Heritage site

Indratataka

ឥន្ទ្រតដាក

The Indratataka (ឥន្ទ្រតដាក) is a baray (បារាយណ៍), or reservoir, that King Indravarman I (ឥន្ទ្រវរ្ម័នទី១) had dug at Roluos (រលួស) in the late 9th century.[1][2] It lay north of his capital, Hariharalaya (ហរិហរាល័យ).[1] The temple of Lolei (ប្រាសាទលលៃ) was built on an island at its center.[1][3][4] Maurice Glaize called it the Lolei baray.[5]

History

Indravarman came to the throne in 877.[1][6] The inscriptions record that the digging began five days after his consecration.[3] Charles Higham wrote that in 879 the king declared he would begin digging five days later.[2] The inscribed stone, or stele, of Bakong (ប្រាសាទបាគង), which records the founding of that temple's linga in 881, also mentions the digging of the reservoir.[5] In Higham's account, the king likened his reservoir to the ocean, as a mirror of his glory.[2]

Glaize wrote that the reservoir was dug to bring water to the capital and to irrigate the plains around it,[3] and Chun Chanboth wrote that it served farming greatly.[1] Its water was led south to fill the moats of several temples, among them Preah Ko (ប្រាសាទព្រះគោ) and Bakong.[2] Michael Vickery described a pattern that the scholar P. Stern found in four Angkorian reigns, Indravarman's among them: first public works, most often great reservoirs, then temples to the kings' immediate ancestors, and last a temple mountain for the central state cult.[7]

In the Angkor Database's note on its record of a 2014 article, Indravarman completed the reservoir.[4] In Higham's, his son Yasovarman I (យសោវរ្ម័នទី១), who came to the throne in 889, completed it by building the island temple.[2] Lolei is dated 893.[3][8] Its stele dedicates it to Indravarmesvara, in memory of Yasovarman's father.[3] Chun Chanboth and Nhim Sotheavin wrote that it honored Yasovarman's parents and his maternal grandparents.[1][6]

In Higham's account, Yasovarman all but abandoned Hariharalaya for a new capital around Phnom Bakheng (ភ្នំបាខែង), 18 kilometers (11 miles) to the north-west.[2] Nhim Sotheavin wrote that this short move was not strictly a change of capital. Nhim also wrote that a raised road the king built from the Roluos baray to Phnom Bakheng shows there was no break between the two cities.[6] Higham wrote that Yasovarman's East Baray (បារាយណ៍ខាងកើត), once finished, was twice the size of his father's reservoir.[2] Chun Chanboth gave the East Baray as 7 kilometers by 1,800 meters (4.3 by 1.1 miles), against 3 kilometers by 800 meters for the Indratataka.[1]

Size and layout

The reservoir measures 3,800 by 800 meters (2.4 by 0.5 miles),[3] almost four kilometers by 800 meters (2.5 by 0.5 miles)[2] or three kilometers by 800 meters (1.9 by 0.5 miles).[1] Its long side runs from east to west.[3] Its central axis runs due north and south on the same line as Bakong, which stands 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) south of the reservoir's center. Lolei was set on the same line. Giulio Magli judged this alignment deliberate and symbolic.[8] Glaize compared Lolei's place in the reservoir to that of the Mebon on its island in the East Baray.[3]

Water

Indravarman turned the Roluos River to fill the reservoir.[2] Roland Fletcher and his co-authors wrote that a canal from the north would have been needed to supply it. The obvious candidate would have followed the line of the current Roluos River, which flows from north to south.[9] The Thnal Mrech valley on Phnom Kulen is one of the headwaters of the Roluos river system, as of the Puok and Siem Reap rivers.[10]

In their account, the Roluos network of the 8th and 9th centuries, as far as it can be observed, includes the reservoir and channels and moats around Bakong. It also includes a large canal running due south to the lake, the Tonle Sap (ទន្លេសាប), and a canal to the west in the direction of Vat Athvear. The village of Kompong Plok lies at the south end of the southern canal, which would have served to carry water away.[9] A map in a 2008 paper by Fletcher, Dan Penny, Damian Evans and others in the journal Antiquity leaves out the reservoir's west and south channels, as their link to the rest of the system is "obscure".[11]

The Antiquity paper describes a long embankment that left the late 9th-century heart of Angkor (អង្គរ), ran south-east to the reservoir's north-west corner and went on south-east beyond its south-east corner. In that paper, this embankment and a great embankment running south-east from the West Baray could together have helped spread water across the whole floodplain to their south.[11] The other paper calls the stretch beyond the south-east corner an Angkorian road and says both works would have carried water to the south-east.[9]

The East Baray was added north of the Roluos network in the late 9th century.[9] In the Antiquity paper, its first supply was the upper Roluos River, which fed it from the north-east.[11] In the other paper, an embankment would have diverted a river north of Phnom Bok (ភ្នំបូក), which was either a separate river or a northern tributary of the old Roluos River. If it fed the Roluos, the East Baray took a large share of the Indratataka's water; if it was a separate river, the East Baray complemented the Indratataka rather than reducing its water. The same authors wrote that a later channel from the Puok river, perhaps of the early 10th century, may have been made to supply the East Baray so that more water could return to the Indratataka.[9] In the Antiquity paper, the East Baray's second supply was a channel diverted from the Puok river, now the Siem Reap river, probably in the 10th century; Bernard-Philippe Groslier identified this diversion.[11]

Later history

Glaize described the approach to Lolei on a dike across 600 meters (2,000 feet) of rice fields, and regretted the buildings of a Wat that stood around its towers.[3] In Rodney Charles L'Huillier's description, updated in January 2026, the temple is reached by road and surrounded by fields, and a contemporary Wat stands on the site.[12]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Radio Free Asia Khmer, Chun Chanboth, Kings of the Angkor period, part 10 of a history series (April 2, 2014; in Khmer)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Proceedings of the British Academy, Charles F. W. Higham, The Origins of the Civilisation of Angkor (2003)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 The Angkor Guide, Maurice Glaize, Roluos: Lolei, from The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Angkor Database, note on its record of Christophe Pottier and Dominique Soutif, A Bakong Inscription and the Datation of Hariharalaya City (2014 article; note undated)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 The Angkor Guide, Maurice Glaize, Roluos: Bakong, from The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation)
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Institute of Asian Culture, Sophia University, Nhim Sotheavin, Factors that Led to the Change of the Khmer Capitals from the 15th to 17th century (undated)
  7. ↑ Angkor Database, Michael Vickery, The Reign of Suryavarman I and Royal Factionalism at Angkor (undated)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 arXiv, Giulio Magli, Archaeoastronomy in the Khmer Heartland (2016)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Bulletin of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association, Roland Fletcher, Christophe Pottier, Damian Evans and Matti Kummu, The Development of the Water Management System of Angkor: A Provisional Model (2008)
  10. ↑ Angkor Database, Piphal Heng and Paul A. Lavy, Pre-Angkorian cities: Ishanapura and Mahendraparvata (undated)
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 Antiquity, Roland Fletcher, Dan Penny, Damian Evans and others, The water management network of Angkor, Cambodia (2008)
  12. ↑ Hello Angkor, Rodney Charles L'Huillier, Lolei Temple (Roluos Group) (updated January 1, 2026)


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This page was last edited on 12 October 2026, at 07:13.