Heritage site
Phnom Yat
ភ្នំយ៉ាត
Phnom Yat (ភ្នំយ៉ាត) is a hill in the town of Pailin, in western Cambodia, crowned by the pagoda of Wat Phnom Yat.[1][2] The hill and the pagoda take their name from Yeay Yat, a woman of the Kola people remembered in a local legend.[1]
The hill
Pailin stands on a plateau of old lava flows, about 3 kilometers (2 miles) long and 600 meters (2,000 feet) wide. Phnom Yat rises at its southern end, at 254 meters (833 feet). The gemologist Stéphane Wainer wrote in 2017 that no gems are mined on the hill because it is held to be a holy place, though he saw many people searching its ground for stones after a storm.[3]
Wat Phnom Yat
The pagoda's golden tower is built in the style of those found across Myanmar. It was put up by the Kola, migrants from the Shan State of Myanmar who came to control the gem trade of Pailin. Cambodian accounts date their arrival to 1876, when the area was under Siam.[1] In 2015 The Irrawaddy described statues of Kola men in a garment like the Burmese longyi, scenes of Buddhist purgatory and a tall standing Buddha around the pagoda. Donors from Myanmar had paid for new gold plating and gold leaf the year before, and some visitors from Myanmar treated the site as a place of pilgrimage.[1]
Yeay Yat
The statues of Yeay Yat draw the most Cambodian visitors. Her story appears in a collection of Khmer folk tales gathered by the Buddhist Institute. In it, Yeay Yat and her husband Ta Yat were gem traders in Pailin at a time when local people hunted in the forest with the guns they kept to guard their gems. The most powerful spirit of the place promised the couple that people would find more gems if they gave up hunting. When the hunting stopped and the people prospered, they paid for Wat Phnom Yat and danced a peacock dance on the hill for the spirit.[1] Local people believe that her spirit grants wishes in return for offerings.[1]
In 2020 the Ministry of Interior approved an emblem for Pailin province that shows Phnom Yat and Phnom Khieu, an old stupa and a statue of Yeay Yat with a pair of peacocks.[2] Pailin later became a base of the Khmer Rouge, who held out near the Thai border until the late 1990s, largely on sales of gems and timber.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 The Irrawaddy, The Kola of Cambodia (January 9, 2015)
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Thmey Thmey, A statue of Yeay Yat, an ancient stupa and gems form the emblem of Pailin province (March 7, 2020; in Khmer)
- ↑ Stéphane H. Wainer, Pailin fancy colour sapphires a.k.a. "Talila", dissertation for the university diploma in gemology, University of Nantes (2017)