Angkor, the Heart of Cambodia's Ancient Empire

By Robert Wilson
This is part of our Window on Southeast Asia series.

If South East Asia can be said to have an equivalent to ancient Rome, then the ruined city of Angkor in Cambodia is it. The great city at the heart of Cambodia’s ancient empire made South East Asia what it is today. It was the place where the Cambodian people built their nation and their identity, and would transmit that culture throughout the region.

Having explored many South East Asian countries who owe much of their culture to the Angkor empire, I decided to explore the city of Angkor, its capitol, in late 2001.

Traveling by land from Thailand I had a chance to see something of rural Cambodia. This part of the Cambodian lowlands is very flat and covered with emerald waves of rice from which small villages emerge. Most houses in the villages are on stilts, as they are in Thailand and Laos. Rural Khmer people wear a checkered cloth over their heads known as a “Krama.” Khmer people wear these to keep the sun off their heads. They also wear them around their waists when they go to bathe.

The rice fields that stretched out in all directions all ended about 40 feet from either side of the road. The area along the road was covered with water, enough so that villagers could take their harvests to the village in canoes. The main highway in northern Cambodia is Highway 5, and some of it is even paved! The other 90%, however, is dirt, mud, potholes and bomb craters, making the water along the road more efficient.

Relating my experience at Angkor presents a major problem. By chance I ended up visiting the place backwards in historical terms. I visited the most recent part of Angkor first, and the oldest part last. I’d like to relate the story by telling about the places I visited in the order I visited them. In order to ensure that it makes sense, I’ll start with a very rough historical outline.

The Khmer (ethnic Cambodian) people are indigenous to South East Asia, unlike the Thai and Lao. Khmer society underwent a pivotal change around the start of the Christian era in a process known as “Indianization,” that is, the absorption of Indian customs, rituals, ideas, religion and forms of government. How exactly it occurred is not clear, but Indian merchants appear to be largely responsible. Around the time several Indian kingdoms sent out “civilizing missions,” in the belief that spreading Indian culture was a form of charity.

This does not mean that Cambodia became another India. The Khmer took on aspects of Indian culture they liked, blended them with the aspects of Khmer culture that existed before Indianization, and rejected the aspects that they either did not like or that did not fit into Khmer culture. One thing that must be kept in mind is that the Indians never colonized Cambodia. Indian soldiers never occupied Cambodia and no Indian king ever held sway over Cambodia. The blending of cultures was seamless; most Khmers today would have a hard time differentiating between the Indian and indigenous aspects of their culture.

The importance of Indian culture is demonstrated by the fact that the Khmer creation story traces their ancestry back to India, even though the Khmer did not come from there. The Khmer/Cambodia creation story starts with an Indian prince who was exiled after his uncle usurped the throne. While wandering in exile, a female naga (dragon) fell in love with him. She took on human form and they were married. As a dowry her father drank up the water that covered what became Cambodia and made the prince the king of the land. His descendents became the Khmer. It may seem bizarre for one people to trace their lineage to a people they did not really descend from. It often happens when a young civilization feels a need to connect itself to an older one. The Romans linked themselves to Greece with Romulus and Remus. The Ethiopians linked themselves to Judea, and the Aztecs claimed descent from a previous civilization.

The Angkor era began in the year 802 and was inaugurated by a king named Jayavarman II. Little is known about his early history, except that he spent at least 10 years in Java. Through a series of battles and alliances with feudal lords he managed to drive out the Javanese, create a nation with at least some sense of nationhood, and establish himself as a legitimate monarch. In 802 a ceremony was conducted on an already sacred mountain, named Phnom Kulen ,in which he declared independence from Java and was crowned in the Hindu tradition of kingship. Phnom Kulen is highly sacred to the Khmer today as it is seen as the birthplace of Cambodia.

He and his successors started work on the two things Angkor is best known for: Massive sandstone temples and irrigation projects. The sandstone temples were often shaped like great mountains and were maps of Hindu cosmology. In the center of them was a tower representing Mount Mehru, the heavenly mountain at the center of the universe. The irrigation projects kept Angkor alive and prosperous. Huge reservoirs were built at Angkor and from them canals radiated for miles, though how extensive that network actually was is still hotly debated by historians.

In 1001, after about two years of struggle for the throne, King Suryavarman became the undisputed king. He set about expanding the kingdom into modern Thailand and Laos. He also reformed the bureaucracy and a larger merchant class appears to have developed during his reign. The empire reached its zenith during the reign of Suryavarman II, 1113 – 1150.

After his rule the empire went into decline. This culminated with the invasion of a people known as the Chams. After a four-year occupation, the Chams were driven from Angkor by King Jayavarman VII. He reunified the empire, but it was a much-changed land. Part of that was his doing as he had converted to Buddhism. (More about this intriguing character later.) For now, the important thing is that during his reign, 1181- c. 1220, he went on a massive building spree that exhausted the supply of sandstone and appears to have overtaxed the empire’s recourses. No more great temples were constructed after his reign. The decline of Angkor continued after his reign. In the north Khmer control fell apart and new kingdoms arose from the ashes. These coalesced into three kingdoms, Sukhotai (the forerunner of modern Thailand), Lanna and, later, Lane Sang (the forerunner of modern Laos). By 1350 the Ayutthaya kingdom had consolidated its control over Thailand (minus the Lanna region) and would be a thorn in the side of Angkor for another 80 years. In 1431 Angkor fell to the Thai and the Cambodian capitol was moved elsewhere.

Back to the day I arrived at Angkor. My guesthouse had arranged for a licensed motorcycle driver to pick me up and take me all over Angkor for the length of my three-day pass. The first marvel we encountered was the city gate of Angkor Thom, the city of king Jayavarman VII. In front of it the road is lined with 54 gods with serene, enlightened faces on one side, and 54 demons with harsh looking faces and piercing eyes on the other. They each held a naga with nine heads on either side.

The City Gate of Angkor Thom

The gate itself is 65 feet high. At the top, four massive, smiling faces stare out in all four cardinal directions with a tower between the faces. The enormity of the statues and the gentleness of the smiles are at once welcoming and intimidating. Beneath each of the faces are several angels. Below the angels on all four sides is the Hindu god Indra mounted on his three-headed elephant. The 12 trunks fall to the ground and terminate in flower motifs. Once I had taken in this spectacle, we rode on to the Bayon temple, the great temple of Jayavarman VII. We passed a great deal of open space, where once his bustling city flourished. Only temples were made of stone; all other buildings were made of wood and, given the rainy, humid climate, they are all gone.

Approaching the Bayon, I suddenly became aware of over 400 eyes staring at me from 200 carved faces atop 54 towers.

The Smiling Towers of the Bayon

There has been quite a bit of debate about whose face they represent. It was long believed that they represented Jayavarman VII. While he did have the ego to carve his own face all over the Bayon, most historians believe that his Buddhist faith had more to do with it. Jayavarman VII belonged to the Mahayana sect of Buddhism, which asserts that some people who are about to become Buddhas can forgo Nirvana to help others find enlightenment. They are known as Boddhastavas. Historians now believe that the faces are those of Jayavarman’s patron Boddhastava, known as Avalokiteshvara.

In addition to smiling faces of Boddhastavas, there are hundreds of carvings of Hindu/Khmer angels, known as Apsaras. The word “Apsara” is also translated as “Heavenly Nymph.” They were not born, but were created during the churning of the cosmic ocean, an event from Hindu mythology that I’ll explain later. Many of the Apsaras are shown dancing on a lotus flower, often several at a time.

Mesmerized, I didn’t notice the doorway coming up. From the images of daily village life, all of which were depicted by carvings only a few inches high, I was suddenly staring at massive towers with huge, smiling faces. For just an instant the shock turned me into a Cambodian villager of 800 years ago, an ordinary person coming face to face with the world of the mighty god-king. For a moment I felt the sense of security, awe, wonder, and fear a Khmer peasant must have felt when he encountered kingship. I could feel an inkling of what the people must have felt: little people under the watch of a king who was a god on earth. Maybe Jayavarman had intended it that way?

Jayavarman’s temples can be “read” in terms of Mahayana Buddhism. The Buddha is regarded in Mahayana Buddhism as a deity (but NOT in Theravada Buddhism, the sect now dominant in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia). He is seen as having been the offspring of two other deities: The goddess of wisdom and the god of compassion. In the temple of Preah Khan there is a chapel dedicated to Jayavarman’s father. In a temple on the other side of Angkor Thom there is a chapel dedicated to his mother. Both shrines face each other. Exactly between them is the precise center of the Bayon temple where a Buddha statue was kept. This gives us an insight into both Jayavarman’s religious thinking and his un-Buddhist egomania.

After lunch we went on to Ta Phrom, built by Jayavarman VII. Ta Phrom is a magical temple for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it has not been restored. Only a few walkways have been cleared. Along the walkway to the main temple was an ensemble of about 10 musicians playing classical Khmer music. The classical music of Cambodia must be one of the world’s best-kept musical secrets. It is every bit as eloquent and sophisticated as one would expect from classical music, but in both tone and melody is has a very cheerful sound to it. Most of the musicians were either blind or land-mine victims.

The inner temple is a wonderland of thick jungle and crumbling temples. Some of the trees grow from the floor. Others grow out of the sides of the temples while their roots are draped gracefully over the rest of the walls. Scattered around the temple grounds are blocks from buildings that didn’t survive the trees. Hindu epics and Buddhist symbols are carved on them as they lie there half-buried, many under a veil of moss.

With that, I had spent the better part of a day seeing monuments built by just one king. On the one hand, Jayavarman VII had certainly built to last, but on the other his building projects exhausted the supplies of sandstone. When discussing Jayavarman VII the expression, “On the one hand… but on the other” can be used to describe his entire reign. On the one hand, he broke from the tradition of Hindu kingship and embarked on a Buddhist kingship. On the other hand, he was still surrounded by Brahmins and acted like a god-king. On the one hand, he is often portrayed as a mystic, deep in peaceful meditation. On the other hand, he led a number of wars, often for no other reason than to get revenge on the Chams. On the one hand, he exhausted the country’s resources with his building projects. On the other hand, these projects included hospitals and rest houses for travelers. To this day we know very little about Jayavarman VII, and the fragments of information we have about him are filled with contradictions.

Jayavarman VII ruled over a prosperous Cambodian kingdom, but no longer over an empire. Beyond Cambodia’s borders new kingdoms had arisen, which would become today’s Thailand, Laos, and Malaysia. It was his ancestor’s empire that gave these countries much of the culture they have today as it expanded throughout South East Asia.

Sleep did not come easily to me that night. Memories of the wonders I had seen that day competed with the thought of the monuments to the great empire of Angkor that awaited me the next day.