Cambodia Journal IV: When in Rome

Photograph by Hallie Cohen

When in Rome do like the Romans, which in touristic terms means that if you are in France you will visit cathedrals. In Cambodia you visit temples. It’s interesting that a French explorer Henri Mouhot, was one of those responsible for rediscovering the lost civilization of Cambodian temples since the architecture of the temple, like for instance the Gothic church, is a petrie dish of sensibility. The Khymer king Jayavarman VII built Ta Prohm and Bayon in the 12^th Century but his ancestor Indravarman I was responsible for Bakong which was built in 881 A.D, when the more caste orientated Hindu influence emanated from Hariharalaya, the Sanskrit for the then capital city near what is now Siem Reap. Hari is synonymous with Vishnu, Hara with Shiva. Buddhist influences on the temple would occur after 1000 in the era of the construction of Angkor Wat, most particularly in the use of sandstone instead of brick. Both Hindus and Buddhists believe in reincarnation and while Chartres and Notre Dame never cease to amaze us, the discovery of the ancient temples of Cambodia is a little like our childhood fantasies about the lost civilization of Atlantlis. Mouhot's great find is a little like reincarnantion, n’est ce pas?

Cambodia Journal II: Mom’s Temple

Watercolor by Hallie Cohen

Jayavarman VII built Ta Prohm for his mother in 1186. He would build a second temple, Bayom for himself. Today both temples are Unesco sites which have been adopted by India and Japan respectively. The sound of hammers alternates with the chirping of the Lorakeets and the restoration process by which the stones are restored even has a name, anastylosis. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was filmed at Ta Prohm and Angelica Jolie who starred in the movie ended up adopting a Cambodian child. Bayom has 49 towers. The Khmers liked odd and prime numbers which insured a certain immortality by virtue of indivisibility. Each tower has four Buddha’s facing in the cardinal directions, east, west, north and south adding up to a total of l96 Buddhas. When Pol Pot was ravaging the country, his army attempted to erase the faces of many Buddhas, but the abandonment of the temples due to a drought which caused the Khmer monarchy to move to Phnom Penh in 1434 did even greater damage. At the height of their importance there were 300 temples in over 300 square miles of the Siem Reap area that serviced a population of 1 million inhabitants. The temples were brought to the attention of Westerners in the l9th century primarily by Henri Mouhot, the French explorer.  Now the roots of trees have grown around the fallen stones. And while the refurbishing of the eastern side of the south wing is admirable, it loses the sense of the sublime that Wordsworth would recreate in his famous poem Tintern Abbey and that occurs when time reduces man’s search for immortality to rubble.