The other treasures of Angkor

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The reconstructed face of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara at Ta Som

The most famous, and splendid, of these is the largest remaining structure,

Angkor Wat. Nearest of all the sites to the town of Siem Reap, where the

traveler will stay, this enormous compound is indeed one of the wonders of the

ancient world. But around it, though often at some distance, are many other

sites that are often just as interesting, and occasionally even more beautiful.

* * * Angkor Thom, with an area of 10 sq. km, was a fortified royal city,

once completely walled and with a wide moat said to have been stocked with

crocodiles. Five great guarded gates led into it and these have survived more

or less intact for eight centuries. Some are crowned with four gargantuan faces

of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, each facing a cardinal direction.

Avalokiteshvara is even more thoroughly present in the Bayon, an inner monument

comprising 54 towers decorated with his giant face -- some 200 visages in all.

His expression is enigmatic -- some have seen only eyes watching, some have

seen the famous Khmer smile. The French diplomat Paul Claudel found it merely

"evil" when viewing it in the 1920s, but many (including, presumably, the

Bayon's builder, Jayavarman VII) discovered only the compassion associated with

Buddhism -- the then new religion that contended for a time with the native

Hinduism, until the two amalgamated.

Children play in the ruins of the Bayon at Angkor Thom.

Clambering over the ruins (the Bayon is much less reconstructed than Angkor

Wat), wandering through the long corridors, climbing the steep stairways, the

visitor is always observed by these giant faces. Wherever one turns one sees a

profile, or a puzzling half-smile, or just half a countenance, riven by a giant

tree root. Perhaps this continual surveillance is what Claudel perceived as

malignant, but the regard could just as easily be interpreted as benign. Here

is architecture as image. The highest tower is known as Mount Meru, and the

entire structure is a mandala with a statue of Buddha at the center. The faces

are an assembly of the deities. The Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan, who visited the

place in 1296, said that the Buddhas were immense, that the colonnades and

corridors stretched forever and that where the sovereign sat in the royal

palace there was a great golden window that opened onto a splendid court. Here

"men and women alike are anointed with perfumes compounded of sandalwood, musk

and other essences, and the worth of the Buddha is universal."

The ruins of Ta Prohm

Banteay Srie, a Hindu temple dedicated to Shiva

The Terrace of the Leper King

Stonework at Ta Som riven by giant tree roots

One of the approaches to Angkor Thom

Nonetheless, said Zhou, this vast population was served by slaves -- richer

families owned more than 100 -- and if a husband discovered that his wife was

committing adultery, he had the lover's feet squeezed until the pain grew

unendurable and he surrendered all his property as a price for liberation. The

palace itself has been swallowed up by the forest and its remains are scattered

about Angkor Thom's enormous park, a ceremonial space filled over the centuries

with examples of civic endeavor. Here is the Terrace of the Elephants, perhaps

once a viewing stand for public ceremonies. One may imagine the chariots, the

cavalry, the infantry -- the flags, pennants, all those carapaced elephants and

what Zhou Daguan described as a whole forest of ceremonial umbrellas, those with

gold handles reserved for the highest rank. Here, too, is the famous Terrace of

the Leper King. Perhaps the name derives from the later lichen growth on the

statue of Yama, god of death (a copy of which is still there, though the

original is now housed in the National Museum in Phnom Penh). Indeed, it is

thought that the structure may once have housed the royal crematorium. Climbing

down the stairs leading to a winding corridor, narrow but open to the sky, it is

easy to think of death, and the wailing flute from somewhere ahead seems to

celebrate it. Turning a corner we see the flutist, a maimed man, his cap set

optimistically in front of him. Dotted about the park -- so oddly reminiscent

of Versailles, another ceremonial showplace -- are other temples and palaces.

New, these would have embodied insufferable ostentation, with their slave

labor, their bright colors, and their gold leaf. But the color has vanished

along with the gold and now we are looking at ruins. These are morally

consoling -- pride has had its fall. Ta Prohm, not far distant, is Angkor as it

was "discovered" by the first French explorers (for people in the neighborhood,

of course, Angkor had never been lost). It is a mighty pile of ruins: crumbling

towers, closed courtyards, narrow corridors, the stones pushed by the roots of

the enormous trees, all lined with lichen and carpeted with moss. Built at the

end of the 12th century, again by Jayavarman VII, this vast ruin was once home

to some 80,000 people, including, say the records, over 600 dancers. Now it is

filled only with tourists, and -- adding to the picturesque nature of the site

-- children. These are the guides who will lead you to the best location to

take photos and insure against you becoming lost in the mazes of the place.

(The days of begging children at Angkor are over. The children now sell

guidebooks and postcards and act as guides; they behave with dignity and

self-respect. Likewise, adult beggars are no more. I saw just one and that was

in Siem Riep. The indigent, the maimed and the blind have been formed into

bands, small orchestras that play traditional Cambodian music from pavilions as

the tourists tour the sites. After listening to this magical addition to the

sorcery of the place, one is glad to give.) Ta Prohm is romantic in its ruin;

overgrown, with towering trees dappling the fallen stones, and sunlight turning

to black in the shadows. It is all extravagantly impressive. My guide, seeking

to augment, tells me that "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" was filmed here, but even

this information could not lesson the tremendous dignity of the place. Banteay

Srei, much further off (20 km from the Bayon), was built in the 10th century,

but is the best preserved of all the structures in Angkor. A Hindu temple

dedicated to Shiva, it is constructed from a variety of red sandstone that

weathers particularly well. Nowhere else in the Angkor complex are the carvings

so sharp, so crisp: Pink and stippled with green verdigris, the temple stands

almost pristine. If one thinks of the Petite Trianon at Versailles, it is

because of this miniature perfection, and also because after the heavy Baroque

of Angkor Wat and the Bayon, it appears Rococo -- something refreshingly, even

divertingly human among the monolithic aspirations. Another reason for its

freshness is that until relatively recently it was kept off the tourist map by

Khmer Rouge activity. Now, however, that lethal organization is no more (or

rather, assimilated -- I was told that some ex-Khmer Rouge soldiers are now

tour guides) and the place is safe. Kobal Spien, a 15-minute drive from Banteay

Srei (plus an hourlong mountain climb) is usually called "The River of a

Thousand Lingas" in English. Once you have made the exhausting trek to the top,

there they are, lots of smallish phallic-shaped stones, submerged in the river,

right beside the modest waterfall. Obviously the site is Hindu -- Buddhism

never made much of lingas, and besides there are also images of Vishnu, Rama,

Lakshmi, Hanuman, and so on. What they are doing there and why I never

discovered. The interested tourist will him or herself decide whether the

reward is worth the exertion. Preah Khan, the "Temple of the Sacred Sword," is

in good condition for a structure dedicated in 1191. It even contains a

standing, open, two-story structure. The tourist is guided in through the

original back door, but knowledgeable visitors will want to walk around the

Preah Khan, admiring the two-story columned structure from the outside, and

then enter through the main East Gate door. In this way the place can be seen

as intended, and one may imagine what it must once have been like. Over 500

divinities (Hindu) were worshipped there, and during the course of the year

there were nearly 20 major festivals, whose preparation required teams of

thousands. Now it is empty, filled only with the calls of the birds, the noises

of the cicadas, the suffocating greenery and the sunlit scamperings of the

lizards. Preah Neak Pean, nearby, actually a part of Preah Khan, is a large

square pool at the center of which is a round "island," created by the two

encircling naga "snakes" whose intertwined tails give the place its name. Until

last year it was difficult to get to. A new road has now been opened and the

tourists are trickling in. Water also once flowed in, through the four large

spouts from four reservoirs at the compass points of the pool itself. It was

used for ritual purification rites, and although only a few shallow pools

remain today, during the rainy season sometimes it fills up again and becomes

just as it was. The water level was low when I visited, but my guide saw

something jump in one of the pools and seconds later was in the sacred mud

wrestling with a large, stranded catfish. With the fish writhing in his

upraised fist, he suddenly looked like one of the people -- fishermen, farmers

-- on the friezes of the Bayon, and the gulf of a millennium was erased.

Accompanying this sudden vision from the past came the timeless thumps and

bangs of classical Cambodian music, as under their pavilion of thatch the

armless, legless, eyeless orchestra played its ageless tunes and I sat in the

ruins and rested. Ta Som is now being reconstructed by the World Heritage

Foundation. A late (13th century) Buddhist temple, it is famous for a single

image -- the giant visage of Avalokiteshvara riven by a great anacondalike root

from an ancient liep tree. Reconstruction has removed the root and put the face

back together again, but there are lots of other examples of temple walls,

gates and arches slowly disintegrating in the coils of the trees. Not only do

the liep trees force apart the ancient masonry, they also often bring down

whole temple complexes during the rainy season when the trees frequently fall

(the roots being all aboveground). One side of Ta Som lies scattered in this

way like the pieces of a puzzle. Each piece is now being numbered and then,

jigsawlike, hoisted into its hopefully proper position. Reconstructed work,

too, is threatened by tree overgrowth. One whole series of chambers, put

together in the 1920s, was recently destroyed by falling trees. It was thought

that these could be easily put back together by using the records left by the

French archaeologists, until it was discovered that these had been destroyed,

like so much else, by the Khmer Rouge. Pre Rup is another pyramid-shaped temple

mountain with five shrines at the top and lines of steep stairways, a ruined

Grand Central Station of beige and gray devoted, in this case, to death. The

name means "turning the corpse" and refers to a traditional means of cremation.

East Mebon is another enormous pile with maimed elephants in white stone and

pillars like stacked soup plates. Thammanon looks like an abandoned country

house (palace though it was), its black and tan facade so severely French 17th

century that one expects a marble bust of dramatist Pierre Corneille. One can

understand the excitement of the 19th-century French -- it must have seemed

like time travel to them. On and on and on the ruins stretch, each one, among

other things, a magnificent monument to futility. Claudel was, indeed, silly in

his observation, but it is at the same time impossible not to think of death,

which seems in Angkor somehow close. In Egypt it is equally near, but it is

sterilized by the dryness, the heat, the distance from our times. Angkor was,

however, not -- as these things go -- all that long ago (it was inhabited until

the 15th century). Further, the clinical fact thrust at you at once is that

Angkor is organic. It is all twisted, writhing roots, as intimate as bowels,

everything alive and rotting. Death is dramatized and you will find it

upsetting only if you find death sinister, which you need not. The Khmer Rouge

and its killing fields left only 7 million or so people alive in Cambodia. Now,

a quarter century later, my guide tells me, there are close to 14 million. This

population is poor but surviving: The farmer makes the equivalent of $100 a

month, the shopkeeper maybe $200; my guide, he tells me, $400. Four hundred

dollars would not get you very far in Tokyo, but prices are low in Cambodia.

And the native currency is not the preferred one. The tourist comes and goes

(at least this one did) without acquiring any Cambodian riels at all, except as

small change. U.S. dollars and Thai baht are the currencies of choice and will

get you everywhere. Whether dollars or baht, small denominations are necessary

(nearly everything seems to cost, somehow, $1) and are used for transportation,

without which you can see nothing of the place. There are no taxis, only a few

Thai tuk-tuk and the distances are too vast for rented bicycles. One

consequently climbs on motorbikes and holds onto the driver as he whizzes you

to where you want to go and then holds out his hand for his dollars. This (or

an agency hired car) is the way to see the other treasures of Angkor, spread as

they are over such a vast space. Even so, it is difficult to comprehend the

sheer size of this enormous political, religious and administrative area. It

covers an area roughly that of inner Washington, D.C., another administrative

capital, and one of the ways to apprehend Angkor would be to imagine that

American city in ruins . . . There is the dome of the Capital, still intact and

just visible above the forest; some distance away is the exquisite White House,

seen through Virginia creeper and much as it always was, a privileged palace;

further off is all that remains of the colonnaded Lincoln Memorial, with its

seated, brooding ruler, and in straight, linear progression (suggesting some

early U.S. prowess in sacred geometry), rearing out of the oak and the pine, is

that great, inexplicable linga that we know only by its mysterious name: the

Washington Monument. The Japan Times: Feb. 26, 2002© All rights reserved

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