L'about inscrit du musée national du Cambodge (K. 943) : nouveaux éléments sur le bouddhisme tantrique à l'époque angkorienne

Résumé En

Registered by the National Museum of Cambodia in 1933 and still unpublished, the inscription K. 943, engraved on a bronze end-piece, provides interesting information about the date of the object as well as the religious history of the Khmer country and, more specifically, Buddhism. Although it is difficult to understand, this unusually long inscription for a metal Khmer object mentions a single deity, the Kamrateṅ Jagat Chpār Ransī, who appears in a dozen Khmer inscriptions, suggesting that he was an important deity during the Angkor period. Several elements of the text indicate a late Angkorian date, as opposed to a hasty analysis of the object which could lead one to believe otherwise, and thus supply the most recent evidence of this renowned Buddhist deity. Moreover, by virtue of the deity it bears — a Vajrasattva — this finial links the Kamrateṅ Jagat Chpār Ransī with Tantric Buddhism and, by doing so, raises some new questions about the development of this specific way of Buddhism in Khmer history.