Stone Works: The Religious Power of Lithic Media in Contemporary Cambodia

Abstract

How do Indigenous repertoires of ‘care’–i.e. scripted and ad hoc practices of using, maintaining, repairing, and beautifying religious sites and objects–intersect with the ‘work’ of historical conservation? In what ways are religious values expressed through the continued use and reuse of historical sites? Finally, can these works of piety be integrated within current conversations around the preservation of ancient temples and religious sites in Southeast Asia?

To explore these questions, this essay brings images collected during field research in 2023 at premodern Hindu and Buddhist temple sites in Cambodia into conversation with historical sources that contextualize the reciprocal relationships that exist between religious practitioners, sites, and objects. In the course of my fieldwork I observed the ways that ancient Khmer sites continued to ‘work’– that is, to be sites of pious labor–e.g. investments of time, energy, and resources, the practices of ritual performance, the exertion of devotion and efforts that attend the maintenance of powerful places and potent objects. I learned that the continued efficacy of sites was not contingent upon their historical preservation; rather, practices were informed by Indigenous understandings of the vitality of lithic media. Mountains, caves, quarries, rock-shelters, and crafted stone objects are loci where deities continue to be present, to manifest themselves and be receptive to the efforts of devotees to contact, please, and petition them, much as they were in the premodern world. Working from this understanding, the efforts of practitioners and the efforts of the deities are reciprocal: each works for the benefit of the other.

Citation: Cecil, Elizabeth A. “Stone Works: The Religious Power of Lithic Media in Contemporary Cambodia” The Jugaad Project, Vol. 5, No. 2, 2023, www.thejugaadproject.pub/stoneworks [date of access]

The Enduring Efficacy of Stone

Cambodia is famous for its monumental works in stone. The mention of Angkor conjures vast landscapes of towering temples inspired by Mt. Meru, the lithic centre of Hindu and Buddhist cosmographies. As Mt. Meru oriented the cosmos, so did these monumental structures anchor political regimes, regional economies, agrarian lands, and expansive hydrological infrastructures. These temples were also potent sites of memory and materialized the intimate bonds of kinship between the world of the living and the realm of the deified ancestors, who were often homologized to the deities enshrined in the inner sanctum. As institutions integral to the political, economic, and religious infrastructures of ancient Kambujadeśa, these stone wonders continue to perform critical labour in the twenty-first century as destinations for pilgrimage, tourism, and adventure travel. The Angkor complex, in particular, is emblematic of the modern Cambodian state and, at the local level, the tourist economy drives the pace and structure of daily life in places like Siem Reap, home to the Angkor Park and a hub for heritage-based tours and travel.

Alongside their ‘official’ functions, during my time in Cambodia I regularly encountered religious monuments working in other ways. More precisely, I observed in my research rich evidence of what I describe as ‘unscripted’ or ‘ad hoc’ practices. I use these terms to characterize modes of engagement that operate parallel to the uses of temple monuments as sites of heritage tourism and Buddhist devotional activities. While the latter are in many respects ‘scripted’ since they take place in public and often state-sponsored contexts–especially under the guise of the APSARA National Authority[1] which manages conservation works in the Angkor Archaeological Park and trains Cambodian guides–the former were undertaken by individual practitioners and experts acting outside of these official channels. Such modes of engagement are significant for what they can tell us about the enduring efficacy of certain kinds of sanctified environments, materials, and objects and their ability to work in and through communities as vectors of protection, prosperity, and empowerment. My access to these sites and practices was aided by local guides and translators who provided critical support to my research and my efforts to understand the contemporary uses of ancient monuments and objects.

The historically prominent and highly visible work that ancient Khmer monuments do can easily obscure the ways that other premodern sites continue to be used in contemporary contexts. Alongside these architectural wonders in stone were other lesser-known but equally significant spaces. For example, the networks of brick temples that mapped the early Angkorian religious landscape (ca. ninth-tenth century CE). Today many of the brick structures are collapsed, but the choice stone elements used in their construction (e.g. image pedestals, lintels, and doorframes) remain highly charged objects that attract regular ritual attention.  Lithic media, in the form of both natural rock and crafted stone objects, are a favoured abode of ancestral and emplaced deities called neak ta.[2] Neak ta can be manifest in the forms of images or objects placed in spirit houses and shrines, as in the example from Prasat Kôk Pô (see Figure 5), but they can also be invisibly present in lithic media, as the vital force that animates stone objects and makes them efficacious. Also vital are the networks of spaces that utilized the region’s lithic landscape–in the form of natural rocks shelters (called poeng in Khmer), caves, and contact springs–as sites for religious practice. These places are clustered on and around the sandstone plateau north of Siem Reap called Phnom Kulen (‘Lychee Mountain’), which was the location of the region’s earliest settlements and provided the stage for formative political rituals in the Khmer realm.[3]

Figure 1. Water offering at the O Thmâ Dap quarry. Siem Reap Province, Cambodia, 2023. Photo by author.

Offerings made to the neak ta that reside in lithic media vary in terms of scale and complexity. The simplest gesture of devotion is the gift of water. This ceramic dish of water was placed at the ancient Khmer stone quarry of O Thmâ Dap north of the Beng Mealea temple about 45 km east of Siem Reap. The deep vein of sandstone forms an expansive rock river that winds along the Kulen foothills. Chiselled sections have cut deep ledges in the stone and created space for small pools of water to form. These ledges and platforms serve as natural altars for ritual practice.

Figure 2. Shrine and offerings at Prasat Kôk Pô. Siem Reap Province, Cambodia, 2023. Photo by author.

The group of four brick temples at Kôk Pô were originally constructed in the mid-ninth century CE under the patronage of a priestly family with ties to the court of Khmer ruler Jayavarman III. A carved lintel and other sculpted stone objects from the site were removed to the Musée Guimet in the 1900s. Two of the four structures have collapsed completely and the central pedestals overturned and broken, likely by looters in search of foundation deposits (offerings made in construction rituals that could include precious stones and metals).[4] The standing doorframe of one of the temples houses a neak ta shrine. The small image beneath the doorframe is flanked by water offerings in plastic bottles. The stone slabs in the foreground display additional gifts given in the course of propitiating the deity: cigarettes, incense, and rice in styrofoam bowls, as well as cans of beer and lychee juice.

Figure 3. Angkorian period image pedestal used for divination at Prasat Prei Monti. Siem Reap Province, Cambodia, 2023. Photo by author.

Figure 4. Angkorian period image pedestal used for worship and divination at Poeng Tbal. Phnom Kulen, Cambodia, 2023. Photo by author.

In the course of my fieldwork I often encountered image pedestals used as ritual objects.  At the site of Prei Monti, one of the oldest monuments of the capital Hariharalaya (ca. ninth-tenth century CE), I noticed a number of image pedestals bearing traces of white powder. My guide at the site, Saroun Sean, explained that practitioners use baby powder, ash, or a similar powdery substance to activate the oracular potential of the powerful stones. When spread over the rock surface, the powder settles into tiny lines and grooves revealing patterns that can be ‘read’ through acts of divination. The messages may reveal signs about the petitioner’s health or even winning lotto numbers. Other pedestals, like the one from Poeng Tbal, bear the remains of ritual practice: wilted flowers, melted candle wax, and offerings of fruit.

Figure 5. Pedestal from Prasat Koh Hô used as neak ta Shrine. Siem Reap Province, Cambodia, 2023. Photo by author.

I also observed the ways that lithic sites were enmeshed in patterns of human and more-than-human relationships. At particularly potent times, such as a festival or holiday, lines of red and white thread are tied around lithic deities and then wound around trees, spirit houses, and homes, often at a considerable distance from the stone monument. It is nearly impossible to trace the trajectory of a single thread within these expansive webs. Once you have your eye on one it quickly intersects with another and, before you know it, you’ve changed course. We can understand this entanglement metaphorically as an expression of kinship made up of intersecting bonds between places, objects, and human and non-human persons.

The ca. tenth-century CE pedestal of Koh Hô is an active site for neak ta worship. The vitality of the stone pedestal is evident in the rich offerings that ring its base. The object’s significance to the surrounding community is also expressed through the lines of white thread that transmit the energy and power of the site and its resident deities to the many homes and shrines that surround it. This photo of the Koh Hô pedestal was taken shortly after the celebration of Khmer New Year and the threads are remnants of a ritual that tied the community back to the lithic center at Koh Hô.

The ritual traces that adorn Angkorian-period stone media attest to the ways that these objects work as part of assemblages that pair human subjects with the more-than-human agencies of environments and objects. The networks of thread alert us to the agency inherent in the landscape and the remarkable features that define it. Hovering just above eye level and nearly invisible, it is possible to move about unaware of them at all, but they map an ancient terrain that remains undisturbed by the many changes in the physical and built landscape. The neak ta are accessible in an old stone quarry, in the front courtyard of a village farm, or at an Angkorian temple.  Our world is mutable and fluctuates, but the spirit world is stable and grounded. Old ways of being in and experiencing a place are perceptible if we know where to look.

Water & Stone

In early Cambodia, as in many religious cultures in premodern Southeast Asia, mountains were the abodes of gods and ancestors. Sites, at times wild and uncultivated, where the deities of the land and of place presided.[5] In Hindu traditions, mountains and other lithic environments are sites of vital energy and affective agency. Mountains are manifestations of the divine in the physical landscape. As Hindu traditions were incorporated within early Southeast Asian religious worlds, sites of Indigenous power were homologized to deities from the Indic pantheon. For example, the ‘Liṅga Mountain’ in southwest Laos or the ‘Great Mountain’ in the Cham territory of coastal Vietnam were distinctive peaks long-revered before they were claimed by Brahmanical traditions as manifestations of the deity Śiva.[6]

The early capital of the Khmer empire was located on Phnom Kulen (‘Lychee Mountain’), a mountain plateau that dominates the surrounding agrarian expanse and offers panoramic views of the landscape. A significant geological feature of the Dangrek range, Kulen  provided stone and other building materials for the development of Angkor’s architectural wonders. In Khmer inscriptions, Kulen is given the Sanskrit appellation Mahendraparvata (the ‘Mountain of the Great Indra’) and was the site for political spectacle and rites of kingship.

Figure 6.  Images of the Hindu deity Śiva and ascetics beneath a rock shelter at Poeng Tbal. Phnom Kulen, Cambodia, 2023. Photo by author.

The modes of artistic production and building styles on Kulen were varied. The site was a space for experimentation that created an architectural eclecticism that included brick temples, pyramid temples, and a variety of works in stone. Significantly, in the earliest phases of building we can observe artists’ efforts to engage and augment features of the physical landscape, particularly the mountain’s many caves and sheltering rock projections. Given the historical preference for the study of structural temples, many of Kulen’s rock sites have only recently been cleared and systematically surveyed[7].

One of these sites, Poeng Tbal, is a landscape of wondrous rock formations, caves, natural springs, and waterfalls.  Religious activity within and around Poeng Tbal’s caves and rock shelters has left fascinating, if somewhat enigmatic, traces in series of relief carvings. Many of these reliefs continue to be venerated as neak ta shrines. They are painted and given offerings to please the deities present in the stone.

Figure 7. Riverbed carved with liṅgas at Kbal Spean. Cambodia, 2020. Photo by author.

Image carving was often concentrated on natural rock surfaces along the paths of water and near the sources of springs. On the southern slopes of Kulen, the O Kbal Spean River, a tributary of the Siem Reap River, flows from the top of the hill. For over 200 meters, artists have utilized the sandstone bed of the river and natural rock surfaces along the bank to carve extended reliefs and visual ensembles, repeated images and patterns, as well as individual icons. Images of Viṣṇu Anantaśayin resting on the cosmic waters is a popular motif that evokes conceptions of the rich generative potential of waters. Śiva and Pārvatī seated on the bull is another image favored by practitioners of Śiva religion. Riverbeds and boulders are carved in a profusion of liṅgas, the characteristic ‘mark’ or emblem of Śiva often represented as a phallic icon. These images work to materialize the fecundity and purifying power of the landscape by expressing visually how it is a source of divine agency. The gods themselves emerge organically from it. The water  of the river, too, is put to ‘work’ as a continuous source of lustration for the images over which it flows in the rainy season.

Figure 8. Inscription beneath rock overhang at Poeng Ta Roet. Phnom Kulen, Cambodia, 2023. Photo by author.

Epigraphic writings preserved at rock shelters describe them as sites of religious practice for networks of specialists aimed at amplifying the lithic terrain of Kulen and inscribing the mountain as a landscape dedicated to Śiva. Acts of inscription included both formalized compositions in Sanskrit as well as informal labels and signatures that provide a counterpoint to the elaborate and highly regulated epigraphic spaces of royal temples. The Sanskrit inscription from  Poeng Ta Roet (ca. tenth-eleventh century CE) commemorated the works of an ascetic called Dharmāvāsa (the ‘Abode of Dharma’).[8]  The ascetic used the rock surfaces to create relief carvings with images of Brahmanical sages and Hindu deities. He also augmented a natural cave and named it Śambhugūha (‘Śambhu [i.e. Śiva’s] Cave’). These actions, according to the inscription, transformed the rock shelter into a sacred ‘crossing’ (tīrtha) for the benefit of others. The tīrtha is given the specific title Vyomatīrtha (‘Crossing to Heaven’). In this case, Dharmāvāsa’s effort to care for and augment the rock shelter catalyzed the latent potential of the site by transforming it into a place that offered ultimate release to those who visited it.

Figure 9.  Relief carving beside inscription of Śivasoma at Poeng Komnu. Phnom Kulen, Cambodia, 2023. Photo by author.

The contemporary use of Kulen’s premodern rock shelters is most visible and vibrant at a site called Poeng Kumnu, which lies on the eastern side of the plateau. A maze of striking rock formations, shelters, and caves, Kumnu is situated within an otherworldly landscape.  In the eleventh century CE a religious specialist called Śivasoma (honored with the Indigenous term of respect ‘Vrah’) sponsored a series of relief carvings depicting Brahmanical deities at a place he designated  Mahendraparvata – a move to transpose the sacred mountain of Indic cosmology onto the regional landscape. In this way, Phnom Kulen was assimilated to the celestial mountain through patterns of association that bring the heavens to earth by making them local reflexes of celestial locales. Śivasoma’s dedicatory inscription, commemorating his pious works, celebrated  the power of the images: they are the deities who had taken up residence among the rocks and whose presence promised blessings and rewards for those who stayed there.[9] Other significant premodern carvings in the vicinity, like the reliefs of Gaṇeśa and Viṣṇu (see Figures 11a & b) suggest that Śivasoma was one of a number of people whose acts of inscription and image-making sanctified the space.

Figure 10. Ritual space and residence of Kru Khmer healer at Poeng Komnu. Phnom Kulen Cambodia, 2023. Photo by author.

Figure 11a. Relief carvings of Gaṇeśa and Viṣṇu on rock formation at Poeng Komnu. Phnom Kulen Cambodia, 2023. Photo by author.

Figure 11b. Close view of Gaṇeśa with offering table. Phnom Kulen, Cambodia, 2023. Photo by author.

Poeng Komnu’s landscape includes both rock shelters and caves. Since they allow access to the interior of the mountain, caves are favoured spaces for practices of meditation and asceticism that cultivate experiences of individual interiority. While Phnom Kulen is a region-defining landmark and has historically provided a stage for publicly projecting sovereignty, its many caves are hidden places of power utilized by those intent on becoming a siddha (an ‘fully-realized’ or ‘accomplished’ being).

Today, Komnu’s caves and rock shelters are used as dwellings by local healers, diviners, and ritual specialists described as Kru Khmer (a term that incorporate a wide variety of spiritual and medical expertise). An elderly female healer used  the cave in this image as a living space, atelier, and as a shrine to neak ta and to her own teachers. Through the help of a translator, I learned about her work and ties to site. A resident of more than a decade, she saw herself as a caretaker for the historic images, like those of Viṣṇu and Gaṇeśa, as well as healer and guide for those seeking to contact and benefit from the powerful deities present at Komnu. She showed me pictures on her phone of a daughter living in Vancouver. She, too, had visited Canada but persistent dreams of Poeng Komnu made it impossible for her to stay there. She was called back and plans to remain.

Figure 12. Contemporary ritual space for Kru Khmer at Poeng Komnu. Phnom Kulen, Cambodia, 2023. Photo by author.

In addition to engaging with and caring for premodern images, Kru Khmer healers and ascetics also contribute new layers of imagery and inscription to the landscape. Considering the accretional history and design of many religious sites—places expanded and embellished over long periods of the time—may also help us to understand how and why many ancient sites continue to be places for religious activity.

The Living Rock

While the monuments I photographed were often in a ruinous state, no longer evocative of the temple-mountains the ancient architects imagined, the stone elements have retained their vitality. Lithic landscapes at Phnom Kulen also live on as spaces of ritual and reverence that foster affective ties between religious specialists and the many emplaced deities called neak ta. Evidence of the contemporary repertoires of care shown to ancient stone media indicate that they remain potent places–that is, that they continue to ‘work’. Rather than framing the ritual activities documented in this essay’s images as evidence of the ‘afterlives’[10] of ancient sites and monuments–a term that characterizes modes of contemporary reuse as somehow ancillary to the ‘original’ life or use of a site–we might interpret them as evidence of the continued resonance between the Indigenous ecologies and ontologies that informed their early histories and the reception of those attitudes in contemporary practice. This is not to imply that religious sites are atemporal, but to understand use as indicative of an ongoing life rather than an aleatory effect. While not formally recognized as such, we might consider the practices documented in these images as works of preservation through continued care.

Acknowledgments

My research in Cambodia was supported by the Council of American Overseas Research Centres (COARC) under the NEH Research Fellowship and the European Research Council PURANA Project (Grant 101054849).

Endnotes

[1] The Authority for the Protection of the Site and Management of the Region of Angkor (APSARA) was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Siem Reap.

[2] Courtney Work, “Chthonic Sovereigns? Neak Ta’ in a Cambodian Village,” Pacific Journal of Anthropology 20.1 (2019): 74-95.

[3] Jean Boulbet and Bruno Dagens, “Les sites archéologiques de la région du Bhnaṃ Gūlen (Phnom Kulen),” Arts Asiatiques 27, (1973): 3-130.

[4] On evidence of these rituals in literary and archaeological sources see, Anna A. Ślączka, “The Depositing of the Embryo: Temple Consecration Rituals in the Hindu Tradition of South and Southeast Asia,” in Pierre-Yves Manguin, A. Mani, and Geoff Wade (eds.), Early Interactions Between South and Southeast Asia: Reflections on Cross-Cultural Exchange (pp. 443-442), ISEAS, 2011.

[5] Robert Wessing, “The Lord of the Land Relationship in Southeast Asia,”  in Andrea Acri, Roger Blench, and Alexandra Landmann (eds.), Spirits and Ships: Cultural Transfers in Early Monsoon Asia (pp. 515-55), ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, 2017.

[6] On these sites see, Elizabeth A. Cecil, “Building Belonging: Śaiva Temple Communities in South & Southeast Asia,” in H.P. Ray, Salila Kulshreshtha & Uthara Suvrathan (eds.), Routledge Handbook of the Hindu Temple: Materiality, Social History and Practice (pp. 375-393) London: Routledge, 2022; “A Natural Wonder: From Liṅga Mountain to 'Prosperous Lord' at Vat Phu,” in Peter C. Bisschop, & Elizabeth A. Cecil (eds.), Primary Sources and Asian Pasts (pp. 341-383), Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021.

[7] Dan Penny, Jean-Baptiste Chevance, David Tang, Stéphane De Greef, “The Environmental Impact of Cambodia’s Ancient City of Mahendraparvata (Phnom Kulen),” PLoS ONE  9(1), (2014): 1-9.

[8] For inscription K. 172 see George Coedès, “Etudes Cambodgiennes IV:  La grotte de Po n Prâh Thvâr (Phnom Kulèn),” BEFEO 11.3-4, (1911): 398-400.

[9] For inscription K. 176 see George Coedès, Inscriptions du Cambodge vol. V (p. 275), Paris: EFEO, 1953.

[10] On this term see the Introduction in Deborah Cherry (ed.), The Afterlives of Monuments, London: Routledge, 2014.