Yama – a rare find:
Sculptures rescued from the gigantic temple of Beng Mealea are very rare. Located some 40 kms from Angkor, it’s often described as a flat version of Angkor Wat, with some similarities, constructed around the middle of the twelfth century, but without any inscriptions, its builder and precise date are up for debate. A giant amongst temples, it has suffered more than most in terms of the destructive power of nature and man, and large sections of the temple lie in ruin, especially the central tower. It only re-opened to visitors in the early 2000s after the painstaking work of clearing it of landmines. One of the few standalone sandstone statues to have been recovered from the temple is this quite rare sculpture of the god Yama, sitting on his buffalo. Yama is the Brahmanic god of death, rebirth and justice, and is usually found in the pose of royal ease known as rajalilasana, positioned on his mount, a buffalo, with his right knee bent upwards and his right hand resting on it, holding a danda or short mace. However, most Yama images are on lintels or antefixes, or as one of the Nine Deva or navagrahas, rather than in statue form. Yama was a Dikpala, or directional guardian, for the South, similar to Indra (East), Varuna (West) and Kubera (North), and his lintel would typically have been placed above the main doorway to the southern entrance of its unknown temple. Our rare sculpture of Yama is proudly sitting upright, but is missing both arms and is damaged below his stomach. His diadem rests on his braided locks which rise to a cylindrical chignon and flare behind his dangling pendant earrings. His eyes are wide open and his mouth forms a grimace, while his body decoration includes a large pectoral necklace, upper arm bangles and a pleated sampot with an unusually large rosette at the rear. His mount, the unnamed buffalo, has large eyes, a neck chain and bridle but is missing its four feet.
The sculpture was added to the inventory at the Angkor Conservation depot in Siem Reap in 1958 and the figure was given a late twelfth century date. I assume it’s still at the depot. Another similar Yama on his buffalo sculpture, also damaged, can be found at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, USA, where it was gifted to the museum in 1995 but is without any further publicly-known provenance. A particularly fine bronze representation of the pair was up for sale by the Grusenmeyer & Woliner Gallery in Brussels, Belgium but has since disappeared from view, while stone examples of Yama can be found at the Ho Chi Minh City Museum of History in Vietnam and at the Khon Kaen National Museum in Thailand.Credit By :Andy Brouwer