(Third Part)
June 2, 2012
By Emmie Abadilla
Manila Bulletin (Philippines)
It was not yet morning when I set out. The jungle engulfed me, a black wall with five sandstone lotus towers thrusting from its canopy. Closer, I saw the shimmer of water in the moat - Angkor Wat’s "baray," symbol of all oceans of the world.
On its edge, a shadow bent and straightened. A Khmer woman staggered out, lugging an armful of lotuses, freshly cut. Their long stalks trailed the grass, dripping, as she hauled them on her cart.
Behind her bloomed redented lotuses, replicas of Mt. Meru’s sacred peaks, home of the gods. Floating over a 900-year-old Hindu-Buddhist universe in stone, Angkor Wat’s beauty rivalled the temples of Solomon, the Parthenon of Greece and the Forum of Rome.
Yet, unlike other temples in the Holy City, the Wat faces the west, the direction ruled by its deity, Vishnu, the Preserver. Even in ancient Egypt, sunset was associated with Death. Hence, people believed Suryavarman II built Angkor Wat to be his tomb, just like the pyramids of the pharaohs.
Already, busloads of tourists flooded the Western entrance. But I remembered my About Asia Travel guide, Sarath’s advice. If I want Angkor Wat to myself, even for a single hour, I should sneak through the Eastern gates.
So, I hastened the opposite way. Sure enough, the place was deserted. Still, I have to negotiate very steep steps to the towers. Warily, I hoisted my feet sideways, crab-fashion, one at a time, up the edges of irregularly hewn, slippery, tongue-and-groove sandstone blocks less than an inch wide.
Cramming my fingers inside holes which temple builders drilled in the stones a thousand years ago, I imagined how Khmers carried each block on foot, skewered through bamboo poles from Mount Kulen quarry 40 kilometers away and ferried them on rafts across the Siem Reap River.
It took five million tons of sandstone to build Angkor Wat, the same amount used in Egypt’s Khafre pyramid. Modern engineers estimated it should have taken 300 years, but it took just 40. Khmers started building after Suryavarman II ascended the throne and finished shortly after his death.
At the top, I found myself staring at 2,000 beautiful nymphs desired by deities, demons and kings. Standing "devatas", dancing and flying "apsaras" peopled the walls. They all smiled down at me.
By now, the sun has started gilding the temple’s interior - three courts within a court. The outer covered gallery served as a promenade for meditating monks. The center functioned as a reservoir for collecting rainwater used in baptising devotees and cleaning the Wat.
On the left, I found the Hall of Echoes. Flattening my back against the alcove, I drummed on my chest and waited for the sound to reverberate. Thump! Thump! Thump!
To my right stretched the Gallery of a Thousand Buddhas. There’s nothing in it now except half a hundred decapitated icons. The only intact ones were replicas, the originals long carted off to Phnom Penh for safekeeping.
Even the books and scrolls in Angkor Wat’s ancient libraries had been stolen. Like the Buddha’s heads, they now reside in Thailand. The Louvre in Paris took the gold and diamond cache below the temple. And Suryavarman II’s burial vessels have never been found.
Nonetheless, I felt an odd sense of peace strolling alone among the "apsaras", passing through endless doors that open to other doors, breathing in the smell of jungle, earth and moss.
Beyond the walls, cicadas sang and coucals – rain birds – gurgled like bubbling brooks. Peeking out of a window, I caught the flutter of tangerine robes below. A group of Buddhist monks poured in through the East gate. One tarried behind, gazing up at me. I smiled at him and waved. He smiled and waved back. He was only a boy, about seven years old.
Back in the gallery, I felt drawn to a solitary "apsara" facing the sun. I sat down at her feet, pulled out pad and pen and began to sketch. Just then, a Khmer boy emerged behind the columns with a broom. He swept the steps briskly till he was behind me and stopped to watch.
Very soon, an American visitor materialized, sauntered over, glanced at me then at the "apsara" and back. "Beautiful, isn’t she?" he muttered. He snapped pictures of the nymph and me.
Now, the tour groups are stampeding in as the monks begin their rounds, burning incense and chanting before the Buddhas in the hall. On their wake, worshippers trotted, followed by a throng of photographers clicking their shutters in rapid-fire.
I fled down the gallery of the bas reliefs. It was horribly crowded but I saw only the ancient drama unfolding in the stone. Soon, I ceased to hear the rustling of maps, the narration of guides and the clamor of tourists in a dozen languages.
Life in Angkor a thousand years ago seemed no different from rural life in Cambodia today. The sculptures showed Khmers living in the same wooden houses on stilts. In the markets, women haggled and bartered honey for oil, cloth for syrup, cotton for ginger conserve. Officials collected taxes in the form of grains, courts handed out justice by flogging their subjects, or chopping off their hands and feet.
Some walls recreated scenes from Indian epics. Others showed souls being weighed for judgment, imploring the God of Death, Yama, with his many arms holding clubs, falling to hell as they are condemned.
In the wall depicting creation, deities held the "naga" on one side, opposite demons on the other, using him as a rope to churn the ocean of milk. "Apsaras" diverted the demons’ attention to keep them from drinking the elixir of immortality. Vishnu stood at the center astride a turtle while "garudas" - half birds, half men, held up the heavens.
In the south gallery, I found Suryavarman II, 18th of Angkor’s 39 god-kings. Sculpted in the likeness of Vishnu, he sat bejewelled and serene on a wooden dais made of "nagas". Around him knelt attendants holding parasols, fly whisks and fans.
Another scene showed him astride a war elephant, shaded by 15 umbrellas, leading a procession of his two thousand concubines.
As a young prince, Suryavarman II battled with his great uncle, an ineffective king. He leaped atop the latter’s tusker, killing him "as Garuda would kill a serpent." Eventually, he reunited Cambodia and practiced diplomacy with China. He even conquered parts of present-day Thailand, Laos and Malaysia though he suffered three major defeats against Vietnam.
His 37-year reign marked Suryavarman as a builder and religious reformer, one of the greatest Khmer god-kings. After he died, a usurper seized the throne and neighboring invaders sacked Angkor. Weak kings came and went for the next 131 years until Jayavarman VII, Angkor’s last great ruler, reclaimed the Holy City and rebuilt Angkor Thom.
Lost in thought in the galleries, I didn’t realize it was noon. The crowds were wilting in the heat, fleeing back to their hotels for "siesta" and lunch.
My About Asia Travel driver took me back to the guesthouse where I checked in for the night after an over six-hour bus ride from Phnom Penh. Like the Khmer capital, Siem Reap has only two main streets full of motorbikes with side roads choked in clouds of red dust.
At 3 p.m., I hit the road again for 800-year old Ta Phrom which Jayavarman VII erected to honor his mother.
For half a millennium, the temple has merged with the jungle, untouched. Unfortunately, after Angelina Jolie made it the setting for her Hollywood blockbuster, it became known as the Tomb Raider’s Temple
In Ta Phroms’s heyday, 80,000 people cared for its precincts, complete with 18 high priests and 615 dancers. The temple amassed pearls, gold and silks. The god-king studded its stone walls with diamonds to light the altar whose main icon, the bodhisattva of wisdom, mirrored his mother’s face.
Now, I picked my way over fallen wild figs blanketing its broken laterite blocks and collapsed lintels. Everything smelled damp and cloyingly sweet. Strangler figs are creeping up on the 300-year old spung trees whose roots have wrapped around the thresholds, pried open the vaults and snaked out of the windows.
After the Khmer empire fell in the 15th century, the temple was abandoned. Thieves gouged out the gems from its altars. Hindu iconoclasts destroyed its Buddhist carvings and the stone- faced towers similar to the Bayon.
I squeezed through the caved-in chambers, whistling to wake the bats in the ceiling. Eerie shadows danced on the maze of corridors, the ruins of its libraries, the Hall of Dancers and the House of Fire. Oblivious, I nuzzled a lizard on my palm and played with the butterflies.
But it was getting dark. Reluctantly, I made my way to the exit. Tomorrow, before dawn, I go to the Khmers’ last great city, Angkor Thom.
(For questions, comments, suggestions, etc. please contact the author at emmieabadilla@yahoo.com.)
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