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Angkor
Mega
Attraction Angkor
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.
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.
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.
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