(From a Photograph by Mr. J. Thomson.)
It is a well-known fact that, wherever Serpent-worship prevailed in any part of the world, it was the custom to devote the most beautiful young girls to the service of the temple. This would not only account for these numerous female statues, but their presence affords a hint of the worship to which it was dedicated. This, however, is not required; for, though the god is gone, and the Buddhists have taken possession of the temple, everywhere the Snake-god appears. Every angle of every roof is adorned with an image of the seven-headed snake, and there are hundreds of them; every cornice is composed of snakes’ heads; every convolution of the roofs, and there are thousands, terminates in a five or seven-headed snake. The balustrades are snakes, and the ridge of every roof was apparently adorned with gilt dragons. These being in metal, have disappeared, but the holes into which they were fixed can still be seen on every ridge.
There is no image in the sanctuary, of course, because it is the peculiarity of this religion that the god is a living god, and dies, or is eaten up by his fellow divinities, so that no trace of him remains. But, beyond all this, the water-arrangements which pervade every part of the great temple are such as belong to the worship of the Serpent, and to that only.
377. Lower Part of Pilaster, Nakhon Wat. (From a Photograph by Mr. F. J. Thomson.)
At present this temple has been taken possession of by Siamese bonzes, who have dedicated it to the worship of Buddha. They have introduced images of him into the sanctuaries and other places, and, with the usual incuriousness of people of their class, assert that it was always so; while, unfortunately, no one who has yet visited the place has been so familiar with Buddhist architecture as to be able to contradict them. If, however, there is one thing more certain than another in this history, it is that Nakhon Wat was not originally erected by Buddhists or for Buddhist purposes. In the first place, there is no sign of a dagoba or of a vihara, or of a chaitya hall in the whole building, nor anything that can be called a reminiscence of any feature of Buddhist architecture. More than this, there is no trace of Buddha, of any scene from his life, or from the jatakas to be found among the sculptures. In former days it might be excusable to doubt this; but it is not so now that any man may make himself familiar with the sculptures at Bharhut, at Sanchi, or Amravati, or with those from the Gandhara monasteries or at Boro Buddor. It is just as easy to recognise a Buddhist scene or legend in these representations, as it is to identify a Christian scene in the Arena chapel at Padua, or at Monreale near Palermo. What may hereafter turn up I do not know, but meanwhile I most unhesitatingly assert that there is not a trace of Buddhism in any of the bas-reliefs yet brought to light from Nakhon Wat, nor an integral statue of Buddha or of any Buddhist saint about the place.
I am, of course, aware that there are traditions of Asoka having sent missionaries there, and of Buddhaghosha having visited the place,[645] but they are the merest of traditions, imported, apparently, from Siam, and resting on no authenticated basis. Had Buddhists ever come here en masse, or the country ever been converted to that religion, as was the case in Java, it seems impossible the fact should not be observable in the buildings. But there seems no trace of it there. There is no Eastern country, in fact, where that religion seems to have been so little known in ancient times. The testimony of the Chinese traveller, who visited the country in A.D. 1295,[646] is sufficient to prove it did exist in his time; but, like his predecessors Fa Hian and Hiouen Thsang, he saw his own faith everywhere, and, with true Chinese superciliousness, saw no other religion anywhere.
So far as can be at present ascertained, it seems as if the migrations of the Indians to Java and to Cambodia took place about the same time and from the same quarter; but with this remarkable difference: they went en masse to Java, and found a tabula rasa—a people, it may be, numerous, but without arts or religion, and they implanted there their own with very slight modifications. In Cambodia the country must have been more civilized, and had a religion, if not an art. The Indians seem slowly, and only to a limited extent, to have been able to modify their religion towards Hinduism, probably because it was identical, or at least sympathetic; but they certainly endowed the Cambodians with an art which we have no reason to suppose they before possessed. Now that we know to what an extent classical art prevailed in the country these Indians are reputed to have come from, and to how late a date that art continued to be practised in the north-west, we are no longer puzzled to understand the prevalence of classical details in this temple; but to work out the connexion in all its variations is one of the most interesting problems that remain to exercise the ingenuity of future explorers.
Baion.