Heritage site
Jayatataka
The Jayatataka, also called the North Baray, is a reservoir at Angkor built under King Jayavarman VII, with the temple of Neak Poan on its central island.[1][2]
The reservoir
Glaize gave its size as 3,500 by 900 meters. It lies east of Preah Khan on the same axis as the temple, and Neak Poan stands on a square island 350 meters on each side in its middle.[1] Hang Peou, a hydraulic engineer at the APSARA National Authority, gives 3,600 by 930 meters and an original capacity of 5 to 10 million cubic meters.[2]
At the eastern entrance of Preah Khan, an old landing terrace on the reservoir's western bank once served boats. Two stone lions stand on it, facing the water.[1] The landing has three stairways and was probably built, like Neak Poan and Ta Som, at the end of the 12th century. The APSARA archaeologist Chea Sarith thinks the kings may have used it for religious visits to Neak Poan. His team found that both the landing and the reservoir were rebuilt several times, which he links to raising the reservoir to store more water for farming and for the people.[3]
In the inscriptions
The foundation stele of Preah Khan describes the Jayatataka as a mirror colored by stones, gold and garlands, with an island at its center that washes away the sins of those who touch it. Glaize identified it with the "Northern Lake" described by the Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan.[1]
Drying and refilling
Hang Peou writes that the water system feeding the reservoir was built in the 12th century and dried up in the 16th. The APSARA National Authority's North Baray project set out to study that system and bring water back into the Jayatataka. Its aims included the old landscape and visitors, water for the villages in the park and the groundwater under Siem Reap. The project's figures show about 700,000 cubic meters stored in 2008, 3 million in 2009 and 3.8 million in 2010, with 5 million for 2011 to 2015.[2]
In 2023 the APSARA National Authority was restoring the Preah Khan landing, in a second phase of work begun in 2022.[3] A Cambodianess picture of the day published May 30, 2026 shows lotus leaves and half-submerged trunks in the water around Neak Poan.[4]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Angkor Database, Maurice Glaize, The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation of the fourth French edition)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Hang Peou, APSARA National Authority, Rehabilitation of Angkor Cultural Landscape: Ancient Hydraulic System (presentation, Siem Reap, January 12, 2016)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Le Petit Journal Cambodge, La restauration de l'embarcadère du Preah Khan à Siem Reap (August 28, 2023; in French)
- ↑ Cambodianess, Wonders of Cambodia, Picture of the day: Silent Waters of Baray Neak Poan (May 30, 2026)