Harihara

Period:: pre-Angkor period

Date:: late 7th–early 8th century

Culture:: Southern Cambodia

Medium:: Sandstone

Dimensions:: H. 35 1/2 in. (90.2 cm); W. 13 3/8 in. (34 cm); D. 6 in. (15.2 cm)

Classification:: Sculpture

Credit Line:: Purchase, Laurance S. Rockefeller Gift and Anonymous Gift, 1977

Accession Number:: 1977.241

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 245

In Harihara imagery, Shiva is represented as the right half of the deity, his vertical third eye, lightly incised into the forehead, truncated at the Vishnu divide. The facial features are undifferentiated, unlike in their Indian counterparts, where a masculine and feminine cast is given to each half. This Harihara makes clear the extent to which the Khmer conception differentiated the two deities only in the partition of the headdress into a combined jatamukuta-miter and in the provision of half of a third eye on Shiva’s side. The popularity of this hybrid deity was largely confined to the seventh century in Cambodia.

cat. no. 92

[ Spink & Son Ltd., Zurich , until 1977, sold to MMA ]

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Lost Kingdoms: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture of Early Southeast Asia, 5th to 8th Century," April 14, 2014–July 27, 2014.

Timelines
Southeast Asia, 500-1000 A.D.