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Angkor - 2003
Angkor - 2003
Jacek Pałkiewicz2006-06-25 13:29:32
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there at my own risk, only a few weeks beforte the Khmer Rouges took complete control of this territory. At the time, accompanied by a guide, I made a tour of the temples on an elephant’s back. I still remember the rather unpleasant feeling, in all that solitude, that I was somehow desacrating the place.
I came back to these ruins ten years later. Instead of the bloodthirsty Khmers Rouges I found the Vietnamese occupants. But what most impressed me was the destruction of so many religous symbols, authentic works of art like the statues of Buddha and other divinities decapitated by these guerillas. At other times I reached Angkor by taking advantage of the waterways on board a rickety boat, or by car, covering in days the five hundred kilometres that separate Angkor from Phnom Penh.
Out of the vast plain rises the most classical, the most celebrated of temples, the one which at present enjoys the best state of all the temples of Angkor: the imposing Angkor Vat. This structure is for Khmer art what the Parthenon is for Hellenic art. The symbol and pride of the nation, it was built in thirty years by King Suryavarman II (1113-1150) for the Indian divinity Vishnu with whom, as the King-God, he identified himself. The conception of the king as the embodiment of the divinity was materially translated into the representation of the phallic symbol of the god himself, into the “linga”, an expression of the regality of both.
A tradition of the khmer regime, which lasted from the first half of the ninth century to the end of the twelfth, made it mandatory for all successive sovereings to erect their own mountain-temples, and keep the linga there. After their death, the temple was to be transformed into a mausoleum. Just how to interpret this divine abode, whether temple or tomb, is still a matter of debate. Angkor Vat is one of the greatest religious structures in the world and the most spectacular one ever conceived by the human mind. To
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See photographs from:
Cambodia Gallery
