Heritage site
Preah Ko
ប្រាសាទព្រះគោ
Preah Ko (ប្រាសាទព្រះគោ) is a 9th-century Hindu temple of six brick towers in the Roluos (រលួស) group of temples near Siem Reap.[1][2][3] King Indravarman I (ឥន្ទ្រវរ្ម័នទី១) built it at his capital, Hariharalaya (ហរិហរាល័យ), and dedicated it to his ancestors.[3][4] Its name means "the sacred ox",[1] after the statues of Nandin, the sacred bull and mount of Shiva, lying in front of the towers.[2][1] The name is also written Prah Ko.[1][2]
The temple stands about 13 kilometers (8 miles) east of Siem Reap,[2] just west of the track to Bakong (ប្រាសាទបាគង) and 500 meters (1,640 feet) south of Route 6.[1][3]
History
Hariharalaya lay in the area known today as Roluos, near the northern shore of the Great Lake.[5][4] Glaize wrote in 1944 that it was already a city when King Jayavarman II (ជ័យវរ្ម័នទី២) settled there.[5][3] The king settled there twice, before his investiture on Phnom Kulen and again after it.[5][3] Hello Angkor writes that Jayavarman II probably founded the city.[2]
Indravarman I came to the throne in 877.[3][4] He founded Preah Ko in 879, the year its inscriptions give,[3][2] or in 880.[6] The foundation stele opens with praise of Shiva and of the king.[1] It recalls the cult of the god-king (devaraja) begun on Mount Mahendra (Phnom Kulen), and gives 879 as the foundation date of three statues of Shiva and of the goddess Devi.[1] The six towers honored his family. The three in front were for male ancestors: his father, his grandfather on his mother's side and Jayavarman II, each joined by name with Shiva. The three behind were for their wives.[4][3] Glaize called Preah Ko the funerary temple of Jayavarman II and of Indravarman's ancestors.[1] Charles Higham wrote that by linking these names with Shiva, the temple presented the king's forebears as gods.[4]
The temple's inscriptions record what its upkeep required. Thousands of men and women from the villages around the royal center owed it goods and labor, and it was given cattle, horses and elephants, and musicians, singers and dancers. It owned gold and silver vessels, mirrors, perfume, fly whisks and garments for the gods and the temple staff.[4] Water from the king's great reservoir, the Indratataka, ran south to fill the moats around his temples, Preah Ko among them.[4]
The back of the foundation stele, written in Khmer, dates from 893, in the reign of Indravarman's son, Yasovarman I (យសោវរ្ម័នទី១).[1][3] It lists gifts to two gods: Paramesvara, whom Glaize places in the middle of the eastern row of sanctuaries, and Prithivindresvara, whom he places in the southern row.[1] A second stele, from 1005, praises King Jayaviravarman, who reigned from 1002 to 1010; Glaize wrote that Suryavarman I ousted him.[1] Hello Angkor lists 19 inscriptions from the site, in Sanskrit and in Khmer, on the steles and on the lintels and door frames of the towers.[2]
What the temple's grounds were meant for is uncertain. Glaize suggested in 1944 that the buildings may have been an addition to a temple-mountain project later replaced by Bakong.[5] They may instead have gone with light structures of Hariharalaya that have since vanished, such as a royal residence, as George Cœdès had proposed.[1] Hello Angkor writes that the site received additions in the late or post-Angkor period, as Theravada Buddhism spread, and that Vietnamese forces held it for a short time in the 19th century.[2]
Georges Trouvé cleared the site in 1932.[1] The foundation stele was found in an eastern entrance pavilion (gopura), in excellent condition: Glaize places it in the gopura of the brick inner enclosure,[1] and Hello Angkor in the second east gopura.[2] The temple gave its name to the Preah Ko style of the late 9th century, a period of Khmer art that Henri Parmentier defined in 1919.[2][5]
Architecture
The temple occupies the eastern part of a wide rectangle enclosed by moats, 500 meters (1,640 feet) from east to west and 400 meters (1,310 feet) from north to south.[1] As of 2026, the moat is mostly dry.[2] A long causeway once led to the outer entrance pavilion on the east.[2] That pavilion is of laterite, a hard red stone, with sandstone windows; Glaize found three quarters of it collapsed.[1] The middle enclosure has a laterite wall of 97 by 94 meters (318 by 308 feet). Long halls once lined its courtyard, and a square brick building with an upper story stands south of the causeway, with figures of ascetics carved in its brick and stucco figures in its niches.[1][2] Hello Angkor notes that it is the only building in the courtyard that is fully standing.[2]
The inner enclosure wall, 58 by 56 meters (190 by 184 feet), is of brick, like its two entrance pavilions, whose lintels show the god Vishnu riding Garuda.[1] Inside, a molded sandstone base carries all six towers. Three stairways climb it on the east, their side walls carved with door guardians (dvarapalas) and female deities (devatas) and set with seated lions; a reclining Nandin lies in front of each. A single stairway rises on the west.[1][2]
The brick towers stand in two rows of three and all open to the east. In the front row, the middle tower is the largest and stands slightly back; the rear towers are smaller.[1] The northwest tower sits out of line with the tower in front of it. Glaize saw no reason for this.[1] Hello Angkor relates it to the dedications.[2] On entry through the last gopura, the northwest tower, for the king's grandmother, appears in the space between the central tower, for Jayavarman II, and the northeast tower, for his grandfather.[2] The other rear towers stay hidden.[2] The front towers have rooms of 3.4 meters (11 feet) across, 3.7 meters (12 feet) in the main tower, and were reserved for male gods; the rear towers, 2.5 meters (8 feet) inside, were for goddesses.[1]
Decoration
The towers were covered in stucco, a sculpted lime plaster, which was once painted.[1][4] Glaize wrote in 1944 that it survived in places, above all on the northeast tower, after eleven centuries.[1] The doorways are framed in sandstone, with octagonal colonnettes (small decorative columns) that Glaize ranked above all others in Khmer art. The frames are made of four pieces joined at mitered corners, as in woodwork.[1] Sandstone door guardians stand in arched niches at the corners of the front towers. On the rear towers, sandstone devatas on the corner piers take their place, and the door frames are also of sandstone. The rest of the decoration there, colonnettes and lintels included, is modeled in stucco over the brick.[1]
Lintels of the Preah Ko style are tall, topped with a small frieze, and crowded with small figures.[5] At Preah Ko, those over the doors of the three towers show small riders and figures mounted on nagas, serpent beings of Khmer art.[1] The lions of the style sit resolutely and are notably squat.[5] Sculptures from the 9th century to the Bayon period were found during conservation work.[1] Of these, a Shiva in the southeast tower and a headless goddess in the rear central tower, both from the time of the temple, were left in place.[1]
Conservation
Hello Angkor writes that the German government paid for a restoration of the towers in the early 1990s.[2] The German Apsara Conservation Project is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and the Technical University of Cologne.[7] It began work at the Roluos temples in 1999, above all at Preah Ko, where it checks the condition of the stucco at intervals.[7] The project's authors name Preah Ko and Angkor Wat as its main sites.[7] Work on the temple's other decorations began in 2023,[7] and Hello Angkor dates a new round of restoration and preservation to early 2024.[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 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 1.18 1.19 1.20 1.21 1.22 1.23 1.24 1.25 1.26 1.27 1.28 The Angkor Guide, Maurice Glaize, Roluos: Prah Ko, from The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation)
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 2.18 2.19 Hello Angkor, Rodney Charles L'Huillier, Preah Ko Temple: Highlights and History (updated January 1, 2026)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 Radio Free Asia Khmer, Chun Chanboth, Kings of the Angkor period, part 10 of a history series (April 2, 2014; in Khmer)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 Proceedings of the British Academy, Charles F. W. Higham, The Origins of the Civilisation of Angkor (2003)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Angkor Database, Maurice Glaize, The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation of the fourth French edition)
- ↑ arXiv, Giulio Magli, Archaeoastronomy in the Khmer Heartland (2016)
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 The Royal Society for Asian Affairs, Hans Leisen and Esther von Plehwe-Leisen, The German Apsara Conservation Project (GACP) at Angkor Wat: A Report (undated)