CHAMPA ( Cham's country, now annexed by Viet-Nam ( 2nd part)

Shared by S K MONOHA of Cambodia, France.

Read first part here.

Yet there is one particular feature of Cham temples which distinguishes them. This is the pedestal altar within the cell, upon which statues of various kinds were set, sometimes - as far as we can tell - in groups. These pedestals were themselves often most beautifully adorned with reliefs, and some of the best Cham work appears on them. Usually the subjetcts are taken from typical Indian imagery of the celestial court. But the fact that these pedestal altars carried their sculptures in the space of the cell, away from the wall, meant that the Cham sculptors became accustomed to thinking in terms of fully three dimensional plasticity, not only of relief. This strongly conditioned their art. It has been suggested that such a conception of the altar was derived from China, for it was quite foreign to Indian tradition. This may be true. Champa always existed in to shadow of China, often trying to cultivate good relations with the Son of Heaven as an insurance against pressure from the Vietnamese. And the coastal ports of Annam were recognized staging posts for ships bound from China to other parts of the Orient. There can be no mistaking the Chinese inflections of the curves and scrolls of Cham ornament, especially in their fondness for the slightly squared hook or spiral in both positive and negative forms.

The temple architecture of the first epoch is represented principally at Mi Son. The groups of remains on the site have been given identifying letters by the French archaeologists who investigated them.

As these are the only names they names they have been given, we are obliged to use them in discussing the art. From the early phares represented by the EI group there are no complete buildings, only ground plans and fragments of sculpture. The sequence runs through towers FI at Hoa Lai , to the great A I and the associated Po Nagar at Nha Trang. Also forming part of this complex are the Prasat Damrei Krap at Kulen in Cambodia , built by Cham architects while Jayavarman II was founding Angkor; and Buddhist monastery complex at Dong Duong, built when the capital had been set up at Quang Nam. Unfortunately, the earliest buildings of all are not fully decipherable from their remains, and the best surviving examples of the early phare are those on Mount Kuken, on Khmer terrain, and at Hoa Lai in the southern Champa.

These tower-shrines follow the same pattern. the central rectangular volume of the cell is tall, on a square or long rectangular plan. The faces are marked with central porticos which are blind on all but the western face, where the entrance door is situated. These porticos are set in a tall, narrow frame of pilasters crowned with horizontally moulded capitals which step up outwards. They support a tall double-ogival blind arch, which is crowned by another stepped in behind the first.
These arches are based on the Indian torana pattern,and are carved with a design of slowly undulant foliage springing from the mouth pf a monster whose head forms the apex of the arch. The faces of the walls are formed of pilasters framing tall recesses, and the faces of all the pilasters are carved with foliate relief. Elaborate recessed ans stepped-out horizonal mouldings mark their bases. The height of the pilasters and recesses gives a strong vertical accent to the body of the shrine.

The principal architrave is carried on stepped-out false capitals to the pilasters. Three diminishing compressed storeys form the roof of the tower, each marked by little pavilions on the faces above the main porticos. Inside this tower is a high corbelled space. The blind porticos seem once to have contained figures of deities - perhaps guardians with weapons standing in a threatening posture.