| Before
Angkor |
| In Cambodia |
| By Antonio Graceffo |
| September
2005
Along the dusty
road, you pass ancient two-wheeled carts, pulled by large cows. Half wild
herds of buffalo make their lazy way through lush dense jungle, driven
by barefoot boys wearing krama. Rice farmers squat in their flooded fields,
their heads protected from the intense Cambodian sun by pointed wide-brimmed
straw hats.
Children play,
casing pigs and chickens under the houses on stilts, whose thatched walls
are made of woven palm leaves or shredded bamboo. Many of the front doors
are adorned with a plastic bag of red liquid to ward off the vampires believed
to drink the blood of young girls. |
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Women, wearing
traditional dress, their heads wrapped in krama, walk or ride bicycles
along the side of the road. Merchants on bicycles, over-loaded with colourful
plastic kitchenware, ride from house to house, selling their goods, the
original pedlars.
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The place is called
Koh Ker, and it is located approximately eighty kilometres from Siem Reap.
Until the year 946, this place of breath-taking natural beauty was the
capital of Cambodia, until King Jayavarman IV moved the capital to Siem
Reap. If not for the plastic and the occasional motorcycle, the scene could
just as easily have been a photo of Cambodia one hundred years ago, or
five hundred, or nearly a millennium ago, when the king still held court
at this location. |
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| An early history
of Cambodia, written in 1296, by Chau Da Guan, a visiting Chinese diplomat,
from the court of Emperor Kublai Kahn, tells us that the basic house design
hasn’t changed.
In the ancient
times of the Jen La period (6th to 9th Century) and the Angkor period
(9th to 12th Century), stone was considered sacred, reserved only
for the construction of religious buildings. Even the king lived
in a wooden structure, demonstrating his subservience to the Hindu gods,
in the days before Buddhism swept through Indochina. Chau Da Guan confirms
that while the people lived in homes made of thatch, the king and other
royals lived in grand homes made of precious teak wood. Almost as proof
of the enduring power of the deity, the jungle consumed the dwellings of
the kings and common folk, erasing their existence, with only the ancient
Chinese text left to remind us that they once lived. But the stone temples,
places of worship, still stand, in an eternal battle of the elements, as
the sheer faith of stone grapples with the never-ending advance of the
primordial jungle. |
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Offshore
Resources Gallery
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| The well
mapped, historic tourist sites of other countries have been institutionalised
and commercialised, until the dignity of the ancients has been reduced
to a sterile Disney World exhibition complete with a T-shirt and mouse
ears. But, in Cambodia history, like the landscape, is still wild. The
past is still being written, as archaeologists fight to reclaim countless
temples from hundreds of years of jungle growth.
Cambodia
is an exciting country, full of change and movement. Even the ancient
temples, many nearly one thousand years old, are in constant metamorphosis,
as they are rediscovered and preserved. This is not Europe, where history
is a stagnant fact, belonging to the past. Cambodia is a country of vibrant
active culture. People don’t come to Cambodia looking for a boring story
of extinct civilizations. They come to Cambodia looking for adventure.
And, they find it!
Watching
from the window of an air-conditioned minibus, the Cambodian countryside
is just more TV. But, on a motorcycle you experience everything about the
world around you. You notice the changes in temperature as you pass by
a flooded rice field or lake. |
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| You smell
the dusty earth, the green fields, and the herds of animals, which you
have to dodge on the road. You hear the song of the farmers as they
toil, and of the women as they walk. You taste the sweet waters of the
afternoon rain. You feel like a time traveller, as eighty kilometres of
traditional Khmer village life flies by you. The constant hum and vibration
of your motorcycle engine lull you into a strange hypnosis, where nothing
is real.
By the time
you reach the Koh Ker temple complex, with its more than one hundred
stone structures, you are ready for anything. Stepping off your bike and
into the jungle, you feel like Laura Kroft or Indian Jones. No tour guides
here, no guardrails, and no Yellow brick Road to follow, nothing separates
you from the ancient monoliths except the limits of your own imagination.
You pick a
direction and just go. The park is yours. |
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| Eventually,
jungle overgrowth gives way to a path strewn with massive stones, like
the toys of some giant child at play. The smell of wood fires drifts across
the open field adding another dimension to your experience.
Monoliths
begin to appear, tremendous stone sculptures bearing the tool marks of
artisans from centuries gone. Stony constructs poke their way through
the dense jungle, which has been trying to claim them. Defiantly, these
stone-works, crafted by the ancient Khmer ancestors to honour the Hindu
gods in a time before Buddhism spread through Indochina, push their way
through the viny nets, towering over the earth.
The temples,
built between 920 and 940 AD, are architechtural wonders, featuring peaked
entranceways, supported by square columns. The perfectly square windows
are ornately decorated with balustrades, demonstrating both the craftsmanship
and the undying faith of the ancients. Over centuries, the 114 temples
have fallen into various stages of disrepair, leaving a priceless litter
of collapsed stone and statuary covering nearly every inch of the complex
grounds. If you stoop, and push away the vines, you will see among the
broken statues, massive lions, which once supported the rooves of the covered
passage ways. You will also see fallen Hindu gods, Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma,
almost like a metaphor for the ascension of Buddhism, in place of Hinduism.
Many of
the temples feature linga, the Hindu statue of the falic symbol. The
linga are often displayed attached to yoni, the symbol of female fertility.
In ancient Hindu ceremonies, the monks would wash the linga with milk and
water. Drains at the bottom of the yoni would direct the holy runoff to
a spout, on the side of the temple, where the believers would come, and
wash away their sadness. Although the annual Hindu ceremony is no longer
practiced in Cambodia, locals still engage monks to ritualisticly wash
them with the runoff, when they are sad. Once again demonstrating that
these ancient temples are not just tourist attractions, but a living part
of modern Khmer culture.
You are
free explore the park uncovering temples for yourself. Some are completely
overgrown, and require a keen I to be “discovered.” You could spend
weeks in Koh Ker and still have weeks of new adventures ahead of you. Presat
Tom was one of the most exciting adventures. This was a tall, castle like
temple rising way up above the tree tops. Originally, there was a stone
staircase leading all of the way to the top, but the lower third of the
stairs were removed by French treasure hunters. Today, there is a wooden
ladder, which leads to a nearly vertical climb up the stone steps. The
view from the top is breath taking, particularly if you are able to summon
up your time travel abilities and see the complex below, as it must have
stood, a thousand years before.
In a number
of locations, one could see where the statues of the Hindu gods were actually
removed, after the coming of Buddhism. Several of the temples were
scared by a huge hole in the floor, where robbers, following up oral legends,
dug up the earth, looking for buried treasure. Sadly, all of the small
details and sculptures have been carried off and sold. Many of the remaining
sculptures bear the scars of thieves, thwarted in their attempts to steel
the national antiquities.
My guide, Mr.
Samban from Phnom Penh Tours, was explaining the ancient inscriptions found
on the temple walls. “The writing system is called ancient Khmer.”
I could see that it bore some similarity to modern Khmer. In trying to
read one section, I was certain that it said “no smoking.”
Samban laughed.
“That might be what it said if it were modern Khmer.” But, Samban
went on to explain that the two languages used in ancient Hindu were Sanskrit
and Pali. Both language remain a part of modern Khmer Buddhism, almost
as Latin remains a part of Catholicism. “But the problem in doing translation.”
Began Samban, “is that the writing system is ancient khmer, but the
words are ancient Sanskrit or Pali, which almost none of us can speak today.”
He went on to say that the ancient languages were taught at the Buddhist
University in Phnom Penh, but that a shortage of translators has left many
ancient texts untranslated.
As a trained
linguist, I wanted to help out my Khmer hosts any way I could. So, drawing
on all of my years of education and experience, I pieced together one of
the inscriptions. “This text seems to be written in a primitive dialect
of English.” I said. “It predicts the arrival of Amy and Thomas
from Sydney in 2002.”
Samban shook
his head. “That’s not an inscription. That’s graffiti. Amy and Thomas
probably visited here in 2002.”
“So, the
prediction did come true!” I marvelled.
The beauty
of the park is that you are free to roam and experience, rather than merely
look at history. One of the most amazing feelings is to not only touch
the ancient stone structures, but to press your cheek up against the massive
stone monoliths and feel the coldness and the centuries old power that
lay inside. But, be respectful! The temples are still a holy site and must
be preserved. Do not deface the temples, and do not steel anything. The
bad karma you would get for robbing a temple could never be washed away.
To find out
more about Koh Ker, or any of the historic sites in Cambodia, contact Mr.
Long Leng at leng@abercrombiekent.com.kh
The following
are the previous articles that Antonio wrote for the magazine:
To contact Antonio
Click Here |
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Article
Index ~ Cambodia
Index ~ |
