Preah Pisnukar, Divine Architect of Angkor

Preah Pisnukar is the Khmer reception of the pan-Indic divine artificer Vishvakarman, the architect of the gods. He is the principal hero of the seventeenth-century Poem of Angkor Wat (Lpoek Angkor Vat), in which the god Indra, unable to keep his half-mortal son Ketumala in heaven because of the prince's human odour, sends Pisnukar down to earth to build him a palace worthy of the gods; that palace is identified with Angkor Wat itself. Beyond the poem he survives in living tradition as the patron invoked by Cambodian carpenters, sculptors, and builders, and his legend is retold in popular theatre and the Royal Ballet.

Domains

• architecture and craft

Powers

• to raise celestial palaces and temples on earth

Sources

• Preah Pisnukar is the Khmer form of the divine architect Vishvakarman, sent by Indra in the Poem of Angkor Wat to build the temple-palace for prince Ketumala and revered as the legendary builder of Angkor Wat and patron of artisans.: Judith M. Jacob, The Traditional Literature of Cambodia: A Preliminary Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). (secondary); Saveros Pou, philological study of the Lpoek Aṅgar Vat (The Poem of Angkor Wat), dating the poem to 1620 CE and attributing it to Pang Tat (Neak Pang). (secondary)