Cultural and religious connections between South India and South East Asia

Recently we traveled to Bali which piqued my interest in this topic and has been reinforced by a recent lecture I attended. As we learned while preparing for the Bali trip, while Indonesia is predominantly Islamic, the population of Bali is mostly Hindu, Balinese Hindu to be specific. 

We grew up learning about Rajendra Chola's military expedition to South East Asia. As per K. A. Nilakanta Sastri's treatise on South Indian History, Rajendra's naval expedition resulted in victory over the Sri Vijaya kingdom, forcing the Sri Vijayan king, Sangrama Vijayatungavarman to accept Chola suzerainty. The Sri Vijaya kingdom at the time, spanned the Malayan peninsula and Sumatra (the largest Indonesian island).  It is well known that Rajendra Chola earned the title Kadaram Kondan after this expedition. Kadaram is the Tamil name of modern day Kedah, a port in modern-day northern Malaysia. 

It might be tempting to say that the connection to South East Asia was initiated by this expedition. That would be inaccurate and simplistic to assume that cultural connections happen solely through or as a result of warfare. The connections between India - especially South India -  and South East Asia had clearly started 100s of years earlier. After all, the rulers of the Sri Vijayan dynasty (modern day Indonesia/Malaysia) and the Khmer Dynasty (modern day Cambodia) bore Hindu/Sanskrit names*. Nilakanta Sastri states that diplomatic relations existed between the Chola and Sri Vijaya kingdoms since at least Rajaraja Chola's (Rajendra Chola's father) time. 

The more immediate impetus for this post is from a very interesting and insightful lecture  I had the privilege to attend, by  Prof. Vasudha Narayanan, (Dept. of Religion, University of Florida) on Vishnu Temples and Iconography in Cambodia. Dr. Vasudha covered multiple examples of how deities and stories from Hindu mythology have been interpreted and represented sculpturally by Cambodian sculptors including at the world-famous Angkor Wat temple. Following are some excerpts and my take-aways from this talk.  

The story of the churning of the Ocean of Milk (பாற்கடல்) by the Asuras and Devas has for some reason attained a lot of significance in Cambodia and is a common motif across the country. It is a fascinating story of how Lord Vishnu takes multiple forms - first the Koorma (tortoise) Avataram that supports the Mandara Mountain which is used to churn the ocean to extract the amirtam (the nectar of immortality) and later takes on the form of Mohini to oversee the distribution of the amirtam to the devas and asuras.  Dr. Vasudha talked about the massive 49-metre bas relief panel on the eastern gallery of the outer wall of Angkor Wat that depicts the churning scene **.  

There is a curious character near one end of Vasuki the snake's tail (the snake is used as the rope to churn) on the panel. It is a robust looking monkey figure bigger than the churners next to it. This character has been previously identified as either Hanuman or Sugriva by scholars. 

Photo courtesy of Bahnfrend licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

However, Dr. Vasudha has made a compelling case that this is none other than Vali. Perhaps the most compelling evidence she cites is from Kambaramayanam, where Vali's participation in the churning effort is mentioned. It should be noted that in Valmiki's Ramayana there is no mention of Vali's involvement. Kamban however mentions this in multiple instances including one where Vali is mollifying his wife Tara saying he - whose strength helped the Devas themselves in churning the ocean - can handle his brother Sugriva in battle. There is also a 13th century Telugu text called Ranganatha Ramayana that mention's Vali's involvement in the churning of the ocean. Dr. Vasudha also showed a relief panel of the churning scene in the Virupaksha temple at Pattadakkal in which a monkey figure is shown (which happens to be an amazing heritage site in its own right as a Badami Chalukya temple from the 8th century). 

Dr. Vasudha also showed instances where the Cambodian representation of stories from Hindu texts is different from how they are typically seen in India. 

• There are sculptures representing the story of Vishnu protecting his devotee Gajendra the elephant from the crocodile. In Cambodia, the crocodile is above Lord Vishnu which is very different from how it is portrayed in India. 
• The reclined posture of Lord Vishnu on Adhiseshan the multi-headed serpent is usually depicted with Vishnu's head on the left. However in Cambodia, it is more commonly depicted with his head on the right. There are rare instances of this in India as well which Dr. Vasudha has identified; she has come up with a correlation of the direction the scultpture is facing to which side the head is positioned.

It is as if Cambodian sculptors had access to the same texts, but perhaps not the Indian iconography and came up with their own. Or as Dr. Vasudha stresses, there is the possibility that they did not necessarily have access to the texts, but had knowledge of the same stories that are narrated in those texts. 

R. Balaji

P.S.

* It is also interesting to note the an suffix of the male rulers' names which bears similarity to Tamil (and Malayalam?) names - as opposed to other Indian languages which do not have the an suffix; e.g. Bheeman in Tamil vs. Bheema in Telugu/Kannada or Bheem in Hindi).

** See this WSJ article for a nice description of the panel at Angkor Wat.