ANGKOR- KHMER DAILY LIFE
Angkor Wat abortion, AD1150 Richard Stone wrote in National Geographic, “An intriguing firsthand account brings the city to life at its zenith. Zhou Daguan, a Chinese diplomat, spent nearly a year in the capital at the end of the 13th century. He lived modestly as a guest of a middle-class family who ate rice using coconut-husk spoons and drank wine made from honey, leaves, or rice. He described a gruesome practice, abandoned not long before his visit, that involved collecting human gall from living donors as a tonic for courage. Religious festivals featured fireworks and boar fighting. The greatest spectacles occurred when the king ventured out among his subjects. Royal processions included elephants and horses decorated with gold, and hundreds of palace women bedecked in flowers. [Source: Richard Stone, National Geographic, July 2009]
“Angkor's daily rhythms also come to life in sculptures that have survived centuries of decay and, more recently, war. Bas-reliefs on temple facades depict everyday scenes—two men hunched over a board game, for instance, and a woman giving birth under a shaded pavilion—and pay homage to the spiritual world inhabited by creatures such as apsaras, alluring celestial dancers who served as messengers between humans and the gods.The bas-reliefs also reveal trouble in paradise. Interspersed with visions of earthly harmony and sublime enlightenment are scenes of war. In one bas-relief, spear-bearing warriors from the neighboring kingdom of Champa are packed stem to stern in a boat crossing the Tonle Sap. The scene is immortalized in stone, of course, because the Khmer were successful in battle.
Zhou described Angkor as a city filled with gilded statues, towers, thatched roof homes for ordinary people and tile-roofed palaces for the rich. Monks wore saffron robes and had shaved heads (as they do today); soldiers carried lances and shields; and both men and women went topless and wore their hair long and tied in a knot. The Chinese envoy also described female merchants, lepers, criminals with their hands and noses cut off as punishments, and nobles carried on gold, silver and silk palanquins.
Bas-reliefs at Bayon depict fortunetellers, hospitals, taverns, beauty parlors, women giving birth, men fishing in Tonle Sap, bookies taking bets on a cockfight, monks trying to remove the sarong of a young girl, and a man pulling out his whiskers with tweezers. There are also images of wild boar fights, jugglers, wrestlers, chess players, bow hunters and princesses surrounded by suitors. One scenes shows three smiling Cambodian women cheating three Chinese by secretly adding weight to the scales with their fingers. Another shows a holy man escaping from a tiger by climbing a tree.
Khmer parades featured in the bas-reliefs showed caparisoned elephant, chariots and flag bearers. The Khmers held rain-inducing ceremonies in which elephants sucked water from a cistern and sprayed everybody, symbolizing rain. Their traditional form of cremation was referred to as “turning the corpse.” Chinese travelers both admired the Khmers and looked down on them They described their dark skin with disgust and were shocked by women who urinated while standing up.
Angkorian Society
The ancient Khmers were not so different from modern Khmers. They spoke the same language, looked similar and followed many of the same traditions. Women held relatively high positions in Khmer society. They served in the government and were influential in economic life. The hereditary lineage of a ruler and inheritance of property was passed down through the female line.
Angkorian society was strictly hierarchical. The king, regarded as divine, owned both the land and his subjects. Immediately below the monarch and the royal family were the Brahman priesthood and a small class of officials, who numbered about 4,000 in the tenth century. Next were the commoners, who were burdened with heavy corvée (forced labor) duties. There was also a large slave class that, like the nameless multitudes of ancient Egypt, built the enduring monuments. [Source: Library of Congress, December 1987]
According to Zhou slavery was common and rich families had up to 1,000 slaves. He also described huge parades with clusters of ceremonial umbrellas with gold handles reserved for the highest ranks; and wrote that husbands of adulterous wives were allowed to torture their wive’s lovers with a special devise that squeezed their feet, until the pain was so unbearable they turned over all their property to the husband.
Angkor-Khmer Religion and the Devaraja “God King” Cult
Initially, the Khmers were Hindus. Angkor Wat originally was the center of royal phallic cult dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva. A linga (the phallic symbol of Shiva) was installed in the temple’s main sanctuary. Later Vishnu became the most important Hindu god and his image was placed in the sanctuary at Angkor Wat. Under Jayavarman VII the Khmer converted to Mahayana Buddhism. Later, Theravada Buddhism was introduced by the Thais. It became dominate after the Khmer empire collapsed.
“Devaraja” , meaning “God King” or literally “the Lord of the Universe Who is King,” refers to the cult associated with the rulers of Angkor, who were regarded as a earthly representations of deities, capable of performing the same kind of role on earth that the gods performed in the heavens. Through a consecration rite, the kings were endowed with divine power and given the responsibility to protect the state and the people.
“Devaraja” was linked with Hinduism and has its root in an ancient Indian royal cults based on the concept that a king and one of the Hindu gods, usually Shiva or Vishnu, were spiritually linked. At Angkor, the “devaraja” cult was used like pharaoh worship in ancient Egypt to help justify the state and put the population to work to build monuments and maintain the state.
In Khmer Cambodia and in Java, the devaraja (god-king) cult embodied the belief that the living king transmitted divine will through his relationship with a particular god, and that the deity’s images in the temple constructed by the king symbolized the god’s approval of the king’s divine right to rule. The devaraja cult was appropriated from India. Hindu rulers turned to Shiva or Vishnu as their patron deity. Buddhist kings derived their authority not from Buddha, who had renounced his worldly position, but from bod- hisattvas, who were still of this world and possessed extraordinary powers. [Source: Steven M. Kossak and Edith W. Watts, The Art of South, and Southeast Asia, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
In keeping with these beliefs, occasionally representations of the monarch were made in the image of the god, often complete with the attributes of a deity. Many of the greatest Khmer temple-mountains were centered on a funerary shrine—the inner core of Angkor Wat, for instance— in which such statues were placed.
Along with the cosmic and spiritual truths embodied in the temple’s architectural form, extensive narrative reliefs on temple walls performed on educational role by instructing worshippers in both religious and histor- ical events. For instance, as the pilgrim ascends the galleries at Borobudur, circling each level before climbing to the next, he or she is inspired by depictions of the Buddha’s life and the compassion of bodhisattvas.
Angkor-Khmer Culture and Dance
The Khmers kept vast libraries but most of the writing was done on animal skins and palm leaves and disappeared with time.
Dance was very important to the Khmers. Most dances in the Angkor era were temple dances, performed by huge ensembles of female dancers, linked to a temple. The royal court of King Jayavarman VII employed 600 dancers. The content of these dances is not known but images in the temples of dancing “apsara” (celestial nymphs) indicate they were strongly influenced by traditional Hindu dancing.
Some of the dance movements depicted in bas-reliefs are quite extreme and hard to do. These include the second position “plie”; flexing fingers backwards towards the wrists; and diagonally tilting the pelvis with one foot against the opposite thigh. Dance costumes included shoulder decorations, bracelets, wristlets, anklets, floral garlands, hip-girdles, earrings and elaborate headdresses.
Angkor Art, See Separate Article
Angkor-Khmer Buildings
Carvings show that everyday Angkorian buildings were wooden structures not much different from those found in Cambodia today. The impressive stone buildings were not used as residences by members of the royal family. Rather, they were the focus of Hindu or Buddhist cults that celebrated the divinity, or buddhahood, of the monarch and his family. Coedès suggests that they had the dual function of both temple and tomb. Typically, their dimensions reflected the structure of the Hindu mythological universe. For example, five towers at the center of the Angkor Wat complex represent the peaks of Mount Meru, the center of the universe; an outer wall represents the mountains that ring the world's edge; and a moat depicts the cosmic ocean. Like many other ancient edifices, the monuments of the Angkorian region absorbed vast reserves of resources and human labor and their purpose remains shrouded in mystery. [Source: Library of Congress, December 1987]
The basic structures of a typical Khmer-era temple (from top to bottom): 1) lotus bulb finial; 2) diminishing tiers; 3) mutiple pediments on axial; 4) lintel; 5) axial entrance; 6) raised platform foundations.
It has been estimated that 50,000 people, including artisans and slaves worked on Angkor Wat during the 37 years it took to build it.
Angkor Temples
Rather than expanding temples built by their predecessors, the Khmer kings consecrated their rule by building new temples—with its own moats, irrigation systems, causeways, gates and carved sandstone towers—in scattered areas, where separate mini-cities grew up around them. That is why there are so many incredible monuments in the Angkor area.
Hundreds of architects and engineers were hired to design the temples. Some were dedicated to Buddha. Some were dedicated to the Hindu gods Vishnu or Shiva. Others were built as shrines to the Angkor god-king that commissioned them. Some like Angkor Wat were all of the above. For the most part the temples were viewed as sanctuaries of the gods and only members of the royal family and perhaps some monks or priests were allowed to enter them.
The sandstone used to build the monuments was transported from faraway quarries by canal barges, oxcarts and elephants. After the stones were cut and fit together they were decorated with bas-reliefs and free-standing statues. Many were once painted with bright colors and decorated with gold leaf. The stone building were once surrounded by wooden houses, where ordinary people lived, but these all disappeared with time.
Angkor Architecture
The architecture of Angkor was influenced by architecture in India and other kingdoms in Southeast Asia, but also contains some unique elements such as those associated with the Khmer king and his cosmology and divinity.
Many Khmer temples were built as microcosms of Hindu cosmology with a central tower or towers representing Mt. Meru, , the center of the Hindu universe and the home of the Hindu gods. The sanctuary walls defined the limits of the universe. Some features that appear to have been built for military purposes were in fact built for symbolic and religious reasons. The water-filled moats, for example, that surround the temples represent the oceans around the Hindu universe.
Most temples were built facing east towards the rising sun which was regarded as auspicious, with the main gate on the east side. The west was considered inauspicious and associated with death. The north was linked with elephants, which are valued because of their strength. The south was neutral. An effort was made to make sure all the structures were balanced and in harmony as is the case with the Hindu and Buddhist universes. Angkor Wat was built facing west, perhaps in honor of the Hindu god Vishnu, preserver of all things.
The decorative motifs and sculptures are similar to those found in India. Some early buildings contains elements found in the architecture of ancient Indonesia. Some of the later ones contain Chinese characteristics such as glazed tiles and Chinese-style motifs in the reliefs.
The architectural technology is less sophisticated than that of the Romans. The rooms are small, ceilings are low, and some of the designs for stone structures is based on wooden structures. Many buildings are made of rough-hewn blocks of sandstone placed on top of porous slabs of laterite—a spongy, iron-laden soil that hardens when exposed to air— and fitted together rather than anchored with concrete. But, somehow, using these basic techniques and materials, the Khmers were able to create structures of extraordinary beauty, harmony and complexity.
Sandstone was the preferred material for walls with reliefs because it is relatively easy to carve. The sandstone blocks used at Angkor were quarried about 40 kilometers away and transported by raft to Angkor when Tonle Sap reversed its direction and flowed towards Angkor. The laterite used for foundations is found in abundance in the Cambodian soil. Known for its durability, it is a red rock that is soft when it is underground, because of its high water content, but becomes hard when exposed to sunlight. In most cases it was cut while still in the ground and removed in the form of blocks that were left to dry on the sun.
Elements of Angkor Architecture
Elements of Angkor Architecture: 1) the corbel arch is a primitive construction method that was used only by the Khmers. It is made by placing blocks on top of one another until they come together. The disadvantage of this method is it creates arches that are tall and narrow and accommodate little space underneath them. 2) False doors are another common Khmer feature. They are sometimes found with real doors at the main sanctuaries of temples, and are often beautifully decorated and carved. 3) Khmer pediments (triangular upper portions of a wall) are often intricately decorated with pictorial scenes.
Other common Angkor architectural elements included: 4) rectangular and lotus-shaped pillars (free-standing supports); 5) rectangular pilasters (columns that project slightly from a wall); 6) decorated lintels (slabs that supports the weight above a door) and tympanums (triangular spaces above lintels enclosing the moldings of the pediments); and 7) windows with balusters. Often the windows have laterite blocks placed at the top and five to seven wood- or bamboo-like balusters on the lower half.
Khmer central towers are almost always facing towards the east. Their conical shape is formed by a series of stepped tiers that come together to form a rounded point at the top The interior is usually relatively plain, with the exterior being more highly decorated. The focus of a temple is the sanctuary, which sits on elevated platform below the central tower. Elaborate temples have a central tower surrounded by other towers. These towers represent the peaks of Mount Meru and were often adorned with stucco or carved sandstone decorations.
As the temples became more complex, hallways and galleries were built off the sanctuaries. They were usually set on platforms, with stairways connecting different levels. Later, separate buildings were added for meditation halls, “libraries” and other purposes, and elaborate porches, sanctuary walls, gates and causeways across moats were built. Gallery walls were often decorated with carved reliefs. The so-called libraries were generally storage rooms for sacred objects.
Angkor-Khmer Infrastructure
Surrounding the temples at Angkor is a sophisticated waterworks system, that still functions to some degree today, consisting of numerous canals, dams and rectangular reservoirs called “barays” . In a monsoon climate, where the rainy season sometimes brings too much water and the dry season doesn't bring any at all, control over water is the key to wealth and even survival.
The waterworks system was very advanced The canals and reservoirs directed and collected wet season runoff water to prevent flooding; stored the water during the dry season; and channeled it into an irrigation system capable of producing two or three crops a year. Canals were used to haul stones used in the construction of temples. The two largest reservoirs held over two billion gallons of water. To build and maintain such water system required central planning and lots of physical labor mobilized through the power of a god king.
The major temples were surrounded by huge moats. Some scholars believe that some of the moats served as reflecting pools to amplify the beauty of the temples. Others say they were primarily symbols of the cosmos. Water in the moats symbolically separated the outer world from the sacred precincts of the temples inside them. Recent surveys indicate the water may have been more decorative and symbolic that practical. It seems that relatively few canals ran out of the moats, implying that there were involved less in irrigation than previously thought.
Rice surpluses produced by irrigation and floating rice freed labor to devote its attention to art and religion and made it possible for the Khmers to build a large standing army and support an opulent culture with court ministers, priests, bureaucrats, and artisans. But the intensive labor required to maintain both the agricultural and irrigation systems also demanded much from the empire’s work force, and may have proved intolerable over time and led to the Khmer civilization’s collapse.
In his book "Challenging the Mystery of the Angkor Empire: Realizing the Mission of Sophia University in the Asian World, Yoshiaki Ishizawa, former president of Sophia University, says he has answered some longstanding questions about the Angkor civilization. Ishizawa, who has studied and worked to preserve Angkor monuments for more than 50 years, found that temples and roads related to the Angkor Empire had spread over the Indochinese Peninsula by reading inscriptions written in Sanskrit and old Khmer, which were discovered in the Angkor monuments. He concluded this huge network of trade and logistics must have supported and nurtured the once-great civilization. According to Ishizawa, the empire's throne was traditionally seized by force, not inherited through bloodline succession. Ishizawa explained the discarded statues were evidence of political conflicts in which a king displayed his new power, and that the empire continued to flourish until its fall. Hiromi Kanekita, Yomiuri Shimbun, October 26, 2012]
Angkor and Water
Another significant element of the Angkor complex is the irrigation system of the region based on the great reservoirs, which provided the economic infrastructure for the successive Khmer capitals and their rulers. Spillways from sloping dams used in the system may extended as long as a football field. Richard Stone wrote in National Geographic, “By harnessing the monsoon tide that gushed from the Kulen Hills, Angkor and its rulers flourished. From the era of Jayavarman II, who laid the kingdom's foundations in the early 800s, the empire's growth depended on bumper rice harvests. Throughout southern Asia, perhaps only the ancient cities of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka and their famed reservoirs could compare to Angkor's ability to guarantee a steady water supply. [Source: Richard Stone, National Geographic, July 2009]
“That reliability required massive feats of engineering, including a reservoir called the West Baray that's five miles long and 1.5 miles wide. To build this third and most sophisticated of Angkor's large reservoirs a thousand years ago, as many as 200,000 Khmer workers may have been needed to pile up nearly 16 million cubic yards of soil in embankments 300 feet wide and three stories tall. To this day the rectangular reservoir, or baray, is fed by water diverted from the Siem Reap River.
“The first scholar to appreciate the scale of Angkor's waterworks was Bernard-Philippe Groslier, an archaeologist with the French School of Asian Studies (EFEO). In a landmark 1979 treatise, he envisioned Angkor as a "hydraulic city." The great barays, he argued, served two purposes: to symbolize the primeval sea of Hindu cosmogony and to irrigate rice fields. Unfortunately, Groslier could not pursue this concept further. Cambodia's civil war, the brutal reign of the Khmer Rouge, and the ouster of the regime by Vietnamese forces in 1979 turned Angkor into a no-go zone for two decades. After Vietnamese troops withdrew, looters descended on Angkor, swiping statues and even chiseling off bas-reliefs.
“When Christophe Pottier, an architect and archaeologist, reopened EFEO's research station at Angkor in 1992, the first priority was helping Cambodia restore dilapidated and pillaged temples. But Pottier was drawn to the wilderness beyond the temple walls. He spent months crisscrossing the southern half of Greater Angkor on motorbike and foot, mapping once hidden house mounds and shrines near artificial ponds called water tanks. (Lingering lawlessness deterred Pottier from surveying the northern half.) Then, in 2000, Fletcher and his colleague Damian Evans laid hands on NASA radar images of Angkor. They were a revelation: The University of Sydney team, working with EFEO and APSARA, the Cambodian agency that manages Angkor, found vestiges of many more settlements, canals, and water tanks, particularly in Angkor's inaccessible areas. Donald Cooney's ultralight flights have helped Fletcher and Pottier, now a co-director of the Greater Angkor Project, examine these features in finer detail. Crucially, they found inlets and outlets to the barays, ending a debate catalyzed by Groslier's work about whether the colossal reservoirs were used solely for religious rituals or for irrigation. The clear answer is both.
“The researchers were amazed by the ambition of Angkor's engineers. "We realized that the entire landscape of Greater Angkor is artificial," Fletcher says. Over several centuries, teams of laborers constructed hundreds of miles of canals and dikes that relied on subtle differences in the land's natural inclination to divert water from the Puok, Roluos, and Siem Reap Rivers to the barays. During the summer monsoon months, overflow channels bled off excess water. After the rains petered out in October or November, irrigation channels dispensed stored water. The barays may also have helped replenish soil moisture by allowing water to soak into the earth. In surrounding fields surface evaporation would have drawn up the groundwater to supply crops. "It was an incredibly clever system," says Fletcher.
“That clever water system may have made the difference between mediocrity and greatness. Much of the kingdom's rice was grown in embanked fields that would otherwise have relied on monsoon rains or the seasonal ebb and flow of water on the Tonle Sap floodplain. Irrigation would have boosted harvests. The system could also have provided survival rations during a poor monsoon season, says Fletcher. And the ability to divert and impound water would have afforded a measure of protection from floods. When other kingdoms in Southeast Asia were struggling to cope with too little or too much water, he says, Angkor's waterworks would have been "a profoundly valuable strategic asset."
Khmer Agriculture, Fishing and Economic Activities
The Khmer were an agricultural people that lived primarily around waterways. They practiced a variety of agricultures including shifting cultivation, irrigated farming and intensive cultivation of dry land gardens. They relied n Tonle Sap for fish and rice.
Much of their food came from floating rice, the earliest know form of Khmer agriculture. Floating rice grows very fast in deep water. It stems can reach a length of six meters and grow as much as 10 centimeters a day. The food bearing parts of the plant lie near the surface because the water rises about the same rate the rice grows. At harvest time, the rice is collected by boats and rafts.
Khmer trading routes extended into China. Well maintained roads spread out from Angkor like the spokes of a wheel. Goods wee moved mostly in ox carts.
Fishing and Agriculture and Tonle Sap
The Khmers fished in Tonle Sap. There are 300 species of fish living in Tonle Sap. These include black fish that breed and spawn when the lake is full and stick round when the lake empties, living in ponds, and sometimes in hollows of unique underwater plants. Migratory whitefish, mostly catfish, enter the lake during the wet season and migrate to the sea or the upper reaches of the Mekong River to spawn. They are caught in great numbers as they enter and leave the lake.
The months of flooding encourages the growth of huge fish stocks and other aquatic life, that become extremely easy to catch once the waters begin to reside. Fishing families string nets and bamboo traps across the lake's mouth and the numerous fish can almost be plucked from the water. The Tonle Sap Lake's level drops so fast that it out catches many of its inhabitants, and its not unlikely to see fisherman picking their catch from the trees.
When the Tonle Sap fills with water it also fills with quick-spawning and -growing fish. During the height of the dry season Tonle Sap becomes one of the easiest lakes in the world to catch fish in, as all the fish that grew and spawned in the wet season get squeezed into shallow pools from the drained lake. The fish are then trapped in bamboo weirs and nets that are strung across channels.
The mud banks created by the flooding of the Tonle Sap are extremely fertile, and local rice farmers have developed a deepwater rice that is unique to this area. Water from the Tonle Sap also provides rice farmers with water for irrigation. The fresh layers of silt deposited after each flood serves as an ideal fertilizer. The abundance provided by Tonle Sap, some historians have theorized, is one reason why the Angkor civilization was so great and was able to sustain itself for so long.
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons
Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Global Viewpoint (Christian Science Monitor), Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, NBC News, Fox News and various books and other publications.
Last updated August 2020