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Cambodia
/ Mega Attraction Angkor
Photo: A row of giant statues at Angkor Thom
Angkor, a
few kilometres to the north of the town of Siem Reap, is
indisputably the most famous, most enormous, most impressive
and most important attraction not only in Cambodia, but
in all of Southeast Asia, and maybe even in all of Asia.
Compared
to Angkor the old Royal Palace of Bangkok, the Shwedagon Pagoda
of Rangoon or the Citadel at the old Vietnamese Emperor's town
of Hué fade. Compared to Angkor many of the attractions,
monuments or archaeological sites of other places appear small,
if not irrelevant. Angkor is truly overpowering.
In its dimensions
Angkor is best compared to the Egyptian Pyramids. But Angkor
is far more than merely an agglomeration of huge geometrical structures.
Despite its enormous constructional dimensions, it is ornamented
in detail like Notre Dame of Paris and tells of an ancient
art of architecture and sculpturing on a level of the Acropolis
of Athens.
From the
early 9th century, after the first independent Khmer kingdom was
founded by King Jayavarman II, until 1431, when a large
part of the population emigrated a few hundred kilometres to the
Southeast, Angkor was the capital of a Khmer state, which
in its prime covered the major part of Southeast Asia from present-day
Myanmar to present-day southern Vietnam, from today's southern
Chinese province of Yunnan deep down the Malayan peninsula.
Photo: After the Khmers had abandoned their capital Angkor,
the structures were claimed by the jungle. Unlike other parts
of Angkor, Ta Prohm Temple, shown here, has remained overgrown
as it had been found in the 19th century by the French explorer,
Henri Mouhot.
Many publications
create unnecessary confusion by citing the construction of a "new
capital" again and again, whenever a new Khmer king constructed
a new palace a few kilometres from the former palace and
transferred his government there. (The construction of new palaces
is treated similarly as a move of the capital in many guide books
about Myanmar.)
Considering
the case of the Angkor realm it can be read, that its first king,
Jayavarman II, set up his capital in Rolous, the fourth
Angkor king, Yasovarman, in Angkor by the name of Yashodharapura,
the seventh Angkor king, Jayavarman IV, at Koh Ker, the
ninth Angkor king, Rajendravarman, again at Angkor; and
the 21st Angkor king, Jayavarman VII built the royal town of Angkor
Thom.
Fact is:
almost all of these so-called new capitals are only a few kilometres
apart: the distance between Rolous and Angkor Thom is just 15
kilometres; only the distance from Angkor to Koh Ker is more than
50 kilometres.
Because the
Angkor kingdom, as the most powerful state of Southeast Asia of
its time, must have commanded a significant permanent army
and a large centralized administrative apparatus, and because
thousands of workers were needed for the construction and
maintenance of the enormous building complexes, it can safely
be assumed that around the stone constructions of the palaces
and temples an appropriate city with a substantial population
must have existed.
The city
probably covered large areas of the empty terrain between the
remainders of the temples and palaces. But there is nothing left
of these surrounding settlements, probably because wood
had been used as construction material, which has long since rotten,
and jungle or rice farmers have reclaimed the former urban area.
Another cause
for confusion is, that the entirety of the attraction is often
named Angkor Wat. But strictly speaking, Angkor Wat is
only a single temple within a total complex of many others, even
though it is the most impressive one.
Photo: Archeologists of several countries, among them Japan,
India and Poland, participate in the restoration of Angkor structures.
About one
kilometer north of Angkor Wat is Angkor Thom, the royal
town constructed during the reign of Jayavarman VII towards the
end of the 12th century (about 400 years after the founding of
the Angkor kingdom). The quadrangular palace area, enclosed by
a wall and a moat running three kilometres on each side, roughly
compares to the forbidden city of Beijing.
Angkor Thom
was not built on open terrain. Numerous buildings within the area,
which after the construction of the wall and the moat became Angkor
Thom, had already existed earlier, parts for centuries.
However, many older buildings had been partially or fully destroyed
by a Cham armies when they occupied Angkor for some time.
Newly built
by Jayavarman VII was the Bayon: a colossal central temple
exactly in the middle of Angkor Thom.
East and
west of Angkor Thom are two large artificial lakes, so-called
Barays. The lakes are of about equal size measuring some
8 kilometres in east-west and about 2 kilometres in north-south
direction.
It has earlier
been assumed that those artificial lakes served as water reservoirs
to irrigate the rice paddies around Angkor during the dry season,
to be refilled during each rainy season. But current opinion is
that the lakes are much too small for this purpose. It is now
presumed that the lakes were created primarily with artistic
intentions, just like the enormous temple buildings. At the
same time, they may have served to raise fish. Even today
the western Baray is used for fish farming; the eastern Baray
is dry.
Numerous
structures in the plain of Angkor are worth a visit - way too
many for all of them to be accounted for in this summary. The
most interesting structures certainly are Angkor Wat and
Angkor Thom with the Bayon.
This page: http://www.cockatoo.com/cambodia/e-04angk/ec-ang10.htm
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