Aspara and the Churning Sea as performance

Last week, I introduced the Khmer both as an ancient and a modern civilization. This week in class we have had rich discussions on myth and ritual. Our discussions reminded me of what I experienced visiting Cambodia in 2006. In preparation for the trip, we studied the myths that we would see repeatedly in the country, sort of like brushing up on the best hits of the Bible before touring cathedrals. We each were assigned several myths by my mother and subsequently relayed them for the enlightenment and education of our family. Once we arrived in Cambodia we found the myths everywhere and expressed much more eloquently than our home spun attempts.


As I cited last week, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana are the main written sources of Hindu myth as presented in much of the Khmer architecture. We studied the principle myths and had the task of teaching them to our family so that they could recognize the symbolism when they saw it. Each of us chose a different way of relating the stories we studied. My little sister was assigned to the Churning of the Sea of Milk and because she knew it was a song she made up a tune and sang it to us. This is an excerpt of the action in that story:

The Sea of Churning Milk as a bas relief 

A portion of a shadow puppet presentation of
 the Sea of Churning Milk

Once, as they say, band met with band,
And, joined in awful council, planned
To live, unharmed by age and time,
Immortal in their youthful prime.
Then this was, after due debate,
The counsel of the wise and great,
To churn with might the milky sea 3
The life-bestowing drink to free.
This planned, they seized the Serpent King,
Vásuki, for their churning-string,
And Mandar's mountain for their pole,
And churned with all their heart and soul.
As thus, a thousand seasons through,
This way and that the snake they drew,
Biting the rocks, each tortured head,
A very deadly venom shed.
...
Then Vishnu, bearing shell, and mace,
And discus, showed his radiant face,
And thus addressed in smiling glee
The Trident wielding deity:
What treasure first the Gods upturn
From troubled Ocean, as they churn,
Should--for thou art the eldest--be
Conferred, O best of Gods, on thee.

To read the rest click here. In Cambodia we saw dramatization, puppet shows, murals, and recitation of this story. We had expected it to be fairly ubiquitous in the architecture but were not prepared for how common it was in performance. In The Search for the Perfect Language Eco cites a reference about the power of performance. It says in effect that even though the observer may not understand the meaning of words experiencing a performance has power in it self and conveys a special meaning.

Cambodians in the temple just after performing as Aspara

I was assigned to the heavenly dancers, the Aspara, (they are kind of like the Hindu version of the valkyrie and  muse). They were born out of the Sea of Churning Milk:

Then as the waters foamed and boiled.
As churning still the Immortals toiled,
Of winning face and lovely frame,
Forth sixty million fair ones came.
Born of the foam and water, these
Were aptly named Apsarases.    

Me and my sisters doing our heavenly dance by the Aspara

And were responsible for inspiring artists and conveying warriors to the heavenly realm. I decided that we needed to dance a story to convey the character of the Aspara. So, I enlisted my two sisters and we performed a heavenly dance. In Cambodia we saw the Cambodians performing heavenly dances as well, admittedly with much more skill and aesthetic appeal than we did.

The main thing I wanted to bring up here was that as mentioned by Ong the narrative conveyed by this oral tradition allowed us to remember important information about the cultures as a whole. Presenting information in the form of a narrative was an effective mnenomic device to help us with elements not directly related to the story. Further the mode of oral communication be it dance or song or simple retelling varied how well we remembered the information. We remembered the stories much better if we participated in performing them than if we simply read them. As a way of educating people and having them remember, story telling  and ritual performance seems more effective than reading.  It is more internalized. The institutions that controlled the myths wanted to communicate the information in a way that would be transformative in the lives of the hearers. Although the majority of the people could not read to discover the stories themselves, they still were able to learn and remember the myths of their culture.