Heritage site
Banteay Samre
Banteay Samre is a 12th-century temple at Angkor, built at the southeast corner of the East Baray reservoir.[1] It is a flat temple rather than a temple-mountain, closed by two masonry walls, one inside the other.[1] No inscription has been found there, and its date, its founder and the god it served are debated.[1][2]
Name and setting
The temple's ancient name is unknown. Banteay means "citadel." Samre can name the Samre people, or a farmer who grows rice.[1] The Samre, a people of uncertain origin, lived in the country below the Kulen hills, and the people of the nearby village were held to be their descendants.[2] The temple stands in Preah Dak village, in Nokor Thom commune of Siem Reap district and province.[1] The village appears as Pradak in Glaize's guide, on the road that leads on to Banteay Srei.[2]
A local legend that Glaize retold ties the temple to Pou, a farmer of Samre origin who grew sweet cucumbers and became king.[2] In the story, the court would not show the new king respect, and he withdrew to live at Banteay Samre.[2]
Architecture
The temple opens to the east.[1] In front of the central tower, on its east side, is a long room, with two buildings known as "libraries" on either side of it.[1][2] The tower rises in four tiers to a lotus crown.[2] Glaize thought that a wooden or metal pole must have stood on its top, reaching about 21 meters (69 feet) above the courtyard.[2] The inner enclosure measures 44 by 38 meters (144 by 125 feet), and the gallery of the outer enclosure 83 by 77 meters (272 by 253 feet). All the buildings sit high on a platform, with the courtyard at a lower level.[2]
From the east, a causeway about 200 meters (660 feet) long, lined with serpent balustrades, runs between two pools to terraces at its western end.[1][2] A second causeway, lined with boundary posts, runs west as far as the edge of the East Baray's bank.[1] Aerial photographs and airborne laser scans show that the site is much larger than was first thought. They reveal two more enclosures of banked earth and, to the east, a reservoir dug on the temple's axis.[1] With its four enclosures, the temple's sacred ground covers about 630 by 430 meters (2,070 by 1,410 feet).[1]
The temple was built in stages. Roche sets out three phases. The first raised the tower, hall, libraries, inner gates and east causeway. The second added the inner gallery, the outer gates and the west causeway. Last, at the start of the reign of Jayavarman VII, in the period of the Bayon style, the outer east gate was cut down in size.[1] Glaize noted that the inner gallery replaced an older enclosure wall.[2]
Carvings
The pediments of the outer gates show episodes from the Ramayana.[2] The most intact panel, on the north gate, shows Rama and Ravana fighting from their war chariots.[2] Glaize noted that many scenes on the pediments of the upper levels are episodes from the Vessantara Jataka, a Buddhist story, and that some carved motifs, probably also Buddhist, were damaged.[2] Among the temple's Buddhist images, Roche counts several Jataka scenes and a large number of figures that were chiseled away.[1] A stone tank, the only one at Angkor that keeps its lid, was restored and placed in the hall beside the sanctuary. George Coedès took it to be a kind of sarcophagus.[2]
Above each of the four lintels of the central sanctuary, which face the four directions, are carved five figures known as the five jinas; three of the four openings are false doors.[1] The figures were systematically chiseled off, but their number and their seated, adorned outlines still identify them, except the central figure on the west lintel, which erosion has worn away.[1] Fragments of a sandstone Buddha sheltered by the naga, a serpent, about 1.2 meters (3.9 feet) high, were found during the restoration. In Roche's view, its iconography seems to mark it as the temple's main image.[1]
Date and dedication
Writers have dated the temple to different reigns. Glaize placed it in the middle of the 12th century, near the date of Angkor Wat or slightly after it.[2] Giulio Magli lists it under Suryavarman II (1113 to 1145).[3] Roche dates most of the building to the third quarter of the century, in the reign of Tribhuvanadityavarman (1149 or 1150 to about 1167 or 1177).[1] She does not rule out that work began at the end of the reign of Suryavarman II, which she gives as 1112 or 1113 to 1149 or 1150. She bases this on the carving styles and on two inscriptions that name him as the direct successor of Suryavarman II.[1]
The god it served is also debated. Glaize described it as a Hindu temple of Vishnu that also carries Buddhist scenes.[2] Roche notes that he based this on myths of Vishnu and Krishna and scenes from the Ramayana that he identified on the inner gates' pediments during the restoration.[1] Other writers have proposed a Buddhist temple, and one writer a Shaiva temple.[1] From the five jinas and the Buddha on the naga, Roche proposes that it was a Buddhist foundation of the tantric tradition.[1]
Magli notes an east-west line about 10.8 kilometers (6.7 miles) long that joins the top of the Bayon to the top of Banteay Samre across the East Baray. He suggests that the top of the older temple could have served as a survey point.[3]
Restoration
The site was cleared of brush in 1930[2] or the early 1930s.[1] In May 1934 Henri Marchal raised the idea of restoring it by anastylosis, rebuilding a ruin with its own fallen stones. He advised against taking down all the masonry and proposed working case by case, so that only the most collapsed upper parts would have to be rebuilt.[1] The work ran from 1936 to 1946 under Jacques Lagisquet and then Maurice Glaize of the École française d'Extrême-Orient.[1][4] Glaize's own guide gives his work there as 1936 to 1944.[2] He wrote that before the work the overgrown ruin had no form or character of its own, and that the restoration made it one of the Angkor group's most complete monuments.[2]
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 Arts Asiatiques, Louise Roche, Le sanctuaire de Banteay Samrae à Angkor : une fondation bouddhique du règne de Tribhuvanādityavarman (2020; in French)
- ↑ 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, Maurice Glaize, The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation of the fourth French edition)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 arXiv, Giulio Magli, Archaeoastronomy in the Khmer Heartland (2016)
- ↑ Archives of the École française d'Extrême-Orient, Glaize, Maurice (1886-1964) (undated; in French)