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The Great City or Capital |
Angkor derives from Sanskrit
word: "Nagara" meaning "City or Town or Capital"; "Thom" means "Great" so
Angkor Thom meaning "Great City".
The town of Angkor Thom as we
see it today, is not the first capital of ancient Cambodia in the same
place.
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The South Gate of
Angkor Thom |
The first city was founded by
king Yaçovarman I (899 to about 910). This king began his reign in the
capital of his father Indravarman I at Hariharalaya. He abandoned the city
in order to build his own capital Yaçodharapura meaning the "city of
Yaçovarman". It was recognized that the centre of this first city is the
Phnom Bakheng. It was chosen for its proximity to the river Siem Reap which
does not dry up and because the hill form a natural foundation for the
pyramid of the God-King ritual. Yaçodharapura was larger than the present
town (4 km at each side) owing to the security was good; it allowed the king
to be surrounded the city by cheap enclosures of stake to protect the
eastern side, he used the course of the river.
The inscription says that the
king Rajendravarman brought his capital back to Angkor because between 921
to 944 one king Jayavarman IV -- the usurper founded the city at Koh Ker,
about 100km northeast of Angkor. The king Rajendravarman did not
re-installed the city on the same ground that had been marked out by
Yaçovarman (the Bakheng). He erected the pyramid of Phimeanakas which
resembles the temples of Koh Ker, as the center of the city. We know nothing
of the walls of this town but the position of Phimeanakas which is almost
the same distance from the South and East walls of Angkor Thom, from eastern
dike of Western Baray and the Northern dike of the Basin behind Preah Khan,
would make us suppose that its walls passed by these lines and were again
include in part in the latter town.
The Baphoun became the center
of the third Angkor and was still on the same North-South axis. It was
placed a little to the South.
When Jayavarman VII (1181 to
about 1220) came to power; he took over the reigns of the Khmer Empire at a
difficult moment after the invasion of a Cham fleet which had destroyed the
capital from end to end (1177-1181) and had taken away the greater part of
the country's properties. He displaced the center of the city and reduced
the surface, thus making the perimeter les costly. In the middle he built
the Bayon and made its walls of the town from laterites (8m high , 3km at
each side and the moats: 100m wide). He made five gates which decorated the
same each other; four gates located on the axis of the Bayon but one of them
(Victory Gate) is on the axis of the Royal Enclosure.
The Bayon and the gates get
their special character from the great faces of Bodhisattva Avalokiteçvara;
the old system of the images which existed already in the Hindu-monasteries
of the 7th century and which enabled the whole world to be put under the
benevolent protection of his quadruple face. The King decorated the bridge
across the moats with the churning milky ocean motives.
Architectural Symbolism
This tradition was still so
much alive at the time when Angkor Thom was restored by Jayavarman VII that
compare the wall to the chain of mountains enclosing the universe and the
surrounding moat to the ocean. "The first pierced the brilliant sky with its
pinnacle the other reached down to the unplumbed depths of the world of
serpents. This Mountain of Victory (Jaya Giri) and this ocean of victory (Jaya
Sindhu) built by the king as his great glory.
The bridge with Naga
balustrades represent rainbow -- the bridge between men and Gods. The
bridges lead to the gates of the city which reproduced at four
cardinal points in a reduced form. They represent the extension and
projection of the Royal Power emanation from the temple in the four cardinal
directions. The giant three-headed elephants on which are seated figures of
Indra the wielder of thunderbolts and master of the thirty-third heaven.
Thus, the rainbow is also the bow of Indra. This representation of the God
Indra at the end of the bridge accentuates the fact that the bridge with the
Naga balustrades is symbolic of the rainbow ladder. |
