Interlude 1: So is it Hindu or Buddhist?

One of the things that has confused me about the faiths of South East Asia, both historic and contemporary, is the apparent fusion of Hinduism and Buddhism. My experience with these faiths is in their discrete expressions found on the Indian subcontinent. So one of my objectives of this trip was to understand the history of these faiths in this region and, maybe get a little insight on the contemporary Hindu influences in SE Asian Buddhism. So was the Khumer Kingdom Buddhist or Hindu? Well the answer, unsurprisingly is yes. And actually, it is yes, yes, yes, yes. It turns out that the Kingdom went from Hindu (the early building and Angkor Wat[1]) to Buddhist (Angkor Thom) in its golden age, before making one more cycle in its decline.

So you get syncretic curiosities like 54 towers, each bearing faces of Buddha pointed in the 4 cardinal dimensions, but each with a chimney that allows rain water to fall on a linga[2] dedicated to Shiva inside and gateways to the great city in which the image of Buddha looks out over the 54 Hindu gods and 54 demons inadvertently creating the cosmos in their cooperative game of tug of war with a 9 headed snake.

And everywhere you look, Buddhistrelics are missing, the joint legacy of the Khumar Rouge and the systematic program of defacement during the second Hindu period. So it seems that the legacy of the dynastic alternation between Hinduism and Buddhism led to some dissonance but eventually to a form of Buddhism that features the iconography of the Naga and appropriated the Ramayana and Mahabharata as sacred stories.
_______________
[1] Though Angkor Wat which represents the golden age of this period, is represented
[2]The linga is one of the most distinctive aspects of Hindu iconography. Most interpreters suggest that it represents a phallus penetrating a vulva with all manner of symbolism of the joining of cosmic principles and gender connection as well as the center of devotional practices for fertility and virility. It was ubiquitous in Kathmandu…literally on every street corner. As a mostly ignorant outsider, I’m not really capable of commenting on this meaningfully. But I couldn’t tell if the architectural decision to put in the bowls linga in the belly of each of the 54 Buddhas was ironic, playful, spiteful or a disorienting act of syncretism. Whichever it was, it struck me as yet another of the intriguing dissonance this place seemed to provide at every turn.