Who the Sculptors were?

There would be many thousand of bass-relief works at Angkor. Large number of haute-reliefs and sculptures in-the-round, taking the beating of both weather and humans over these thousand years. But one thing stands out amidst all of this chaos. And that is Angkor Thom sculptures. Those of nearly six dozen huge, truly huge humans pulling the Vasuki on both sides of the entrance to Angkor Thom. You cannot miss them, even if you walked with eyes closed. And that is my point of discussion.

These massive human sculptures, even though badly mauled and damaged by any and every force that might have been inflicted against them, are still as potent & powerful as these might have been a thousand years ago. As stout as those  Misters Olympia Dorian Yates, Lee Haney or Ronnie Coleman, or perhaps even much more than those monsters of human beings.

But the central & chief question remains just one – who do these sculptures resemble the most. Khmers; Chinese, Vietnamese, Thais or say Indians? One must go into this aspect of history of Angkor. It might reveal unto us today as to who those sculptors were who created these massive figures.

In my opinion, the faces and their massive bodies definitely would not fit into any frame of either the Khmers or the Chinese. Their facial construct would not match the Thais or any other oriental race either. Then who? My guesswork would like to deliberate at the hint latent within these sculptures. That hint being that one would always like to create a story about something he, the creator himself, is  familiar with.

I have to go back to those temples at Kanchi, Rameswaram, Madurai and Chidambaram and other places to inquire. There, with the help and guidance from the Seers of great insight and deep wisdom, I might find an answer to my quest. Might.

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