Angkor Wat, Cambodia

BRIEF HISTORY
Angkor Wat is a temple complex in Cambodia and the largest religious monument in the
world. (1) It was originally constructed as a Hindu temple of god Vishnu for the Khmer Empire,
gradually transforming into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th century. (2) It was
built by the Khmer King Suryavarman II (3) in the early 12th century in Yaśodharapura, (or present
day known as Angkor in Cambodia) the capital of the Khmer Empire, as his state temple and
eventual mausoleum

Breaking from the Shaiva tradition of previous kings, Angkor Wat was instead dedicated
to Vishnu. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a
significant religious centre since its foundation. The temple is at the top of the high classical style
of Khmer architecture.

According to legend, the construction of Angkor Wat was ordered by Indra to serve as
a palace for his son Precha Ket Mealea. (4) According to the 13th-century Chinese traveler Zhou
Daguan, some believed that the temple was constructed in a single night by a divine architect.
(5) The initial design and construction of the temple took place in the first half of the 12th century,
during the reign of Suryavarman II (ruled 1113 – c. 1150). Dedicated to Vishnu, it was built as the
king's state temple and capital city. Work seems to have ended shortly after the king's death,
leaving some of the bas-relief decoration unfinished. (5) Towards the end of the 12th century,
Angkor Wat gradually transformed from a Hindu centre of worship to Buddhism, which continues
to the present day. (2) By the 17th century, Angkor Wat was not completely abandoned and
functioned as a Buddhist temple.

Etymology

The modern name, Angkor Wat, means "Temple City" or "City of Temples"
in Khmer; Angkor, meaning "city" or "capital city", is a vernacular form of the word nokor ,
which comes from the Sanskrit word nagara.(6) Wat is the Khmer word for "temple grounds",
also derived from Sanskrit vāṭa , meaning "enclosure". (7)
The original name of the temple was Vrah Viṣṇuloka (Sanskrit) or Brah Bisnulōk (Local variant)
which means the sacred dwelling of Vishnu.

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LOCATION
Angkor Wat lies 5.5 kilometers (3.4 mi) north of the modern town of Siem Reap, and a
short distance south and slightly east of the previous capital, which was centered at Baphuon.
In an area of Cambodia where there is an important group of ancient structures, it is the
southernmost of Angkor's main sites.

Cambodia in Mainland South East Asia (retrieved from maps.google.com)

Angkor Wat in Krong Siem Reap, Cambodia (retrieved from maps.google.com)

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SITE PLANNING AND ORIENTATION
Angkor Wat is a spectacular temple in central Cambodia, built by the vanished Khmer
empire. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods: the
central quincunx of towers symbolizes the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat
symbolize the surrounding mountain ranges and ocean. The land occupied by the temple
measures 1300 meters north-south, and 1500 meters east-west.

Unlike other Khmer temples, the entrance faces west in the direction associated with
Vishnu, rather than the east. This has led many (including Maurice Glaize and George Coedès)
to conclude that Suryavarman intended it to serve as his funerary temple. Further evidence for
this view is provided by the bas-reliefs, which proceed in a counter-clockwise direction—
prasavya in Hindu terminology—as this is the reverse of the normal order. Rituals take place in
reverse order during Brahminic funeral services. The archaeologist Charles Highamalso describes
a container which may have been a funerary jar which was recovered from the central tower.

It has been nominated by some as the greatest expenditure of energy on the disposal of
a corpse. Freeman and Jacques, however, note that several other temples of Angkor depart
from the typical eastern orientation, and suggest that Angkor Wat's alignment was due to its
dedication to Vishnu, who was associated with the west. The temple proper sits on a sandstone
plinth a meter above the ground. Its perimeter is decorated with naga balustrades. The outer
wall of the temple is called the "third enclosure" and sits on a plinth 3.3 meters high. A continuous
gallery runs along the outside face of the wall. The inner face is decorated with 700 meters of
continuous bas-reliefs.

Just inside the west gate of the third enclosure is a series of four rooms arranged in a
cruciform. Each room is surrounded by a continuous gallery with a sunken floor which may have
held water. The southern arm of the cross was once called the "Gallery of a Thousand Buddhas"
because the Khmer faithful left Buddha statues here. Most of these were destroyed during the
Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. North and south of the "western cruciform" are two more
"libraries."

The second enclosure rests on a base 5.8 meters high. It is linked to the cruciform cloister
by a series of stairs. Inside this courtyard are still more "libraries," smaller than the previous ones.

The inner enclosure rests on a two-tiered pyramid 11 meters tall with 3 stairways on each
side, each at a 70 degree angle. The upper terrace has a continuous gallery that encloses an
inner cruciform of four rooms. Five towers jut from the upper tier in a quincunx arrangement (like
five dots on a pair of dice). The cruciform used to contain a number of separate shrines which
now appear to be continuous galleries since the wooden partitions have vanished. The central
tower is 65 meters above ground level.

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 General overview of the site

Drawn by Timothy M Ciccone following

Claude Jacques, Michael Freeman, and Jean Laur.

Outer enclosure and temple

Drawn by Timothy M Ciccone following

Claude Jacques, Michael Freeman, and Jean Laur.

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 Inner enclosure and towers

Drawn by Timothy M Ciccone following

Claude Jacques, Michael Freeman, and Jean Laur.

SYMBOLISM
Most temples that came before Angkor Wat were dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva,
however, this temple was different. Suryavarman II dedicated his masterpiece to Vishnu and
faced it west (the direction associated with Vishnu), instead of east. The skilled architects
designed the temple and grounds to represent the universe, including the ocean and a
mountain temple to house the Hindu gods.

Although many beautiful temples came later, Angkor Wat still stands as the most stunning
and renowned. This 12th-century masterpiece of the Khmer people is a pyramidal temple
structure. It includes an outwardly extending complex that symbolizes cosmological and
landscape elements. There are three levels with galleries (halls or walkways) each higher than
the previous. At the very center on the highest level of the temple, there are five tall towers. The
temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods: the central quincunx of towers
symbolizes the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat symbolize the surrounding
mountain ranges and ocean. Access to the upper areas of the temple was progressively more
exclusive, with the laity being admitted only to the lowest level.

From the second level upwards, devatas abound on the walls, singly or in groups of up
to four. The second-level enclosure is 100 m (330 ft) by 115 m (377 ft), and may originally have
been flooded to represent the ocean around Mount Meru. Three sets of steps on each side lead
up to the corner towers and gopuras of the inner gallery. The very steep stairways represent the
difficulty of ascending to the kingdom of the gods.

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BUILDING INFORMATION
Design
Angkor Wat is the prime example of the classical style of Khmer architecture—the Angkor
Wat style—to which it has given its name. By the 12th century Khmer architects had become
skilled and confident in the use of sandstone (rather than brick or laterite) as the main building
material. Most of the visible areas are of sandstone blocks, while laterite was used for the outer
wall and for hidden structural parts. The binding agent used to join the blocks is yet to be
identified, although natural resins or slaked lime has been suggested.

The temple has drawn praise above all for the harmony of its design. According to
Maurice Glaize, a mid-20th-century conservator of Angkor, the temple "attains a classic
perfection by the restrained monumentality of its finely balanced elements and the precise
arrangement of its proportions. It is a work of power, unity and style."

Architecturally, the elements characteristic of the style include: the ogival, redented
towers shaped like lotus buds; half-galleries to broaden passageways; axial galleries connecting
enclosures; and the cruciform terraces which appear along the main axis of the temple. Typical
decorative elements are devatas (or apsaras), bas-reliefs, and on pediments extensive garlands
and narrative scenes. The statuary of Angkor Wat is considered conservative, being more static
and less graceful than earlier work. Other elements of the design have been destroyed by
looting and the passage of time, including gilded stucco on the towers, gilding on some figures
on the bas-reliefs, and wooden ceiling panels and doors

Construction Details/ Techniques

Building Angkor Wat was an enormous undertaking
that involved quarrying, careful artistic work and lots of
digging. To create the moat around the temple, 1.5 million
cubic meters (53 million cubic feet) of sand and silt were
moved, a task that would have required thousands of
people working at one time.

Angkor Wat meaning “Holy Temple” was built for

about 35 years; because the temple was sacred, it has to
be built on pure soil, this meant that the dirt was to be
excavated down several meters. It is back filled with thick
layer of sand and topped with stones and a final layer of
sand is added to level the final surface.

The buildings at Angkor Wat posed their own challenges. To support them a tough
material called laterite was used, which in turn was encased with softer sandstone that was used
for carving the reliefs. These sandstone blocks were quarried at the Kulen Hills, about 18 miles
(30 km) to the north. They dipped cords with colored powder, with these they laid out Mandalas.
The Mandala’s pattern represents heaven, symbolically binding the Gods to the site and
ensuring their blessings on the Temple.

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 At the core of the Temple, beneath the central tower was a shaft that leafs to a chamber
where there are offerings namely, White Sapphire, representing the Moon and Gold Leaves
signifying the Sun, these offerings “spiritually energized” temples, much as a battery will provide
power to a portable electronic device.

Details

(Bas relief carving showing Hindu devas, or gods, pulling on the

snake Vasuki in the Churning of the Sea of Milk creation story.)

The relief describes how the devas (gods) and

the asuras (demons) churned the ocean under the
aegis of Vishnu, to produce the divine elixir of
immortality,

Celestial nymphs
Angkor Wat is famous for having more than
3000 beguiling apsaras(heavenly nymphs) carved
into its walls. Each of them is unique, and there are
37 different hairstyles for budding stylists to check
out. Many of these exquisite apsaras were damaged
during efforts to clean the temples with chemicals
during the 1980s, but they are being restored by the
teams with the German Apsara Conservation
Project. Bat urine and droppings also degrade the
restored carvings over time.

Ravana, king of the giants. Bas-relief showing the Hindu This is from the Battle of
He has some large number of arms, heavens and hells. Here Yama, Kurkshetra, which pitted five good
and twenty heads eighteen-armed ruler of Hell, rides a brothers against a hundred evil ones
buffalo while judging the newly Depicted here is a military
dead. commander; he has only eight or ten
parasols shading him, the king would
have many more (15-18).

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PERSONAL LEARNINGS

The Hindu sanctuary ruin of Angkor Wat is the biggest single religious working on the world,
and is maybe the most great and positively the most acclaimed of the Angkor ruins. The bigger
lost city of Angkor, including Angkor Wat, is an UNESCO World Heritage Site. The sanctuary is
additionally particularly the image of present day Cambodia, and embellishes the Cambodian
banner. Perhaps the most striking characteristic of Angkor Wat is that it flawlessly aligns with the
constellation Draco as it appeared within the sky at some stage in the spring equinox of the year
10,500 BC. Many speculate at the importance of this and how it is able to be performed in an
age without assistance from superior era, but it miles an undeniable fact that Angkor Wat
changed into constructed to in shape harmoniously with the sector surrounding it. The
overwhelming level of class inside the temple geometry suggests that its builders was hoping to
create a deeper connection with the universe via what they believed to be sacred numerology.
Angkor Wat turned into now not constructed out of the vanity of a dictating leader, but
alternatively was made as a tool to assist people make a tangible connection with divinity. Each
dimension is connected to every other measurement primarily based on historic astrological
observations, and it has even been postulated that Angkor Wat could be a form of fantastically
state-of-the-art calendar or cosmic clock. The mysteries of the complex at Angkor Wat have
perplexed guy for generations, and it will retain to draw attention as extra human beings try to
unfold the word of its great secrets and techniques within the hopes that the reality could be
exposed. The complexity at Angkor Wat is tremendous for numerous motives. It became the
primary temple created by Khmer people dedicated to Vishnu, developing a shift from their
traditional ideals. The temple was constructed with 9 towers that reach over 60 meters tall, and
changed into designed to represent Mount Meru, a sacred location within Hindu way of life in
which the god Brahma lives with the Devas. The main temple is a pyramid with 3 levels and has
a surrounding moat.

It can be seen that Hindu Architecture has an influence on the design of today’s South
East Asian buildings although not all are present at the vanguard of modern architecture as
modern architects are attempting to present new techniques and materials towards designing.

Angkor Wat, an example of Khmer architecture evolved largely from

that of the Indian sub-continent, from which it soon became clearly distinct
as it developed its own special characteristics, some independently evolved
and others acquired from neighboring cultural traditions. The result was a
new artistic horizon in oriental art and architecture. Traditional Vastu Shastra remains influential
in India's architecture. By which, this Cambodian temple deploys the same circles and squares
grid architecture as described in ancient Indian Vastu Sastras. The temple has provided many
of the staple features of modern Indian architecture that it became a symbol for Cambodia,
appearing on its national flag. In conclusion, architects must process in their minds that the basic
idea in building a temple must be for the icon, and not an icon got ready for the temples, for a
temple is only an outgrowth of the icon, an expanded image of the icon. And an icon is
meaningful only in the context of a shrine that is worthy to house it.

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"What the world's largest Hindu temple complex can teach India's size-obsessed politicians" Retrieved
from https://scroll.in/magazine/855228/

Ashley M. Richter (8 September 2009). "Recycling Monuments: The Hinduism/Buddhism Switch at

Angkor". Retrieved 7 June 2015.

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379. ISBN 978-616-7339-44-3.

J. Hackin; Clayment Huart; Raymonde Linossier; Raymonde Linossier; H. de Wilman Grabowska; Charles-
Henri Marchal; Henri Maspero; Serge Eliseev (1932). Asiatic Mythology:A Detailed Description and
Explanation of the Mythologies of All the Great Nations of Asia

"Angkor Wat, 1113–1150". The Huntington Archive of Buddhist and Related Art. College of the Arts, The
Ohio State University. Retrieved 27 April 2008.

Chuon Nath Khmer Dictionary (1966, Buddhist Institute, Phnom Penh)

Cambodian-English Dictionary by Robert K. Headley, Kylin Chhor, Lam Kheng Lim, Lim Hak Kheang, and
Chen Chun (1977, Catholic University Press)

Most images copyright 2014 by Timothy M Ciccone. Certain images copyright 2000 by Professor Yunsheng
Huang
Brukoff, Barry & Jessup, Helen Ibbitson. Temples of Cambodia: The Heart of Angkor.
New York: Vendome Press, 2011.
Cohen, Joan Lebold. Angkor: The Monuments of the God Kings
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River Books Co., Ltd., 1997. Thailand
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Bangkok: River Books Press, 2007.
Laur, Jean. Angkor: an Illustrated Guide to the Monuments
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat
https://www.google.com.ph/amp/s/www.historicmysteries.com/angkor-wat/amp/

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