attempted to rescue shipwrecked sailors. We know
from a thirteenth-century Chinese visitor that the wa-
ters of Neak Pean were believed to wash away sin.
The Cham sites are in mid- and southern Vietnam
(the kingdom called Champa). The earliest Indian-
related inscription, in Sanskrit, in Southeast Asia
comes from Vo Canh in south Vietnam, dating to
around the third century C.E. The earliest extant
Indian-related images are much later, from the seventh
century, and are entirely Hindu. A Buddhist monastery,
however, was built at Dong Duong in central Vietnam
in the ninth and tenth centuries. The Buddhism was
MAHAYANAwith tantric elements, apparently some-
thing of a local school. The stone sculptures include
figures performing unique gestures and wearing unique
clothing and ornaments. Both Taraand Avalokites ́vara
were of importance, and in 1978 a metal image of Tara,
almost fifty inches tall, was found, indicating that large
metal images were also being made at the time. The
style of the Dong Duong sculptures is highly unusual
within the Southeast Asian artistic tradition, with such
characteristics as a single long eyebrow and the use of
wormlike designs for hair and halos.Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula
The art history of Buddhism becomes even more com-
plex when turning to Indonesia and the Malay Penin-
sula. As on the mainland, both Hinduism and
Buddhism were introduced simultaneously from India
as a result of trade. Two of the earliest Indian-related
Southeast Asian kingdoms were founded in the fifth
century C.E. on the islands, one in Borneo and one in
Java. The inscriptions by the “kings” from both men-
tion brahmanical rites and indicate the appeal Hin-
duism had for the local Southeast Asian chiefs as a
means to increase their power through using a shared
Indian religious vocabulary.
These two kingdoms apparently disappeared, with
Indian religions reappearing in central Java in the eighth
century. During about a two-hundred-year period (ca.
730–950), hundreds of monuments in brick and stone
were built and thousands of images were made in stoneSOUTHEASTASIA, BUDDHISTART IN
The twelfth-century Khmer Bayon Temple at Angkor Thom, Cambodia, has fifty-two (originally fifty-four) “face towers.” Each contains
four images, which likely represent the all-around compassion of Avalokites ́vara looking in all directions. © Robert D. Fiala, Concordia
University, Seward, Nebraska. Reproduced by permission.