Borobudur, Angkor, and SE Asia 
ABSTRACT 
This lecture discusses the elements of the Hindu temple, the various ritual practices that it defines, and its relationship to the image of a sacred landscape. It looks in particular at Descent of the Ganges at Mahabalipuram (700) and the Pancha Rathas or Five Rathas (630–680 CE), both of which played a formative role in the development of Hindu architecture.

KEY PEOPLES AND EMPIRES
•	Chola (southern India from the later half of the 9th century till the beginning of the 13th century)
•	Kingdom of Polonnaruwa, Sri Lanka (the 8th century -1310)
•	Dvaravanti (Thailand)
•	Champa (Vietnam)
•	Puy (Myanmar, Burma)
•	Khmer (Cambodia)
•	Srivijayan Empire
•	Mongolians
•	Jayavarman II (770-850)

KEY CONCEPTS
•	Mandla
•	kshetra
•	Rice paddies
•	Baray
•	The Churning of the Milky Ocean 
•	Temple/city

KEY PLACES
•	Borobudur, Indonesia, 800
•	Śrī Kṣetra (Hmawza), Myanmar (Burma)
•	Oc Eo, Vietnam
•	My Son, Vietnam
•	Straits of Malaca
•	Shrestapura, Laos
•	Dali
•	Hariharalaya (City of Vishnu and Shiva), 802
•	Bakong, 802
•	Angor Wat (Vrah Vishnukok), ca. 1125
•	Bayon, ca. 1200

NOTES ON SELECT TERMS 
Indianization 
Beginning around 400 CE, Indian traders began to expand their reach into SE Asia. The resultant contact and influence is known as Indianization. Since India was not one country but consisted of many states, often in competition with each other, and with different religious emphasis, the process of Indianization was not monolithic. Nor was it one-sided. Local chiefs embraced Indianization as a way to expand their own control. The advantage of Indianization to both sides was that it was a coherent model of political, social and religious integration. The successful political growth of the Guptas (320-550) in particular provided a powerful, coherent and attractive ensemble of religious motifs and bureaucratic mechanisms. Beginning in the mid-first millennium, the elements of this ensemble were combined with local Southeast Asian traditions, resulting in syncretisms that varied in their content from place to place.

Khmer: The Kings of Rice
What propelled the Khmer into the limelight of history and made cities like Hariharalaya and later Yasoharapura and Preah Khan by the 12th century among the largest cities in the world? Rice. The forests that we see today would not have existed. Instead there would have been vast rice paddies. 
 
But rice in Cambodia was not produced in the traditional way. By 700, the Khmer already in the their heartland in south eastern Cambodia had devised a hydro-engineering system based on barays and canals that stored and channeled water from the Mekong River floods and that could be used to irrigate the fields during the dry season. A baray was basically an artificial lake that filled itself up during the flood. The first barays were relatively small, but soon, they were huge, some 12 square kilometers in area. The West Baray at Angkor alone contained some 48 million cubic meters of water.
 
With this system in hand, the Khmer began to transform the Mekong River basin into a well regulated, centrally controlled, rice producing machine that could grow rice twice a year at an unprecedented scale.  The Khmer became one of Asia’s leading rice producers and as a result, extraordinarily wealthy

SE Asia From Village economy to state economy
200 – 800
1: Indianization
a.	Irrigation technology for rice paddies
b.	Spread of Buddhism and Hinduism
2: state formation and rice as export commodity
3: international trade between China and India
EVENTS around 800
1: End of the Silk Route and massive shift to south Asia
2: Rice paddies in forest inland areas with bary system
3: opening of the Strait of Malacca

Angkor
When Jayavarman II decided to make Angkor his capital, he did so because his engineers had predicted that with the proper canalization the land would be ideal for rice cultivation. But there was one more reason. The place was already a local ‘holy land’ that with relatively modest enhancements could be transformed into the holy land of the Khmer. Angkor spiritual geography, as would have been typical in the Indic mythology, was defined around three primary elements: the mountain, the river and the ocean  - or Mt. Meru, the Ganges River and the Indian Ocean. Each had its own translation in the local Angkor geography. 
Mahendraparvata (Mt. Meru)
Siem Reap (Ganges)
Indratataka (The Sea of Indra)

The Churning of the Milky Ocean  
The Churning of the Milky Ocean is an important theme in Angkor. It is a creation myth that explains how the gods, in process of forming the world defeated the demons and became immortal. 

In the story, Vishnu advised the other gods to churn the Milky Ocean in order to recover a number of lost treasures, including the elixir of immortality. Knowing the gods would be unable to churn the great ocean themselves, Vishnu had to create an alliance with the demons whom he promised would get a share of the treasures, including the elixir of immortality, if they helped. Mount Madura was used as a churning stick, and the giant serpent, Vasuki as the rope. With the demons taking the head and the gods the tail, each side alternately pulled the rope then allowed it to relax, causing the mountain to churn the water. When the elixir of immortality finally rose to the surface, the demons rushed to grab it, but Vishnu assumed the form of Mohini, a beautiful woman who by sleight of hand changed the elixir for alcohol while giving the precious liquid to the gods, and in this way the demons were defeated. The churning also brought Lakshmi, the goddess of success and wealth, forth from the ocean. She came as a beautiful woman standing on a lotus flower. Seeing all the gods before her, she chose the god she felt was most worthy of her. Vishnu and she have been inseparable since.

Temple Symbolism
The temples represent a combination of these principles:
1: the sacred combination of mandala/mountain/ocean of Shiva and the Hindu pantheon.
2: an intensified model of the scared landscape in which they are sited.
3: the home of the gods.
4: the omnipotence of the king.
5: the economy and purpose of the Khmer people.