Eric Prokesh in Angkor, Cambodia

Angkor Wat, a Hindu monastery in Angkor, Cambodia.
Photo by Eric Prokesh and David Astudillo.
Angkor Wat may sound exotic to some, was once better known in the West than it is today. Jackie Kennedy made it here inspired by her friend, Andre Malraux, France’s cultural minister under de Gaulle, who wrote lovingly about the beauty of Khmer art. The name is often used to indicate the entire, extensive archeological zone of temples and monasteries around Siem Reap, as well as the monastery-tomb of Angkor Wat.

Built around 1150, by Suryaverman II whose image one can see in the reliefs on the southern side of the exterior gallery, the Hidu monastery ofAngkor Wat was once at the center of the Khmer empire. At its height in the 12th century, it included Cambodia, parts of Thailand and Burma. The area around Angkor Wat is thought to have had a population of nearly a million. The palaces and houses have disappeared. Only the temples remain.

Angkor Wat was never completely abandoned and today, still teams with life. To the north, groups of monkeys play outside the walls and sometimes climb the roof. Buddhist monks in their saffron robes have returned to attend the many images of the Buddha to whom the temple was rededicated sometime in the 15th century. The flood of tourists increases every year-about 2/3 Asian-the rest mostly European, gauging from my observation. Often the serenity of this place is spoiled by the crowds, but from time to time, in some spots, one can still contemplate the beauty of this place in silence.

Thought to be the world’s largest religious structure, Angkor Wat lies on a low plain, its towers-stupas-risie like the mountains they symbolize, behind a series of gallery walls. The approach, a long causeway over the moats which surround the complex, give the pilgrim the same feeling of arrival as Bernini’s colonnade entrance to St. Peter’s-a feeling which continues as one penetrates its series of walls to the core. The somewhat unusual westward orientation associates it with the setting sun-hence death and with Vishnu, the Hindu god to whom the monastery was originally dedicated. Therefore the progress from the entrance to the central stupa symbolizing Mt. Meru, the home of the Hindu pantheon, is a journey from the end to the beginning of time.

The power of Angkor Wat is the power of seduction. Unlike Aztec and Mayan sites which awe us with their assertions of masculine, martial power, Khmer art beguiles us with its feminine sinuosity. This is especially apparent in the bas-reliefs which cover the exterior gallery and in the thousands of graceful heavenly nymphs or apsuras who everywhere adorn the walls. The reliefs rank among the world’s greatest works of art and deserve as many visits and as much time as one can afford to give. The sensation is often like a hypnotic, cosmic dance. Extravagant in detail, they are on a grand scale. Panels of 50 meters in length depict The Churning of the Sea of Milk-the Hindu big bang, scenes from the life of Krishna, celestial and historical battles, and a royal progress of Suryaverman

For more on Angkor Wat, go to www.theangkorguide.com which has published the definitive scholarly work by Maurice Glaize.