Thailand and Cambodia are very close neighbors with
common borders and cultural relations. We, as Thai
people, received and adopted some arts and culture from
ancient Cambodia. The pre-Thai scripts and spoken
words were adopted from Khmer's native language which
we are using now.
The area of south-East Asia covers broadly the whole
of the Indo-Chinese peninsula and East Indies, popularly
called Suvarna-bhumi which, to be more precise, comprised the territories now known as Myanmar, Siam (Thailand), the Malay Peninsula, Cambodia (Kambujadesa),
Laos, Vietnam on the mainland and the Island of
Sumatra, Java, Madura, Bali, and Borneo.
The Brahmanical religion that flourished in Southeast Asia was not the Vedic religion of old. It evolved and
developed in India almost at the same time when Buddhism and Jainism flourished. The essential character of
this new religion was sectarian which recognized Brahma
[the Creator], Visnu [the Nourisher], and Siva [the
Destroyer], the three great gods of Brahmanical trinity.
As we know, it is the names of these three gods that later
gave birth to the three renowned Brahmanical sects such as Brahmanism, Vaisnavism, and Saivism which dominated as the most popular religious force, evident from
the hundreds of inscriptions found in different parts of
South-East Asia.1
The arrival of the Hindu and Buddhist religions as
part of the process of Indianisation had profound consequences for the development of Imperial Khmer art. By
the time it is first noted in Cambodia during the first centuries of our era, Hinduism had become a devotional
religious center of a pantheon of gods (such as Shiva,
Vishnu and Krishna) and goddesses (such as Uma, Parvati, and Lakshmi) who were all recognized as manifestations of the same formless universal essence. Of special
importance to Khmer, kings were Shiva and Vishnu who,
along with the god Brahma, form a trinity encompassing
the cyclical cosmic functions of creation, preservation, and destruction. Harihara, a combined form of Shiva
and Vishnu, was also especially popular. Hinduism was
the state religion of the kings of Angkor. Until the thirteenth century when it was permanently eclipsed by
Buddhism, which had played a lesser role in Cambodia
since the pre-Angkorian period.
The Khmer people today are primarily found in the
country of Cambodia (formerly Kambuja) but the original heartland of the Khmer was associated with an area
of the middle Mekhong river in Laos and the southern
part of Northeast Thailand. Thus the remains of Khmer
temples at Angkor are justly famous and rulers from at
least the 9th to 14th centuries concentrated their temples within the urban area of Angkor, throughout this period,
if not far before, the Khmer also inhabited parts of Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia.
Use of the Khmer language in early Southeast Asia
probably extended far beyond the limits of present-day
Cambodia, into the Mekhong delta, the Khorat plateau of
Northeast Thailand, and central Thailand’s lower Chao
Phraya valley. It is possible that a proto-Khmer language was
spoken by the people of Funan, a (1st to 5th century A.D.)
Kingdom located in the lower Mekong of southern Cambodia. How these peoples reached the area is unclear,
but similarities in the material cultures of Northeast Thailand and Cambodia by the beginning of the Christian era
suggest a shared heritage originating at a much earlier
date.
During the early first millennium A.D., the adoption of
aspects of Indian civilization had a profound effect on the
nature of the Khmer urban settlement. Indian imports included concepts of kingship and law, the use of Sanskrit
in the recording of inscriptions on stone, and most
especially, the Hindu and Buddhist religions with their
distinctive styles of art and architecture. For example, the
word for ‘brick’ in Thailand developed from the Sanskrit,
and the erection of brick and stone structures to honor
deities may date to the advent of Indian religious influence. Previously shrines were made of wood, a custom
that still survives in rural areas of Thailand where small
wooden shelters house the spirits of the land. The building of these shrines would be undertaken by the whole
community, and like Hindu and Buddhist temples were part of a ritual complex designed to ensure the continued
prosperity of the society.
The construction of Khmer temples in Thailand represented not only the founding of a religious shrine, but
the incorporation of a community to serve the gods and
rulers to whom the center was dedicated. The building of
stone temples with small inner cells to house a cult image
is clearly modeled on Indian prototypes.
However, the tradition of ancestor veneration is deeply ingrained in the
culture of the Khmer peoples. Thus the temples of the
Khmer represented an amalgamation of established customs of ancestor and spirit veneration with imported
ideas which continued from the 8th to the 12th centuries.
At the end of the 12th century, Jayavarman VII erected
two massive temples honoring his parents: Ta Prohm was
dedicated to his mother in 1186 A.D. and five years later,
Preah Khan was dedicated to his father.
The high esteem accorded at royal courts to religious
figures were crucial in the blending of Hinduism and Buddhism with pre-existing ancestor cults. The many Indian
concepts of state and kingship adopted by the Khmer also
reflect the political power of priests. A mutually beneficial
liaison existed between the king and his religious advisors,
the first of whom may have reached the Khmer courts in
the early 1st millennium A.D. Some scholars argue that the
earliest Indian advisors to Southeast Asia were Buddhist
missionaries who arrived in the wake of Indian traders. As
one of the characteristics of the absorption of Indian
religions in Southeast Asia has been toleration, Buddhism, Hinduism, and earlier beliefs appear to have coexisted peaceably, a rare state of affairs in the face of
priestly activity limited to religious conversion. This implies that religious advisors and rulers were equally concerned with earthly and immortal existence, a concept
whose essence is expressed in the term ‘devaraja’, a Sanskrit word meaning ‘god who is king’. A Khmer ruler
would be consecrated as devaraja by the court priest and
would take a Sanskrit-based name, such as Jaya (victorious) or Surya — (from the sun god Surya). To this he
would add the suffix -varman, meaning ‘protector’. The
ruler would commemorate the event with inscriptions,
and the foundation of a temple. For the most part, the
temples of the Khmer rulers were dedicated to Hindu
gods, principally Shiva and Vishnu. However this did not
exclude the incorporation of other religious elements, and
traces of a variety of Buddhist doctrines may be seen in
many Khmer temples. In the late 12th century, Jayavarman VII (1181–1219) adopted Mahayana Buddhism as
his state religion. Thus during this period, architecture and
sculpture show their greatest development in Buddhists
rather than Hindu iconography. The development of Cambodian arts can be seen in
the Thai art of the Lopburi period (11th–15th century A.D.)
It was occupied by the Khmers or Cambodians and as
such the art of this period is known locally as Khmer art
which deals with Mahayana elements, just like the Sri-Vijaya school of art. This school of Buddhist art marks the
last stage of the growth of Buddhist art in Thailand before
the rise of the Thai people to power in the land which is
now called Thailand.
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