200 Faces and A Stonework Cockfight at Angkor Thom

Posted on August 6, 2013 by lisafindley

Angkor Thom was the first stop on my first day in the park, and it turned out to be my last stop of the day, because there’s so much to see and it’s too hot to move quickly from one site to the next. (Have I mentioned how hot it was in Southeast Asia yet? Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to dwell on that point for the next several weeks, because even summers spent in muggy Michigan swamplands and concrete-baked Chicago porches could not prepare me for the humid heat of this part of the world.) Anyway, heat aside, Angkor Thom was a great introduction to the wonders of the park at Angkor.

At Bayon in Angkor Thom (there I am for a sense of scale)

The South Gate

The south gate is the main entrance point for modern visitors, and it’s an impressive introduction to King Jayavarman VII’s city-temple. The bridge over the moat is flanked by two rows of figures–gods on the left, demons on the right–and each group of figures holds the body of the rainbow naga, a giant serpent, which is either meant to bridge the world of the gods and the world of humans, or to show the creation myth the Churning of the Sea of Milk, making the center of the city the created world. That’s a difference between Angkor Thom and most of the other temples in the area–there’s no moat or wall around the main temple inside, Bayon, so archaeologists theorize that the whole city is meant to represent Mount Meru, rather than just the temple, which would seem to bring up a lot of theological questions in terms of the inhabitants of the city, what activities were and weren’t holy in the city, etc.

Serene gods

Anyway, this is how I reacted to these interesting archaeological and theological questions:

Holding up the snake

Bayon

Bayon

The Bayon is a weird and wonderful temple. Its central portion is filled with face towers: large blocks of stone with a face carved in each of the four sides. The faces might resemble King Jayavarman VII or Lokesvara, the bodhisattva of compassion in the Buddhist tradition, or they might resemble Jayavarman as Lokesvara. There’s a long tradition of rulers around the world having their likeness dressed up as historical heroes or religious figures; it lends majesty. Apparently there are 216 faces in this one temple alone, but there used to be more, or maybe less. It’s hard to tell with all the renovations made over the centuries. So there may have been some significance to the number of faces found in the temple, but it’s hard to know what it would be.

So many faces at Bayon

The many face towers contribute to the crowded feeling of this temple, since there’s a tower cropping up just about everywhere you turn, unlike at other temples, where there were carefully planned distances between the considerably fewer towers. Apparently, the Bayon was just added to and added to over the years, and built up higher than it was originally intended to be, so we see more towers, and also narrower hallways, than at other temples.

Crowded hallways in Bayon

The Bayon also has one of the most extensive collections of bas-relief friezes in the park. Like Angkor Wat, the Bayon does include friezes depicting mythological scenes from Hindusim, but there are also huge walls of bas-reliefs showing everyday life in the late 12th century in Angkor, as well as some historical events. There’s a wrestling match, a chess game, a cockfight, and a market scene, among many others.

Cockfighting

Chess game

There are also naval battles between the Khmer and their traditional enemies the Cham, and some processionals involving Khmer generals atop their elephants. I really enjoyed poring over all these scenes.

The friezes were multilevel

Dancing on a boat

Crocodile mishaps

Bapuon

Bapuon

Here is where my guidebook’s last update (2003) came in sharp contrast with reality. The book shows photos of a grass-covered mound, and vaguely describes the massive temple as once more impressive than even the Bayon. Reality shows a completely restored, impressively massive temple, complete with ridiculously long bridge with a couple ponds on either side, and my first introduction to just how steep the steps of Angkor temples can be.

Everyone made jokes about what a workout it was to go up and down these stairs

Ssssstone carvings

Not sure who carved the arrow–the ancients or modern restoration workers–but the hole was probably used to hold wooden pegs as stones were maneuvered into place, then removed when the stones were snugly fitted

The Royal Palace and Phimeanakas

Phimeanakas

I tried to follow my guidebook’s plan to get to the Elephant Terrace after the Bapuon, but found myself going through a side entrance to the grounds of the Royal Palace. Tucked back here is the Phimeanakas, the temple of the king. It wasn’t in great condition and couldn’t be climbed on. A dusty path led away from the temple toward what was left of the gate of the palace.

A rare instance of Khmer writing at Angkor

In a small grove of trees to the right, I saw a group of Cambodians eating lunch and resting from the heat of midday, kids running around playing games and screeching as kids do. Pretty much everyone I saw touristing at Angkor was white or East Asian, so I guessed these families were working here, and were taking a break. Then I saw a couple of the women stand up and grab plastic bags and long poles and realized that they were part of the crew I’d seen picking up litter all along the roadways on the way here. They were why Angkor was so much cleaner than most tourist sites I’d visited in Thailand.

Snack Break

The snacks tree

I left the palace and went across the road to find some refreshment. As soon as I started crossing that road, at least three women started screaming out for me to visit their stall. I headed across the field toward the large tree under which the snack stalls were set up, but the women literally ran toward me in order to be the one to get me to buy a $1 bottle of water. It was disconcerting to be the focus of such a ferocious sales pitch, and saddening to get to the shelter of the tree and buy my mango slices and bottled water from the 10-year-old daughter of one of the women who had run to greet me. Several girls vied for my attention and my dollars, and they all talked to me in good English. They’d all learned English by selling snacks to thirsty tourists, and none of them could be spared by their parents to go to school, or if they could be spared, they couldn’t afford the uniforms required to attend.

I swallowed my privileged American white lady guilt along with the mango slices and went back across the road to see the rest of the structures, but I’d lost the enthusiasm I’d had earlier.

Elephant Terrace

I admired the Elephant Terrace (so named for the long-trunked animals carved into the side of the terrace) and smiled as kids chased each other through the narrow walkways of the Leper King Terrace (so named for the king of legend who had leprosy, whose likeness might be seen in one of the carvings–or who might be called to mind simply because the lichen has eaten away the carving of the king figure here).

Restoration work is a giant jigsaw

Dig the groovy swirls

Then it was time to catch a sunset at Angkor Wat and head back to the air-conditioned comfort of the guesthouse before another day in the splendid ruins.

So. Hot.

Angkor Wat: A Temple, A City, A Breathtaking Sight

Posted on August 5, 2013 by lisafindley

When I say I’ve been to Angkor Wat, people sometimes reply, “where?” but when I show them this photo, they nod in recognition:

Angkor Wat at sunrise

Oh yeah, that place. The giant temple thing in Cambodia. In fact, Angkor Wat is the largest single religious monument in the world. (I guess that’s under dispute by Those Who Measure Religious Monuments or something, because most of the info I can find on it won’t give me a hard yes or no on the topic. Regardless, it’s huge–the outer wall runs over 2 miles long.) Of course it’s big, when you learn that “angkor” roughly translates to “city” and of course we know “wat” is fairly synonymous with “temple.” Angkor Wat is a temple and also a city.

Angkor Wat

Khmer king Suryavarman II built Angkor Wat in the beginning of the 12th century. He broke from tradition by dedicating it to Vishnu rather than Shiva, and orienting the temple complex to the west, rather than the east. In the next century, the main religion of the Khmers changed from Hinduism to Buddhism, so the religion associated with the temple changed, too. One of the main statues of the temple, which was somehow not destroyed during the reign of the Khmer Rouge (as most of the statuary was), is an eight-armed Vishnu whose head has been swapped out for a buddha’s head.

Vishnu/Buddha

Other decorations, however, are not so easily changed from one religion to another. Angkor Wat is impressive not just for its size and age, but for the bas-relief friezes that run around a large part of one of the inner walls. These friezes show scenes from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, two Hindu epics. Many of the friezes have been restored by various conservation groups over the past few decades, and I’m so glad I got to see this artwork dusted off and cleaned up. It’s much easier to appreciate the incredible detail of each carving when the accumulated grime of centuries has been swept away.

The Churning of the Ocean of Milk

Bas-relief frieze

Angkor Wat is built in the temple mountain style: it’s meant to resemble Mount Meru, the home of the gods in Hindu mythology. There are always outer walls representing mountains, and usually a moat to represent the ocean. The inner temple is made up of five pyramids representing the five peaks of Mount Meru–usually four in the corners, and an elevated one in the center, the innermost sanctum of the gods.

One of the distinctive features of Khmer architecture, according to my architecture guidebook, was the “trick of perspective” achieved by progressively reducing the height of each structure from the center outwards, making the central towers appear even taller and more impressive. This architectural trick expresses the religious beliefs of its builders, too, since it emphasizes the importance of the home of the gods and the humility of the rest of creation in comparison to it–even the oceans are reduced to flat moats calmly reflecting Mount Meru’s glory back to it.

For those of us who haven’t made a study of Khmer architecture or Angkor period temples (and that’s most of us, isn’t it), it’s good to keep in mind that a Khmer temple “was not a meeting place for the faithful but the palace of a god,” as Michael Freeman and Claude Jacques note in Ancient Angkor. Thus, the tiny space in the interior of the central pyramid, made only to house the statue of the god and not for crowds of worshipers; the super steep stairs that were usually only scaled by a few temple workers; and small buildings housing various gods, the grouping of which made up one large temple, rather than one temple per god. This is such a different approach to religious architecture from the Western, Christian one that I hadn’t even realized I had been making assumptions about what a temple was for and how that affected the architecture until this book pointed it out.

I’m used to vast cathedrals built to house masses of congregants; the altar is often large and ostentatiously decorated, and it’s easy to see from just about anywhere in the building. The temple mountain structure of the Khmer Hindu places of worship also accommodates large crowds, but in the outer areas of the grounds; the inner areas are difficult to reach, and the sacred space is small and hidden from the casual eye. I love that the book made me look at the temple in a different way, and also had me reflect anew on the churches I’d been to before.

None of the buildings from the city surrounding the temple (the “angkor” part of “Angkor Wat”) have survived. They were likely made from wood, unlike the sandstone, brick, and laterite of the temples. This means that a lot of imagination is required to envision what it must have looked like in its heyday, a little harder than putting paint on the Forum in Rome, but not as difficult as seeing the cooking fires smoking at the side of Uluru. I stood on the east end of one of the interior walls of the temple and looked out over the forest that stretched to the moat nearly two miles away. All this forest was once royal palace, regular houses, streets, food stalls, markets–all populated with one of the largest concentrations of humanity in the pre-industrial age.

Aspara

This is all about Angkor Wat, but let’s not forget that the Angkor period lasted several hundred years, and almost every king built at least one temple (perhaps as a mausoleum for himself, the god-king), so there are nearly a thousand temples in the area. Dozens of these have been restored and opened to the public. It all seems an embarrassment of riches once you see Angkor Wat. Not only is there this magnificent complex, but there are more–and in different styles, with their own delightful carvings and architectural quirks? I enjoyed discovering those temples as well; stay tuned this week for more on those.

Embracing the sunrise

ACAM: Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Posted on July 28, 2011 by lisafindley

Hello, dearest fellow travelers! We are now moving from Singapore to Cambodia in the ACAM Project. I’ve been reading A Short History of Cambodia: From Empire to Survival by John Tully, and so far I’m liking it as a very brief overview. One of the things that Tully emphasizes is that there are so few records of Cambodia before the 16th century. Unlike the ancient and well-documented civilizations of China and Japan to the north, the Khmer people live in the hot, wet land of southeast Asia, which doesn’t do so well for preservation of paper. So what we know of the history of Cambodia is largely taken from what visitors wrote about it over the years, and also a bit from stone inscriptions.

If it's this magnificent now, imagine how Angkor Wat looked in its day.

The ancestors of the Khmer people built the city of Angkor in the 9th century CE, and at its height it was the largest city in antiquity, with a population of 1 million. One million people in one place in the pre-industrial age! For comparison, London grew hugely in the 16th century and still only reached 225,000. So Angkor, today a giant ruin of temples and not much else, was, for several hundred years, the largest city in the world.

Tully is eager to emphasize that the massive building projects of Angkor were all based on a huge slave population. I got a bit uncomfortable with his descriptions of the “overweening egotism and peculiar religiosity” (p. 25) of the devarajas (god-kings) who ruled over their enslaved subjects and commissioned giant temples. I’m not uncomfortable with pointing out the barbarism of slavery, but there are several other places in the book where Tully draws comparisons between the Angkor people and other ancient peoples, which helps put their culture in context. I mean, when I read about tens of thousands of slaves dragging several tons’ worth of stone to a building location to construct an enormous temple made for the glory of a god-king, the first thing I thought of was the ancient Egyptians. Right? Pharaohs, gods incarnate, built pyramids as massive tombs for themselves, to be filled with materials to carry into the afterlife; and all at the considerable expense of slaves’ sweat and blood. But Tully never draws this comparison, which strikes me as odd.

Maybe the constructions weren’t similar enough for him? He says several times that the wats were an unprecedented religious construction; they were temples and mausoleums at the same time. So they weren’t like a church or mosque, which may have some tombs in it but serves the main purpose of being a place of worship for people; nor were they like pyramids or large tombs, which serve the main purpose of housing the deceased. They were places to worship the deity Vishnu or Shiva, but only through worshiping the god’s manifestation on earth, the god-king’s body. (Or at least this is what I got from re-reading the relevant chapter over and over; please correct me in the comments if I’m missing something.)

splendid

Speaking of religion, the wats (yep, the Angkor Wat is the largest religious construction of what used to be this major city, and that’s how it got that name) were part of a strain of Hinduism practiced in Angkor, influenced by Mahayana Buddhism and Khmer folk beliefs (p. 39). Tully references historians who believe that the decline of these religions and the rise of Theravada Buddhism contributed greatly to the decline of the Angkor empire. The drive to build monuments glorifying one man, at the expense of thousands of men who literally lived to serve him, was a concept supported by Hindu and Mahayana Buddhist beliefs. Theravada Buddhism, on the other hand, emphasized living a simple life resigned to suffering. This resignation to suffering may have comforted the laborers, but the more democratic focus on achieving nirvana by living a good life rather than making great displays may have stirred up discontent among them as well and undermined the devaraja rule. (Please note that I am not familiar with the particulars of various strains of Buddhism, so I’m paraphrasing Tully here, who is talking about Buddhism as it was practiced 1000 years ago. These may not be the same as current iterations of the religion.)

Tully points to two other major factors in the decline of the Angkor empire: increased raids by neighboring Siam (today known as Thailand), and environmental destruction. The city (which was spread over a large swath of land) depended on a particular system of irrigation canals. Deforestation above the canals caused damage to the water and soil below, which destroyed many fish and introduced still water patches perfect for malarial mosquitoes to breed in.

So the people believe in a more equitable religion, one that denounces material things, right around the time armies are invading, and old farming and forestry practices are destroying the people’s habitat. Easy to see how these factors combined to kill and displace people, and transform the population of a mighty kingdom into a minor city and eventually a grand ruin.

Photos from here; photo 1 taken by Trey Ratcliff, photo 2 taken by Philip Lock.