Built between roughly A.D. 1113 and 1150, by the King Suryavarman II but he did not finish and other king Jayavarman VII continued.
The
encompassing an area of about 500 acres (200 hectares), Angkor Wat is one of
the largest religious monuments ever constructed. Its name means “Temple City.”
Originally
built as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu, it was converted into a
Buddhist temple in the 14th century, and statues of Buddha were added to its
already rich artwork.
Its
213-foot-tall (65 meters) central tower is surrounded by four smaller towers
and a series of enclosure walls, a layout that recreates the image of Mount
Meru, a legendary place in Hindu mythology that is said to lie beyond the
Himalayas and be the home of the gods.
The city
where the temple was built, Angkor, is located in modern-day Cambodia and was
once the capital of the Khmer Empire. This urban center contains hundreds of
temples and a population that has been estimated to be as high as 1 million
people. It was easily the largest city in the world until the industrial
revolution.
The temple
is surrounded by a 650-foot-wide (200 meters) moat that encompasses a perimeter
of more than 3 miles (5 km). This moat is 13 feet deep (4 meters) and would
have helped stabilize the temple’s foundation, preventing groundwater from
rising too high or falling too low.
Angkor Wat’s
main entrance was to the west (a direction associated with Vishnu) across a
stone causeway, with guardian lions marking the way. To the east of the temple
was a second, more modest, entrance.
The heart of
the temple was the central tower, entered by way of a steep staircase, a statue
of Vishnu at top. This tower “was at once the symbolic center of the nation and
the actual center where secular and sacred power joined forces,” writes
researcher Eleanor Mannikka in the book "Angkor: Celestial Temples of the
Khmer Empire" (Abbeville Press, 2002). “From that unparalleled space,
Vishnu and the king ruled over the Khmer people.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment