Cambodia after Angkor

NEW COLLECTION of ESSAYS by Dr Uday Dokras

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I-The Fortress City of Vimayapura page 5
CHAPTER II-STAIRS of HINDU Temples in Bharat(India) Cambodia and Indonesia
With 100 photographs . Many originals by the author Dr Uday Dokras page 29

CHAPTER III-VESARA TEMPLE DESIGN-Synthesis of 2 art forms page 99
CHAPTER IV Mountain temples of Khajuraho  page 109
CHAPTER V Khajuraho Group of Temples page 124
CHAPTER VI Chitragupta Temple
CHAPTER VII -Connection between the Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singhji & Napoleon Bonaparte  page 160

Il grande parco di Angkor, collocato nel cuore della
foresta cambogiana, con la sua estensione di
oltre 200 kmq, è probabilmente la più grande area archeologica
al mondo. Attualmente molti progetti internazionali
si occupano del restauro e della conservazione dei suoi affascinanti
templi. La storia dei moderni
restauri è relativamente recente e
risale per lo più ai primi decenni del
secolo scorso.

11 new Technical papers on Angkor
CONTENTS page 3
PART I-INTRODUCTION page 4
CHAPTER I-Memories of the Past-The Wonders of Angkor Wat page 5
CHAPTER II Myths and Legends of Angkor page 18
CHAPTER III Anachak Khmer or Khemer Empire page  42
PART III-Technical and Quasi- tech papers 48
Chapter III Dashavatara  दशावतार page  49
CHAPTER IV 1000 Shivlingas India and Cambodia-( Khal  Spean) page 85
CHAPTER  V CHAPTER VI- Samudra manthan समुद्र मंथनAngkor Wat's marvelous bas relief - The churning of the ocean of milk page 92

Chapter VI -Banthey Srei- Citadel of Women and gender roles in Cambodia Page 115

CHAPTER VIII Rama, warrior king & devaraja ?The divine incarnation  as an Inspiration to SE Asian Monarchs page 149

CHAPTER IX SADASHIVA page170
CHAPTER X-A Shivling Established by Lord Kartikeya Himself tht emerges and submerges each day page  183
CHAPTER XI Architectural knowledge of the Pataliputra capital page 203
ABOUT THE AUTHORS page 218

Collection of LATEST Papers of the author DR UDAY DOKRAS
Chapter Pujas at Angkor1 Page 7
Chapterv2 Monumental Gates of AngkorbPage 33
Chapter 3 ANGKOR WAT in Collective Memorialization page 43
Chapter 4-Hindu Cities & Cosmological Design page 55
Chapter 5-The Art & Architecture of the Vijaynagar Empire page 93
CHAPTER 6-THE CONCEPT of a LOST CONTINENT-Featuring Atlanti

The Historical Background of Angkor Wat* "The kings of the Khmer empire ruled over a vast domain that reached from what is now southern Vietnam to Yunan, China and from Vietnam westward to the Bay of Bengal. The structures one sees at Angkor today, more than 100 temples in all, are the surviving religious remains of a grand social and administrative metropolis whose other buildings-palaces, public buildings, and houses-were all built of wood and are long since decayed and gone. As in most parts of India, where wood was plentiful, only the gods had the right to live in houses of stone or brick; the sovereigns and the common folk lived in pavilions and houses of wood.

La mayoría de especialistas en historia de Camboya (Chandler, Vickery, Coedes, etc.) han reconocido que a partir del siglo XVI la documentación “europea” constituye una importante fuente para estudiar el desarrollo histórico de Camboya post Angkor. Mickel Vickery en su obra dice lo siguiente al respecto:  “Las más detalladas fuentes externas (para la historia de Camboya) son los escritos europeos, que comenzaron en el siglo XVI y se fueron haciendo más voluminosos con el paso del tiempo” The most detailed external sources are the writings of Europeans, which began in the sixteenth century and become most voluminous at its very end.” .  Sin embargo, cuando revisamos sus fuentes pocos muy pocos han visto o estudiado estas fuentes, y los que lo han hecho se basan sólo en una o dos obras traducidas al inglés.    Esta situación nos llevó a preguntarnos ¿que documentación realmente existe en Europa sobre Camboya durante este periodo?.

In Cambodia, in the classic Khmer architecture of the Angkorean period, we find a temple type in which the sanctuary is built atop a stepped pyramid. Nineteenth century archaeologists called these “temple- mountains.” Each important sovereign was apparently obliged to build one in order to establish his power. Baphuon is one such temple at Angkor, Cambodia. It is located in Angkor Thom, northwest of the Bayon.


Built in the mid-11th century, it is a three-tiered temple mountain built as the state temple of Udayadityavarman II dedicated to the Hindu God Shiva. It is the archetype of the Baphuon style with intricate carvings covering every available surface. The temple adjoins the southern enclosure of the royal palace and measures 120 metres east-west by 100 metres north-south at its base and stands 34 meters tall without its tower, which would have made it roughly 50 meters tall. Its appearance apparently impressed Temür Khan's late 13th century envoy Zhou Daguan during his visit from 1296 to 1297, who said it was 'the Tower of Bronze...a truly astonishing spectacle, with more than ten chambers at its base.

ANGKOR is an important CLUE to the Ancient Civilization of Cambodia
With a lack of archeological evidences, the Angkor ia an anchor to getting knowledge about ancient Cambodia.

One of the reasons why so much of the Khmer empire remained un-discovered until the use of LiDAR was in part due to the forest covering much of the former cities. In the next chapter, the effect of nature of the Angkor Wat will be discussed.

""""“Living in the shadow of Angkor”: Responses and strategies of upland social groups to polity demise in the late-to post-Angkor period
Dr. Nancy Beavan ( Principle Investigator; University of Otago NZ)
Dr. BM Buckley (Associate Investigator, Columbia University, USA)
Dr. Alison K Carter (Associate Investigator, University of Wisconsin USA)
Dr. WD Hamilton (Associate Investigator, Scottish Universities Environmental Research Center, UK)
Mr. Tep Sokha (Research Assistant, Royal University of Fine Arts, Cambodia)

Factors influencing the decline of civilizations may differentially affect communities on the margins of a collapsing society. How these groups fare during societal decline is central to key archaeological questions concerning population response and societal re-emergence. Archaeological research on the Late Angkorian era maintains a lowland-centric focus, mainly due to previous lack of evidence for highland groups' biological, economic and cultural responses to state collapse. However, by the late 14th century AD and the decline of the great kingdom of Angkor, some ethnic minorities had socially and geographically distanced themselves in the Cardamom Mountains of southern Cambodia. Their existence is known only from burial sites that are unique relative to rituals recorded in Khmer history: re-burial of human bone in log coffins and exotic ceramics, on exposed rock ledges. The sites hold previously untapped information on demographics, health, environmental conditions, and trade relationships, which are essential for answering archaeological questions about responses of marginal cultures in an era of political, environmental, and economic change. Using novel integrations of methods to examine the archaeological information from different perspectives, we will develop the first-ever characterization of a highland culture’s lifeways and how they fared in the Late Angkorian era.
Email nancy.beavan@otago.ac.nz""""

The temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia is one of the most famous monuments in the world and is noted for its spectacular bas-relief friezes depicting ceremonial and religious scenes. Recent work reported here has identified an entirely new series of images consisting of paintings of boats, animals, deities and buildings. Difficult to see with the naked eye, these can be enhanced by digital photography and decorrelation stretch analysis, a technique recently used with great success in rock art studies. The paintings found at Angkor Wat seem to belong to a specific phase of the temple's history in the sixteenth century AD when it was converted from a Vishnavaite Hindu use to Theravada Buddhist. http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/088/ant0880549.htm

The temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia is one of the most famous monuments in the world and is noted for its spectacular bas-relief friezes depicting ceremonial and religious scenes. Recent work reported here has identified an entirely new series of images consisting of paintings of boats, animals, deities and buildings. Difficult to see with the naked eye, these can be enhanced by digital photography and decorrelation stretch analysis, a technique recently used with great success in rock art studies. The paintings found at Angkor Wat seem to belong to a specific phase of the temple's history in the sixteenth century AD when it was converted from a Vishnavaite Hindu use to Theravada Buddhist.