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Angkor Wat is often called a city

Forum

In a sense it was. But at the same time it was more than a city, for its basis is an immense technological achievement. Whereas cities generally live off an already established agricultural prosperity, Angkor was originally designed to create its own prosperous agriculture. The land around Angkor is not well watered naturally. Its rivers flow violently during the monsoon season. But during the dry season, when the monsoon rain-water is gone, the surrounding plains suffer from severe drought.

Angkor was a capital, filled with temples

and supporting many inhabitants. But its nucleus was a splendid irrigation project, 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 Cambodian Khmer 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 Cambodian rice paddy so watered was the continual support of the strength and prosperity of the Khmer empire.

Since Angkor itself was the source of that support, it was regarded by the Khmer people with religious reverence as a divine endowment. The Khmer 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 Khmer royal intercession, and by the performance of correct ceremonial. In this the Khmer king, who was the earthly image of God, his Brahmins and later on

Cambodian Khmer Relief
Cambodian Khmer Relief

Buddhist monks, played an essential part. The Khmer king believed himself to be united with the deity of his cult after his death, and statues were set up in his main temple, including apsara and other bas-relief to commemorate the divinization of the king.

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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