Philip Rawson

[KALKI]

Philip Rawson ( ? ) academic, and artist and author of The Art of Southeast Asia has written:

“The culture of India has been one of the world’s most powerful civilizing forces. Countries of the Far East, including China, Korea, Japan, Tibet and Mongolia owe much of what is best in their own culture to the inspiration of ideas imported from India. The West, too has its own debts. But the members of that circle of civilizations beyond Burma scattered around the Gulf of Siam and the Java Sea, virtually owe their very existence to the creative influences of Indian ideas. No conquest or invasion, no forced conversion imposed upon them. They were adopted because the people saw they were good and that they could use them. “

“The sculptures of Indian icons produced in Cambodia during the 6th to the 8th centuries A.D. are masterpieces, monumental, subtle, highly sophisticated, mature in style and unrivalled for sheer beauty….”

“One of the most interesting pieces of all is a fragmentary bronze bust, from the western Mebon, of the God Vishnu lying asleep on the ocean of non-being. Head and shoulders and the two right arms survive. It shows the extraordinary, delicate integrity and subtle total convexity of surface, which these sculptors could achieve by modeling. Eyebrows, moustache and eyes seem to have been inlaid, perhaps with gold, silver or precious tone, though the inlay is gone and only the sockets remain. This was one of the world’s great sculptures.

Another magnificent bronze of Shiva, from Por Loboeuk, suggests the wealth of metal art that once must have existed in Cambodia (Kamboja) at the height of its power."







This was one of the world’s great sculptures. Recumbent, bronze image of Lord Vishnu lying asleep on the ocean of non-being - Western Mebon, Cambodia.

One of the most interesting pieces of all is a fragmentary bronze bust of this colossal image, the most extraordinary bronze statue of Southeast Asia. Between two cosmic periods, Lord Vishnu, lying on the snake Ananta (“He who has no end”), is resting on the surface of the primordial waters.

(source: Great Civilizations: The Cultural History of Angkor - By Jean-François Gonthier p. 15).

For more refer to chapter on Greater India: Suvarnabhumi and Sacred Angkor

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"The genius of the artists of that age was for relief. Indeed one might say that Angkor Wat is a repertory of some of the most magnificent relief art that the world has ever seen. The open colonnaded gallery on the first storey contains over a mile of such works, six feet high. The main sources for the relief subject matter are the Mahabharata and Ramayana, as well as legends of Vishnu and his incarnation Krishna. The wars of classical legend, in which incarnations of the various persons of the Hindu deity triumph at length over demonic adversaries. The artists’ skill is everywhere apparent."

(source: The Art of Southeast Asia - By Philip Rawson p. 1 - 77. For more refer to chapter on Suvarnabhumi).