Angkor Wat Tells Stories Of The Glorious Past
Cambodia’s ancestry has Indian roots and royal lineages both from the Kings and Queens of the Somavamsa as well as the Suryavamsa. King Jayavarman II declared that he was the universal ruler of the Khmer people in 802, and he even called himself the God king. Many Cambodian rulers claimed that higher powers chose and guided them.
Modern Cambodia is different from the one of the past, when it also included places like China, Thailand, and Vietnam among several others. Jayavarman II made this region the center of his empire and it was later called Angkor. Thousands of Khmer workers cleared the jungles and made the land good for farming. They also started building palaces and temples.
Each and every king of the Khmer empire built several beautiful temples and palaces. This was mostly done to show their power. However, Angkor’s finest temple, the Angkor Wat was built by King Suryavarman II, who ruled the Khmer empire from 1113 to 1150. This temple staggers the imagination with its unbelievable architecture.
King Suryavarman gave orders for the construction of a grand Hindu temple to honor Lord Vishnu, and it took thirty-five long years to build. Sculptures of gods, including Lord Shiva grace the walls of the temple. While most other Khmer temples face the East, the Angkor Wat faces the West. Some historians believe that the West, a direction of the setting sun indicates death, but others believe that it shows dedication to Lord Vishnu.
Angkor Wat is an excellent example of the temple mountain design. An amazing work of the Khmer architecture, it showed how intrinsic symmetry and repetition are to the Khmer design. The temple has five huge towers, each one representing the peaks of Mount Meru. The unique and stunning architecture of Angkor Wat has to be seen with the naked eye to be able to experience the impact. The galleries inside the temple depict the history in a most beautiful manner.
There was a unique controversy surrounding the temple, which was soon put to an end. It questioned the history of when the temple was built. The Europeans came up with the notion that the temple was built after the–th century because the temple’s motifs look exactly like the motifs from the Italian Renaissance. However, this rumor and allegation was instantly proved wrong, with historians saying that the opposite was true – that it was the Europeans that took the oriental art from Angkor Wat to Europe.
Inscriptions on the walls of Angkor Wat reveal that Divakara Pandit, a priest who lived around 1050-1135 was highly respected. These inscriptions and his image talk of his achievements with great love. He was said to be the chief architect for this temple. Through the carved writings found in the region that show royalty as well as the common people, archeologists get a lot of information. Everything about Angkor Wat reveals a story that helps us visualize the temple and the Khmer Empire in all its glory.
Learn more about Angkor Wat at KhmerPortal.com or just visit there to enjoy pleasant Khmer music and Khmer rap.
Tags: Angkor Wat, Cambodia, Culture, History, travel, Travel & Leisure
