Hari-Hara
Hari-Hara East AsiaLiteral meaning: ‘grower-remover’. Hari, a popular name for Vishnu, implies the renewal and growth of plants, while Hara, ‘he who takes away’, is a common epithet for Shiva. Together, they symbolize the great opposites, creation-destruction, life-death: the intimate harmony of the two supreme, antagonistic divine principles. Visual form is given to this mysterious concept in the figure of Hari-Hara, where the right side is Shiva and the left is Vishnu. Fine examples are found in the temple ruins of Cambodia, once a renowned Hindu-Buddhist kingdom.
Near their capital of Angkor Thom, in the middle Mekong valley, the Khmers under the leadership of King Suryavarman II began to build the immense temple of Ankor Wat in 1112. A palatial temple-residence, with walls and moats measuring some 300 yards along each side, Ankor Wat celebrated the mythical exploits of Vishnu, whose incarnation the Khmer monarch was supposed...
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