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based on a number of huge
artificial reservoirs fed by the local rivers and linked
to each other by means of a rectangular grid system of
canals.
These reservoirs, called
barays, were located at the highest point in the river
system, and were used to feed a vast chain of irrigation
channels spreading out over the lower lying land.
The huge acreage of rice paddy
so watered was the
continual support of the strength and prosperity of the
Khmer empire. And since Angkor itself was the source of
that support, it was regarded by the Khmers with
religious reverence as a divine endowment. Its temples
and palaces are thus both an expression of that
reverence and at the same time an essential part of the
mechanism.
The continual
gift of the waters of heaven, divine by origin,
is ensured by continual royal intercession, and
by the performance of correct ceremonial. In
this the king, who was the earthly image of God,
his Brahmins and later on Buddhist monks, play
an essential part. The Khmer king believed
himself to be united with the deity of his cult
after his death, and dedica¬tory statues were
set up in his chief temple to commemorate the
divinization of the king. here are
Angkor Wat
pictures.
Baray at Angkor
Indravarman built the first
colossal baray at Angkor, and laid down the basis for
the irrigation system. The idea was perhaps an expansion
of the concept of irrigation by means of the reservoir,
used by the Chen La people.
The Khmer engineering involved at Angkor, however, was
vaster and far more sophisticated than anything seen
before in that part of the world. Indravarman's original
baray, now dry, was 4,400 meters by 1000 meters. It is
still called the Khmer baray of Lolei. Indravarman
resided at Roluos, a few miles to the south-east of
Angkor proper, the Khmer culture capital in which
Jayavarman II had died.
At Roluos are the first great works of Khmer temple
architecture.
They are the Preah Ko, a
temple begun in 879, south of Lolei; the king's own
temple-mountain, the Bakong, begun in 881; and the
ruined Prasat Prei Monti, which was the Khmer king's
palace. All were surrounded by rectangular moats filled
by the waters of the Lolei baray. From here the water
flowed through the canals and irrigation channels and
finally down to the great lake of Cambodia. The huge
platforms of earth on which these Khmer buildings were
erected probably consist of soil excavated in forming
the moats and the channels which not only divided up the
city, but also provided an easy means of transport.
Like virtually all Khmer temple buildings, and like
Angkor itself, Preah Ko is oriented east to west, with
its main gates to the east. Its plan shows it to have
been already a most sophisticated architecture of
planned space. The moats, the terraced enclosures and
the group of six shrines - in two rows of three -are
subtly articulated inside their square plan. Their
layout is symmetrical only along the east-west axis; the
main Khmer temple enclosure, itself square, is set back
towards the west in such a way that the front walls of
the first row of Khmer temples it contains lie on the
central north-south axis.
Khmer temple gates, and
pavilions whose close-set pillars seem composed entirely
of turned bobbins of stone, are disposed in the area.
The Khmer tower shrines, the main three containing stone
images of deified male ancestors of the Khmer king, the
second three females, were still constructed of brick,
faced with stucco ornament, much of which has been lost.
The shrines have evolved in such a way as to allow the
lowest tier of the structure to reach a considerable
height.
Khmer Temple Building with
great stone images
compressed tiers. The door in the face of the lowest
tier is the main feature, flanked by high brick
pilasters with deep molded capitals. Today Khmer kids
are playing in the ruins. A pair of octagonal stone
pillars, with varied horizontal moldings, support
magnificent, deep, stone lintels carved with ornamental
relief. In the walls are set Khmer stone images of
deities carved in deep relief, set in niches crowned
with flamboyant-framed arches. Clearly the Khmer stucco
relief was magnificent. There must once have been an
efflorescence of foliage, in which little figures of
deities and animals are involved, all over these walls.
The Bakong was a more deliberately impressive Khmer
culture work. It was intended to be Indravarman's own
holy lingam shrine on top of its sacred mountain. The
Khmer shrine was, like those of Preah Ko, of brick and
stucco, and was replaced in the twelfth century. It
stands on a series of sandstone terraces with four axial
stairways and a gate-tower forty-seven feet high at the
foot of each. It forms the centre of what must have been
a most impressive group of eight Khmer brick shrines,
set in an enclosure with gates, pavilions, and causeways
over the moats lined with colossal Nagas, and
free-standing Garudas.
There can be little doubt that the huge Khmer terraced
pyramid was inspired by - if not so highly
elaborated as - the great ninth-century Buddhist
monument in Java, Borobudur.
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