In the second stage of Jayavarman's Reign he erected temples in honor of his parents,the first of these
now as Ta-Proum(Ancestor Brahma),was dedicated in 1186,it honored Jayavarman's mother in the guise of Prajnaparamita. the goddess of wisdom,conceived metaphorically as the mother of all Buddhas.the temple also housed a portrait statue of Jayvarman's Buddhist teacher or Garu (the word KRU means" Teacher in modern Khmer) surrounded in the temple by statues or more than six hundred dependent Gods and Bodhisattva,the syncretism of Cambodian religion is show by the fact that Shaivite and Vaisnavite ascetics were given cells on on the temple grounds alongside Buddhist Monks and learned men,the appearance of Ta-Prohm today gives a poor Idea of its original appearance,for unlike the other major temple at Angkor,it has never been restored.instead,it has been left to the mercy of the forest.
The next temple complex to be built by Jayavarman II is know nowadays as the Preah Khan( Sacred Sword) Its inscription says that it was built on the site of an important Cambodia Victory over the Champas ,andits twelfth-century name,Jayasri( Victory and Throne) may echo this event,no other inscription mentions this battle,fought so close to Yasodharapura as to suggest a good Cham invation of the City,Groslier. however has argued that it took place and has proposed that it is depicted is Bas-reliefs at the Bayon.
Preah Khan was dedicated in 1191 and houses a portrait statue of Jayavarman's Father,
Dharanindravarman ,with the traits of Lokesvara the Deity expressive of the compassionate aspects of the Buddha,the symbolism is relentless appropriate,for in Mahayana Buddhist thinking the marriage of wisdom( Prajna) and compassion(Karuna)gave birth to enlightenment,which it to say,to the Buddha himself, the Englightened One. In this stage of Jayavarman's artistic development,Lokesvara appears more and and more frequently,and throughout his Reign,the Triad of Prajnaparamita (Wisdom),the Buddha (Englishtenment)and Lokessvara(Compassion)was central to the King's Religious thinking.the the placement of the two temples Southeast and Northwest of the new center of Yasodharapura(later occupied by the Bayon)suggest that the three temples can be"Read"together.with the dialectic of compassion and wisdom giving birth to Englishtenment represented by the Buddha image that stood at the center of the Bayon,and thus at the heart of Jayavarman's temple-Mountain.
The inscriptions from these two."Parent temples"show us how highly developed the Cambodian bureaucracy had became, particularly in terms of its control over the placement and duties of the population, but also in terms of the sheer number of people in positions of authority who were entitled to dis posit and endow images of deities inside the temple Ta-Prohm housed several thousand people, as its inscription attests.
"there are here 400 men,18 high Priests,2,740 other priest,2,232 assistants,including 615 female dance.a grand total of 12,640 people,including,those entitled to stay[ In additional there are] 66,625 men and women who perform services for the Gods,making a Grand total of 79265 people,
Including the Bumese,Chams etc.
Similarly the people dependent on Praeh Khan- that is to say,those obliged to provide rice and other services -totaled nearly a hundred thousand drawn from more than five thousand three hundred villages,the inscription goes on to enumerate people who had dependent on previous temple endowments,drawn from thirteen thousand five hundred villages,they numbered more than three hundred thousand the infrastructure needed to provide food and clothing for the temples to name only two types of provision -must have been efficient and sophisticated.
Three interesting points emerge from the inscriptions ,one is that outsiders-"Burmese",Chams etc,
were account for indifferent ways than local people were,perhaps because they were prisoners of War without enduring ties to individual noblemen,Priests,or religious foundations ,another is that the average size of the village refer ed to in the inscriptions appears to have been about two hundred people including dependent-still the median size of the villages in Cambodia in the 1960s,finally,the inscriptions indicate that the temples ,although dedicated to the Buddha and serving as residences for thousands of Buddhist Monks. Also housed statues and holy men associated with different Hindu-sects, Jayavarman VII obviously approved of this arrangement,for we know that he also retained Hindu thinkers and bureaucrats at his Court,indeed ,it is probably more useful to speak of the Coexistence of Hinduism and Buddhism in Jayavarman VII's temples,and perhaps in his mind as well than to propose a systematic process of synchronization.
The jewel-like temple known as Naek Po'n(twining Serpents) នាគព័ន forms an island in the Jayatataka and was probably completed by 1191 for it mentioned in the inscription of Praeh Khan.
The King has placed the Jayatataka like a lucky mirror,colored by stones,Gold and Garlands,in the middle, there is an Island,drawing its Charm from separate basins,washing the mud of sin from those coming in contact with it,serving as a boat in which they can cross the ocean of existences.
The island with its enclosing wall, constructed in a lotus pattern,was intended to represent a mythical lake in the Himalayas,sacred to Buddhist thinking around the temple, as at the lake,four gargoyles spew water from the larger lake into the smaller ones,the temple itself,Raised above the water by a series of steps, was probably dedicated ,like Praeh-Khan,to Lokesvara, whose image appears repeatedly in high relief on its walls,.
Groups of statues were place at the four sides of the temple unfortunately,only one of these.representing the horse Balaha. an aspect of Lokesvara can be identified with certainty two others are probably representations of Siva and Vishnu,Jean Boi- has argued that the presence of these Gods inside the enclosure can be read as a political statement,showing that the former Gods of Angkor were now submitting to the Buddha,but why they should they do so ? Boi- following Mus,has suggested that Shaivism and Vaisnavism were seen to have failed the Cambodia when the Chams were able to destroy so much of Angkor in 1177,lake Anavatapta,moreover ,was sacred not only to all Buddhists but particularly to Buddhist rulers,or Chakravartin, beginning legend asserts ,with the Emperor Asoka, who was able magically to draw water from the lake to enhance his own purity and power.
Boiselier,has argued that the political significance of the temple goes even further,as it was know in the Praeh-Khan inscription as the Rajasri,translatable as " The Regalia ".and Neak Po'n probably housed palladia of the Kingdom,Boiselier believed that it was torn down by the Thai when they captured in 1431 and according to their chronicles កាលប្បវត្តិ carried off Cambodia's regalia to their own Capital City of Ayadhya,in the Thai View ,the destruction of Neak Po'n delegitimized the universal Kingship of Jayavarman VII and his successors in the sixteenth century,when was invaded by the Burmese,these very regalia were carried off to Burma,where two Cambodian statues, perhaps from Neak po'n,can now be seen in Mandalay.
In this second phase of his iconography Jayavarman VII also sponsored additions to many early structures-notably the temples of Pimai in Northeastern Thailand and Praeh-khan in Kompong svay,new constructions at this time included the massive ruin known today as Banteai-chmar in Northwestern Cambodia.
The sheer size of these foundations suggests a trend toward urbanization under Jayavarman VII,or at lease a tendency to herd and collect large numbers of people from peripheral បរិមណ្ឌល areas into the service of the state, it seems likely that Jayavarman VII.like Suryavarman before him, was attracted to the Idea of increasing centralization and the related idea of bureaucratic state control, perhaps these ideas formed part of what he perceived as a mission to concert his subjects to Buddhism or were connected with organizing people to respond swiftly to foreign threats.
The second phase was marked by several stylistic innovations,these included the motif of multi faced towers,inaugurated at the small Temple of Prasat Praeh Stung and carried to its apex in the entrance gates to the City of Angkor-Thom and,ultimately,in the hundreds of faces that look down from from the Bayon,the stone walls surrounding the entire City,apparently for for the first time in Angkorean history,and the causeways of giants outside the gates of the City.
These constructions can be read in terms of both politics and religion Boiselier, following Mus has compared the wall-building at Angkor-Thom to a fortified Maginot-Line,supposedly offering an impenetrable defense against any Cham invasion,at the same time,the walls can be said to represent the ring of mountains that surround MT meru or Jayavarman's temple-mountain, the Bayon.
After capturing the Cham capital in 1191,Jayavarman probably spent the rest of his Reign at Yasoharapura,at this very point,his building began to show signs of hasty construction and poor workmanship as well as of a shifting ideology,the temple that was to become the Bayon, for example was radically altered at several points in the 1190s,it is tempting to seek an explanation for the haste and quantity of Jayavarman's monuments in his personality or in otherwise unknown aspects of his life,did the temples represent an attempt to impose his legitimacy and point of view on his successors? Was he attempting to purify Angkor after it had been desecrated by the Cham ?did he have personal shortcoming to atone for ? evidence to answer these questions is thin, but it is certainly true that Jayavarman,for whatever reason,tried to stamp Cambodia with an Ideology drawn from Mahayana Buddhism and with his own personality as well ,these two aspects of his Reign overlap in his portrait statues and perhaps most dramatically នាដកម្ម in the symbolismនិមិត្តរូប of his idiosyncratic temple-mountain and of the city that surrounded it,.
An inscription from the end of Jayavarman's Reign describes the city as his Bride"the town of Yasodharapura,decorated with power and Jewels ,burning with desire ,the daughter of a good Family,,, was married by the King in the course of a festival that laked nothing under the spreading dais of his protection,the object of the marriage, the inscription goes on to say,was "the procreation of happiness throughout the universe"
At the center of the city was Bayon(Literally "Ancestor Yantra" Yantra being a magical geometric sharp) with its hundreds of gigantic face,carved in sets of four,and its captivating bas-reliefs,
depicting everyday life,wars with Champa,and the behavior of Indian Gods,the temple at one time housed thousands of images,its central image discovered in the 1930s.was a statue of the Buddha sheltered by an enormous hooded snake,or Naga.
There has been considerable controversy about the symbolism of the temple and about what was means by the causeways leading up to it, with giants (Asura) and angles (Devata) engaged in what looks like a tug of war,grasping the bodies of two gigantic snakes,some have argued that the causeways represented the well known,Indian myth of the churning of the sea of milk,others have agreed with Mus, who saw them as rainbows,leading people out of their world into the world of the Gods,at another level,the Asura represented the Chams and the Devata,Cambodians in this respect,it is tempting to perceive the City and most of Jayavarman's works ,in dialectical វិចារវិទ្យា terms, for example,as we have seen,the Pair Lokesvara (Compassion /Father and Prajnaparamita intelligence
/Mother) give birth to the Buddha (Enlightenment,ការត្រាស់ដឹង thought to be the child of wisdom and compassionមេត្តាធ៌ម)ie Jayavarman VII himself,we have encountered this turn of mind before,in the cult of Harihara and in the opposition and synthesis in Cambodian popular thought of divinities associated respectively with Water/Moon/Darkness/Earth/Sun/and Brightness. similarly,the struggle between the Cambodians and the Champs,Acted out along the causeways and in the Bas-reliefs at the Bayon and Banteay-Chmar,can be seen as bringing to birth the new,converted nation of Cambodia,in which the Buddha has won over the Hindu Gods of Champa,this dialectic may well be the "Message" of Bayon,which Boilselier saw as the "Assembly hall of the City of the Gods" once again,the message can be read in terms of Civil policy as well, and so can the half-smiling faces with their half closed eyes that dominate the temple,as so often in Angkorean Art,it would be arrow and inaccurate to interpret these haunting faces as representing only one kind of deity,performing one kind of task, in a way ,for example,they serve as guardians of Buddha and his teaching,in another, glancing out in four directions, they oversee the Kingdom and perhaps represent civil and military officials of the time,Boiselier ,who has argued that they are princely manifestations of Brahma,has noticed also that their tiaras resemble those worn by the Cham Asura along the entrance causeways,
perhaps,as Woodward has suggested this signifies the conversion of the Chams to Buddhism.
Another extraordinary feature of the Bayon, found also at Banteay-Chmar,is that its bas-reliefs depict historical Cambodian events rather than,say, incidents in the Ramayana or some other literary work that coincide with or resemble historical events,the battles depicted on the Bayon are fought with recognizable weapon,and other panels depict ordinary people buying and selling,Eating,Gambling Raising children, Picking-fruit,Curing the Sick, and Traveling on foot or in Ox-Carts, nearly all the customs artifacts,and costumes depicted in the bas-reliefs could still the found in the voices of these people are missing from Jayavarman's inscriptions,they move across his bas-riefs with unaccustomed freedom citizens at last of the country they inhabit,adorning a King's temple as they never had before,perhaps the bas-reliefs are intended to show that the people have been converted and saved-which is to say,revolutionized-by Jayavarman's example,they also exhibit the "Lowest"of the worlds one traverses on the way to englishtenment,in this sense, they resemble their counterparts carved on the eight-century Javanese Buddhist monument,the Borobudur.
Unless more inscriptions come to light from Jayavarman's reign.he will remain mysterious to us, because they are so many ambiguities ភាពមិនច្បាស់លាស់ about his personality and his ideas,the mysterious springs in part from the wide-ranging social and ideological changes that characterized thirteen,and fourteen-century Cambodia and may have been due in part to forces that Jayavarman or people near him set in motion.
Another source of ability can be traced to the uneasy coexistence សហត្ថិភាព in Jayavarman's temples and inscriptions of an overwhelming compassion and an overwhelming will,of a detachment ការផ្តាច់ of the world-symbolized by the horse Balaha at the Neak-Po'n and a detailed program aimed at tranforming the physical world of Angkor which had been go badly damaged by the Cham invasion,a third mystery is the silence-both in terms of building and inscriptions -that followed Jayavarman's Reign and appears to have begun in his declining years, we have no way of telling if Jayvarman was in some sense to blame for this inaction ,as in subsequent inscriptions he is hardly ever mentioned for this hardly ever to mentioned, the patterns of community,stressed so often broken or damaged severely by his Reign.
The End of ,Temple of Jayavarman VII
