
V. KARNATAKA/KHMER: EMANATING/ EMANATION
The preceding two sections briefly summarized the divergent development of Karnata Dravida and Khmer “temple mountain” traditions – from the simple, square vimanas and prasats at Bhitargaon and Sambor Pre Kuk to their classic expressions at Somanathapura and Angkor Wat. These few concluding paragraphs consider if these differences reflect nuances of interpretation of their shared emanative cosmology. A third major “architectural language” dating from the same period and located geographically between these two – the 3,000 zedis (stupas) and kyus (temples) at Bagan in Myanmar, illustrates another variant on the “temple mountain” archetype illustrated in this background note.16
This two-fold dynamic of “creation/destruction” could be said to be implicit in every emanation since a manifestation, in common with any sign, by definition bears a merely metonymic17 relationship with what it manifests or signifies. It is therefore an index (trace, echo, reverberation) of its non-manifest signifier – like the ripples of creation around the vanished bindu drop. A vimana or prasat might therefore be regarded as an “architectural metonym” for the niskala god who inhabits, emanates and bursts through it, splitting his own shrine. At the same time, it could be thought of as an “aedicule,” a miniature translation into stone of its mythic “aedes,” Mt. Meru. This process is repeated because the vimana itself is constructed out of shrine aedicules, hence aedicules of itself, including wall shrines and the unitary or multi-aedicular talas (tiers) of its superstructure. Such aedicules are thus linked both indexically and iconically to the prasats and vimanas from which they emerge and which they resemble.
When in turn these aedicules are split, staggered or burst apart, a metaleptic rupture could be said to occur between two over-lapping and contradictory “spatialities,” (spatial registers or representational regimes.) The “metonymic reduction” of the non-manifest to the manifest, of a god to his aedes and of his aedes or vimana to its shrine aedicules, is revealed when the viewer stares into the absence of the emanating god or force, for example, into the empty shrine of the east (Suryanarayana) vimana of the Kasivisvesvara, Lakkundi; there can only be manifestations or aedicules of the non-manifest. If a god appears inside an aedicule, a further Riss (fissure, rupture) occurs; the icon or murti (Sans.> form, embodiment) is metonymically reduced to a material shadow, a representation in stone, of that god’s flickering immanence. Karnata Dravida architectural language could, in this sense, be said to erase itself in its own writing but without post-modern irony. Metonymy is designated as a “trope of reduction” and, indeed, the aedicule diminishes its aedes as an emanation of divinity, with each iteration, not just in physical breadth but ontological depth.
The Khmer “temple mountain,” in contrast, does not significantly inflect its “invariant” prasat “aedicule;” it does not so much emerge from this module as re-instantiate or restate itself outside and around itself. In this respect, it resembles an “analytic language,” like Chinese or English, where meaning changes not by a words morphology but the particles placed around it. It has therefore been described here as expanding “isomorphically,” emanating its towers and terraces axially and laterally through a cruciform, “trunk-and-branch” growth. The temple’s unity derives from the pervasive and perceptible homology of its parts to its whole, a “scalably variant” motif reflected across its fabric (a characteristic it incidentally shares with Islamic design.) This produces a continual play, ambiguity or resonance between center and periphery, origin and simulacrum, inside and outside, demonstrated at the Bayon and implicit in Hinduism and Buddhism’s emanative ontology.
In a Khmer “temple mountain” or pyramid, the center and its emanations, both their resemblance and their distance, are visible simultaneously, everywhere arrayed in the hierarchical relationship inherent in the mandala governing the placement of its terraces around its central prasat. In a Vajradhatu (“Diamond Realm”) mandala, the five tathagata Buddhas, representing the dharmakaya or “subtle Buddha body,” are arranged with the Adi-Buddha, Vairocana, at their center and his four principal aspects at the cardinal points around him; (some texts mention a sixth Buddha, Vajradhara, the non-manifest Buddha.)
Similarly, the Khmer “temple mountain” could be viewed as representing both the undivided absolute, (the whole, the prasat at its center,) and its differentiated parts or aspects, (its terraces and the isomorphic “prasat aedicules” emanated around it.) While synecdoche represents a whole byits parts, the parts of a Khmer temple also echoes its whole as the universe the Aum. Auxesis is the general term in rhetoric for such amplification and few edifices have been more amplified than the Khmer “temple mountain.” The concentric terraces of these pyramids, built from multiple repeated moldings cascading down, one to the next as at Ta Keo or the Baphuon, might recall the rippling of the bindu, the primal drop, in waves of stone.

A structural comparison of the “temple mountain architectural languages” might now be possible based on their emanative processes or “architectural rhetoric.” Emanation could be seen as interiorized within the limited periphery of a Karnata Dravida vimana, while; in Khmer “temple mountains,” it is exteriorized through the projection of its “invariant” prasat onto its terraces.In the former, the talas rise above and within the shrines, while in the latter they descend around and below it. The Karnata Dravida vimana by splintering its square walls into aedicules and facets imparts a sense of dynamism but also instability. The Khmer step pyramid reinforces its square, central prasat with each concentric terrace and tala above and below it; (as a state temple, any hint of fragmentation might be construed as “architectural treason.”)
The temptation to attribute a Saivite dynamism to one “language” and Vaishnava stability to the other should be resisted since significant monuments to both deities are found in the two architectural traditions. The almost Baroque aedicular prolixity at Dambal or Arsikere disguises an apophatic silence but explosive “Big Bang” at its center, while the four-square clarity of Angkor Wat echoes an irrefutable primal commandment or word. The distinctive character of these two “architectural rhetorics” would then differ chiefly in the moment within the emanative cycle of creation/destruction they express – the emanating or the emanation.18
Gallery: South and Southeast Asian “Temple Mountain” Types