Heritage site
Terrace of the Leper King
The Terrace of the Leper King is a carved stone terrace in Angkor Thom, built under King Jayavarman VII in the late 12th century.[1] It stands just north of the Terrace of the Elephants, in line with it but separate, and takes its name from the statue that sits on top of it.[1]
History
Maurice Glaize, in his 1944 guide to the Angkor monuments, dated the terrace to the late 12th century and the reign of Jayavarman VII.[1] Philippe Stern judged its style the last phase of the Bayon style, when figures crowd together and their dress grows heavy with ornament. Peter Sharrock, writing in 2009, placed related sculptures behind the terrace in the reign of Indravarman II for that reason.[2]
Glaize thought the terrace had once been one part of a larger composition, perhaps with pools, later altered.[1] George Coedès read its stacked rows of mythical figures as an image of Mount Meru, the mountain at the center of the world. Because it lies north of the Royal Palace, in the place kept in Phnom Penh and Bangkok for royal cremations, he suggested that the terrace served as a permanent royal cremation ground.[1]
The terrace
The terrace is a mound of masonry about 25 meters (82 feet) across and 6 meters (20 feet) high, with stepped, projecting sides faced in sandstone.[1] Its walls are covered with figures in high relief, set in seven rows, the top row almost entirely lost.[1] Clearing revealed a second carved wall 2 meters (6.6 feet) behind the outer face and parallel to it, with reliefs of the same design; the space between the two walls had been packed with laterite. Some of its carvings were left unfinished. Glaize took this as a change of plan during building, or as a symbol of the buried underworld of the cosmic mountain.[1]
The reliefs show rows of seated figures: nagas (serpents), garudas, kumbhandas and other beings of the slopes of Mount Meru, giants with many arms, bearers of swords and clubs, and bare-breasted women whose headdresses of flaming discs belong to the Bayon style.[1] The north side has kept its carving most fully. On its return along the road, scenes of palace life include a sword swallower and attendants with their hair in a knot to one side.[1] In the inner corridor, entered from the south, the same figures stand above a lower band of fish, elephants and a river, joined by celestial dancers (apsara). Long protected, these carvings are in very good condition.[1]
The statue
The "Leper King" sits with his right knee raised, among three smaller headless figures, each with a club over the right shoulder.[1] The figure is entirely naked, which Glaize called unique in Khmer art, and shows no sign of leprosy apart from patches of lichen; its fame comes from stories more than from its carving.[1] Some have taken it for Shiva as an ascetic. A short 15th-century inscription on its base suggests it may be a Dharmaraja, a name given both to Yama, god of the dead, and to one of his assessors, the judge of good and bad deeds.[1] Coedès saw a demon's nature in its thick coiled hair and the two fangs at the corners of its mouth.[1]
After an attempt to steal the statue's head, it was replaced with a copy, whose head was then stolen. The original is in the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh.[1]
Restoration
De Mecquenem cleared the terrace in 1911, and Henri Marchal in 1917.[1] The École française d'Extrême-Orient restored it from 1993 to 1996,[3] or in 1995,[1] and its work there refined the dating of the monument.[3] From 2011 to 2012 an international project funded by the Australian Research Council studied the remains of a sculpture workshop in the area behind the terrace.[3]
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 Angkor Database, Maurice Glaize, The Monuments of the Angkor Group (1944; English translation of the fourth French edition)
- ↑ Angkor Database, Peter D. Sharrock, Garuda, Vajrapani and Religious Change in Jayavarman VII's Angkor, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40(1) (February 2009)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 ICC-Angkor, 20 Years of International Cooperation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (January 2014)