Heritage site
Banteay Kdei
ប្រាសាទបន្ទាយក្តី
Banteay Kdei (ប្រាសាទបន្ទាយក្តី) is a Buddhist temple at Angkor, built during the reign of King Jayavarman VII.[1][2] It stands southeast of Ta Prohm, near the Sra Srang reservoir.[2] In 2001, Japanese and Cambodian archaeologists dug up 274 Buddhist statues that had been buried in its grounds, many of them with their heads cut off.[2][3]
The name has been translated as "the citadel of chambers"[1] and, with a question mark, as "citadel of monks".[2]
History
The temple was built between the middle of the 12th century and the early 13th century.[1][4] The Cambodia Daily called it a late 12th-century temple.[3] Jayavarman VII reigned from 1181 to 1218 and was a major patron of Buddhist monuments.[5] Banteay Kdei is in the Bayon style of his reign, and its plan resembles those of Ta Prohm and Preah Khan, on a smaller and simpler scale.[2]
The conservator Maurice Glaize saw at least two styles in the temple, one from the period of Angkor Wat and one from that of the Bayon. In many places, later additions hide sculpture that was already there.[1] Writing of Ta Prohm, Glaize suggested that in a reign of some 20 years Jayavarman VII could not have built every Bayon-style temple from the ground up. More likely, he changed, enlarged or finished religious foundations that already stood.[6]
Glaize wrote that nothing was known of the temple's dedication.[1] The Angkor Database names the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara as its main deity,[2] and The Cambodia Daily wrote in 2002 that the temple was dedicated to the father of Jayavarman VII.[3] An inscription in the western entrance pavilion of the second enclosure is carved on reused stones. It dates from the reign of King Rajendravarman in the 10th century, invokes Shiva and records the setting up of statues of Brahma and Vishnu. Glaize thought the stones probably came from Kutisvara, a nearby temple.[1] The Sdok Kak Thom inscription names a village called Kuti at this place, granted to the family of the royal priest Sivakaivalya. In the Angkor Database's account, excavation had so far found no proof of a link between the site and Kutisvara.[2]
After the reign of Jayavarman VII, nearly all images of the Buddha were destroyed or chipped away at major temples of Angkor, Banteay Kdei among them.[5] Glaize recorded a frieze of Buddhas defaced by iconoclasts in an inner courtyard. Some of the carved pediments and lintels survived the religious strife of the 13th century.[1] A Wat stood on the site until clearing work began,[1] and Buddhist monks lived in the temple until the civil war of the 1970s.[2]
H. Marchal and Ch. Batteur cleared the temple from 1920 to 1922.[1] Glaize found the ruin far advanced, through the many building faults of the period and a poor, crumbly sandstone that tends to give way.[1][2] A partial anastylosis followed at the end of 1946.[1]
Architecture
The temple is laid out on a single level, in the manner of a Buddhist monastery. Inside two enclosure walls, two concentric galleries carry a crowd of towers, with a cross-shaped cloister on the east. The sacred enclosure measures 63 by 50 meters (207 by 164 feet) and lies within an outer enclosure of 700 by 500 meters (2,300 by 1,640 feet).[1] The towers seem to have been joined by galleries and vestibules only after they were built.[1]
The outer laterite wall has four entrance pavilions, or gopuras. Each is crowned by a tower carved with the four faces of Lokesvara (លោកេស្វរៈ),[2] a form of the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara,[5] with garudas at the corners, the same design as the outer gates of Ta Prohm.[1] They date from the Bayon period, as does the cross-shaped terrace that crosses the moat on the west side, decorated with lions and serpent balustrades. At the eastern gate, the face tower has survived in better shape than the side wings, and its corner garudas are almost whole.[1] Inside, the laterite wall of the third enclosure measures 320 by 300 meters (1,050 by 980 feet).[1]
East of the central group lies a large cloister divided into four small courtyards, which may have been used for ritual dance or served as a "palace". Its pillars are carved in low relief with apsaras, dancing alone or in pairs.[1] To the north stands a hall of large, closely set columns, which probably held up a light upper floor. Its use is unknown, and similar halls stand at Ta Prohm and Preah Khan.[1][6]
The central sanctuary has a chamber 2.75 meters (9 feet) square, where traces of a wooden ceiling rest on the cornice.[1] Two small buildings known as libraries held two female statues without heads or arms, probably from the 10th century and brought from another monument. A pediment on the first northern gopura shows a seated Buddha over a standing figure flanked by a pair of elephants. Another, set on the ground near a small sanctuary, shows the Buddha's Great Departure, with gods holding up the hooves of his horse.[1]
The buried Buddhas
The Angkor mission of Sophia University, in Tokyo, first surveyed Banteay Kdei in March 1989.[7] Its team found the first statue in August 2000, near the temple's eastern gate.[3] In March and August 2001, the team and Cambodian archaeologists dug up 274 Buddhist statues in the grounds.[7][2] The Japan Times put the number found in late 2001 at some 167 statues and other objects.[8] The archaeologists had come to study the temple's water works.[4] The historian Yoshiaki Ishizawa, who led the mission, wrote that the Cambodian trainees made the discovery.[2]
The statues lay in a single pit about 150 meters (490 feet) from where the eastern causeway begins, facing a small sanctuary on its north side. The pit was about 2 meters (6.6 feet) square and 1.8 meters (5.9 feet) deep.[2] Cambodianess gives the depth of the cache as 2 meters (6.6 feet).[4] The statues range from 20 centimeters (8 inches) to 1.8 meters (5.9 feet) tall, and two small bronze Buddhas lay with them. Most show the Buddha seated and sheltered by a naga, the serpent king Mucalinda.[2] Many of the Buddhas had been beheaded or damaged at the head;[2] The Cambodia Daily wrote that virtually all had their heads cut off before burial, and that the heads were buried with them.[3]
Among the finds was a four-sided sandstone pillar carved with 1,008 seated Buddhas.[8][4] The Japan Times called it in 2002 the first of its kind dug up in Cambodia.[8] It stands 110 centimeters (43 inches) high and 50 centimeters (20 inches) wide, with its top missing. It is dated to the Bayon style of the early 13th century[2] or of the latter half of the 12th century.[4] Ishizawa's book suggests that 1,008 may add a zero to 108, the number of earthly desires.[2]
Readings of the find
The Cambodia Daily wrote in 2002 of a theory that a wave of hostility to Buddhism swept over Angkor after Jayavarman VII, when several of his successors favored the Hindu god Shiva. It added that Banteay Kdei was apparently no exception.[3] The archaeologist Masako Marui told visitors in Siem Reap that the statues seemed to have been destroyed on purpose by a rival religious group. She said that the statues appear to have been placed with care in a pit dug for them, which was later covered with a laterite platform. In a research paper she wrote, "The intention is a kind of worship, rather than an enmity." She suggested that a revival of Buddhism may have led devout people to gather the broken images and bury them with a religious ceremony.[3]
Ishizawa argued that the find showed the reach of an iconoclast movement against Buddhist images at the end of the 13th century.[2] In his view, tearing down and burying so many statues and putting Hindu images in their place took great labor and expense. The kingdom, he wrote, continued to work effectively during the reign of King Jayavarman VIII (1243 to 1295).[2] Sophia University calls the find a major discovery that rewrote the history of the Angkor dynasty.[7]
After the find
In November 2007, Sophia University and the Japanese company AEON completed a museum in Siem Reap with a permanent hall for the 274 statues, and gave it to the Cambodian government.[7] The statues and the pillar are held at the Preah Norodom Sihanouk-Angkor Museum.[2] In August 2009, 11 of the statues went on show in Japan for the first time, in an Angkor Wat exhibition held at ten venues.[7]
Excavation in the temple grounds turned up six more images of the Buddha in August 2010 and three more in August 2015. In December 2011, the mission opened a center for education on Angkor's cultural heritage inside the Banteay Kdei site.[7]
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 The Angkor Guide, Maurice Glaize, Banteay Kdei, from The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation)
- ↑ 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 Angkor Database, Angkor Buddhist Treasures from Banteay Kdei (undated; a record of Yoshiaki Ishizawa's 2007 book)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 The Cambodia Daily, Jody McPhillips, Beheaded Bhuddas Puzzle Angkor Experts (March 2, 2002)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Cambodianess, Ky Chamna, Siem Reap's Museum of Buddhist Artefacts (January 25, 2025)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 ASIANetwork Exchange, P. Nietupski, Medieval Khmer Society: The Life and Times of Jayavarman VII (June 19, 2019)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 The Angkor Guide, Maurice Glaize, Ta Prohm, from The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation)
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Sophia University, Sophia Asia Center for Research and Human Development, History of the Angkor International Mission (undated; in Japanese)
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 The Japan Times, Rob Gilhooly, Finds 'rewrite history' (October 27, 2002)