Kanchi and Kambuja: The Vaikuntha Perumal Temple and Angkor Wat

Connections between Cambodia and South India are taken for granted by some scholars and marginalized by many others.  Avoiding the extreme positions and keeping in mind that there was considerable movement and contact between various parts of the Indian sub-continent itself, I will look at some areas that are indicative of more than casual similarities and discuss the implications with caution.  We will begin with the origin stories and then move on to architecture, and iconographic programs, which seem to connect the Kanchipuram region with Cambodia.

Although the Vaikuntha Perumal temple of Kanchipuram and Angkor Wat are the only two Vishnu temples that have three floors and are west-facing, Angkor Wat is a unique product of the Khmer genius. Surrounded by a moat filled with water, like Vaikuntha encircled by the Viraja river, one can see why it is called Preah Vishnulok (“sacred world of Vishnu").  We will also discuss common tropes in the iconography including the “reverse-reclining" Vishnu and the eight-armed Vishnu, common in Angkor and evocative of Kanchipuram.  I will argue that both sides of the monsoon-basin were probably plugged into a larger network of cultural connections from which they drew ideas, concepts, and an ideology of architecture that are associated with Vishnu's supreme realm.

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