Upper section of a ceremonial path marker with scenes of Krishna conquering animal demons

Side 1
A male figure, striking a pose reminiscent of Cambodian dance-drama, jerks a four-legged animal off the ground by its tail, while an onlooker watches. This could be Krishna killing the demon Arishta in the shape of a buffalo (if this is a buffalo).
According to the texts, Arishta threatened and injured the villagers' cows. He terrified cows with his coarse, fleshy mouth, his bruised face, his flailing horns, his great thighs, heavy legs, and sagging belly. Krishna attacks the bull demon, wrenches out one of its horns, and uses it to kill the demon with one blow.
The issue that remains is what animal is here being slain. It could be a bull, but might it be some other creature? Krishna kills a demon in the form of a calf by seizing it by the rear legs and tail and hurling it to the top of a tree. Krishna's brother Balarama kills a donkey demon named Dhenuka in a similar way. Both these scenes, as well as the one of Krishna killing the buffalo demon Arishta, appear elsewhere in Angkorian art. Because we can't be sure what animal is intended in this relief, and cannot clearly distinguish Krishna from Balarama, the identity of this scene remains uncertain.
Side 2
A male figure holds an elephant by the tail and stamps its head with his foot. This must be Krishna killing the elephant Kuvalayapida that King Kamsa has sent to destroy him. According to one telling, ". . . Bewildered by his inability to crush Krishna, the huge-bodied beast fell forward on his knees, bellowing in anguish. . . .Then, placing his foot on Kuvalayapida's head, Krishna uprooted one of his tusks and stuck him in the face with it. . . . Blood gushed from his shattered temples."
The scene of the killing of the elephant Kuvalayapida also occurs in other Angkorian representations.
Side 3
One person tries to restrain (or perhaps eggs on) an animal that seems to be jumping up on another person. Once, according to the scholar W. G. Archer, King Kamsa sends the wolf demon Vyama to take on human form and join the herd boys' game of wolf and rams. The demon rounds up the children and then, assuming true wolf's form he pounces on Krishna. Krishna strangles the wolf demon. Is this what we see in the relief? Could it be that the story is concentrated into a single scene, with Kamsa siccing the wolf demon on Krishna, who then strangles it?
Another possibility is an episode early in the ancient text the Harivamsha, when Krishna feels he must pressure his unwilling cow-herder neighbors, for their own good, to move to a more favorable locale. He puts forth scores of wolves from the hairs of his body, and the wolves attack both cattle and children. At last the herders resolve to move their settlement as Krishna advises.
Neither of these wolf-related stories seems to be represented elsewhere in Angkorian art, so the identification of this scene remains unsettled.
Side 4
A male figure seems to restrain or spear a horse while another figure looks on. One suggestion is that we see Krishna killing the horse demon Keshi . Keshi was said to be "furious, immensely vile, an eater of human flesh. . . . Any region he entered soon resembled a cremation ground heaped up with human bones. " Krishna hurls the demon through the air and then dispatches it by fearlessly thrusting his arm down its throat, choking the creature to death.
If all sides of the path marker show scenes from the earlier part of Krishna's life, then it is hard to see what could be represented here other than a portion of the Keshi episode, because that is the primary one in which a horse figures prominently. But the sculptured scene shows nothing of the fierce battle between Krishna and the horse demon, and does not resemble other known depictions of the encounter in the art of Angkor.
Style and Function
The reliefs on the path marker call to mind those on the eleventh-century Baphuon temple in Angkor. Both have active, relatively large figures and tree-like elements arrayed on a plain ground, and the garments and other details (as best they can be made out on the path marker) seem similar. What comes across to twentieth-first-century eyes as a pleasing, slightly naïve quality characterizes both the reliefs at the Baphuon and those on the marker.
Path markers are stone posts, usually wider at the upper end than in the middle, that were set up at intervals along the walkways leading to ancient Cambodian temples. Most often they are relatively plain; examples with narrative reliefs such as the Asian Art Museum's are rare