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Angkor Wat

GIGANTIC WORKS
Antonio da Magdalena at Angkor Wat, 1586-1589

At Angkor, there are … ruins of such grandeur … that, at the first view, one is filled with profound admiration, and cannot but ask what has become of this powerful race, so civilized, so enlightened, the authors of these gigantic works?

HENRI MOUHOT Travels in the Central Parts of Indo-China, Cambodia, and Laos during the years 1858,1859 and 1860.

Antonio da Magdalena, a Capuchin monk from Portugal, traveled to the Far East with a mission. It was 1586 and the Portuguese empire was rapidly expanding into new overseas territories. For the merchant of the Portuguese fleet, this meant access to new wealth, to luxuries that would certainly fetch a high price in Europe. But for Antonio da Magdalena it meant access to new souls.

Converting what most Europeans considered to be the barbaric and heathen natives of their colonial empires went hand in hand with their subjugation. Little attention was paid to the indigenous culture, which was usually more convenient to bread as ‘primitive’ and hence suitable for conquest. But when Antonio da Magdalena returned from his journey to the interior of Cambodia, he had a very different story to recount to the official historian of the Portuguese Indies, Diogo do Couto. He told him that on trekking into the jungle interior they had come across a ruined city:

“… surrounded by a moat, crossed by five bridges. These have on each side a cordon beld by giants. Their ears are all pierced and are very long. The stone blocks of the bridges are of astonishing size. The stones of the walls are of extraordinary size and so joined together that they look as if they are made of just one stone.”

It seemed to him to be a city of Goliath, filled with elaborately decorated palaces and watercourses, now all slowly disappearing back into the enveloping jungle. But just under 2 miles (3 km) beyond it lay something yet more wonderful: a temple, which his local guides told him, was called ‘Angar’.

“It is of such extraordinary construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen…it is like no other building in the world. It has tower and decoration and all the refinements which the human genius can conceive of. There is a much smaller tower of similar style … which is gilded. The temple is surrounded by a moat, and access is by a single bridge, protected by two stone tiger so grand and fearsome as to strike terror into the visitor.”

The place de Magdalena had stumbled on was the ruins of the Khmer temple of Angkor Wat, a vast structure surrounded by 2.2 miles (3.6 km) of wall and moat, crowed with five huge towers. In the minds of Westerners, this was an almost impossible find and it seemed beyond belief that it was the work of any native civilization. Hypotheses were put forward concerning its origins, including that it was a lost Roman city built by the emperor Trajan or perhaps a Greek outpost. Marcello de Ribadeneyra, another Portuguese missionary who visited the site at the end marveled, ‘… no-one lives there now, it is inhabited by ferocious animals, and the local people say it was built by foreigners’ 

In fact, the city these Portuguese missionaries ‘discovered’ had been abandoned for only about a century when da Magdalena visited, and parts of the temple were still in use. And it had not been built by foreigners but by an indigenous civilization which had flourished in the region from the ninth to the 15th centuries.

High peaks and bas-reliefs 

It has taken many years of excavation and restoration to uncover the story of Angkor and even in the 19th century, it was widely believed in the West to be Roman work. By restoring and studying the miles of bas-relief that decorate the main temple of Angkor Wat, now we know that it was built early in the 12th century by Suryavarman II (r.1113-1150), king of the Khmer empire, who dedicated the temple to the Hindu god Vishnu. It stood as the centerpiece of his great city of Angkor, a representation in the sandstone of Mount Meru, the home of gods. Built-in three rising rectangular galleries, the temple was topped by five towers representing the five peaks of that mythical mountain. The beautifully carved bas-reliefs that line the walls depict stories from the ancient Sanskrit epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, along with a processional scene showing Suryavarman II and episodes from the life of Krishna (an incarnation of the god Vishnu). Pilgrims visiting the temple would walk past these familiar tales, something leaving inscriptions telling of their own good deeds, before climbing steep stairs (which represent the difficulty in climbing to the kingdom of the gods) to the next level of terraces, cloisters, and galleries. Those who were allowed to climb to the top saw the five towers standing before them, the central tower raised above the rest, its shrine containing a statue of Vishnu who started out over one of the greatest cities on earth.

The Khmer Empire

THE KHMER EMPIRE

No written records survive from the Khmer empire except inscription carved on temples and palaces, so its history has been pieced together from reliefs at places like Angkor Wat, records of Chinese visitors to the region and archaeological investigations.

The Khmer kingdom of Angkor could be said to have begun in 802 when King Jayavarman II (r.802-50) ostentatiously declared himself ‘king of the world’. He had grown up in the sophisticated Javanese court, possibly a hostage from one of Java’s Cambodian vassal kingdoms. On returning to Cambodia, he had set about rapidly increasing neighboring kingdoms, forming in the process a land he called Kambuja which, through his 802 declarations, he announced independent from Javanese rule. Although he was casting off the overlordship of Java, his years in the court there had not been wasted and his memories of its refined civilization were the seeds from which Khmer art would grow.

Under Jayavarman II’s immediate successors Kambuja’s central location meant that conquest could give way to trade, providing the wealth with which the first city of Angkor was built sometime around 900. As well as spending on building projects, the Khmer invested heavily in agriculture and irrigation, building a series of huge reservoirs, providing a further impetus to trade and allowing the population to expand.

In the early 12th century the Khmer empire began looking beyond its borders and an era of aggressive expansionism began. Under Suryavarman II kingdoms were conquered in Burma, the Malay Peninsula, and Thailand, extending to the borders of Laos. It was during this period that the city of Angkor reached its height and the great temple of Angkor Wat was built, taking 37 years to complete.

Expansionism brought its own problems and, following Suryavarman’s death – probably during an attempted invasion of Vietnam – the Khmer empire was briefly conquered. It rose again under the Buddist King Jayavarman VII (r. 1182- c.1266), who built a new capital at Angkor Thom (‘the Great City’). Under his enlightened rule, much of the infrastructure of the empire was laid down, including the construction of over 100 hospitals and an extensive road system linking the old and new cities, complete with inns for merchants and government officials.

The empire came under increasing pressure after Jayavarman VII’s death and began to contract in the face of Thai expansion and threats from Mongol China. By the time the Chinese diplomat Zhou Daguan arrived in Angkor the golden age of Khmer rule was already over, so his dazzling description of the court of king Srindravarman can only hint at the wealth and power his predecessors must have enjoyed. 

After Srindravarman’s death in 1308, records become scarce. There is evidence that later king’s belief in a more personal form of Buddhism may have eroded their authority and archaeology shows that around this time much of the extensive water management system that supported the empire began to fall into disrepair. The empire never regained its former power and finally, in 1431, it was conquered by the Thai Ayutthaya kingdom. There is evidence that Angkor was not entirely abandoned at this time but, as the rump of the Khmer state moved south to the area around Phnom Penh, slowly the economic value of the site dwindled, By the time Antonio da Magdalena arrived in 1586 the surrounding jungle had grown back enough to convince him that this ‘lost city’ was not simply abandoned but had been empty for centuries.

About

Today, This blog will tell you to know more about one of the greatest temple in the world. Angkor Wat is a wonderful temple that listed on the World Heritage List. I will tell about the archaeology and The Khmer Empire, how it going and how did they work.

At least, I hope you guys enjoy it and get more information form this blog.
And I'm sorry for using some wrong grammar, vocabulary or something else.