Angkor Thom Cambodia & Khmer Temples

The outer Bayon relief

are part of the original temple buildings and commemorate the defeat of the Chan and also show some everyday scenes.

The inner gallery was built later and shows episodes from Hindu mythology. It reminds very much to the relief depicting Buddhist Jakata stories at Bagan Myanmar, the relief here are only substantial bigger.

At the eastern gallery Khmer warriors are depicted as well as people who prepare to eat. At the beginning of the south gallery the battle in the lake is shown where the forces of King Jayavarman VII defeated the Chan.

The relief on the west and north side make a rather unfinished impression. Unfortunately the whole area is mainly a field of temple ruins only.

Jajavarman VII begun building Angkor Thom in 1200 over the old city of Udaydityavarman II centered on his Baphuon. He surrounded it with a gigantic moat at least a hundred meters wide and 15km long. It became the focus of a final, huge complex of canals and irrigation, with extra barays. He walled it completely; and in the walls five gates marked by huge gate-pavilions were constructed.

The four gates were at the cardinal points, and the fifth gate in the east wall was there to keep the old road open which links the Phimeanakas to Ta Keo, which lay slightly to the north of the east west center line.

The gate pavilions embody the outstanding architectural invention of Jayavarman's reign, which has become almost a symbol for Angkor the tower with four colossal faces looking

out in the four cardinal directions. These faces, which in some way are related to the icon of Lokeshvara, at the same time symbolize the power of the king, demonstrating his domination of the four quarters of the world. The Bayon which was Jayavarman's own sacred temple-mountain at the very centre of  Angkor Thom, is crowded with towers, most of which carry the same motif. The masks are combined with the terraced tiers of the towers, with their corner-recesses and projecting false porches, in such a way that the section becomes virtually octagonal. The elevations present both the curved and the pointed, sprouting-shoot contour.

The arches of the gateways, and within the towers of the Bayon temple, are triangular and corbelled. Generally speaking the stonework is hasty and relatively ill-trimmed, and was carved into its final shape and surface in situ.

The architecture of Cambodia temples

Khmer Temples Neak Pean.

This is a small tower-shrine on a circular base standing at the centre of Jayavarman's larger baray to the north east of Angkor Thom. It is a fountain as well, its water spilling over from the basin in which it stands into four ponds before running into the baray. It represents the mountain lake from which magic healing waters flow, supposed by Indian mythology to exist in the Himalayas. This notion introduces us to what was, perhaps, the outstanding artistic if not purely aesthetic achievement of Jayavarman's architects: the working out into massive architectural symbols of a complex of mythical imagery. We have seen how the conception of the temple as sacred mountain came to be embodied in Khmer tradition. At Jayavarman's Angkor, many similar mythical concepts

The king built his palace in the enclosure of the Phimeanakas, and connected it with the tenth-century pools and other parts of the site, by a series of raised and carved terraces of stone. The most magnificent of these is the 'Royal Terrace' the front of which is decorated partly with a frieze of elephants.

Buddha's achieving enlightenment seated under his Bodhi Tree. Mara (Death), 'The Enemy of Man', who would be deprived of his prey by the Buddha's enlightenment, sent as many distractions as he could to divert the Buddha from his goal, including a terrible storm and flood. A Naga crept out from his hole under the Buddha's tree to lift him above the floodwater and

celestial home. Around the interior walls of the great enclosure were acres of relief carving, all of it rather hastily and roughly executed, and nowhere reaching the standard of the relief on Angkor Wat.

This Angkor Thom relief

once more deal mainly with Indian classical legend. Here again there is evidence of the influence of Chinese pictorial conventions in some of the compositions, while numerous genre passages market scenes, hunting, quarrels have often been admired, Khmer temples often are adorned by sandstone relief. But it is obvious that the sheer volume of work which the artists were compelled to get through prevented them from thoroughly thinking out their ideas or fully achieving their execution. This is an art of cursory

extemporization on well-worn themes. The most impressive single works of art associated with the name of Jayavarman VII are certain single iconic stone figures s from various places in the Angkor Thom complex. Chief . among them are the Buddhas on Nagas, the 'Leper King and the idealized 'portrait' image of the king himself. In all of these one can feel something of the dedicated skill of the earlier sculptors of Cambodia, and it must have been that the masters who cut these important works were allowed the time they needed to mature them. Their fluent surfaces, deep plasticity and squared-off conception convey a sense of ultimate tranquility and celestial calm.