Heritage site
Preah Palilay
ប្រាសាទព្រះបាលិលេយ្យ
Preah Palilay (ប្រាសាទព្រះបាលិលេយ្យ) is a Buddhist temple in Angkor Thom, northwest of Tep Pranam.[1][2] It lies a short walk from Tep Pranam and the Terrace of the Leper King.[2] Its sandstone sanctuary is dated to the first half of the 12th century,[1] and its entrance pavilion carries carved scenes from the life of the Buddha.[1][2]
Location
Preah Palilay belongs to the group of monuments on the west side of the royal square of Angkor Thom. The group also takes in the Baphuon, the Terrace of the Elephants, Tep Pranam, the Terrace of the Leper King and the royal palace with its temple, the Phimeanakas.[1] A path leads northwest from behind Tep Pranam for 150 meters (490 feet) to a small terrace in front of the temple. Tall silk-cotton trees surround the site.[1] From a gap in the south side of the temple's enclosure wall, a walk of about 200 meters (660 feet) through the forest leads toward the royal palace.[1]
Long Ton, writing in Cambodianess, listed the Preah Palilay temple among the sanctuaries of Angkor Thom other than the larger Bayon and Baphuon, and wrote that they suit visitors who seek peace and quiet.[3]
Name
Preah Palilay is the temple's present-day name and means the sacred forest of Palilay.[2] Its original name is not known.[2] Maurice Glaize, in his guide to the Angkor monuments, suggested that the name may come from Parileyyaka, the forest where the Buddha withdrew to live alone after leaving Kosambi. A pediment of the temple shows the animals of that forest bringing offerings.[1] Hello Angkor also gives this forest, where elephants served the Buddha, as a possible origin of the name, citing Nhim Sotheavin.[2]
Architecture
Terrace and Buddha image
At the east entrance lies a cruciform terrace about 30 meters (98 feet) long.[1][2] Glaize gave its upper level a width of 8.5 meters (28 feet).[1] Its balustrades are formed by seven-headed nagas, mythical serpents.[1][2] Glaize admired the clean line of their broad crests, carved without excess weight. He wrote that their crests of flaming locks follow the form seen at Angkor Wat, in the first half of the 12th century. He compared the naga balustrades of Preah Pithu and Banteay Samre with these.[1]
Guardian figures (dvarapalas) and lions stood at the entrance of the terrace.[1][2] As of 2026, remains of them can be seen there.[2] Glaize counted two guardians and two crouching lions on its east side. By his time the guardians had lost their heads, and only one lion remained.[1] A paved walk of 33 meters (108 feet) leads from the terrace to the entrance pavilion. Sandstone blocks carved with hamsas, sacred geese, once lined it, like those on the Terrace of the Elephants.[1]
A large Buddha image of a late period has been set up in front of the temple. It is three meters (9.8 feet) tall with its base and sits on a lotus in the gesture of calling the earth to witness.[1] Its ushnisha, the rise on the crown of the Buddha's head, ends in a flame, as on the Buddha of Tep Pranam. Its head was missing for a long time until 1934, when it was found caught in the roots of a tree.[1] Hello Angkor places the image in the style of the late or post-Angkorian era, from the 14th or 15th century on.[2]
Enclosure and entrance pavilion
A square laterite wall, 50 meters (164 feet) on each side, encloses the temple.[1] It has a single entrance pavilion, or gopura,[1][2] on its east side.[1] The gopura is cruciform, with three passageways.[1][2] Glaize found it slender in proportion. At its center stands a square tower of one story, roofed by a rounded vault that ends in double gables.[1]
Sanctuary
The sandstone sanctuary has a chamber five meters (16 feet) square that opens on all four sides, each through a vestibule.[1] The building rests on a base above a three-tiered plinth, with a stairway on each side.[1][2] The plinth is six meters (20 feet) high in all, and its stairways have landings partway up.[1] Glaize placed the decoration of the tiers close to the style of Angkor Wat, in the first half of the 12th century.[1]
Above the chamber stands a high pyramid with a flat top, which Glaize likened to a rough-faced chimney. Its fill is of reused blocks, and he held that it was certainly an addition. In his view, its only possible role was as a frame for a light covering, like the face towers of the Bayon.[1] Hello Angkor also likens the upper part to a chimney.[2] Some have compared it with the central part of the Bayon and suggested that the temple may have carried a face tower.[2] Hello Angkor called this speculation and judged it unlikely, since the upper section is built of reused masonry.[2] Many of those blocks carry carvings like those on the remains on the north side of the Terrace of the Leper King.[2]
Hardwood beams once backed the lintels and carried the stonework above the doors. After they rotted away, reinforced concrete supports took their place above the doors on the north and west.[1] In the western doorway, a large Buddha image of a later period, of some merit in Glaize's view, rests at an angle. The torso of a standing Buddha lies close by.[1]
The French archaeologist Henri Marchal found a Buddha image in the central chamber.[2] Hello Angkor wrote that it was badly worn and probably more than two meters (6.6 feet) tall.[2] It sat in the earth-touching posture and retained black and red lacquer and gold gilding.[2] As of 2026, its remains lie among the rubble inside the temple.[2] Matching grooves led Marchal to judge that the central chamber probably had wooden doors.[2]
Carvings
The pediments of the entrance pavilion carry Buddhist scenes. Glaize found it remarkable that they had escaped defacement by iconoclasts.[1]
On the east side of the north wing, the animals of the forest, among them elephants, monkeys and peacocks, bring offerings.[1] Hello Angkor identifies this east-facing pediment as a scene of the Parileyyaka forest.[2] To the west, a seated Buddha receives the offerings of Sujata.[1] Hello Angkor also lists Sujata's gift of rice milk to the future Buddha among the pediment scenes.[2] The gable end shows the calming of the furious elephant Nalagiri.[1] Hello Angkor also lists this scene, as the subjugation of Nalagiri, among the pediments.[2]
Some carved pieces from the pediments were taken to the Bayon storeroom for safekeeping. Others were placed around the monument, some with Buddhist scenes and others with Brahmanic, that is Hindu, gods.[1] Two of them stand inside the enclosure, one on each side of the gopura. In one, the god Indra rides a three-headed elephant. The other shows Mara and his army of demons attacking the Buddha, whose figure has not been found.[1] Glaize wrote that such a blend of Buddhist and Hindu images is not unusual among the Khmer.[1]
Hello Angkor lists lintels showing Brahma on a three-headed hamsa, a standing Buddha on a pedestal between worshippers, and Indra on his three-headed elephant.[2] As of 2026, carved fragments lie scattered inside the enclosure, and some decoration survives on the pilasters.[2]
History
Hello Angkor wrote that the mix of Hindu and Buddhist elements, and the lack of a foundation stele or inscriptions, make the temple somewhat difficult to date.[2] It lists one inscription from the site, K. 546, in Khmer script, with its date given only as "?".[2]
Glaize dated the sanctuary to the first half of the 12th century and the gopura to the late 12th or early 13th century.[1] Hello Angkor wrote that Marchal suggested the first half of the 12th century for the sanctuary, on the evidence of its decoration, and apparently placed the gopura in the late 13th century.[2] Vittorio Roveda has suggested that the temple's Buddha images are in a Theravada style of the 13th to 14th century.[2] Some writers ascribe the temple to the reign of Jayavarman VIII.[2] Hello Angkor questioned this, since it would be hard to explain how the Buddhist images survived the removal of Buddhist imagery in that period.[2]
Glaize suspected that the Buddhist images may have escaped destruction under the Hindu successors of Jayavarman VII because of the nearby Tep Pranam monastery, the Saugatasrama. He thought the temple perhaps depended on that monastery, whose official standing beside the royal palace could have given the images some protection.[1]
The temple appears in the inventories of Aymonier, of 1904, and Lunet de Lajonquière, of 1911.[2] The 1926 list of historic monuments (Liste des Monuments Historiques) entered it as a sandstone sanctuary with annexes.[2] Marchal cleared the site in 1918 and 1919.[1][2] He published a study of the temple in the Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient in 1922.[2]
Before its restoration in 1937, little remained of the entrance pavilion but a precarious, unstable structure, the result of problems Glaize found usual in buildings of the Bayon style.[1] Glaize rebuilt it in 1937 and 1938 by anastylosis.[1][2] In this method, a monument is rebuilt with its own materials and by its own methods of construction.[1]
In 2013, Martin Polkinghorne, Christophe Pottier and Christian Fischer listed a carved head from Preah Palilay, known from a photograph in the archives of the École française d'Extrême-Orient. They counted it among more than forty sculptures at Angkor that they identified as early Ayutthayan in style.[4]
State
Glaize found the east terrace remarkably well preserved.[1] As of 2026, Hello Angkor calls it beautiful but ruined.[2] Glaize found the tiers and vestibules of the sanctuary badly ruined.[1] As of 2026, two trees have grown over the stairway on the temple's south side.[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 1.29 1.30 1.31 1.32 1.33 1.34 1.35 1.36 1.37 1.38 1.39 1.40 1.41 1.42 Angkor Database, Maurice Glaize, The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation of the fourth French edition)
- ↑ 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 2.20 2.21 2.22 2.23 2.24 2.25 2.26 2.27 2.28 2.29 2.30 2.31 2.32 2.33 2.34 2.35 2.36 2.37 2.38 2.39 2.40 Hello Angkor, Rodney Charles L'Huillier, Preah Palilay Temple (updated January 6, 2026)
- ↑ Cambodianess, Long Ton, Angkor Thom: the Khmer Empire's Enclosed and Complex 12th Century City (April 2, 2022)
- ↑ Angkor Database, Martin Polkinghorne, Christophe Pottier and Christian Fischer, One Buddha Can Hide Another, Journal Asiatique 301.2 (2013)