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Angkor - 2003
Angkor - 2003
Jacek Pałkiewicz2006-06-25 13:29:32
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was first entrusted to Henri Marchal, then to the archaeologist George Groslier, and then to his son Bernard-Philippe.
It was only in 1927 that their patient work was awarded, when they made significant progress in the definitive chronology of the temples. With the passing years the explorations and restorations were extended to all of Cambodia, and among other things, it was discovered that in about 800 archaeological sites some monuments had been erected on other older ones. This work went on until 1972 - that is, up to the moment when the civil war broke out.
Preah Khan, the “sacred sword,” is a very complex city. Grouped in it, around the temple built in 1191 and consacrated to Jayavarman VII’s father, are a number of religious constructions: chapels close to one another, annexed buildings, small courtyards and perhaps even some family graves. However, these buildings lack the architectonic tidiness seen in other Anghor monuments. The city’s particular structural layout reminds one of a place of private meditation rather than of one open to the cult; but the plan of the city is clearly modelled on the others.
A wide exterior moat runs along the perimeter, while three concentric boundary walls enclose the temple proper which, in its turn, is sheltered by a high wall marked at regular intervals by high-reliefs, more than five metres high, representing the garuda. All the religious symbols on the pilasters flanking the avenue leading to the temple have been chiselled off. This does not seem to have been furtive or even recent work, as some think, but rather carefully considered work, whose purpose was to remove systematically all images of Buddha and to leave in their place the imprint of a repressed rage. And indeed, this was how the aristocratic priestly class, badly damaged by the religious choice of Jayavarman VIII, reacted immediately after his death.
As at Ta Prohm, here too the luxuriant forest seems to have
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See photographs from:
Cambodia Gallery
