Heritage site
Kleang
The Kleang, or Khleang, are two sandstone buildings on the royal square of Angkor Thom, from the late 10th to the middle of the 11th century.[1][2] The two, the North Kleang and the South Kleang, take their name from a word meaning "storerooms".[1]
History
The two buildings stand behind the towers of Prasat Suor Prat, facing the north and south ends of the Terrace of the Elephants their length aligned with the long side of the square.[1] Maurice Glaize, in his 1944 guide to the Angkor monuments, dated both to the period between Pre Rup and the Baphuon, the same period as the gateways of the royal enclosure, with decoration a little later than the style of Banteay Srei.[1] Though they look alike, the South Kleang was left unfinished and seems later than the North Kleang.[1] Glaize placed the South Kleang in the late 10th or early 11th century, under King Jayavarman V or King Suryavarman I.[1]
Two inscriptions in the North Kleang date from the reign of Suryavarman I (1002 to 1049). Two in the South Kleang repeat the wording of the oath of the king's servants, carved in 1011 on the door jambs of the east gateway of the Royal Palace.[1] Suryavarman dominates the inscriptions of the Kleang, the site of inscription K. 468, though one Sanskrit text is given entirely to Jayaviravarman.[2]
The name "storeroom" does little justice to the scale of the buildings, the richness of their decoration or the care of their construction.[1] Glaize thought each looked like a kind of palace, perhaps for receiving foreign princes or visiting dignitaries.[1]
South Kleang
The South Kleang stands on a plain molded platform. Its walls, 0.9 meters (3 feet) thick and entirely of sandstone, are decorated at the base and the cornice and pierced on both long sides by large square windows, each with seven turned stone bars. The roofs of wood and tile over its east and west porches have gone.[1] Inside, a single long gallery runs 45 meters (148 feet), 4.2 meters (13.8 feet) wide, decorated only by a frieze under the cornice. A small annex at a lower level closes each end.[1] To the east, galleries probably of light materials once enclosed a courtyard of about 50 by 30 meters (164 by 98 feet); almost nothing of them remains.[1]
North Kleang
The North Kleang is the more imposing of the two and the more carefully built. A cross-shaped terrace of a later period, with naga (serpent) balustrades in several styles, stands before it to the west.[1] Its base is carved over its whole surface with opposed diamond shapes around a central band of foliage that Glaize singled out for praise. Its colonnettes have four large rings, against eight at the South Kleang, which marks them as earlier, and its lintels and pediments, with the head of Kala on large scrolls of foliage, show the style of the 10th and 11th centuries.[1]
Its walls are 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) thick, laterite faced with sandstone, and the gallery is 4.7 meters (15.4 feet) wide.[1] The false upper story inside collapsed, because double wooden beams carried the stone over the openings. Later, a masonry tower was built across the middle of the gallery, dividing it into a square central room flanked by two long rooms.[1] Two bronze statuettes, one of Vishnu and one of Lokesvara, were found in these galleries.[1] In the courtyard to the east, parts of the outer gallery walls were rebuilt from stones found on the ground. At its center stands a small cross-shaped sanctuary close to the style of Angkor Wat.[1]
Just east of the North Kleang, a small monument a little older than the Kleang, in the style of Banteay Srei, stands inside a laterite wall about 30 meters (98 feet) square. It holds the remains of a small tower, two "library" buildings and a tiny gateway. Eleven small linga, emblems of the god Shiva, each 0.47 meters (1.5 feet) high, were found in three rows in its southern library.[1]
Restoration
Commaille cleared the Kleang in 1908, and Henri Marchal from 1919 to 1920.[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 Angkor Database, Maurice Glaize, The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation of the fourth French edition)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Angkor Database, Michael Vickery, The Reign of Sūryavarman I and Royal Factionalism at Angkor, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 16(2) (1985)