Natural Wonders: Indigenous Landscapes and the Building of Hinduism in Early Southeast Asia

FAIN: FT-285961-22

Elizabeth Cecil
Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL 32306-0001)

Research and writing leading to a book on the installation of Hindu temple complexes between the fifth and tenth centuries at sites in Southeast Asia whose unusual landscape features had been considered sacred in local native tradition.

In early Southeast Asia, distinctive mountains, natural springs, and rivers revered as the abode of tutelary deities, ancestors, and the heart of subsistence economies, were systematically redesigned as royal temple sites dedicated to Hindu deities beginning in the late fifth century CE. More than just eye-catching landmarks, remarkable features of the landscape were considered manifestations of divine presence called svayambhu (natural; self-existent) deities in Sanskrit language. This study examines the structural remains, Sanskrit inscriptions, and iconographic programs of three monumental temple complexes from Vietnam, Laos, and Java between the fifth and the tenth centuries CE, to show how centuries of accretional building practices produced architectures designed to control powerful places and forcibly transform indigenous sacred geographies into political landscapes dedicated to Hindu deities.