Heritage site
Bakong
ប្រាសាទបាគង
Bakong (ប្រាសាទបាគង, Prasat Bakong) is the stepped sandstone pyramid King Indravarman I (ឥន្ទ្រវរ្ម័នទី១) consecrated in 881 at Roluos (រលួស), near Siem Reap.[1][2][3][4] It was the state temple at the center of Hariharalaya (ហរិហរាល័យ), the royal city of the Khmer Empire before Angkor.[3][1][5] It was the first temple mountain the Khmer built of sandstone, a form that recalls Mount Meru of Hindu myth.[1][3][2] The Roluos group lies about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Siem Reap.[2][1] Hello Angkor places Bakong east of the town,[1] and Hariharalaya lay southeast of Angkor.[6] The group also takes in Preah Ko (ប្រាសាទព្រះគោ) and Lolei (ប្រាសាទលលៃ).[2][3]
History
Hariharalaya stood on the plain near the wet-season shore of the Tonle Sap.[6] Jayavarman II (ជ័យវរ្ម័នទី២) made it his seat both before and after he was proclaimed universal monarch on Phnom Kulen.[2][4][3] The Sdok Kak Thom inscription of 1052 dates the proclamation to 802.[6][4] Indravarman I ruled there from 877 to 889.[6] Early in his reign he had a great reservoir, the Indratataka (ឥន្ទ្រតដាក), dug north of the city, and he built Preah Ko, a smaller temple for his ancestors.[3][6][4]
Bakong followed in 881.[3][1][2] Its Sanskrit foundation stele, found in 1935 in a small laterite building on the east side of the inner enclosure, opens with an invocation, then praises the king.[2][1] It records the founding that year of the linga Sri Indresvara (ឥន្ទ្រេស្វរៈ) and of eight images of Shiva in its court.[2][1][3] It also records the digging of the Indratataka.[2] Indravarman called the temple "the stone house of Isa", a name Glaize took as a sign that it was the first large group of buildings raised in sandstone.[2]
Glaize counted Bakong as the third pyramid temple. The modest ones at Ak Yum (northwest of Siem Reap) and at Rong Chen on Phnom Kulen came before it. He saw in Bakong the main temple of Hariharalaya and the seat of the cult of the god-king.[2] He thought it possible that Jayavarman II had begun the temple mountain after coming down from the Kulen hills, though the stele credits the foundation of 881 to Indravarman.[2]
Water from the Indratataka was carried south to fill the moats of Preah Ko and Bakong.[6] The temple lies 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) south of the middle of the reservoir, on the same north to south line.[5] Indravarman's son and successor, Yasovarman I (យសោវរ្ម័នទី១), later built the island temple of Lolei in the reservoir on the same line, and Giulio Magli judged the alignment deliberate.[5][6][3] Yasovarman came to the throne in 889 and founded a new capital around the hill of Phnom Bakheng (ភ្នំបាខែង), about 18 kilometers (11 miles) to the northwest, and Hariharalaya was all but abandoned.[6][3] His temple on the hill follows Bakong in many ways.[1]
The temple
Bakong stands within three enclosures. The outermost, about 900 by 700 meters (2,950 by 2,300 feet), was marked by a moat that by 1944 could be traced only in places. Within it, 22 brick buildings, most of them ruined, ring the monument.[2][1] The second enclosure is a laterite wall of 400 by 300 meters (1,310 by 980 feet) around a broad inner moat.[2] Paved causeways cross the moat on the east and west, lined by great stone nagas (serpent figures) whose bodies lie on the ground, unlike the raised naga railings of the 12th century.[2] Hello Angkor counts them among the first naga balustrades in Khmer building.[1] North of the eastern causeway stands a Buddhist Wat, with murals and sandstone boundary stones (sema) that Hello Angkor judges likely to date from around the 16th century or later.[2][1]
Inside the low laterite wall of the first enclosure, long halls line the eastern approach. Paired square brick buildings stand in the eastern corners, lit only through patterns of small round holes; one on the south keeps a carved frieze of ascetics.[2][1] Eight brick towers, two on each side, surround the pyramid.[2][1] They were once coated in carved lime plaster (stucco). Glaize praised their richly carved sandstone lintels.[2]
The pyramid is faced and paved in sandstone and rises in five tiers[2][6][1] (three in Radio Free Asia's history series[3]) to 14 meters (46 feet) above the ground. Its base measures 67 by 65 meters (220 by 213 feet) and its top 20 by 18 meters (66 by 59 feet).[2] Stone elephants, smaller at each level, stand at the corners of the three lower tiers, and lions flank the four central stairways.[2][1][6] Twelve small sandstone shrines, each built for a linga, line the fourth tier.[2][1] Around the fifth tier runs a frieze carved in low relief, mostly scenes of battle and of the court; it is badly worn. Glaize took it for the earliest such frieze in Khmer art.[2][1] Of the stepped temples of the Angkor region, he judged Bakong perhaps the closest to the idea of Mount Meru on five levels. In his reading, each level is the realm of one order of beings, from the nagas at the foot to the Maharajas of the four cardinal points at the top.[2]
The central sanctuary, about 15 meters (49 feet) tall, is far younger than the pyramid beneath it.[2][1] Judging by its carving, Glaize dated it about two centuries after the rest of the temple, and no earlier than the Baphuon of the second half of the 11th century.[2] Its pediments, in the style of Angkor Wat, show a dancing Shiva, the Churning of the Ocean, Lakshmana among the monkeys and a reclining Vishnu above the west[2] or east[1] door. Glaize wondered whether Indravarman had left the sanctuary unfinished for later kings to complete, or whether it replaced an earlier one, perhaps of light materials.[2][1]
Clearing turned up statues of Shiva and Vishnu, two four-armed Vishnu figures carved much later in the style of the Bayon, and a group of Shiva with his two wives, Uma and Ganga, cut from one block. The stele names that group Umagangapatisvara.[2][1]
Restoration
Over the centuries the temple was stripped and altered. Before restoration it had become a heap of earth, its sandstone scattered at the foot of the pyramid, and of the central sanctuary only the outline of its base on the top platform remained.[2][1] A brick and wooden shelter built by monks stood on the summit, holding fragments of sculpture.[2][1]
French clearing of the site began in 1935,[1] or in 1936 under Henri Marchal.[2] Marchal dug out the central well to a depth of 20 meters (66 feet), and nothing of interest came to light, as treasure hunters had already broken into it from the side.[2][1] From 1936 to 1943 Maurice Glaize rebuilt the temple by anastylosis, reassembling it from its own fallen stones.[2] The scattered blocks were sorted by their moldings and carving to find where each belonged.[2][1] In his notes on the work of 1937, Glaize wrote that by the end of the year the central sanctuary stood again up to the cornice of its first tier. He did not expect to restore its third and fourth stages, as too few of their stones had been found.[1] His 1944 account gives the sanctuary its whole outline again, from base to crown.[2]
In 2005 the archaeologists Tan Sophal and Saray Kimhuol, both Cambodian, came upon two inscribed fragments in one of the temple's towers. The stones are kept at the Preah Norodom Sihanouk Museum in Siem Reap.[4] The text, in Khmer, dates from before the Angkor period.[1][4] Christophe Pottier and Dominique Soutif read most of it and, in 2014, used it to date the early city of Hariharalaya more closely.[4]
The German Apsara Conservation Project has worked at the Roluos temples since 1999. Its stucco conservation program began in 2011, and its first work was on the stucco of five brick towers at Bakong.[7]
Visiting
Entry is covered by the Angkor Pass, which includes the Roluos temples.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27 1.28 1.29 Hello Angkor, Rodney Charles L'Huillier, Bakong Temple: Highlights and History (updated January 1, 2026)
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 2.22 2.23 2.24 2.25 2.26 2.27 2.28 2.29 2.30 2.31 2.32 2.33 2.34 2.35 2.36 The Angkor Guide, Maurice Glaize, Roluos: Bakong, from The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation)
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 Radio Free Asia Khmer, Chun Chanboth, Kings of the Angkor period, part 10 of a history series (April 2, 2014; in Khmer)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Angkor Database, Christophe Pottier and Dominique Soutif, A Bakong Inscription and the Datation of Hariharalaya City (record of a 2014 article; undated)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Giulio Magli, Archaeoastronomy in the Khmer Heartland (arXiv, 2016)
- ↑ 6.00 6.01 6.02 6.03 6.04 6.05 6.06 6.07 6.08 6.09 Proceedings of the British Academy, Charles F. W. Higham, The Origins of the Civilisation of Angkor (2003)
- ↑ The Royal Society for Asian Affairs, Hans Leisen and Esther von Plehwe-Leisen, The German Apsara Conservation Project (GACP) at Angkor Wat: A Report (undated)