INDIAN ARCHAEOLOGY

 

The Iconography of Pashupata Cult in Cambodia

Illustrated lecture by Shivani Kapoor, independent researcher; her area of focus is the art history of pre-Angkorian Cambodia and teaches on a Post Graduate Certificate Course on Southeast Asian Art and Architecture at Jnanapravaha, Mumbai

Chair: Dr. Himanshu Prabha Ray
 

The lecture looks at the representation of ascetic figures in Khmer iconography in order to understand their religious antecedents. Although Cambodian epigraphy attests to the presence of ascetics of the Pasupata sect in the Khmer domain, situating them against the backdrop of the Saivite kingdoms that existed in Southeast Asia from roughly the 6th to the 13th century, it is difficult to find iconographic evidence to substantiate their presence.

 

In order to understand the ascetic imagery which occurs in profusion in the period coinciding with the presence of the Pasupata tradition in Cambodia, the speaker examines the development of the iconography of Lakulisa (act. 2nd century), acknowledged as the founder of this religious tradition, in the Indic sphere and its probable influence on the iconography of the ascetic figures in Cambodian sculptures and reliefs, with specific attention to the badly eroded image of one such ascetic figure at the temple complex of Sambor Prei Kuk (N-11, northern group of temples)