There appears to be no one on the earth who is not awestruck by the magnificence of Angkor Wat, the world’s biggest religious monument located in the heart of Cambodia. Angkor Wat is a massive temple complex that was initially built for the Khmer Empire as a Hindu worship place for the deity Vishnu.
According to legend, Angkor is the architectural incarnation of Hindu mythology’s sacred Mountain Meru or Mountain Olympus in Greek mythology. The temple complex faces the West, which has sparked debate among historians over its meaning.
In Hindu, the West denotes the direction of death, which has led some to believe that the primary purpose of Angkor was as a mausoleum. By the end of the 12th century, the site had evolved into a Buddhist temple.
Angkor Wat’s magnificence fascinated tourists and explorers for ages, and they largely commented on the mystery temple. One of the most fascinating reports comes from the Chinese traveler Zhou Daguan, who was dispatched as a diplomat under Emperor Chengzong of Yuan of China. Zhou arrived in the temple complex in August 1296 and stayed at King Indravarman III’s court until July 1297.
“The Customs of Cambodia,” a book created during Zhou’s official tour, offers Zhou’s thoughts on the life and times of the early Angkor Wat. He describes the intriguing traditions, religious rituals, and roles of women and slaves in this civilization. According to some of the strange stories he had told, it was thought by some that the temple was built in a single night by a heavenly architect.
“Official buildings and dwellings of the nobility, including the Royal Palace, face the east,” Zhou would write of the Royal Palace. The Royal Palace is one and a half miles in circumference and located north of the Golden Tower and the Bridge of Gold. The main dwelling’s titles are made of lead. Other structures are made of yellow earthenware tiles. All of the massive columns and lintels are adorned with carved or painted Buddhas. The rooftops are also stunning. On both sides, open corridors and tall colonnades are organized in harmonic designs.”
“When the King walks out, troops are at the head of [his] escort; next come flags, banners, and music,” he says of the royal procession of Indravarman III, descendent of the Angkor Wat builder. Three to five hundred palace ladies, dressed in flowery fabric and with flowers in their hair, form a troupe and carry lights in their hands. The lamps are lit even in broad daylight.”
The Chinese emissary goes on to describe the appearance of the King and the ladies of Angkor. Only the ruler was permitted to wear clothing with an all-over flower motif. The King also wore three pounds of Photo pearls around his neck, as well as gold bracelets and rings with cat’s eyes put around his wrists, ankles, and fingers. He always carried a gold sword with him when he appeared in public.
“Ministers and princes are mounted on elephants, and their many crimson umbrellas can be seen from afar,” Zhou says of the processions. Following them are the King’s wives and concubines, who arrive in palanquins, carriages, on horseback, and elephants. They have almost a hundred gold-flecked parasols. Behind them comes the king, riding an elephant and wielding his sacred sword. The elephant’s tusks are gold-plated.”
Last but not least, according to the envoy, women conducted the trade responsibilities with foreigners at Angkor. Zhou would also point out that women aged swiftly. “Because they marry and have children when they are too young,” he said of the reasons. They have the appearance of Chinese ladies in their forties and fifties when they are twenty or thirty years old.”
Scholars have found flaws in Zhou’s descriptions, although they are deemed accurate. For example, he incorrectly refers to Hindu religious enthusiasts as Confucians or Daoists in Chinese. He also supplied inaccurate figures for the length of the temples and their location within the complex. However, the stories can help us vividly imagine what life was like at Angkor Wat around the end of the 13th century.
When the first Westerners arrived at the site, they were astounded by what they saw. A Portuguese priest António da Madalena, regarded among the first to arrive at Angkor Wat in 1586, would claim that the place “is of such incredible construction that it is not possible to describe it with a pen, particularly because it is like no other edifice in the world. It contains towers, ornamentation, and all the niceties that the human mind can conjure up.”
However, Angkor Wat became increasingly well-known in the West during the mid-nineteenth century, when the site was visited by French naturalist and explorer Henri Mouhot. “One of these temples—a competitor to that of Solomon, and created by some ancient Michelangelo—might take a dignified position among our most magnificent buildings,” he would write in his travel notes. It is larger than anything left to us by Greece or Rome, and it stands in stark contrast to the nation’s current condition of savagery.”
Between the visits of the Portuguese monk and the French naturalist, life at Angkor Wat had significantly slowed. According to legend, by the 17th century, the edifice had not been abandoned and was still in use as a Buddhist temple. Fourteen inscriptions uncovered in the adjacent area from that periodperiod confirm that Japanese Buddhist pilgrims built tiny towns along the indigenous Khmers.
Angkor Wat was initially misidentified by the Japanese as a famous Jetavana park in India, where the Buddha had given the majority of his teachings.
It was difficult for academics to piece together the significant site’s history precisely. They eventually succeeded by removing and restoring the whole facility. There were no typical homes or traces of neighboring villages, which was rare. There were no cooking items, weapons, or clothing, as is common at other ancient sites. Only the monuments remained. The repairs took undertaken in the twentieth century and were mostly concerned with the removal of concentrated dirt and plants.
Angkor Wat suffered some major fatalities in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when art thieves, especially from Thailand, claimed practically every head that could be hacked off the buildings, including reconstructions.
To this day, the complex is a significant symbol of Cambodia and a source of immense national pride, which has influenced the country’s diplomatic movements in the past with nations such as France and Thailand. The magnificent legacy of Angkor and other Khmer empire structures in the vicinity prompted France to declare Cambodia a protectorate in 1863, intruding into Siamese (Thai) territory and seizing control of the ruins. The events that followed prompted Cambodia to rapidly regain regions in the country’s northwest that had been under Siamese control for generations.