Jayavarman VII (1181–1215) was the greatest of all Khmer Buddhist kings. Jayavarman VII worked tirelessly to establish Buddhism as the state religion of Angkor.[citation needed]
He was already an elderly man, perhaps 60, when he ascended the throne. Before becoming king, he had devoted his long life to meditation and tantra.
Sensing his mortality he worked feverishly to accomplish his works in "saving" the Khmer people and establishing a Buddhist empire in a race against time.
In 1177, the Cham Kingdom of central Vietnam had invaded and sacked Angkor, creating a sense of trauma and crisis throughout the Khmer Empire by attacking and looting the capital. King Jayavarman VII ascended the throne in a climate of crisis, and war.
Jayavarman VII was a Mahayana Buddhist, and he regarded himself to be a Dharma-king, a bodhisattva, whose duty was to "save the people" through service and merit-making, liberating himself in the process.
Scholars speculate why Khmer royalty rejected Hinduism and embraced Buddhism definitively at this time. Perhaps, they suggest, Jayavarman and his people had become disillusioned with the Hindu gods because of their failure to protect the Angkor Empire from being sacked by their enemies, the Cham. The Cham themselves were Hindu and worshiped Shiva, and the Khmer may have therefore felt an instinctive revulsion at the religion of their enemies.
Jayavarman withdrew his devotion from the old gods and began to identify more openly with Buddhist traditions. His regime marked a clear dividing line with the old Hindu past.
Before 1200, art in the temples mostly portrayed scenes from the Hindu pantheon such as Vishnu reclining on a lotus leaf, or the churning of the primeval sea of the milk of creation. After 1200, scenes from the Buddhist Jatakas, and life of the Buddha, along with scenes of the Ramayana began to appear as standard motif.
As a "bodhisattva king" Jayavarman VII was considered to be a living Buddha, or bodhisattva who turned his back from the brink of enlightenment to redeem or save his people from suffering; he imagined himself in a role similar to that of the present day Dalai Lama of Tibet.
Images of Jayavarman portray him in the ascetic pose seated in meditation with a serene, enlightened expression. He built numerous public works to serve the people, including waterworks, hospitals, temples, hospices for travelers.
Stone inscriptions say he "suffered from the maladies of his subjects more than from his own; for it is the public griefs that make a king's grief, and not his own."
Another inscription reads: "Filled with a deep sympathy for the good of the world, the king swore this oath; 'All beings who are plunged in the ocean of existence, may I draw them out by virtue of this good work. And may the kings of Cambodia who come after me, attached to goodness...attain with their wives, dignitaries and friends, the place of deliverance where there is no more illness.'"
Profound psychological change was underway in Jayavarman VII's reign. There was a shift away from the cult of devaraja god-king, toward the cult of the Sangha, the cult of monks. In former times, great effort and resources were invested into building temples for elite brahman priests and god-kings. Under Jayavarman, these resources were redirected to building libraries, monastic dwellings, public works, and more "earthly" projects accessible to the common people.
His temple, the Bayon in Angkor Thom, is the first temple built without walls, indicating its openness to all the people, not exclusive to the god-king and his Brahmin priests. The walls of the Bayon are decorated with scenes from the daily life of the people fishing, eating, gambling and cock-fighting, rather than the heroic deeds of gods and kings.
King Jayavarman considered the Bayon as his masterpiece, his "bride." A stone inscription says "the town of Yosadharapura, decorated with powder and jewels, burning with desire, the daughter of a good family...who married by the king in the course of a festival that lacked nothing, under the spreading dais of his protection."
The purpose of this mystical marriage of King and people, the inscription goes on to say, was the "procreation of happiness throughout the universe."
The building projects commissioned by Jayavarman were redolent with tantric Buddhist symbolism. The word "bayon" means "ancestor yantra" - a magic symbol of geometric shape of tantric Buddhism. In the center of the Bayon temple was an image of Buddha-Mucalinda: the Buddha sitting on a seven-headed cobra, with the serpent's hood unveiled above the Buddha as protection from the elements. The Buddha image has the features of Jayavarman VII himself.[citation needed]
Jayavarman other major temple projects included Preah Khan and Ta Prohm.
While Jayavarman VII himself was Mahayana Buddhist, the presence of Theravada Buddhism was increasingly evident. "This Singhalese-based Theravada Buddhist orthodoxy was first propagated in Southeast Asia by Taling (Mon) monks in the 11th century and together with Islam in the 13th century in southern insular reaches of the region, spread as a popularly-based movement among the people. Apart from inscriptions, such as one of Lopburi, there were other signs that the religious venue of Suvannabhumi were changing. Tamalinda, the Khmer monk believed to be the son of Jayavarman VII, took part in an 1180 Burmese-led mission to Sri Lanka to study the Pali canon and on his return in 1190 had adepts of the Sinhala doctrine in his court. Zhou Daguan, who led a Chinese mission into Angkor in 1296-97 confirms the significant presence of Pali Theravada monks in the Khmer Capital."[3]
No comments:
Post a Comment