Jungle Find Puts Theory on Firm Footing
28 October 2009
Peter Sharrock, senior teaching fellow in the Art and Archaeology of Southeast Asia, believes a sandstone statue holds the key to a radical rethinking of one of the great civilisations of antiquity. And his theory has just been given legs - literally: He has rediscovered the statue's legs in the jungle.
The eight-headed, three-meter-high statue, found at Angkor in Cambodia, depicts Hevajra, a warlike tantric Buddhist deity. Peter and other researchers are beginning to rewrite the history of the 12th century in Cambodia by placing this fierce deity at the heart of the religious beliefs of the ancient Khmers.
Scholars have traditionally held that the Khmers followed a far more compassionate Buddhist philosophy. And Cambodian civilisation was not thought to be associated with Tibet and the Mongol dynasty of China, the centres of the fiercer form of Buddhism during this period.
"It’s something of a tectonic shift in archaeology," Peter says of the rethinking now under way.
The deity would have been venerated during the reign of Jayavarman VII, emperor of the Khmers at the height of their power around 1200 CE. At that time Angkor was one of the largest cities in the world, with a population that probably exceeded 500,000.
The significance of the statue was misunderstood for decades because French archaeologists discovered it in pieces and misidentified it during their restoration of the magnificent Angkor Wat temple complex.
The largest intact piece is the giant bust with seven heads, which has been on display at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art since the 1930s. It has long been separated from its body, large chunks of which were lost in the jungle.
Lost, that is, until now. Peter began to wonder whatever happened to the statue’s huge legs. He was in Cambodia in July for an archaeological conference and decided to spend a day searching the forest in Angkor for the site where French archaeologists originally excavated and photographed the New York bust and its legs.
He knew his chances of finding the legs were slim, given the rough terrain, the overgrown vegetation where the Khmer Rouges had left landmines and the fact that no one else had reported seeing them in 84 years. Much to his surprise, however, he found them after several hours of searching.
Peter believes the statue was removed from a central position in the Bayon temple at the centre of the Angkor temple complex during a revival of Hinduism in the 14th century, when many Buddhist icons were destroyed. An icon this important, he believes, would have been taken outside the city walls to have its power ritually broken by smashing it to bits.
When he reported the findings to the large international conference in Cambodia a few days later, he says, his news was "greeted with astonishment and delight" and the Cambodian government authority in charge of preserving Angkor immediately authorised a new archaeological dig to search for other missing chunks of the statue, including the statue’s eighth head.
Peter still seems somewhat in awe of his Indiana-Jones-meets-Ozymandias moment.
"There is a distinct feeling of the unreal about going into the jungle and actually finding something of such importance to my research and to Cambodia’s history," he says. "It took a few days for the feeling to wear off that I had dreamed it all. I can still hardly believe this has happened."
For further information, contact:
Dr Peter SharrockSenior Teaching Fellow
Department of Art and Archaeology
School of Oriental and African Studies
Tel. 0207 435 8819
Email: ps56@soas.ac.uk
