœdès, BEFEO 43 (1943): 10.

85 A number of bronze figures from Cambodia and Thailand have been published. See Robert T. Bowie, The arts of Thailand (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960), fig. 50; Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Schätze aus Thailand: Kunst eines buddhischen Königreiches (Köln: Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, 1963), fig. 38; Georges Groslier, ‘Recherches sur les Cambodgiens’, pl. XXVIII–D; George Cœdès, ‘Bronzes Khmèrs’ Ars asiatica 5 (Paris: G. van Oest, 1923), pl. XIX, 1 and 3; Emma Bunker and Douglas Latchford, Khmer bronzes: New interpretations of the past (Chicago: Art Media Resources, 2011), pp. 374, 385.

86 Kaimal, Padma, ‘Early Chōḷa kings and “Early Chōḷa temples”: Art and the evolution of kingship’, Artibus Asiae 56, 1–2 (1996): 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 Kenneth Hall, ‘Merchants, rulers and priests in an early South Indian sacred centre: Cidambaram in the age of the Cōlās’, in Structure and society in early South India: Essays in honour of Noboru Karashima, ed. Kenneth Hall (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 87–95. For a detailed study of Śiva Naṭarāja as Chola emblem see Padma Kaimal, ‘Shiva Nataraja: Shifting meanings of an icon’, Art Bulletin 8, 3 (1999): 390–419.

88 Herman Kulke, ‘Royal temple policy and the structure of medieval Hindu kingdoms’, in The cult of Jagannath and the regional traditions of Orissa, ed. Anncharlott Eschmann, Hermann Kulke and Gaya Charan Tripathi (New Delhi: Manohar, 1980), p. 133.

89 Inscription (no. 66), SII, vol. 2, pp. 278–303. For the dancing figures being sculpted on the second storey, see B. Venkatraman, Rājarājeśvaram: The pinnacle of Chola art (Madras: Mudgala Trust, 1985), pp. 131–47.

90 Padma Kaimal, ‘Shiva Nataraja’: 412.

91 This Vajrayāna Sanskrit text was compiled in the late eighth to early ninth century Pāla India. See David L. Snellgrove, The Hevajra Tantra: A critical study (London: Oxford University Press, 1959).

92 Rob Linrothe, ‘Compassionate malevolence, wrathful deities in esoteric Buddhist art’ (Ph.D. diss. University of Chicago, 1992), pp. 535–6.

93 Pratapaditya Pal, Dancing to the flute: Music and dance in Indian art (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1997), pp. 127, 132.

94 David Snellgrove, Khmer civilization and Angkor (Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2001), p. 57.

95 Sharrock, ‘The mystery of the face towers’, p. 266. The 3-metre-tall statue is now physically divided between the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the Sihanouk Museum in Siem Reap.

96 Claude Jacques and Philippe Lafond, The Khmer empire: Cities and sanctuaries from 5th to 13th century (Bangkok: River Books, 2007), pp. 237–9.

97 David Chandler, A history of Cambodia (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2008), p. 72.

98 Michael Vickery, ‘Introduction’, in Bayon: New perspectives, pp. 13–27.

99 Peter D. Sharrock, ‘The Buddhist pantheon of the Bàyon of Angkor: An historical and art historical reconstruction of the Bàyon temple and its religious and political roots’ (Ph.D. diss., SOAS, University of London, 2006), p. 69.

100 See Maxwell's commentary (v. D46), ‘The stele inscription of Preah Khan’: 75.

101 Bernard-Philipe Groslier and Jacques Arthaud, Angkor, hommes et pierres (Paris: Arthaud, 1956), p. 153.

102 Sharrock, ‘Buddhist pantheon of the Bàyon’, p. 68.

103 Harris, Zhou Daguan, p. 63; See (v. D46), Maxwell, ‘The stele inscription of Preah Khan’; he mentions the assembly of gods from the Khmer provinces and images of gods being bathed and ritually dressed on pp. 42, 43, 75.

104 ‘Both members of aristocracy and Khmers of lowly birth participated in dances.’ Groslier, ‘The Angkor kings’, pp. 3–5.