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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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Maharishi mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to transcendental meditation, died Tuesday at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop, a spokesman said. He was thought to be 91 years old."He died peacefully at about 7 p.m.," said Bob Roth, a spokesman for the Transcendental Meditation movement that the Maharishi founded. He said his death appeared to be due to "natural causes, his age."Once dismissed as hippie mysticism, the Hindu practice of mind control that Maharishi taught, called transcendental meditation, gradually gained medical respectability. He began teaching TM in 1955 and brought the technique to the United States in 1959. But themovement really took off after the Beatles visited his ashram in India in 1968, although he had a famous falling out with the rock stars when he discovered them using drugs at his Himalayan retreat.With the help of celebrity endorsements, Maharishi — a Hindi-language title for Great Seer — parlayed his interpretations of ancient scripture into a multi-million-dollar global empire.After 50 years of teaching, Maharishi turned to larger themes, with grand designs to harness the power of group meditation to create world peace and to mobilize his devotees to banish poverty from the earth.Maharishi"s roster of famous meditators ran from The Rolling Stones to Clint Eastwood and new age preacher Deepak Chopra.Director David Lynch, creator of dark and violent films, lectured at collegecampuses about the "ocean of tranquility" he found in more than 30 years of practicing transcendental meditation.Some 5 million people devoted 20 minutes every morning and evening reciting a simple sound, or mantra, and delving into their consciousness."Don"t fight darkness. 
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