 Okay, it's my great pleasure to welcome all of you today to an event entitled The Multiple Manifestations of Hindu Buddha's Gods, Angkor, and the Dynamics of Art History. I want to thank all of you who made it to SOWAS today. It's a balmy June day. You could be doing other things. And I really appreciate your being here and making this event possible as well. I also want to thank our funders and our hosts, the Alpha Wood Foundation-funded Southeast Asian Art Academic Program at SOWAS, and the SOWAS Center for Southeast Asian Studies. This is our final event in the 2017-2018 event series on Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology. This brings to an end this year's series, which is the culmination of four years, in fact, of a running program on South and Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology that is run through the center and funded by the SAP program. Over this four-year period, we've tried to develop a two-pronged approach to the event program. So as some of you will know, in the first two terms, we have an invited speaker series. And then in term three, when both staff and students, well, let me say, I wanted to say when staff and students have more time, that's not quite true, unfortunately, but when we're not as tied to the teaching rhythm, let's put it that way, we're all doing our independent work and our independent marking. We organize more substantial research events, which I've been calling workshops, so this is one of those. And in these events, we try to bring together multiple scholars, often who come from different disciplines, and we try to work on specific themes that are of importance within the field of Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology today. So the ambition here or the goal in running this series is also two-fold. In the first instance, we very basically seek to promote research in the field with a particular orientation to supporting Southeast Asian scholars themselves in developing and in disseminating research. Secondly, we aim, and this is the more ambitious aim perhaps, although the first is also ambitious in other ways, we aim to examine in a much more synthetic fashion the state of the field of Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology with a particular orientation here to supporting reflection on methodologies in the field. So that's the big picture. So the collaborative workshop format is designed really to enable us to reach in particular this latter goal. So more broadly with this two-pronged approach, the Center for Southeast Asian Studies program seeks to align the SAP research remit with its more practical dimensions of enabling development of work on the region by regional scholars. While nonetheless, and this is quite important to us and I think visible in our events, while nonetheless refraining from essentializing a Southeast Asian scholar or what is a Southeast Asian scholar, that is while really very proactively recognizing the international nature of Southeast Asian scholars today as well as the necessity and the very complex nature of international exchange at the heart of the field. So another way to speak so as talk at the moment, we seek to align our specific work on Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology with a broader and very shall I say potent directive or orientation at the university today. Imperative is perhaps the right term on decolonizing scholarship in and on what we call our regions. So let me just say a few practical words on the means by which we seek to reach these relatively lofty goals. The research and publication subgroup of the Southeast Asian Art academic program is currently launching two publishing initiatives. First of all, a postgraduate research journal which is called Rattu. This is co-edited by a group of SOAS PhD candidates. I will name them for their valor in doing this. Heidi Tan, Ben Rayford, Udomna Kuntrakon and Duyen Nguyen. And we are also launching a book series within U.S. Press which is entitled Southeast Asian Art and Archaeology, Hindu Buddhist Traditions. So the journal and the book series each are meant to provide a substantial new forum for disseminating the highest quality research in the field. Now a number of us who are participating in today's event are additionally involved in what are now long-established Cambodian-based publishing ventures. Professor Ong Chulian and I are co-founders and editors of Udaya, the Journal of Khmer Studies. This is a trilingual academic journal which is born out of our joint work with the Cambodian government at Angkor and at Phnom Penh's Royal University of Fine Arts. And this is a journal devoted to Khmer Studies at large. Professor Ong is also the founder and director of Yasatoa, a Phnom Penh-based NGO which is devoted to supporting research and publishing in Khmer Studies and notably in the Khmer language. Yasatoa today publishes both Udaya Journal of Khmer Studies and Khmer Renaissance which is an online Khmer language, Khmer Studies Journal. Now Yasatoa runs on charitable donations and on the voluntary work of a very hearty group of Cambodian scholars including a number of those who are currently undertaking postgraduate research here at, or postgraduate degrees here at SOAS and who are in the audience. Dr. Gregorhee Miquelion, our second speaker, he and I have joined with members of the European Cambodian diaspora to found and to run a French-based association which is devoted to supporting Yasatoa's work and we call ourselves the Friends of Yasatoa. So following our discussions and our talks today, we warmly invite you to a reception down the hall in 2-1-1, if I'm not mistaken, where we will be providing information about these initiatives in the UK, in Singapore, in Cambodia, in France, and indeed in the virtual transnational world which is the internet, and we will also be holding a book sale. We will also be offering drinks. So please do come for a browse and for a drink after the formalities today. Now I want to turn to our speakers. First of all, to thank them all for having traveled far and wide. We have people from different reaches of the world, if not of the universe today. And I want to thank you all also for having already given significant amounts of time and thought to making the event worthwhile for all of us today. So there's a lot of back work behind this. I will also thank someone who's not in the room, who is Charles Taillondier, who is making it all happen logistically from the centre, and of course Liam Roberts from the SAP program who is really behind the very efficient organisation of these series. So they have done a lot to make this happen, and our speakers and our respondents have put in a significant amount of work to be with us here today, and to begin to collaborate and discuss with each other already the topics that we will be presenting and opening up with all of you. So I should say that our workshop today, and I'm very proud to say this, it brings together a group of the most outstanding scholars of Cambodian art history, archaeology, cultural and political history and anthropology. Presenting new research at the nexus of these disciplines, our two speakers will lend their work to addressing the deep and necessary questions at the heart of the field of Southeast Asian art and archaeology today, and I will now quote from the original conception behind this workshop with these questions. How does art serve to sustain cultural dynamics over centuries? How is it caught, transformed and carried by forces more powerful than any given work? What has driven the staying power of Indic gods in Southeast Asian contexts? Through close consideration of particular works of art and image types, along with the evolving architectural, textual and ritual contexts in which these objects are embedded, our speakers examine the work of art in long-term historical processes. And as we will see, if Encore is our point of departure and return, Encore repeatedly propels us to transcend its apparent temporal and spatial limits. I would add also that just in coming out of a lunchtime conversation with our group of scholars today, I think there is very rich material in the work that will be presented to think very broadly, but also quite specifically, relations between the material and the immaterial, between the object and perhaps the idea or what we think it is that we call relation. So that's the big picture. Now, let me just give formal introductions to our speakers. Ong Chulian is professor of religious anthropology and epigraphy at the Department of Archaeology, Royal University of Fine Arts. He is the director, as I said, of the Yasatoa Cultural Institute in Phnom Penh. Professor Ong is renowned for his profoundly insightful anthropological work, uniquely grounded in and shedding light on Cambodian and broader regional historical art historical and linguistic contexts. He is also renowned for his commitment to teaching. I think we have ample demonstration of the appreciation and of the impact of his pedagogical work over decades now here in the room today. He delivers lectures and seminars to researchers and cultural heritage managers at the National Museum of Cambodia at the Apsara Authority for Managing Ong Chul. This above and beyond the regular lectures and seminars that he delivers in the regular program at the department, in the regular undergraduate program in the Department of Archaeology at the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh. I think that many people in this room would support me in saying that he, more than anybody else, has uniquely shaped the experience of students of art and archaeology in and on Cambodian. I include myself in that over nearly three decades now. Gregory Michelin is a full-time researcher with a Parisian CNRS and collaborates with colleagues to deliver an important interdisciplinary seminar on Cambodian historical, cultural and linguistic phenomena at the École Léotitude en Science Social in Paris. He is a leader amongst a younger generation of Cambodian scholars. He is an outstanding historian whose work has profoundly changed understandings of Cambodian historical and cultural landscapes from the 17th century on, and he is increasingly key to the scholarly development of postgraduate students working between France and Cambodia in joint training programs held between the Royal University of Fine Arts and a number of Pro-Isian institutions of higher learning. We are very sorry to let you know that his co-author, Éric Bourdonot, who is an accomplished art historian of the École Française d'Extra-Maurion and who is based in Siam-Briep, is actually unable to join us in person today. He is nonetheless more than present in spirit, having co-authored the presentation which Greg will single-handedly deliver. I am also delighted to welcome our panel of respondents. These include so as postgraduate student Conan Chung and professors Penelope Edwards and Vasuda Narayanan. I will introduce our respondents in greater detail before the roundtable discussion. Let me just tell you now how we will organize our format for today. We will have our two speakers first. I warn you in advance. I ask them to speak for 45 minutes or so, so they will be substantial presentations. We may stretch our legs between the one and the other, but we won't have a real break, a real pause. We will then, after the two talks, we will break up to organize ourselves for the roundtable, maybe a 10-minute break for everybody to do what they need to do to be prepared to go into the afternoon session. Then our three respondents who have had sight of the materials prior to the presentations today will be responding to the papers, and then we will open it up to the full group. So please bear with us. I realize many of you from talk one on to talk two will have questions that you want to pursue immediately. Please do note those down. Please do keep those and bring them to the discussion towards as we open up the roundtable. So that's where we will be heading. I think that is all I have to say, so please join me in welcoming first of all Professor Aung Chulian. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I would like to express my deep thanks to the Center for Southeast Asian Studies to Ashley, to all the organizers of this session. The title of my talk here may not reflect entirely the point I wish to develop. Dealing with Yama, Yama of course is the God of Death as Death relates to rebirth. I would like to put the stress upon the second dimension of this God, of the idea of rebirth, of renaissance, of cycle of time. So it is about the Yama, a very special God. Can I sit down? He is quite a special God because by definition God ignores death. All the gods are immortal except Yama. Yama is the only one who has experienced death among the gods. And his story roughly goes like this. In the beginning there was no time, there was no darkness, only light. And there was no, of course, there was no human being, just God associated with light. Once more, this special God, Yama has a twin sister called Yami. And one day, I should not say one day because there was no time, but once he died, and the twins' sister which left Yami in a deep sorrow, and she cries endlessly. And all the gods, the other gods come to see her, asking her this question, why do you cry? She says, because my brother died yesterday, today, I'm sorry. And she continues crying incessantly. And a long time after all the gods come back, asking the same question, why do you cry? And she answered, because my brother died when today. And this sequence just repeats and repeats without an end. And finally the gods decide to create night. So they create night so that you can have time from now on because night, and they just alternate in an endless cycle. And from then on, we can talk about time and so we can see that the Yama is at the origin of time. Yami cries, of course, but in a lesser degree, the gods come asking the question, why do you cry? Say, because my brother died when yesterday. And after that, and the sorrow goes down and down to eventually fade away completely. And as we know, time is the factor which wears out everything. So from then on, time exists. Thanks to Yama, if I may say so. This is the story of Yama. From ancient Cambodia, you have a number of sculptures, some free-standing sculptures like this. But in that case, we do not know the exact original position because all the statues are no more in situ. We do not know why you say this because Yama is associated to the south. He is the guardian of the south direction, the region of the south. We can only guess that in its original location, situation, maybe this statue faces the west, south direction. He is the region of the south. This is the central tower of Numakain. Numakain is a huge complex in the Angkor area. At the top of the hill, you can see this tower. And you cannot see clearly, but in the center of this pediment, this is the detail of it, you can see Yama on his buffalo. The buffalo is the classical vehicle of Yama. And the pediment is facing south, exactly conformed to Indian tradition. We are in the 10th century. This is from the Meibon, also the 10th century. The Meibon, you can see Yama, this is the central part of the lintel. Yama on his buffalo facing south. One lintel is the Meibon. Another lintel also at the Meibon temple. Another Yama. Yama is holding a stick because it is a symbol of justice, of punishment, etc. Facing south. Another view from Prairup, also from the Prairup and Meibon are from the same period, 10th century. Here Yama, which disappears here, Yama is on a three-headed buffalo. The lintel faces south. Bantis Ray, also from the same century. This is a pediment, this is a lintel. Yama is represented on the pediment. This is Yama on his buffalo holding a stick. And on the lintel also holding a stick on a buffalo. From Bantis Samurai, now we jump up to the 12th century. Yama on his three-headed buffalo with a stick. At Angkor Wat, 12th century. Yama with multiple arms holding sticks on his buffalo. And facing south. All this is totally conformed to the Indian theory. Yama is the region of the south. And of course he is known as the god of the dead. As the judge of the dead. This piece comes from Bangmelia. This is Yama on the top. On the bottom you can see his number of torturers and of damned souls. You can see. I don't know if you see it clearly. One of the damned souls is suffering from torture. Another one here. But it is in Angkor Wat that the representation of Yama becomes very spectacular. This whole panel in the south part of Angkor Wat, you know the south, is devoted to the scene of health and heaven with the god Yama in the middle of it. Yama here. You can see here Yama with the many arms holding sticks on his buffalo facing south etc. With his assessor. You on the same panel, you know you can see scene like this. These direct torturers are called Kingara in the Sanskrit. In modern Khmer it becomes Kang Takang. You can see some scene of torture here. Kingara. This is for Bari Lee from Sculpture etc. We have evidence from epigraphy from as early as 7th century. For example, this is a Sanskrit inscription mentioning Kingara. The epigraphy is translated by Yama servant Kingara. The Kingara you saw just now. Another inscription from 11th century bilingual in Khmer and in Sanskrit mention the world of Yama. Yama Luka etc. So this god was very well known. Kingara etc. Very very well known in the ancient Cambodia. It seems that there was not really a swift but the stress became put on the second dimension of Yama. The renaissance, the rebirth and the notion of cycle of time. In Angkor, this is Angkor Thom, the ancient capital of Cambodia. Angkor Thom and this is in the center of it. This is the Royal Palace which has functioned during at least the 5th century as Royal Palace. And in the northeast side of it with regard to the Royal Palace the northeast is associated with rebirth renaissance in Cambodia. It is very well known up to today. Nowadays the area is called Terras of Leopard King but this is just a name. The Terras is built with stone and you can see many rows. If you look at these rows in detail you see all the long each row you see a character like this. I think they are kingara. But if you pay attention they are no more grimacing but they are rather smiling. They hold a stick but they don't inspire fear. And according to scholars this as we see it today the Terras dates back to maybe the end of the 13th century but it may have existed before. And on top of it this statue was installed. This is the statue of Yama in the top. I forgot to say that scholars think that this area play maybe a multiple role of this area one of them was the role of a burial ground of cremation area, cremation ground. So this statue is installed atop the so-called Terras. Now after cleaning it is his official name inscribed here is Supreme King of Order. Yama is the judge, the God of the Law, the God of the Order etc. Judging by the script, said that the form of the script is from 15th century. But the statue may have existed before. Now coming to modern Cambodia. In modern Cambodia we have regarding Yama we have two kind of representation. We have representation on picture in Buddhist monastery. And another representation is totally symbolic. You cannot see Yama with a body with a face but you can only see his altar in ritual. It seems that when you go very often in the Buddhist monastery you can see painting like that and always located in the west. The south now is totally forgotten the west. This is a modern painting, moral painting. This is Yama, directly in another place. This is Yama. Here he is acting as a direct torturer but normally you can see things like this. Yama is the king of the law and order and they are the direct torturer. And these people, these souls are suffering. Here Yama is here. This is Yama, on this scene. This is quite nothing special, you know. With view like this you can see quite often in the Buddhist monastery. Sometime in this case, you know, in the east phase you see, I don't know exactly to what sequence of the life of Buddha exactly it relates to but it is the theme of salvation, the east. And if you go to the west, outside, you see the scene of hell. But what is the Buddhist monastery? What is Buddhism? Yama in this context. First of all, I think that it reminds us of the fresco of Angkor Wat I mean in the level, in the religious level, in the philosophical level of Buddhism. Yama is just here to remind us that our present condition, you know, is the result of our past action in our previous life, etc., etc. But coming to, you know, immediate concern of people. This dimension, I don't mean that this dimension is ignored but tend to be forgotten. Coming to the practical, the very practical concern. For example, when you organize a funeral, when you organize a cremation, for example, the mind of people goes directly to the second dimension of Yama, the one who helps you to have a good reincarnation. And in that context, you know, in that level of belief, people think that a good reincarnation is conditioned by a correct, perfect, ritually speaking organization of the funeral. If you have a master, a great master called Acha in Cambodia who organized a very well-known person who organized debt for the debt, the debt in question has a chance to have a good reincarnation. Moral doesn't matter here. The main thing is to organize properly the funeral. Moral is almost forgotten in this level. So you have something like a tool level. In a moral level, when you go to a Buddhist monastery, you can see, you know, everything reminds you that this is the result of our bad action in our previous life, et cetera. But coming to practical concern, this dimension is almost forgotten. And people think about a ritual of cremation properly organized, et cetera. If I come back to the Royal Ancient Royal Palace in Angkor Thom, this is the Royal Palace. This is the area of cremation to simplify, the area of Yama. This is the scheme of the space layout of the Royal Palace today in Phnom Penh. You can see that this is the north. In the northeast corner, this is the area for cremation. So once more, the northeast is associated with renaissance, with good rebirth. So practically, this is the people care for. Now, all the examples I will show you come from remote area of Angkor, remote places of Angkor area, you know. Yama is systematically present, but not under an anthropomorphic representation, just through his altar that you evoke him. This is a scheme of a cremation ground, you know, a cremation field. You always have an enclosure like this from light material, you know. And most of the time, in the center of it, you have the pile. You can see that in northeast quadrant, you always see this kind of installation. Almost systematically sand mounds. You know, sand mounds are made by sand, you know, like this. Normally, sand mounds are erected in the New Year everywhere. It can be in the Buddhist monastery, it can be in your house, especially in the province of Siam Ria. Why? Because New Year is a new time, and new time means new space. You have to build, to rebuild the universe, to rebuild the world. And the present of sand mounds here is that the idea behind that is rebirth. New Year is the rebirth of the world, here is the rebirth of the dead person. But a good rebirth. Besides, all these are linked one to another by a kind of thread, you know, linked to this, to the top of this pile. This is a bit theoretical. At the maximum, you can see three altars. This one is called Pishnuqa. Pishnuqa is the patron saint of all artisans, and especially of architects. But most of the time, you only see two. Puttakun and Yama. It is called Riyan Yomari. Puttakun, it is quite difficult to translate, and even to understand, you know, because Puttakun is not a god, is not a person, is not the... Puttakun may mean the virtue, Buddhist virtue, or virtue of the Buddha. I don't know how to translate it. But the most significant, the most important is Yama's Alta. It is Yama who is designated like that. When you have only one, these are three altars. When you have only two, you can have this. When you have only one, you know, even the Buddha is, how to say, people jumped out the Buddha, and only Yama's Alta is here. Systematic Yama. You can see the importance of the three altars. This is an example from what run this is the enclosure and question, etc. This is the pie. In the northeast corner, this is Yama Alta. You can see that the first one Puttakun is bigger. Visually we would think that it is the most important because it is bigger, etc. This is Yama. But what happens at that moment, you know, the coffin, the cremation is very often collective. The coffins are burning down and at the same moment people just prostrate themselves and pray in front of the Puttakun, in front of this, in front of this, you know, in front of this. But when you listen to the prayer, it is Yama. They are addressing Yama in particular for the good reincarnation of the dead person. These are the new world, the sand mound, the new world for the dead person. This is a cremation among the less sophisticated I happen to see in the Angkor area, among the less sophisticated. But, you know, everything has to be here, the enclosure, etc. These are two coffins burning in the northeast corner quadrant. There was only one Alta, which is the one of Yama, no other Alta. And in this particular case, there was even not the sand mound, only Yama Alta here. And you see the, you know, talking about the importance of the proper organization of Yuna Ra. This man, Thakke, he died in April, last April. This is not an anecdote. I'm just telling you because of this topic. One time I had some discussion with him, and I realized that he himself, he believed that he is well known by Yama. Incredible. He believed himself. He is not someone who tries to boast something. No, not at all, not at all. But in the course of the discussion, I realized that he do believe, he does believe that he is known by Yama in the, but now he died. But now he performed the ritual, this ritual, you know, this cremation for villagers. And you know how he, at one moment he prostrated himself in front of the Alta Yama. You know, you can see the importance of Yama as the God of the good rebirth. Now coming for the fortnight of the dead. This is the most important religious event in Cambodia. Very, I would say spectacular, but everything happened especially in night time. So it is not spectacular for a foreign visitor, for example. But it's really spectacular in rural area. It lasts a whole fortnight. What is it meant for? Fortnight for the dead, for the dead, consists for the living to help a category of, let's say spirit called prait preta, to be able to, for us to give a body to these damn souls so that they can reincarnate. So we give them a body. This body is represented by rice ball, a ball made with sticky rice. It is not necessary that the dead in question is of your family. Any dead person. The preta, of course, was well known in ancient Cambodia. This is a representation of the preta. We are here in the context of Mahayana Buddhism. The God Lukashvara is here. They are praising Lukashvara to save them from their condition, from their bad condition in hell. Everything happened in Buddhist ministry. The fortnight of the death is rooted in the totally in the Brahmanic Cambodia, not in Hindu Cambodia. We even have inscriptions from Tencent juries. But nowadays everything happens in the Buddhist ministry. These are two main buildings as for ritual. This is the sanctuary. We are here. This is the sala. And especially during the fortnight, people just built a provisional altar called Yama's altar in the northeast corner of the Veranda of the Vihira and on the northeast corner of the sala. But after that they just dismantled the altar. This is happening in the sala. You know, in the northeast corner. Now the sala is totally forgotten. Around 7 o'clock in the evening, people pray Yama. This prayer addresses directly Yama to help the dead person. This is around 7, let's say, 7 o'clock. And after that they gather themselves to make rice balls from secure rice. You know, each ball represents a body. This happens around 8 o'clock, always in the Buddhist ministry. And after that they go to sleep in the Buddhist ministry itself or if they... But they have to come back before dawn to start by making this procession. All the processions enter the Vihira this way by the east and make three turns, and then circumambulation three times. Three turns like this. And on the way, you know, they put rice balls here, they put rice balls there, they throw rice balls away because they say that there are many categories of prayer, of Preta. Some can come close to you, some others cannot etc. But each time they arrive here, you know, they make a hall and they pray Yama, directly Yama, and some put the rice balls on the Yama's altar and in the vicinity. You know, the fortnight of death, in reality, the sequence of one day is just repeated 14 times. It happens exactly from one night to the other like this. And the fact that they make this procession before dawn is quite significant because dawn is the passage from the opportunity to light, from the bad condition in hell to another condition. But now, coming to the rice cultivation, nothing to do with the death. You know, once more, Yama is at the origin of time. It's just a repeated cycle of night and day, night and day alternating endlessly. And the rice cultivation also will be to cycle the season. This is a small ceremony. I choose the smallest one to show you. It happened in May, you know, the opening of the new cycle of rice cultivation because in May the first rain becomes to fall. It is quite difficult to see, but you know, this enclosure also, it's like an incubation, but it has to be done close to a Nekta house. What is a Nekta? A Nekta is a spirit, considered as the ancestor of the given rural community. But the Nekta, an ancestor of course, it is always very, very close to, totally associated with agriculture and mainly with rice cultivation. This is why such a ceremony has to be organized close to the Nekta. You know, an enclosure like an incubation. If you look at the scheme of it, you know, it can remind you what you have seen previously. In the northeast quadrant, you can see Saint Mount and Yama's Altar here. The difference is that there is a Nekta here in the north. We can elaborate the other theory why the Nekta is in the north, but we have no time to... This is the house of the Nekta. This is Nekta, you know, he is just represented by a stone. And close to the Nekta, you can see rice and husk rice. But this is seed rice, not the rice to be consumed, but the rice to be, how to say, to be sown. The quantity is symbolic, but the meaning is very important. Because it is a new cycle of rice cultivation, you know? The idea is that, as we know, time and space are inseparable. So it is a new time for agriculture cycle. I mean to rice cultivation cycle. It has to be a new space also. If you compare the two, this is a cremation area. This is what we just saw. You can see that the northeast quadrant has not changed. So this, nowadays, I do not mean that the notion of karma, of the relation between cause and effect are forgotten. I don't mean that people still know that. But I mean, coming to practical concern, this dimension is more or less forgotten. The most important thing for a funeral is that it has to be done correctly, properly done, etc., with a good official, with a famous official. The moral consideration of it has nothing to do here. When people come to practical concern, it is this dimension of yama. It is the northeast. Thank you very much. Thank you all for sticking it out for the afternoon. We still have a very rich, if my speakers will pay attention. We still have, we are all, we all respect each other. We all respect each other. We still have a very rich afternoon ahead of us. I've been contemplating how to proceed now. We do have traditional visuals that Professor Narayanan will be presenting. So what I'm thinking of doing is beginning with Kodan and Penny, and with some comments, and then open it up to our speakers to respond so that they don't get too caught up and far behind, and then we'll move to Vasuda's presentation for a response and ask them to respond, and then open it all up. That's okay with everybody. I might just forget what I have to say. You might forget. Okay. We might all forget. So please, everybody, try to remember and remind us. So let me present our respondents who are equally, I don't know, astounding, shall we say, some very, very powerful thinkers and making very important contributions to the field. So I will begin, I will begin with Kodan Chong, who is a, he currently pursuing a master's degree here at SOAS with an Alphalos scholarship. And Kodan has come to us from the Asian Civilizations Museum who is working as a curator and has taken a break or perhaps a shift in his career to really pursue the academic dimension of the field. And we are all very, very lucky to have him amongst us, a very powerful, critical, but remarkably humble voice within the department. And I'm happy to be able to welcome him here, his peers in the audience and with the group of scholars who will be responding as well. I could perhaps say a little bit more about the work that Kodan is developing at the moment in the context of his MA dissertation on suffice-to-vite representations in a few contexts that you made correct me and tell me where you're heading later, but we'll leave it at that. So that's some of the work he's been doing. So looking at iconographies in Asian Southeast Asia. Next is Penny Edwards. Penny is a professor at the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Penny is perhaps best known in this community for a book on the French colonial enterprise in Cambodia. If I'm not mistaken, titled Le Combeauge, something of the sort where I made Combeauge. And then there's a subtitle anyway. We all know it too well to stick only to the title. So Penny has published that quite a while ago and really made a very important shift in our understandings of that moment and particularly in this context, I think the moment of perception of Angkor and the colonial intervention into perceptions of Angkor and developments of politics in relationship to Angkor, that is another form of continuity with the kind of work that we had just heard. Penny has also done significant work and continues to do significant work on the intellectual milieu that intersects with, for example, Uche's work in the early 20th century. So this is another point of connection, I think, which will be of interest to all of us. And it's developing work also more broadly in Burma at the moment, as I understand it. So Professor Narayanan here behind me, let me not block your view, is a professor of religious studies at the University of Florida in Gainesville. And if I can be a bit provocative, we Southeast Asianists have to learn about South Asia. That's sort of part of our remit if we work on ancient Southeast Asia one way or another. The reverse is not true. South Asianists do not have to look at Southeast Asia. And that is a problem. It's not true. They have to. She's absolutely... At least they have to. They absolutely have to. And Kristen back there is seconding me. But we, I fear, are in the minority with this view. And we are... So therefore, we Southeast Asianists are very, very privileged to have an expert South Asian voice really turning very, very intently to think about Cambodian religion, Cambodian iconographies, and bringing that knowledge. Well, in fact, what I heard Professor Narayanan say at lunch today is that she has to forget everything she knows about South Asia in order to learn about Southeast Asia. And that's an interesting perspective coming from a South Asianist. So that's where we are. That's who we are. And let me now invite... What we will do is invite... Yes, I think I've already gone through this. So let me invite Conan to give his comments. Thank you. So, thank you Dr. Ang on the video. We have very thought-provoking presentations. And I guess in my response... Sorry, can you hear me at the back? Can I speak a bit louder? So in my response, I just like to draw a few themes which I think run through both representations and which I think engage directly with the goals of this workshop. The first being the idea of a continuum, a continuum that connects, I guess in this case, Angkor as an instrument of culture to the present day. And so to quote again from the workshop description, we're kind of concerned with how art sustains cultural dynamics. So which I interpret is how imagery, how the creation of certain types of images serve as points of cohesion for this ever-evolving cultural formation of there is Cambodia or Khmer culture in a non-chronic or long-term perspective. And this cultural formation can include retro practice, can include structures of knowledge, can include iconography and so on. And so I just want to... In the context of a continuum, I find, you know, the art history of a game of images. And I think, you know, to me, images interact very interestingly in this continuum because the image itself is a very dynamic thing in time. It occupies, you know, it is present to us when we approach it in the physical context but it still exists in multiple times in its history. And I think... Well, one thing I wanted to draw out was Dr. Ahm, I realized you put up the photo of the of the Yama that is now in the National Museum of Cambodia, which I've read and also is taken as a figure of the Leber King and it also currently receives a lot of worship from regular visitors from Cambodians even after it was moved from where it was found in Angkor Thong to the National Museum of Cambodia. So I mean, for me, that's a very good example of how images occupy different moments of time. And as you said also that the inscription that identifies the Yama is later, right, in the 15th century. So obviously somebody in the 15th century would have taken their piece and, you know, we can say we identified or re-valued it as Yama and started this cult of worshiping the image that continues to today. So I just wondered if you could talk a little bit more about how such objects work or what they say about the nature of this continuum of Cambodia. And in the same... the whole of the same lines I wanted to bring up in talking about the cult of the Devaraja you are actually addressing this sort of quite age old question, right? What is the nature of... what is the Devaraja? Is it an object? Is it a ritual? Is it a material or immaterial process? And it seems like you identified the birth of this cult with the figural representation of Sivanatharaja. And I think that's one of the sort of... one of the bolder propositions that the Sivanatharaja, a figural anthropomorphic sculpture that represents the Devaraja cult as opposed to an iconic cult of the Siva Linga which is more associated with the temple mountains of Cambodia. So I was wondering if you could speak a bit more about that. And the next thing I wanted to talk about a bit more was the idea of the civilizing process that you mentioned following... Yeah, following it, yes. Because I guess you don't... you didn't really go into detail in your presentation that much about it but by invoking this analysis ideas of civilizing it's not a teleological process that you're saying by any means but it's more like a Freudian kind of super ego, right? This is more the internalization of cultural attitudes and for me that's how from the top of the column their hierarchy gets fleshed out through this cult. So in a way the defining feature of the Devaraja cult is the creation of these hierarchies in society, right? So in a way that's how the cult survives through maintaining these sort of hierarchies and I wonder if you could talk a bit more about how that's been in the middle of the cult of here and organize the notes and one more thing in terms of the different types of images of federal images that exist with Dr. Agnes' presentation because you kind of you also make this anthropomorphic dancing Shiva versus an iconic Lingga you're also making a distinction between the anthropomorphic Yama but interestingly they're mostly found in a narrative scene in Alcor in Buddhist temples so if you only see in the later period or in modern period you only see anthropomorphic Yamas in scenes of Heaven and Hell whereas the an iconic or as you say the symbolic Yama occurs in the ritual context in the agricultural rituals and in these sort of life cycle rites including the funerals and the format that appears in the an iconic format and then there's also the shift from the south to the northeast so would you say they're all part of the same continuum of a Yama cult or is it two separate ideas that are being developed that's okay and to the plus point you know about the statue you mentioned the famous Yama I am not an art historian but I think even an art historian would find this statue very difficult to to date to give the date and this really corresponds to the personality of Yama if you look at the statue now that it is clean there is no cloth he is naked in the same time not really naked nothing allow you to you know to give you nothing gives you a clue once more I'm talking as a profane I am not an art historian but nothing provides you a real clue to date this statue naked not and everything is ambiguous on that statue he is beautiful very handsome but in the same time he has two hardly visible friends yes and I didn't say that because I have no idea but I tend to think that the statue did exist before the inscription if you look at the inscription it is very roughly written am I like both of you I don't think that the the inscription and the statue itself might be the same I do think that it might be earlier than the 15th century no I mean that everything is ambiguous or ambivalent maybe this is more proper ambivalent because Yama is the you know, automation of day and night cycle repeat the cycle to certain point was on the and because from ancient Cambodia what we have is as evidence is only epigraphy and sculpture and monument epigraphy show us that Cambodian knew from the earliest time who is the who was Yama etc because as I show an example it was an inscription from the 17th century but if you look at there are very few, maybe three of them only in future but it is you read something menacing you it made you because it is kind of warning about that action etc we are on the theoretical level besides the very few inscription what we have is sculpture and mainly a sculpture and monument and the monument is this a coincidence or is this I don't know but I I see that the main thing we have from that time are from the 10th century and a bit from the 10th century everything seem to be in total respect to the Indian tradition Yama holding stick facing the south direction and from the 12th century that Yama is shown with more concrete action but we should not forget that we are in monument you see the sculpture in Angkor Wat in monument in Angkor Wat all that for me is to be put on a moral or religious eschatological level of the building only from at the earliest the end of 13th century that we can see so called keras of Latin Indian located in the northeast of the royal palace shown for creation this is all the evidence we have I don't know we cannot we can guess we can have some idea of what could be the ritual at that time but we have no proof but we can clearly see that at least it was no more creation of the sound because in the according to Indian belief when we die we have to have a long journey to reach the realm of Yama it take more than one year I think et cetera et cetera a grad a cremation ground what is a cremation ground it is a it responds to a practical concern to a you believe or you do not believe but you have to do something and this dimension of Yama up here maybe because all the view I show on the ritual what happen what happen in the ritual in the villages it make me think about the realism you know we do not have a monument permanent building most of thing are just made for the duration of the ritual concerning right cultivation concerning human concerning other right of passing and in the realism you know you have to you have to how to say to gather all the conditions so that God can be present in the moment of the ritual you you provoke the presence of maybe in ancient Cambodia this was the general practice but we have no proof we can have only one proof the terrace of the left of thing but in Cambodia today especially in Mongolia I know the best I do not pretend I know everything in Cambodia but I mean I work a lot in that zone I can see it make me think about the idea in realism the presence of this is why I talk about enclosure you have to transform an area to be not a propane area but with the north east you build a cosmos you build a new universe after that after the moment of the ritual everything is desaparalized did it happen like this in ancient Cambodia we have no proof but I tend to think that I think that my idea can be a bridge like this Yama as the God of justice this dimension has never been forgotten forgotten because even the minister of justice up to the decade 1950 the minister of justice was called Yama Radja Yama Radja this dimension is not forgotten but there are two levels in the two level of belief this is Yama in the level of you know you have to do something to the bad person to reincarnate in a good situation this is Yama not east no more Yama west different forms of Yama I don't know if it's complementary or it's in opposition to what you are talking about you can also reference your earlier work on the Niek Tha which is like the earth spirits that you said there's a Hallyu on the north of the the agricultural controls because your early publication is in Niek Tha you might the pictures of Rubin stupas or rocks very an iconic objects the sort of me the Niek Tha is directly associated with agriculture mainly with rice cultivation but the presence of Yama in the the opening cycle of Yama is not in that context not really a genius not to remind us about cycle and this is a new cycle so you have to start in a proper way you have to rebuild the universe you have to build the sun mound you know you build the dimension of the Yama for that money is not that of Niek Tha Niek Tha is really agriculture the Yama in that context is how to say you try to have the normal cycle the normal the regime of Mansoor he's outside the cycle the cycle for rice cultivation in Asia do you want to try then so the question was about Kambi Elias so to clarify this point as you know Kambi Elias was partly criticized by historians he wasn't a historian he was a sociologist so the use we made here of Kambi Elias is a use invoked by Roger Chartier who is a modernist and according to him there's three virtues of Navier Elias first it's a long time perspective second as you say it's a model of diffusion of the high culture to the bottom of the society which is quite useful and for us the main point what he's describing is the life of a structure so responding to the first question about what is the Roger it's not an object it's not an idea it's not a right it's all this diving together that is according to us what we are searching is a structure the Roger for us is a structure so that's why when you change an element an element is betrayed by another one because the time is going on the structure is simultaneously but then the sense the structure has changed so that's can I just come back to Conan's point which was this other question that you're now getting to address is that you were interested in getting Greg to speak more about the way that you are nonetheless positing the birth of the cult in a very concrete figure of the Nataraja so and I also had some questions from the audience during the break about that what are the could you it was an effect of your presentation as well where you didn't have time to go through the evidencing of that identification so I don't know if you can speak to that rather bold statement so you're looking at a structure but you are associating the birth with a specific object so what we think that the Sadashiva is the earth structure because this is associated to the death reverse the destruction of the world the reconstruction of the world so and it is a feature that we see all around the history of Cambodia associated with king death reverse and how the king is the one who is intermediate between the common people and this process of death reverse that's the main reason I don't know if I answer the question so in a way it's kind of connected to what Yama produced the structure of the cycle that Dr An was talking about this death reverse is very much connected with for example Yama for us is a typical example of diffusion from the top to the bottom of society because at the beginning of the process the meeting with Yama is reserved to the king or maybe a very teeny elite at the end of the process everything going is going to be Yama and that's the process we have to and what we saw also is that Professor Anjuli just mentioned in this presentation that the figure of Yama is moving we have a clear different Yama between the beginning and the end at the end the appearance of Yama is not the same so it tells us also something it looks like there is two Yama smiling Yama, new smiling Yama and terrifying like Yama from the old and new time so Yama once more is close to human being much closer than any other dog and I think Professor Amalabu say something about Yama he say that only Yama can be king I just said just now that the Minister of Justice was called Yama Raja Yama Raja you have to go to Raja no other dog I never come across any title like that for other dog for human being he is God but he is king he is close to us how do you want to Sure thank you so thank you thank you for the wonderful rich papers I am going to start by reading the messy notes just briefly because one thing as I was listening to you and seeing the incredible slides and images you are presenting I saw a connection to the papers that I hadn't seen I read them which is probably obvious to everybody but I thought with Gregor's paper where you talked about the transition to this new world view in relation to the Tevaraja and in Professor Amalabu's paper where he was talking towards the end about the layout with the Yama for the cremation where you talked about the new time and the new space and building the world anew I saw in both those processes a sort of re-worlding and I thought that was something that echoed between your papers I have some questions for Professor Amalabu again and they're brief and I will ask them at the end and I'm going to read out some but you'll be glad to hear not all of the comments that I had in response to Gregory and Eric's wonderful paper so the first I'm really very interested in this figure Altium the law scholar who went on to give his PhD I thought it was interesting that he made this intervention in 1948 70 years to go to today and very boldly had presented his thesis which went against the grain of surveys and other great French scholars briefly on that to recap the thesis that Altium put forward it was that the Devaraja cannot be the god king as it is the counterpart of the the god of the king so in a few things on that it's a very sophisticated argument that Gregory and Eric are making and I'll address that first about the law and colonialism and then I'll get on to a few very layman or laywoman observations that I had about Devaraja and spirituality and potency so your paper argued that what was at stake was the generalization of the person of the king and if the king is protected he can act with god-like power and that is after the Devaraja ritual is established you mentioned I'll go back here briefly to Altium you mentioned that Altium when he took on this French idea or notion of the Devaraja that what he was doing was reacting to the sovereignty that had been usurped in a way by the French and I think it was just a more perhaps a francophone wording when he said it was a scientific it was scientific he said he was defending scientific knowledge taking it back from the French and reasserting sovereignty and I think that maybe intellectual sovereignty because he's taken back what's been taken from him in a way but also I don't sense that it was necessarily strictly scientific and that's not to refute his very clear brilliantly argued no doubt thesis but there was something else in there which is the spirituality it is the potency it's precisely that which cannot necessarily be traced through the documents that has survived and that spirituality lends the sovereignty that cannot be violated by the colonial scholarship in a sense it's beyond that and that's preferring to Papa Chattagey's scholarship on what resides in the inner spiritual space that cannot be really violated so to go on to the Shiva you'll be able to argue that what is at stake is the sacralization of the person of the king and if the king is protected he can act with God-like power so my response was and I've been doing a lot of study and teaching about kings and kingship in Burma and Cambodia and elsewhere my new project is looking at a rebel prince and a king and a lot of symbolism so forth so yes Shiva he has he offers a protection of the king and we often talk about the Devaraja as somebody who's absolutely all powerful but actually reading your paper but actually he's also accountable because this relationship in a way makes the king accountable to the gods if not to men on earth so the king the Devaraja he's no longer accountable to those people below him and in a way it gives a system rather some sort of divine checks and balances on kingly behavior on the continuity as you argue for this spectrum of continuity from around the previous to the 9th century you trace it back to the 9th century to the present you look at localization and adaptation and you say that Shiva was already there long before the foundation of the Devaraja cult so again my question would be what then triggered what really triggered the foundation of the cult were there external factors were there political factors alongside the spiritual factors for example in the Siddhok Tom inscription you know Java is referenced in the writings of the wise man or the Brahman and since this is not my area I can make outlandish speculations so my sticks are low so bear with me but then I was thinking as I was reading your paper in a way is the Shiva cult adopted and adapted in a way for military protection and I would go on to try and make some sense of that your thesis is that first the Devaraja cult survives until today and the foundation happens alongside a process of reinforcing the earth when the king begins to be called Lord of here below the surface of the crown and this gives a new focus on human activity so this ritual incorporation of the kingdom becomes a ritual incorporation of even partially a domestication of the divine of Shiva and need to refer to the Tom inscription and the Prum Kulen which I think will be well known to everyone with this right that's supposedly established that not only the Devaraja but the Khmer Empire on the Prum Kulen and I wondered whether this process of the Devaraja the emperor at the top of the mountain and then there's the Brahmin who's the go-between with the divine is there also a process of diffusion or suffusion of that power and aura working downwards and you've used the top down model and I'm thinking of mountains, the land of the Panum housing now the spirits and are they already there these spirits do they work up and down and generate other territorial spirits and I'll get on to say a bit more about that in other words a sort of tutelary cult sort of radiating outwards not just up down your paper studies step by step how the evolution of the cult extended from the royal palace and then you do use of the cavalry of extension and expansion but with the examples that you showed I felt and it was for the purpose of your paper it was sort of you know in this century this happened and then that happened and so we go from Angkor and the beautiful examples you gave to Udong so as many of you will know after the sagging or whatever conquest or emptying of Angkor and it was never completely emptied by Siam in the early 15th centuries between the 13th 15th century the regalia including the playa khan the sword that you showed and bronzes were dispersed and that regalia the playa khan and others were taken with the royals but others like the bronzes they were taken to Siam they were taken up to Mandalay and anyone who visits them in the mahamuni pagoda can be so aware of their potency monks and others are coming up to these these bronzes taken from Angkor and they radiate power so I was wondering with this dispersal of the potent objects does that diminish the power of the Devaraja or does it in a way expand his culture of power and then I'll skip a little bit to with your you showed very clearly how Shiva is moved out so you looked at the pymine cat inspirations the three worlds you looked at the 11th century and you looked at the 12th 13th century Bayan and Buddhism how Shiva is moved out close to the fringes and the linga of Shiva is replaced in the central position by a Buddhist transcendental deity so you argue very clearly that Shiva is put aside from the sanctuary on the sovereignty so here are my two outlandish theories so it is a possible theory that Shiva is moved out but he is still essential because he is the protector of the kingdom and the sovereignty and he has to be moved out of it to protect it both in spiritual and spatial terms because or and beings because Buddhism is precisely against violence and the military so his role is almost as important or at least it continues to be essential if not spiritually and spatially central and then just a couple of comments where you where you did reference the weapons in the grand pavilion in the palace now it was you referenced them as weapons well are they really weapons because scholars have suggested that these actually do hold the Devaraja that they hold that potency and then in relation to Mesa or the white lady recalling Uma Doga and this relates in a way to Conan's comments and I'm sure it's something you've been thinking through very carefully but I just wondered if you were perhaps transposing or projecting Doga onto something that is feasibly entirely local or more local than your analogy suggests because women have many powers in spirit role in many cultures they're often associated with the earth they're off the earth and so there are the grandmother goddesses but is this necessarily black Kali because black and blackness is about it like women exist in all cultures so I wondered were you suggesting a fusion or an amalgamation of Uma Doga if it wasn't clear or something less or more and I was wondering alongside that about the incorporation of Ye Mao and others around Cambodia and Fabian Lucho who's done work on this and I've done some work with Krishna who in fact we did a couple of field trips to Pai Lan something I've been working with alongside the Burmese community is Ye Yat and these Dutelary Spirits who are at Pai Lan Ye Yat is there Mesa is there Ye Dave and so forth but Ye Yat is somebody who's very much a creation and a fusion of the Burmese presence and Khmer beliefs so indicating adaptation and finally on the externalization of the Fidda of Shiva I had a comment or suggestion or maybe a question so he's on the periphery and he's on the sidelines he's no longer at the center but he is on the borders so he's actually expanding his own protection in a way as the Khmer Empire but in the front Shiva's boundary is in Angkor or the royal palace that expanded so I'm repeating myself in this bit but this is the incorporation of Shiva to the periphery where Vaidhis pushed outside but at the same time this domain expands the way of incorporating violence and giving it divine sanction since the adoption of Buddhism as the moral order and so lending a spiritual legitimacy to violence as well as lending actual protection finally I just wanted to say that it's a really fantastic scholarship and argument and thank you very much and it's really inspired me and as you can see I have a lot of around me thoughts so I have a very few questions for Vishal Yen which are also part of my ignorance and I learned so much from your Fidda if one question was on the Kinkara the Kinkara probably pronounced it correctly so Yama's sort of torturers in one of the final slides you showed of the painting in a Buddhist monastery and their representation I noticed that there were torturers with ox heads and I wondered if they were associated with Yama because he rides on an ox it's a torturer and the Kinkara often have cow or ox heads that was one question a second question was with the offerings to Yama that you showed and you talked about the offerings I couldn't see it looked like they were just offering one incense stick I wondered how many incense or if there's a particular type of offerings to Yama because for Buddhist offerings obviously it's the three to represent the three jewels and finally on Abmyar Yabaret in the 1950s as the minister of justice and this relates a bit to some of the things I was saying about the spread of the Nyakba and these obituary spirits across Cambodia when the international whatever it is tribunal for the trial of international I forget the acronym but for the trial of Primes Against Humanity and that was established in a great new building that was funded by Amit Bha of Dada Mung Bhe with his big iron stick and when one goes before a Cambodian court as I understand it still the person who is one is asked to swear that they won't lie to you or they swear an oath to is to Dada Mung Bhe perhaps if it's to Yama you want to make I just want to know some of my questions you know starting with the Nyakta the anthropomorphic representation of Nyakta I think it is relatively recent relatively recent phenomenon because nowadays Symen is there everything can be made but traditionally including the famous Nyakta the more famous of Cambodian of course traditionally it was only a stone but yes for maybe 30 years or at least 20 years now the new the new representation of Nyakta are more or less systematically anthropomorphic this is for the Nyakta the ancestor of the village community but it could happen this a kind of contagion from the young relatively because Nyakta of course the first function of Nyakta is to regulate the regime of Mansoom for the crop but his second function is to punish bad people I mean among peasants and maybe this there has been some kind of contagion from the young effectively now when Nyakta is the reason for Nyakta I don't know with anthropomorphic representation systematically I think he holds the stick the symbol of punishment and he always has a grimacing face etc I have no I have no answer to this just that it can be a kind of contagion you know the Nyakta punishing bad people this is not the basic dimension of Nyakta the basic nature of Nyakta but like you mentioned the game of the real concerned people which mean the fisherman fishing calmly living in a really coastal area of Cambodia has nothing to do with the game of a new phenomenon very new phenomenon this is a very fascinating topic you know because I would say politician people who have some high administrative position in provinces businessmen etc all that and the the need of the expansion of tourism in Cambodia now there is a real a new belief in game mind but nothing to do with the traditional game mind of the traditional man but this work I think this is a very fascinating subject for research for that but I know that I have not answered your question or anything about thank you very much so the first question was about fortune and it was a question that was yes that was the parallel I made between the writing of fortune in law and the writing of fortune in 1948 so you were saying that it was a little bit artificial kind of knowledge because he said scientific knowledge and I wanted to give him a source the common way he is working is that in his dissertation in 1941 and in the communication of the society in 1948 he always used the way Cambodian say things to argue for example the beginning of the dissertation in 1941 he is writing down the paper for the first time I guess the word that was the word of the word Cambodian but always in secret in fact the way she never appeared that was the way the Cambodian designated French at that time asura, demons they went to the palace and they put a gun on the head of the road down and so on and so on so after that they say all people say asura like that make a home so the demons with the bounds of iron iron arms and the red eyes so that's the beginning of this as it is and all the arguments are going further from these places and when he argues against the death what does he say? he says he can't be god king why? because in modern Cambodian doh means half it's kind of genitive so he still uses a very natural way to say things to argues with trans guys that was the that's why I went I was trying to leave the two words so the second question can I just come back to this question because I think there may be a there may be a kind of miscommunication which is linguistic going on here so the French term you can use it in English but what it really means in English and I'm sorry I should have I forget about it it means intellectual and I think what Penny is saying and here's where I think the linguistic breakdown might be happening is that Penny is saying that he's using he's making an intellectual argument about sovereignty and so his tool is the Khmer language and if you say this in Khmer then sovereignty has to be thought of the relationship between the god and the king through this Khmer expression has to be thought of in this way which is one interpretation of David Arjan's Sanskrit and which differs from said as interpretation but what Penny is saying is that what he's using is not only the Khmer language in an intellectual slash scientific manner to make that argument but he's saying for sovereignty that he's ultimately saying that there's something that his claim to sovereignty and his claim to maintaining or his bid to maintain Khmer sovereignty in this intellectual argument goes beyond the intellectual it goes beyond the scientific proof of language that's what you're and that's where there's a spiritual realm which is something which can't be violated they can't be named through scientific proof and that that's ultimately what he's about does that make sense? I mean Ocean is a remarkable figure and he's a remarkable figure for his intellectual power but it's an intellectual power which exceeds the pure scientific proof that he's making that's kind of the point and then the other point is that it's a sort of cultural sovereignty or spiritual sovereignty and one thing the French were really terrible at was training lawyers they were also terrible at training in the French period of Cambodian actually Cambodian archeologists so in that period in his frustration that he talked about you know there were Cambodians lobbying to become lawyers but the French wouldn't let them and they weren't quite ready for it and I wondered if that's because the French had this kind of romanticised and nostalgic idea about these Cambodian war raids and customs and you're not quite ready yet to handle Western war and that to me that was what I was getting at about the sovereignty what was the chronology of this providing as a French to that was in my longer notes that I will share with you before Ocean and that's what's very low and they've been pushing back and Cambodians were asking the French to establish lawyers and barristers and so yeah and the French would know it's pretty interesting so it really struck me as somebody who's actually probably had to prove himself outside of the law because he's really not allowed to prove himself inside of the law he's kind of an outlaw and but you don't have to respond to all the comments Gregory if you don't feel we can discuss later there was another question about the the origin of the creation why it appears oh yeah like what kind of treatment all of this you're saying that it's been around for like a long long time the main hypothesis it's a very general hypothesis is that at that time you changed state so to change state you can't grow in I mean 100 people as you grow more more populated populations yeah that makes a lot of sense about the missile about the missile the general hypothesis has always been that the Chtonian coast were here from the beginning of the Indianization that is the main hypothesis so maybe in contrary to this doctor we assume but in the continuity of Ho Chi's work and the Ho Chi's work and Ho Chi's work that the Indianization is more deeper than we previously saw so typically with missile we think that later we go through the creation of the gods and I didn't show the lower part of the of the bayon-bar relief but on the lower part you see what we assume is the sacrifice the dogera sacrifice and in the 17th century when you read the legal text what you see there's no net down so maybe I don't know 50 or 60 missiles all around the country while at the end the missile has been the one that is in the center at the capital N they said that they bring weapons to the capital so I don't think it's a kind of local code that has been here for a long long time and I think it's something new based on all things You want to stop there? Alright, so Vasula I think I can be your clicker here No I will but you can like I am a control freak Oh you're Alright Thank you very much Ashley for inviting me and thanks to our wonderful presenters it's a particular privilege to be talking in front of low crew Julian today thank you very much for all that you've taught us over the years and many thanks for all your scholarship a special thanks to all of you for being here on a wonderful afternoon fully worth it for all of us this late, thank you My talk, my comments today will be a series of suggestions uplifting certain points, questions the comments will be more in line of suggestions or looking at possibilities the whole universe of meanings and I was wondering if we could look at the latitude here of concurrent ideas like any good Indian I don't like the word or I like and we like to have this and that and that all those multiple meanings for any given story so there wouldn't be any one single meaning for instance for the churning of the ocean of milk I think we can come up with 8 or 10 and so this is simply to add to the part and stir in a larger way it kind of goes back to the question that actually raised the beginning the connections between south and southeast Asia and I just be provocative here would say that one needs to study southeast Asia just as one needs to study Trinidad or any other form not in terms of inclusive Hinduism not colonize other places intellectually but to it's as inherent as important in understanding the Hindu tradition as it would be in trying to understand Tamil versions of Hinduism as a means versions and they're all very different they all have the local traditions and they only accepted those parts of the sanskritic stuff which was inherent there already as you have argued in Cambodia what meets the needs and what is part of the tradition and which they can go for cremation is one of them as as you have argued other ideas like the linga in the earlier papers so I'll be adding to some of these and it looks today like I keep going back to the sanskrit or the Indian stuff but I'm asking what if we were to take those into consideration how would these look different for instance Angkor yes it's it's three story facing west and there's only one other temple I know like that in the world in kanjipuram 8th century west facing three floors and so on and having a similar program of sculptures but Angkor is nothing like that it's on steroids and it's like part of it is like oria temples and so on so each one has its own vocabulary first part of it will be to Greg's paper and you have argued that this concept is not earlier than the 10th century I would like to say yes the words may not be earlier but the ideas are already there in place fueling so let's think briefly here about preco and it was built late 9th century dedicated to the ancestors the 3ndra varman jaya varman the 2nd and rudra varman so what's this got to do with anything it comes back to the question of what kind of temples were these and I'd like to evoke Padma Kaimal's work here a little bit briefly what kinds of kinships can we think of when we think of Indian kinship we're not thinking of it in a divine way there are at least two kinds one is the warrior kinship and the other is the the integrative kind of kinship the warrior kinship is when a king directly appeals to his ancestors to legitimate himself so I'm from this great I'm from this great lineage of people they conquer the earth the moon and the stars they did everything else he puts himself in that warrior lineage intriguing part of course is in Cambodia they also put themselves in the matrilineal side frequently and this legitimates their position as a king so sovereign the days however confined to the royal family and one could argue that we'll come back to the Devaraja concept but the Pre-Coke would involve this kind of harkening of the ancestor model whereas some of the other temples fall into what Nicholas Dirks Burton Stein and others have called the Incorporative kinship the Incorporative kinship involves when a king buys himself all his people underlings by giving favors giving gifts to them and making them part of a larger corpus of kinship and where we would go with this is that when the Devaraja the kingdom part comes it doesn't stop with the chieftains with whom the king is linking himself but the idea of moves on perhaps to all parts all stretches of the community nevertheless we do have ideas of the warrior and the Incorporative kinship combining here with the Devaraja concept it's not all I am God business it is very practical so we go back when you go back to Pre-Coke we have the questions when we call someone Pritvindraeshwara the lord of Pritvindra is this simply a memorial temple or even a place where they may be buried these are questions which come up with that later on is it a paltry temple or would it be when I say Pritvindraeshwara do I mean he is the lord of Pritvindra more like what was presented in 1948 by Archang so we have that idea very commonly present it's particularly seen in inscriptions for instance the god the Linga here the Shiva deity in the 8th century built by Rajasimha Palava king is called Rajasimhaeshwara and that he is the king of Rajasimha he is the king the lord the god of Rajasimha this is a temple you may remember we went two years back so he is called Rajasimheeshwara the lord of Rajasimha as it would be in many of the so we could have two possibilities either it's a paltry or the Linga there could be the lord of XYZ just a fun picture of all of us in that temple not in the 8th century but two years back another meaning of course as to how the word Devaraja extends is the kind of visual punning that you get in the sculptures where you have a particular deity or whose exploits can be explained and no one tells you it could be this king but everyone knows and Susan Huntington has said has really worked this out very beautifully in her article Kings as Gods, Gods as Kings I don't agree with all the points she makes but at least in the visual punning of it you will know that a particular king whose presented there could be Vishnu or the king so one example that we give here is the Vaikuntha Perumal temple I'll come back to this temple in a few minutes Vaikuntha is heaven and Perumal simply means god a word used for Vishnu and the temple is called Parameshwara Vinagaram Parameshwara the lord the highest lord Parameshwara here as the same Paramah as Vishnu Paramah Vishnu Loka the posthumous name of Suryavarman II Parameshwara and Vinagaram Nagara as in Nagara as in Angkor Wat Vinagaram is the sky city the sky city but the words of the name itself is interesting Parameshwara Vinagaram is very similar because it refers to the Paramaloka of Vishnu Paramah Vishnu Loka which is Vaikuntha and that's the meaning itself is embodied right here in the name of the temple and this is the name that's used in poetry in the 9th and 10th centuries Tamil poetry when this particular temple was sung about why is this temple important to me in this west facing which is earlier I mean there are many east facing temples which Prof. Brantford has written about particularly the Kudalara temple in Madurai three to four layers and there are multiple east facing temples but only one which is west facing and three floors and has a similar sculptural program as Angkor actually so this is the temple of the lord of heaven west facing and three floors and here inside this corridor and all around are carvings, barrel leaves and the barrel leaves would tell you the story of Vishnu different exploits of Vishnu but it also read as the life of Nandi Varman Pallavamalla and there are many literature on this so I won't get into it, I mean it was written as early as the 1940s there was an MA thesis on it in Madras again here a temple that we all went to visit it so to get back to the paper earlier we speak here about the important part of the Devaraja movement is the reinforcement of earth the area below the reinforcement the firming up here below the surface meaning below the heaven of the gods so I'm picking up this point which is a little different and would like to go back to this point the foundation appears as a reinforcement where similar words come up in describing the three parts of a Shiva Linga in a Purana called the Agni Purana like all our Puranas we like to keep them up to date so it starts in the 7th century but the last parts of it are the 17th century but some parts of it are 8th, 9th centuries and it's from I've taken this illustration from a book called Benaras region spiritual and cultural guide and so what he says is here he quotes the Agni Purana from the foot up to the knee should be Brahma's portion from the knees up to the navel Vishnu and the navel up to the top should be Shiva's portion so the person the portion assigned to Brahma is below the ground but that on below the heaven that is I think you called it just what did you call it the exact words were Padaikram now is called the Pitka here which is the pedestal the pedestal which is on the pedestal on which Vishnu resides which is very intriguing because exactly as you pointed out in fact within two or three pages of finding this description in the secondary source the same person who describes all of this goes on to talk compare this to the people tree so I found that kind of interesting that they make the shift so easily and so seamlessly between the Linga and the people tree as containing all the gods so this is the source of that Vishma gives the mantra all honor to the people tree the bow tree whose roots are the form of Brahma whose trunk is the form of Vishnu and the upper parts are Shiva and this is a very nice title for the book it's called people trees and I asked David for the origin of this and he said you know I tried hard to track this down but it's they say it's Dagni Purana they say it's here but it's not really anywhere but it never mind it's still there so I'm not going to read all of this just one part the idea that the people tree has all three gods and more I mean the whole family is here and the people tree the bow tree makes it most sacred and for the people in Benaras and also Rajasthan it's important because it's not just the male gods but the goddesses the Shakti is there and they say for this reason he said the tree was much more powerful Shakti the tree is more powerful because it contains all this then the temple image itself then the Shiva Linga or anything else so that's just another point to keep to stir up stuff and this was simply a question the last part here below which whom you hadn't identified I looked at it carefully and wondered if it was perhaps the left hand first thing was a Garuda because it's got little wings on it can you see the little wings very cute kind of like a caribbean or you know but but but what about Lakshmi because she is the royal consort so to speak figuratively and really big in terms of Shakti in terms of having embodying all royalty she's called the Rajya Lakshmi and I would like to throw out that everyone's been focusing on the Devarajya but parallel to this if it only ignites it is the churning of the ocean of milk story equally important conceptually in terms of rituals in terms and and continuing till today both in terms of its numerous meanings as well as for its the ritual so here we have in the same place that you've been drawing a lot of work from Eric Portano has been drawing we have the Lakshmi notice on both sides you find the elephant the Gajya Lakshmi that's why she's called the Gajya Lakshmi here so you find the elephant and what are the elephants doing they're anointing her and if you go back to the Vishnupurana they'll tell you they got waters from the Ganges they got it from every other river the Mississippi whatever and they kind of anointed her and that is important that ritual of anointing is the exact moment when that king is made a king that's the transformation moment and it's still done in rituals and temples where when they recite the origin the Purushasukta hymn the waters poured over the deity's head and that ritual which you find is so significant that here by the way here's Lakshmi again in the churning of the ocean of milk coming out is the Rajya Lakshmi and I would argue that equally important as the Devaraja is the concept of the Rajya Lakshmi of whom by which she's known everywhere and you find that ritual of the anointing even now I mean anyone who's been to same river has seen this surely you know the anointing of the waters with the waters on the head moving on this is of course a Koke Sadashiva head found and the Yama and Koke transiting to Prasarang's paper questions on timing you spoke about the fortnight of the dead and I would like to argue here that yes the ritual survive in India it's not a time and the same time period we have corresponded on this before it is the fortnight before the new moon which comes between September and October it's called the Pitru Paksha the fortnight of the dead, of the ancestors the difference of course is in the Hindus you only do it your own answers it's not to everyone like you do it in Cambodia but this is very very same fortnight in which you offer this and this was done in the exact same paksha period by the Hindu immigrant central even in Trinidad in Hinduism however the concept I would like to argue that while Yama is so significant in Cambodia the god of death dies in India and why? because his name is not invoked he's just not there so moving to another idea twins Yama you began your story of twins and last night when I jet lagged I was thinking about a ritual that my friend Bunso Khan had told me that this was a ritual that was common in some of the rural areas in Cambodia and he says and this morning he wrote me saying well not too many people do it maybe we because we're uncivilized no I mean that's important and he said when he had twins he called them Vishnu and Lakme and he said well those are the only times this was in 2005 and he told me that when they were a few months old they have a ritual in which they're united and it's almost like they're doing a wedding for them and he said that's because they wanted to be together inseparable in the earlier lives but now we do the ritual just so saying that they're euphemistically married and he calls this the twins wedding and that's how we do the ritual itself and he said we call it it's something like they wanted they wish to get married in the past life so in this life we have to celebrate them by doing that last point before I just conclude wrap it up Yama is better understood in South Asia as with the other name you spoke about dharma which is a different form of justice not the beating up of people but even though Yama doesn't it's the kinkaras but if I love the word kinkara really archaic but it's so what shall I say sectarian in India only associated with a certain kind of love the word kinkarya means loving service coming from kinkaromi and so a servant is called kinkara but it's not a servant it's loving service what will I do what will I do what can I do next what can I do next so you can see them panting wanting to help people but Yama is understood better as dharma the king of dharma in one form yes that is justice of course it's righteousness but here it's in the more exalted sense I would say more as a dharma who teaches nachiketas in the Shwetashwara Upanishad he gives ideas he gives a boon to this young boy nachiketas and he says I want to know knowledge I mean the real knowledge the real stuff the good stuff and he keeps Yama tries to send him away in the Upanishad and he comes back until he pushes him for the supreme knowledge which will make him immortal and so Yama here becomes more the concept of dharma whose son embodies dharma and he's called the son of dharma and so that's Yudhishtira in the five pound of our saint here in Angkor Wat and sitting right next to Bishma getting all the lectures on dharma justice and that's recorded and that becomes part of the dharma Shastra for us in the Mahabharata okay concluding point yes Yama is here yes this is also a place of royal kingship Surya Varman who faces south right next to all those panels on Yama I took this from the hot air balloon by the way which goes up so on one of those days when it was even working but notice all around it this picture was not mine it's given by Boris but notice the moat around it and it's more than just a palace moat the descriptions of Vaikuntha in many of the texts peak of it as being surrounded by a river it's an island in the middle of a river and the island in the middle of a river is surrounded by a river called Viraja without passion and once you cross there you reached Vaikuntha that is Paramavishnu Loka the supreme abode of Vishnu is Vaikuntha which is surrounded by this river and the word Paramavishnu Loka of course is connected not just with Surya Varman on the one hand the posthumous title but also with the name of the temple I spoke about earlier Vaikuntha Paramal temple Parameshwara Vin Nagaram Nagar which is in the sky which is the highest one and therefore Vaikuntha so would it be and it's a question that a place which has so much of Yama and so much of death on the south facing side is yet a place which conquers that death in a very subtle way not in a harsh way of destruction but where yes Yama has its place but those who worship this god and this is going to the spiritual part of it get to be in Vaikuntha thank you once again once again many many thanks for being here thank you very much okay now you have a hard act to follow so maybe you guys should come up to the front because we are also going to have open up to the audience who wants to begin me this morning in the frame we discussed about this and that about everything and I said that what we lack in Cambodia in the teaching of linguistic what we lack is what is called historical phonetic but I mean if someone teach us the Khmer historical phonetic I am sure that I said king gara because I just read the transliteration I am sure that in ancient Cambodia they pronounce king today it is pronounced kan but what differs today from ancient time is that king gara are no more understood as the torturer nowadays we talk about akam as if he is only one person acting like a kind of a guardian when you the I showed an image on the making of the rice ball around 8 in the evening 8 o'clock the pinda and people just whisper in that kind of they ask this is kind of a vocification not very long and they ask king gara only one person to to prevent because akam is believed to have a dog a fierce dog but in Indian ancient time in Indian tradition it is a yama who has a even two dogs I think but nowadays it is understood that king gara has a dog and when we make the rice ball the pinda we ask akam, grandfather akam to how to say to tie up the dog to tie up the dog so that they can bring all the the pinda to the the dead people so yes nowadays king gara is understood as only one person and not a direct torturer but kind of guardian of the board of yama about twin brother and sister I have no explanation but in our version of Vesantara jataka the last vataku jataka now we are in a Buddhist domain in our version Vesantara there are two children one daughter Chiali Krishna Chiali is a male Krishna and back from the forest to the palace they started gathering the soul but followed by the marriage the wedding of Chiali and Krishna so it shows that it is rooted in our culture but I have no explanation I know other tradition related to that one I have no explanation about the you said that in India yes of course I think that the principle of Sufira has worked deeply on this question the principle of the fortnight of the death is Shraddha in the Indian and we have at least one inscription from Yashwama from early 10th century we can see very very clearly that the root of our fortnight of the death is and it happened that this inscription dates back from the 10th century but I mean tradition and belief may have existed in earlier time of course the basic idea is to Shraddha as you mentioned the first scholar who have translated that inscription was obviously about in the year 1880 something and what stroke him is the fact that in India like you said it is meant to to only your family and maybe in three generation maybe seven if you push it but in Cambodia any model the importance of Lakshmi I didn't mention it but we believe that it begin to be clearly linked with the Devaraja starting from the 12th century and the bryan belief because Lakshmi that is to say Shri is linked with the sword of the king and we think that there is a kind of reconfiguration of the figure of the goddess between Shri and Lakshmi linked to the both rigalia that is the sword and shakti that is the spear because inside the palace you got two rigalia the sword always associated with Shri especially in the 14th century in the description of 23 K568 and K569 we can see that the making of the king is directly linked to the wedding with the the girl of the the daughter of the king and the fact that he kept the sword of the king it's linked and the name of the princess in the name of the king is Shri Shrin Dravarman in the re-deplication of the Shri here Shri for king is Roma but Shri Shrin Dravarman we assume that it is linked with the wedding with the princess and with the fact that the young king at the beginning with Devaraja got the sword from the king that is for the and after that there is a clear association even in Sokotai between the sword of the king and the Shri that is for Laxmi and for let's say Uma or the goddess associated to the sacrifice of the buffalo we got the spear the spear which is the second rigalia stored in the bronze pavilion in the palace of Klumpen and of course people who are killing the buffalo on the barrel of the young are using a spear and but maybe I'm going too far but how do you say that the origin of the spear in the late stories is always always going to the place of the people who are in charge of the cult of the white lady of the center of the kingdom Mesa of Langbu so we think that there is a real relation between Shakti and the spear and Shri, Laxmi and the sword of the king at least starting with this 12th century and so on okay I think all of us have talked enough it's your turn just a brief question cremations in Cambodia are they restricted to or are they open to everybody or are they restricted to certain types of people as they are in North India open in what in a sense that you can't can't cremate a pregnant woman you don't cremate children then you have to cremate you don't cremate a priest you don't cremate there's lots of categories people with mental illness you can't is that the case in Cambodia traditionally you know nowadays many things are changing traditionally that person died in someone who had committed suicide yes cannot be cremated with the order but that custom still exists today in some rural village I can I goodness but it is said that below 10 years old we do not cremate traditionally but I think today we cremate everyone but it is possible that in some area they still observe these customs and not only among Cambodia but among ethnic minority also I see a tomb of a person with under 10 years old age his body was not buried with all the other by the path so we have the word expression to qualify the death in an abnormal you know a normal death is that the person reached the cycle from birth we are born we grows up gets old and we die this is the normal cycle but if you at 30 years of age you die because you have a a candidate in the river or you commit suicide this is considered the death was considered as a the death person is called a small child which means war because the cycle is not rich your presentation was fascinating I thought you used a very interesting word to describe the operation of the earth below is there a reason behind your choice of that word and opposed to other words that are usually used to describe rule as in like imposing order or expanding or causing something to happen is there a link between affirming and discourses in inscriptions that you are trying to link to or what is the implication of that word versus the other words that are normally used and also I think Teni mentioned something like whether that affirming process is only a causative thing from above to below or whether there is any unusual affirming between the right below and the top so the first reason is that it was a translation of a French word which is to say sorry I have to intervene here because I'm partially irresponsible so a firm would be a distinct translation but firm the way they are using the term is also very distinctly relating to that question to make firm so the point is that at that time a fear a Cambodian word to say things for example Ptegram so what we are trying to say is that at that time a new expression is coming to describe the earth below to describe the earth below so that's the point second point is that as I said before why is this appearing now and not before and after it's maybe that hypothesis that there is a changement of here in the society the society is being more complex typically in the copy period with obviously a broader complexification in the statues of the of the elite for example with more titles so we have not the same societies as one cycle or two cycles before that's why we are trying to use this vocabulary which is a quite general vocabulary used by other historians in other societies to describe general challenge in the society general challenge of scale of other societies but why we are choosing this this period to begin the process is because we have the expression in the inscription before or not that we have had your time starting with the guardian of the south region regions of the south judge of the dead god of the earth and particularly good reincarnation and king of good as it was found in one of the but he said today that to guarantee good reincarnation a good funeral is very much in place and yet chart can help you get into organizing the ritual what happens then at the side of the ritual between the archer and the altar does yama confers one of his power to the archer does the archer gets the sort of power to negotiate with yama on the final destiny of the school whether it will be well reincarnated or not in which case do you have a sort of transmission of power from yama who is here quite close to the humans in the same way as you mentioned that the minister of justice until the 1950s was called onya yawari does that mean that at court then this person the judge the minister of justice is the one who gets the power of yama the king of order actually to be able to and be just and right to minister the people who are being governed and taken in front of the court I give the answer of yama to the other onya yawari but I mean first in I'm always talking about the onko area because this is the only one zone I know in the onko area you cannot become onya without the official you know administratively speaking but I mean you have to receive clearly consensus from people from villagers and after that you must receive a kind of acknowledgement official acknowledgement called like when you become a king you know a acha has to be and to become you know there are five people the main acha you saw is called yopi and he is followed by four other acha but the main acha is called the acha yopi it has to be someone these people have been of course the ones at least in their lives this month followed he has to be someone who has succeeded in the kind of meditation called you know meditation from a bit esoteric not really not really not really following orthodox or classical Buddhist teaching you know you have to have a long experience and successful in the meditation meditation on not the meditation on the esoteric subject to become that acha and as I said there are the acha I show in the slide he believe really believe that he is because when you when you operate when you in the cremation ritual you know the acha has to have with him the banner of the soul each that person has a banner of the soul called his name is inscribed in the name of the dead person because this is like a you know ID card for the afterlife yes it is that at some time in some villages the the name of the acha the name of the efficient is put on because it is believed that ones in the ones in front of the Yom Rit Yom Rit can see who was responsible of the cremation if he when he see that it is achaan girl for example ah ok this man is very so so you know the concern of people in that context has nothing moral nothing nothing moral nothing religious but really you know we look for a way to you know we ignore the notion of karma and parna the relation between the the action in the past and the condition you are living now all that is good but I know I've worked a lot of hands up earlier but maybe just to present things about Yom Raja Yom Rit as a minister of justice we are lacking documents but we have another example for example for Lahom as you know there are 5 ministers Kavir Yom Rit you stick with the definition the colonial definition it is a ministry of let's say maritime affairs of maritime affairs let's say so but if you if you see the post opium documentation it will be in charge of war first of all why because the answer is in the name so it might mean I'm speaking under the control of the the area dedicated to the homa the sacrifice before going to war and Adema Leclerc has a clear description when the minister is in charge of some ritual practices in the cutting of the in the festival of the water he is the one who is in charge to cut the the row the neverline cut the line so maybe the Yom Rit has some ritual functions too in the post Korean period in the colonial period as far as I know alright well I think we deserve a drink and please do remember we are promoting various things next door books and support for culture and research the sort of things that please do join us next door and thank you very much to our speakers and our respondents and thank you all