Angkor Wat

Angkor Wat (អង្គរវត្ត, Angkor Wat) is a 12th-century temple in Siem Reap province, Cambodia, built for Vishnu and a center of Buddhist worship for centuries. It stands within the Angkor archaeological park and appears on the national flag of Cambodia.

Illustration inspired by the temple at sunrise from its western causeway.

Heritage site details
Khmer name	អង្គរវត្ត
Also known as	Temple City
Site type	Temple
Location	Siem Reap, Siem Reap province
Country	Cambodia
Period	1113–1150
Subjects	Religion & Spiritual Life; History & Remembrance

History

The name joins angkor, city, and wat, temple, and is usually given as "City of Temples" or "City of the Temple." The temple's original name is not securely known because surviving contemporary texts and inscriptions do not mention it by name. It may have been known as Vrah Vishnulok, after its presiding god.

King Suryavarman II commissioned Angkor Wat in Yaśodharapura, the capital of the Khmer Empire, as a state temple dedicated to Vishnu, and it is generally regarded as his intended mausoleum. He took the throne in 1113 after killing his great-uncle, King Dharanindravarman I. He built a strong central government, opened relations with China and regarded Vishnu as his personal protector. Construction likely began in 1116 and ended around 1150, shortly after the king's death. It took more than 30 years and probably about 300,000 workers, among them architects, masons, sculptors, builders and servants. Work stopped after Suryavarman II died, and some of the relief carving was left unfinished.

In 1177 the Cham people, from what is now Vietnam, sacked Angkor. Jayavarman VII, who reigned from 1181 to about 1220, built Angkor Thom nearby as a new capital with the Bayon as its state temple. The temple's change from Hindu to Buddhist use came gradually. Britannica places the shift after the founding of Angkor Thom, when many Hindu carvings and statues gave way to Buddhist art. Other accounts date it from the late 13th century, with Buddhist monks taking over as Hindu worship ended. From then on Angkor Wat served as a Buddhist center, as it does to the present day.

After Angkor was abandoned in the 15th century, Theravada Buddhist monks maintained the temple and kept it largely intact, and it became one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Southeast Asia. It was neglected after the 16th century but never completely abandoned, and its moat held back the forest. In the 16th century, after a period of Thai occupation, the Khmer returned and restored the temple. Pieces of statues broken in the fighting were set back into the building, and new reliefs completed the Hindu stories on the walls. King Ang Chan called this work the completion of the unfinished business of the ancestors. Buddhist stupas were added between the 16th and 19th centuries.

The French explorer Henri Mouhot visited in 1860, and his travel notes made the temple widely known in the West. When the French arrived, Angkor Wat was an active Buddhist site with brick stupas, cloth hangings and statues. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, French work removed many later additions, including images and structures of wood and other perishable materials, some of which had religious or ritual importance. The removed statues and stupas have not been returned. Restoration and conservation work was undertaken by international agencies during the 20th and 21st centuries.

Cambodia became independent from France on November 9, 1953, and has controlled Angkor Wat since then. Religious life and local worship at the temple have grown again since independence. Restoration stopped during the political unrest of the 1970s, through the civil war and the Khmer Rouge years. The main damage in that period was the theft and destruction of statues, mostly from after the Angkor era. Work resumed in the mid-1980s and needed extensive repairs, and some sections had to be taken apart and rebuilt.

Architecture and layout

The complex covers about 162.6 hectares (402 acres); Britannica gives about 160 hectares (400 acres) and counts more than 1,000 buildings. Guinness World Records lists it as the largest religious structure in the world. It measures about 1,554 by 1,371 meters (5,100 by 4,498 feet), and its central tower rises about 65 meters (213 feet). Unlike most temples at Angkor, it faces west, a direction linked with Vishnu and the land of the dead.

The temple combines the Khmer temple-mountain, a stepped temple built as a sacred mountain, with rings of galleries one inside the other, creating a layered plan. Its layout is commonly read as a model of Mount Meru, home of the gods in Hinduism and Buddhism. The central group of five towers stands for the mountain's five peaks, and the walls and moat stand for the ranges and ocean around it. Of the original nine towers, five still stand.

A moat about 200 meters (650 feet) wide and 4 meters (13 feet) deep runs more than 5 kilometers (3 miles) around the complex. A sandstone causeway 188 meters (617 feet) long crosses it on the west and may have replaced a wooden bridge. The outer enclosure once held the city and, north of the temple, the royal palace. These were built of materials that did not last, and only the outlines of some streets remain.

The visible parts of Angkor Wat are mainly sandstone, while laterite, an iron-rich stone, was used for the outer wall and hidden supports. The sandstone came from the Kulen Hills, about 29 kilometers (18 miles) to the north, and was moved to the site by canal. The central temple stands on a raised terrace. Three galleries rise one above the other toward a central sanctuary marked by five stone towers. Movement toward the upper levels became more and more restricted, so ordinary worshippers were admitted only to the lowest level.

Preah Poan, the Hall of a Thousand Buddhas, is a cross-shaped cloister linking the outer gallery to the second level, with libraries to its north and south. The inner gallery, called the Bakan, holds the central shrine. The shrine once housed a statue of Vishnu and was open on each side; when the temple became Theravada Buddhist, it was walled in, and the new walls bear standing Buddhas. A large eight-armed statue of Vishnu stands at the western entrance.

Art and inscriptions

Nearly every surface is carved. The bas-reliefs, carvings raised from a flat stone surface, cover approximately 1,200 square meters (12,900 square feet) and present eight Hindu narratives. The outer gallery runs more than 600 meters (1,960 feet), and its scenes are read counterclockwise. The western gallery shows the Battle of Lanka from the Ramayana and the Battle of Kurukshetra from the Mahabharata. The southern gallery shows a procession of Suryavarman II and the 32 hells and 37 heavens of Hindu belief. The northern gallery shows Krishna's victory over Bana and a battle between the gods and the asuras, or demons. Other reliefs show the king as Vishnu or carrying out royal duties.

A major relief on the eastern gallery shows the Churning of the Ocean of Milk. There 92 asuras and 88 devas, or gods, use the serpent king Vasuki as a rope, while Vishnu occupies the center. The story tells of the beginning of time, the creation of the universe and the victory of good over evil. Around the central Vishnu, rough chisel marks show where the carving was never finished. The same gallery holds a scene of Vishnu defeating the asuras that was added in the 16th century.

Apsaras, celestial dancers, form another important part of the decoration, with hundreds represented across the temple. Devatas, carved figures of deities, cover the walls from the second level upward, alone or in groups of up to four. Inscriptions in Preah Poan record the good deeds of pilgrims in Khmer, Burmese and Japanese.

Significance and conservation

Angkor Wat is a major religious, cultural and national symbol of Cambodia and a source of national pride. Buddhist monks and nuns worship there today. It gives its name to the classical Angkor Wat style of Khmer architecture. UNESCO inscribed the Angkor area, including the temple, on the World Heritage List in 1992 and added it the same year to the List of World Heritage in Danger. It was removed from that list in 2004.

The International Coordinating Committee for the Safeguarding and Development of the Historic Site of Angkor (ICC-Angkor), established under UNESCO in 1993, coordinated restoration. The Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap (APSARA) was established in 1995 to protect and manage the area. The site was managed from 1990 to 2016 by SOKIMEX, which rented it from the Cambodian government. The wider Angkor Archaeological Park covers about 400 square kilometers (154 square miles) and includes temples, water works and historic roads.

A survey found about 20 percent of the temple's devatas in very poor condition, mainly from natural erosion and decay of the stone and partly from earlier restoration. Conservation work repairs collapsed sections and prevents further collapse. Plant roots and water have also worn parts of the temple. In 2000, about 28 percent of ticket income from the Angkor site went to the temples, and most conservation was carried out by teams sponsored by foreign governments.

Visiting

Angkor Wat lies about 5.5 kilometers (3.4 miles) north of Siem Reap. Access to the temple is by an earth bank to the east and a sandstone causeway to the west, the main entrance. Visitors then pass through three galleries separated by paved walkways. Ropes and wooden steps protect the reliefs and floors.

The complex draws more than 2.5 million visitors a year. Government figures counted 561,000 foreign visitors to Siem Reap province in 2004 and 677,000 in 2005, about half of all foreign tourists to Cambodia. The site reopened to international visitors in late 2021; 280,000 tourists visited in 2022, and more than 400,000 by late July 2023.

References