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Angkor
Wat, one of the most beautiful and mysterious historical sites in the world.
Located over 192 miles to the North-West of Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh,
Angkor has been "protected" from tourism, and the customs and the cultures of
the people living there have not changed much. However, intense internal warfare
for over fifty years has impacted on the people and to an extent on the physical
structure of the temples at Angkor.In 1991, the Khmer Rouge, the guerrilla
movement, controlled the area. It was then very difficult to visit the area, and
the only way to get there was by Helicopter from Phnom Penh. I will never forget
when I first got out from the Helicopter, and stepped into the land of history,
a land which the western civilization had forgotten. In this paper, I would like
to discuss the history of the great temples of the "lost city" of Angkor Wat,
but I would also like to describe some of my own observations from the summer of
1991.
For many years, Angkor Wat was totally isolated from the Western World. Large, thick jungles covers the area, and it is located in the center of Cambodia. The French colonialists were the first westerners to get exposed to Angkor. They heard rumors from the local population about "temples built by gods or by giants." Most of the colonialists referred these rumors to folk tales, but some believed that there really was a "lost city of a Cambodian empire", which had once been powerful and wealthy. The temples were first discovered by French missionaries in 1860. Henri Mahout, a French botanist started intensive research and restoration programs. These research efforts continued until 1968, when the Vietnam war disrupted the studies. Initially, he did not believe that the temples were built by Cambodians, but by another race which had concurred and occupied Cambodia for over 2000 years ago. His theory would later be proven to be incorrect, after that researchers discovered scripts on the walls of the temples, and stone sculptures, that have made it possible for archeologists to piece together the history of Cambodia. Now it is known that Angkor, was the great capital city of the Khmer empire from the city's founding in about AD 880 until about 1225.
The history of Angkor Wat dates back to the kingdom of Funan. This kingdom was established by an Indian Brahmin, and in AD200, the country was peacefully settled by Indian traders. Four hundred years later, the kingdom had become a prosperous trading region. As the area was located on the Pilgrim rout between China and India, Hinduism and Chinese Buddhism was adopted by the new settlers. The Indian and Chinese influence can still be felt in Cambodia, and the temples of Angkor Wat closely resembles Hindu and Buddhist temples that can be found in Northern India and in Nepal. In the end of AD600, the Funan Empire lost much of its power to the kingdom of Chenla...
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