Phnom Bakheng (
Khmer:
ប្រាសាទភ្នំបាខែង) at
Angkor,
Cambodia, is a Hindu temple in the form of a
temple mountain. Dedicated to
Shiva, it was built
at the end of the 9th century, during the reign of King
Yasovarman
(889-910). Located atop a hill, it is nowadays a popular tourist spot for
sunset views of the much bigger temple
Angkor Wat,
which lies amid the jungle about 1.5 km to the southeast. The large number
of visitors makes Phnom Bakheng one of the most threatened monuments of Angkor.
[1]Since 2004,
World Monuments Fund has been working to
conserve the temple in partnership with
APSARA.
Constructed more than two
centuries before Angkor Wat, Phnom Bakheng was in its day the principal temple
of the Angkor region, historians believes. It was the architectural centerpiece
of a new capital, Yasodharapura, that Yasovarman built when he moved the court
from the capital
Hariharalaya in the
Roluos area located
to the southeast.
An inscription dated 1052 AD and
found at the
Sdok Kak Thom temple in present-day
Thailand states
in
Sanskrit:
"When Sri Yasovardhana became king under the name of Yasovarman, the able
Vamasiva continued as his guru. By the king's order, he set up a linga on Sri
Yasodharagiri, a mountain equal in beauty to the king of mountains."
[1]
Scholars believe that this passage refers to the consecration of the Phnom
Bakheng temple approximately a century and a half earlier.
Surrounding the mount and temple, labor teams
built an outer moat. Avenues radiated out in the four cardinal directions from
the mount. A causeway ran in a northwest-southeast orientation from the old
capital area to the east section of the new capital's outer moat and then,
turning to an east-west orientation, connected directly to the east entrance of
the temple.
[2]
Phnom Bakheng is a symbolic representation of
Mount Meru,
home of the
Hindu
gods, a status emphasized by the temple’s location atop a steep hill. The
temple faces east, measures 76 meters square at its base and is built in a
pyramid form of six tiers. At the top level, five sandstone sanctuaries, in
various states of repair, stand in a
quincunx pattern—one in the center and one
at each corner of the level’s square. Originally, 108 small towers were arrayed
around the temple at ground level and on various of its tiers; most of them
have collapsed.
[3]
Jean
Filliozat of the Ecole Francaise, a leading authority on Indian cosmology
and astronomy, interpreted the symbolism of the temple. The temple sits on a
rectangular base and rises in five levels and is crowned by five main towers.
One hundred four smaller towers are distributed over the lower four levels,
placed so symmetrically that only 33 can be seen from the center of any side.
Thirty-three is the number of gods who dwelt on Mount Meru. Phnom Bakheng's
total number of towers is also significant. The center one represents the axis
of the world and the 108 smaller ones represent the four lunar phases, each
with 27 days. The seven levels of the monument represent the seven heavens and
each terrace contains 12 towers which represent the 12-year cycle of Jupiter.
According to University of Chicago scholar Paul Wheatley, it is "an
astronomical calendar in stone."
[4]
Phnom Bakheng is one of three hilltop temples in
the Angkor region that are attributed to Yasovarman's reign. The other two are
Phnom Krom
to the south near the
Tonle Sap lake, and
Phnom Bok,
northeast of the
East Baray reservoir.
Following Angkor's rediscovery by the outside
world in the mid-19th century, decades passed before archeologists grasped
Phnom Bakheng's historical significance. For many years, scholars' consensus
view was that the
Bayon,
the temple located at the center of
Angkor Thom
city, was the edifice to which the Sdok Kak Thom inscription referred. Later
work identified the Bayon as a
Buddhist site, built almost three centuries later than
originally thought, in the late 12th century, and Phnom Bakheng as King
Yasovarman's state temple.
copy from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phnom_Bakheng
