Personal creation from visual materials collected during my travel Vietnam & Cambodia (2014)
The original name of the Ta Prohm temple in Angkor is Rajavihara, which in Khmer means "royal monastery". Built at the end of the 12th century by the last great Khmer king Jayavarman VII, the Ta Prohm temple is a single level construction, of the so-called "monastic complex" type.
Upon discovering the temple, archaeologists attributed the building to King Ta Prohm (hence its current name), but finally a consensus among scientists definitively attributes it to Jayavarman VII, king who brought Angkor to its peak. We also owe him, among other things, the Preah Kahn temple, also in Angkor.
At the time of the construction of these temples, the city of Angkor had approximately 250,000 inhabitants.
The complex, consecrated in 1186, was dedicated a family part of Jayasvarman VII. The main temple was built in honor of his mother, while the other two are dedicated respectively to his brother and his guru. His father will be honored a little later with the construction Preah Khan.
The temple was designed as a representation of the Buddhist universe, with shrines, courtyards, galleries and towers surrounded by an outer enclosure. The temple's bas-reliefs and sculptures illustrate scenes from daily life, mythological episodes and Buddhist deities.
Rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century, Ta Prohm has largely been left in the state in which it was found, except for the essential work to secure the site. The tangles of roots on the temples and surrounding walls speak to the imagination of tourists. The security work required huge amounts of work, as the balance of the walls and temples suffered from these giant invasive roots.
Ta Prohm was a Buddhist monastery and university.
Ta Prohm was a very important place, and according to a listing on the site, more than 12,000 people worked there. Whether dancers, or apsaras, who were nearly a thousand, there were monks, priests and temple workers. In addition, thousands of farmers harvested enough to feed everyone. Therefore, Ta Prohm was an important economic center, in addition to being a place of worship for the royal family.
The Khmer architectural tradition required that temples and monasteries be built in a large enclosure whose doors are adorned with a four-faced tower.
The site extends over more than 60 hectares and is made up of a set of five enclosures which are accessed by gopuras, constructions typical of Hindu temples through which one enters the successive enclosures.
Ta Prohm is another of the important Angkor temples built by King Jayavarman VII. Much like the Preah Khan temple, but unlike the main temples, Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm is overgrown with the roots of giant cheese trees. This famous aspect of the temples of Angkor is a legacy of the romanticism that reigned in archaeological circles at the end of the 19th century, when these temples were rediscovered.
It would have been perfectly possible to free Ta Prohm and Preah Khan from these immense roots and then secure the site, but this invasive vegetation appeals to the imagination of tourists and their removal could harm the interest shown in the Angkor complex.
Unlike Angkor Wat which has several floors and is built according to the plan of mountain temples, Ta Prohm, which was a monastery and a Buddhist university has only one floor.
Ta Prohm was a very important place, and in its heyday housed nearly 12,000 people, dancers (called apsaras), monks, priests and temple workers.
The Khmer Empire has had two defining influences throughout its history. These two cultures, Buddhist and Hindu, have become entangled, which partly explains the presence of numerous bas-reliefs of apsaras in the temples of Angkor, capital of the empire at its height. Apsaras are part of the founding myth of Hinduism but are found on the walls of Buddhist monasteries.
Angkor is certainly the best known and most visited site in Cambodia.
The Khmer Empire dominated the Indochinese peninsula from the 9th to the 13th century. The history of this empire is a long series of wars and internal struggles for power.
Angkor was chosen as the capital of the empire at the end of the 11th century.
The archaeological site consists of about 200 temples and important hydraulic achievements.
Music:
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