Heritage site
Prasat Andet
ប្រាសាទអណ្តែត
Prasat Andet (ប្រាសាទអណ្តែត) is a brick temple in Kampong Thom province, dedicated to the god Harihara[1] and considered pre-Angkorian.[2] The temple once held a standing statue of Harihara.[1][2] It stands in Prasat village,[1] also given as Prasat Andet village,[2] in Sankor[1] or Sunkor[2] commune, Kampong Svay district, about 27 kilometers (17 miles) northwest of the town of Kampong Thom.[1]
Name
In Khmer, prasat andet means a temple or palace that floats in the air. In a note, the linguist Saveros Pou wrote that ordinary Khmer speakers have always expressed the idea of an aerial chariot with this phrase, literally a floating palace. That usage, she wrote, is how some temples came to be called Prasat Andet. The term has the same sense as biman, the word behind the name of Phimeanakas.[3]
History
The temple is dated to the second half of the seventh century, in the reign of King Jayavarman I.[1][2] Harihara combines Shiva and Vishnu.[2][4] Its style is given as Kampong Preah[1] or Prei Khmeng.[2] The Angkor National Museum dates the Prei Khmeng style to the seventh and eighth centuries and the Kampong Preah style to 706 to 800.[4]
In the Angkor National Museum's bulletin of 2016, Sok Keosovannara wrote that from the end of the seventh century into the early eighth, Harihara seems to have become more popular and widely worshipped. The view rests on how many statues of the god have come from temples of that period, among them the one from Prasat Andet.[4]
Architecture
The sanctuary stands alone on a mound 5.3 meters (17 feet) high and faces east. It is built of brick, with laterite and sandstone. Its plan is a rectangle 7.5 meters (25 feet) long and 5.5 meters (18 feet) wide; the structure is 1 meter (3 feet) thick from the inside to the outside. The framed doorway is 1 meter (3 feet) wide, 2 meters (7 feet) high and 0.2 meters (8 inches) thick.[1][2] The mound is man-made.[1] The lintel is carved with garlands in the Khmer manner.[1]
The Harihara of Prasat Andet
A standing statue of Harihara on a decorative royal throne once stood in the temple. It was taken to the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh.[1][2] One half of its body is Shiva and the other half Vishnu.[1] Maurice Glaize, who called it the Harihara of Prasat Andet, named it among the most remarkable works of early Khmer art, "of an elegant purity of line".[5]
The Cleveland Museum of Art links the tall, flat-topped crown of its Vishnu, dated 650 to 700, with figures made at Prasat Andet.[6]
Visiting
Many people visit the temple, above all at Khmer New Year and on other holidays.[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 Tourism Cambodia, Prasat Andet Temple, Kampong Thom (undated)
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 Into Cambodia, Kampong Thom Province (undated)
- ↑ Saveros Pou, Les noms de monuments khmers, Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient 78 (1991)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Angkor National Museum, Sok Keosovannara, Harihara, Angkor National Museum Bulletin, Volume 8 (October 2016)
- ↑ Angkor Database, Maurice Glaize, The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation of the fourth French edition)
- ↑ Cleveland Museum of Art, Vishnu (undated)