ARTICLE
A masterpiece of design, engineering and decoration in Cambodia: Hindu epic stories, dancing, sunrises and several strange analogies.
What is Angkor?
Angkor is one of the world’s 7 wonders, an ancient conglomerate of temples meant to worship Hindu gods although it turned to Buddhism at the end of the XIIIth century. Two centuries later, the locations were abandoned due to war circumstances, whereas in 1992 one of the main temples (Angkor Wat) was included in the Unesco’s world’s heritage.
Angkor was the capital city of the ancient Khmer Empire all along Southeast Asia. The city was in the Northwest area of Cambodia nowadays, and was built around Phnom Bakheng, a temple settle down on a hill representing Mount Meru, the sacred mountain which is believed to be at the centre of the Universe, according to Hindu manuscripts.
Each king of the Empire extended the city and built more temples devoted to different deities, with big reservoirs symbolizing the oceans surrounding the sacred mountain in Hindu cosmology.
So Angkor became a group of temples over more than 400 km2, including more than 1000 buildings now located in the middle of the jungle. The main groups of temples are Angkor Thom, Ta Prom and Angkor Wat (the last one of a colossal size).
Angkor Wat
"Angkor" means "capital" and "wat" is translated as "temple". The construction took only 37 years (from 1113 to 1150), during Suryavarman II's rulership, a name translated as "protected by the sun". This is related to the fact that the temple was meant to worship Vishnu, being the Sun itself one of his avatars.
The main entrance is on the West side, from where one of the main attractions can be appreciated: the famous sunrises when the star seems to emerge from the central tower during equinoxes.
The construction is based on sandstones and laterite, a type of brick easy to handle. Of Hindu design, it can be considered as a mandala of dimensions clearly referring to yugas.
The location is composed by courtyards inside of concentric walls, with a pit built for defensive purposes and for providing water. In the middle, a 213 ft tower is surrounded by other conic towers, shaped like lotus leaves, oriented towards the four cardinal directions and representing the hills of Mount Meru. The 5 towers can also be considered as a whole, with one of them as the centre surrounded by the other four ones inside of a courtyard.
Courtyards' walls include galleries with low-relieves. The gallery on the external wall holds the greatest low-relief in the world, divided into 8 sections (2 per side). And each section tells of an episode of the Ramayana or the Mahabharata, starting with the famous battle of Kurukshetra at the East of the entrance.
The gallery in the intermediate wall holds a set of more than 1500 apsaras, experts in one of the most famous, elegant and refined dancing ever known, which is another classic attraction in the location.
On the inner level, we find devatas' relieves. Both goddesses and apsaras are represented each one of them with unique characteristics in their heads, hands and feet:
Inside of the central tower, we find a representation of Ta Reach, one of Vishnu’s appearances:
Astronomic and astrological analogies
The temple was constructed based on the elbow, an anthropomorphic measurement unit counting the distance from the elbow to the end of an open hand or a closed fist. It can be appreciated in the dimensions of the temple's axes (related to the Sun's cycles) and perimeters (related to Moon's cycles). For instance, the length of the external wall is related to the duration of a solar cycle (the axis is equal to 365,24 elbows x 12 or 1 cycle of Jupiter). And the circumference of the wall equals 354,36 elbows x 24 (an annual lunar cycle during 5 Jupiter cycles, approx. 60 years).
On the other hand, the entrance to the temple allows observing and setting lunar months by both considering the synodic month (29,53) and the total number of days with lunar visibility (28, like nakshatras or lunar mansions in Vedic Astrology).
The famous sunrises in the central tower can be appreciated from a long distance (1640 ft.), more precisely by placing oneself on the first ladder at the entrance. It's like Vishnu were inside of the tower and then emerging from the top.
Besides, Khmer people started counting the new year after three days of the Spring equinox, when from just a few feet to the South from the previous point of observation, the Sun rises again over the same place.
Cosmologic analogies
There’re also constant progressions related to dimensions, from the central galleries towards the periphery, which can be associated to the 8 concentric continents under Mount Meru. They were separated by concentric oceans too, doubling the width of the previous one each one of them.
Among the 8 narrations represented on the outer wall, one of them refers to the churning of the milk ocean, a famous episode that took place in the sixth ocean in between continents.
The story tells that the devas were looking for amrita, a nectar providing immortality, which was the way to put an end to a curse fell upon them. Devas and asuras (demons) pulled alternately from the extremes of Vasuki, a serpent used like a cord, who surrounded Mount Mandara. Devas pulled from its tail and asuras from the two heads of the animal, creating a kind of a churning move from which a lot of things emerged: apsaras, Moon and Lakshmi, among others.
An analogy of Earth
The narration tells that Mount Mandara emerged from the ocean (Milky Way) and was placed at the East of Mount Meru to provide a base to make turning moves during the episode. We may find an analogy here, since Angkor Wat is located to the East of Phnom Bakheng (Mount Meru) and might represente Mount Mandara, beign the Western entrance (privileged point to observe sunrises) the South, so sunrises happen at the North.
Vasuki in Mount Mandara (the temple itself) is also symbolizing the Earth’s axis, with devas and asuras placed at the North and South poles, respectively. Even the narrations of the most outer wall are part of a sequence to be read in counterclockwise direction (starting from the battle of Kurukshetra), such as the Earth’s motion across its orbital translation.
An analogy of life
Nowadays and strangely, it’s hard to find info on internet about the most important and famous characteristic of the temple: it was entirely decorated with jewels, which turned the place into a without-equal show of natural lights, reflexes, energy and constant motion.
Sunlight was not just reflected on and from each tower in the main cardinal directions but also remained inside of stones, which made the structure shine at any moment and time of the year, without seasonal shadows, thus annulling the variations produced by the alternation of days and nights.
If was any temporary fluctuation, it might have been that of each special interaction of light, heat and energy when sunrays entered the stone from a different position every day, along with the Sun motion over the year.
Other interactions were created in and from the very stones according to their different types, sizes and distribution. So each one of the gallery relieves was constantly illuminated by different colors and intensities, displaying each day a different show from the previous one.
By the Sun, Vishnu’s avatar, jewels in Mount Mandara were constantly vitalized. And, because of the cardinal distribution, they turned the temple (Earth) into a place where light, motion and life were flowing all over the year, being the central tower the main focus of all the activity. The centre might have been the place receiving the greatest effects of all of the interactions, which were mainly turning effects, like the "blender" derived from the pullings of devas and asuras with Vasuki's body, and like Earth as turning around its own axis.
An analogy of elementals
During the churning episode, Vishnu’s second avatar (Kurma turtle, who lives in the bottom of the ocean) was placed under Mount Mandara to prevent it from sinking during the churning moves. This characteristic coming from the narration echoes a fundamental Angkor’s building: it's based on an ancient hydraulic system meant to stabilize the base.
The foundations of the temples lay over a sand soil that could turn unstable during monsoons time, when the dry season contracts the soil. But water supplies remain stable over the year because the underwater supply is at a constant level. This is possible because Angkor counts on a hydraulic system designed to prevent the effects of dry seasons. There're pools, channels, barays (water storage tanks), pits, bridges and dykes based on the water’s flow direction in the area, to guarantee irrigation and supplying. The great lake in the perimeter never gets completely dry, fluctuations derived from seasons don’t change the soil, foundations don’t sink, and the structures don’t collapse. This is another characteristic strengthening the meaning of vitality in Angkor Wat, or Vishnu’s temple.
Fluctuations of light produced by days / nights sequences were annulled by the interactions of reflexes coming from towers, which provided a high level of caloric energy inside of the place. But more than that, the temple somehow tells that some fluctuations must continue for life goes on: those of Mount Mandara itself (Earth), which provide water and air.
Natural elements must be transformed for water’s flows to be poured from the top of the mountains. And this is happening because the Earth’s rotation around its axis impulses water to be transformed into air, and then precipitations give back water.
All this reminds us of Kurma, the turtle of stability in the epic narration, who supports the structure by stabilizing the flow as elements are mixed, transformed, and changed, to finally emerge from the "blender". For life to be, Earth must turn. With water and air flowing, the praised nectar or amrita emerges, the immortality that devas won at the end of the narration of the churning of the milky ocean.
Ref.: Templos de Angkor, 10 curiosidades sobre los templos de Angkor Wat, Angkor y la crisis del agua, Web Archive.
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