Kingship and Procreation in a Pyu Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin Stone Relief from Śrīkṣetra [သရေခေတ္တရာရှိ ဗိဿနိုး အနန္တသာရင် ကျောက်စစ်ရုပ်တု၏ မင်းရိုက်ရာ နှင့် စည်ပင်ပြန့်ပွါးခြင်း]

Cheong, Conan

Abstract

This paper examines closely a stone relief carving found in 1919 at the Pyu city of Śrīkṣetra in Myanmar, which appears to be an unusual variant of the Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin iconographic type — the lotus stem germinating from the reclining Viṣṇu’s navel sprouts not one, but three lotus seats, with a recursion of Viṣṇu now flanked by Brahmā on the right and Śiva on the left. Only six images depicting this iconographic variant of Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin have been found in Myanmar. Taking to heart Elizabeth Moore’s calls to complicate the “ethnic and linguistic homogeneity of ‘Pyu culture’ [which] has become entrenched in Burmese archaeology,” this paper seeks to suggest alternative ways of thinking about such Pyu art. It considers the apparent reinterpretation of Viṣṇu’s Creator-function in this particular Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin image in relation to his possible cadastral functions, to the Bagan king Kyanzittha’s conceptions of kingship which are clearly linked to the foundation of Śrīkṣetra, and to Buddhist lineages as reflected in, for example, the succession of the four Buddhas of the Past.

Citation

Cheong, C. (2020). Kingship and Procreation in a Pyu Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin Stone Relief from Śrīkṣetra [သရေခေတ္တရာရှိ ဗိဿနိုး အနန္တသာရင် ကျောက်စစ်ရုပ်တု၏ မင်းရိုက်ရာ နှင့် စည်ပင်ပြန့်ပွါးခြင်း]. Pratu (London), 1(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.25501/SOAS.00032559

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 26, 2019
• Publication Date: Apr 8, 2020
• Deposit Date: Apr 8, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 8, 2020
• Journal: Pratu: Journal of Buddhist and Hindu Art, Architecture and Archaeology of Ancient to Premodern Southeast Asia
• Electronic ISSN: 2634-176X
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-16
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.25501/SOAS.00032559
• Keywords: Bagan, Bodhisatta, fecundity, kingship, Kyanzittha, lineage, Pyu, Viṣṇu Anantaśāyin
• Publisher URL: https://pratujournal.org/