"The rain god Indra seems to be angry today,"
said our tour guide, only half-jokingly, leaving me
surprised by his ready reference to the Hindu god, as we skirted gathering
puddles on the embankment of the moat surrounding the Angkor Wat.
Through my travels in the
Angkorian lands, I was to discover how keenly Hinduism and Buddhism alternately
waxed and waned across centuries under the reign of the powerful Khmer kings
over large parts of mainland Southeast Asia. The Chinese wielded hard power,
extracting tributes in return for peace, but the source of soft power was
undoubtedly India, exporting culture, religions and folklore to ancient Angkor.
Holding umbrellas aloft, we
legged it quickly into the first level of the famed structure to be led into
a seemingly endless corridor to inspect the bas-relief on the
walls. We joined a group of tourists examining the panels, spellbound by the size and detailing of the marvels commissioned by the Khmer king Suryavarman II.
On a whirlwind tour, we cruised
past a yellow-clad towering Vishnu statue, past panels depicting the
Kurukshetra war, the king and his retinue, snapshots from the epics and the
past the occasional pock-marked segments of the walls where bullets had once
landed.
Finally, we joined the long queue
for the ascent to the third and final level. At the topmost level of the temple
complex, high above the humdrum of the mortal life of his subjects, the king
was thought to receive divine inspiration to conduct the affairs of his
kingdom. It was believed that the kings of the Khmer empire were no mere
mortals, deriving their authority from god, with even images of gods being
modelled after the king of the day in these temples.
After a rather steep climb, I
surveyed the environs from a vantage point, at the sweeping views of the temple
complex and the jungles beyond, the simple beauty of the carvings around me and
I understood why the king had visited this tower to commune with the divine.
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| High up in the Angkor Wat towers |
Soon, it was time to head a few centuries
forward to the rajavihara or royal monastery of Ta Prohm, said to be dedicated
to King Jayavarman VII's mother.
A Mahayana Buddhist, this king
established a welfare state on Buddhist principles and left behind a legacy of
a vast network of Buddhist temples. Religious u-turns appeared to commonplace in this land, with the king of
any given time dictating beliefs, swapping Hindu and Buddhist images and sculptures at will.
In contrast to the towering
Angkor Wat that spans dizzying heights, Ta Prohm is almost all flat. Where
Angkor Wat has been carefully restored by men, Ta Prohm has been left to the
artistry of nature. Giant trees have sprung from the laterite walls, with their
coiling roots gripping the structures with a firm grasp. The combination of the
exquisite ruins and the towering trees lent an ethereal quality to this
monument. It has been carefully restored, with attention paid to retaining its
quaint atmosphere.
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| Ta Prohm - unshakeable Nature vs. frail man-made structures |
We left Ta Prohm for Bayon,
another temple of the same period. On a smaller scale than Angkor Wat but no
less impressive, the Bayon temple was said to have had 54 towers originally,
with giant faces carved on to each of the four sides of the towers. The
impression, on arrival, is of being greeted by a serene army watching over the
city of Angkor Thom from all directions. We walked through the winding
corridors, encountering apsaras, garudas and scenes from mythology, under the
benign gaze of the multitude of faces.
Were the faces those of Brahma of
four faces? Or of the Boddhisattva Avalokitesvara? Maybe both- to push
religious transformation in a non-disruptive manner, according to our guide.
At the upper levels, I looked closer at one of
the faces, fascinated by its stoic expression. Our guide drew my attention to
another face, saying, “Doesn't this look like the face of a lady?" Of
course. Then another, "Doesn't this look like a demon?" Sure enough,
there was a foreboding expression on the one indicated. Despite being unable to
peel eyes off these images all along, I had not noticed differences in their
aspect. Suddenly, from an army of identical faces, the towers had been
transformed into a horde of distinct sets of people. He pointed to yet another,
this one calm and intriguing like the others. I felt the spell descending upon
us again, and all faces seemed uniformly alike once more.
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| Faces at Bayon |
I left Bayon, just as mystified
and fascinated as I had been when I had arrived. As the tuk-tuk whirred out of
the city gates, I shook myself off my reverie to hear the guide say, "This
is the gate of Angkor Thom. Bayon is exactly at the centre of the city. And
these," he waved to the human sized figures along either side of the
causeway, "are the devas and asuras churning the ocean!" And indeed,
the figures were holding what appeared to be a gigantic snake, evoking the
well-known tale of the gods and demons churning the ocean for nectar.
And yet again, I felt a familiar
thrill upon finding a well-known cultural reference thousands of miles from
home in this lost city.
