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Tuesday, December 20, 2011

BAPHOUN TEMPLE

Prasat Baphoun is the vast temple-mountain near the centre of Angkor Thom. It located 200m northwest of the Bayon temple and south of the Phimeanakas temple, built in middle 11th century (1060) by King Udayadityavaman II (1050-1066), the temple was dedicated to Shiva God of Hindu religious. By history, at that time the Baphoun temple was built, there was no Angkor Thom yet, and its construction was the largest of its time, surpassed only when Angkor Wat was built a century later and Angkor Thom was also built much later, with the Bayon temple added in around then. The Baphoun temple is a pyramidal representation of mythical Mount Meru. The temple’s main entrance is on the east, which is approached by a 200m elevated walkway made of sandstone, it was supported by three rows short, round columns forming as a bridge to the main temple, the fantastic construction differed from others temple.
The central structure is 43m high with three levels, a central prasat, or tower shrine, one crowned the top of the temple, but it has collapsed long time ago on the rectangular sandstone base of five diminishing tiers, rather like a step pyramid. At that time Baphoun temple was in a poor conduction to begin with, when the project restoration started (about in 1962) it was almost entirely in ruins, and the restoration project is also called “the world‘s biggest jigsaw puzzle”, which was restored from EFEO (Ecole Francaise d’extreme Orient). The project was taking so long time, by factoring in the sheer difficulty of the task and the Cambodia civil war. For example, the team from EFEO had to piece together 300,000 pieces of this monument jigsaw puzzle.

After more than 50 year of restoration, with 9 million pounds was spending on this project, Baphoun temple is now finally re-opened to visitors. The temple was re-opened on July 3rd, 2011 by the Cambodia King Norodom Sihamoni and the French Prime minister Francois Fillon.
Beside of extraordinary feature of Baphoun temple construction, it was also attracted with the bas-relief’s which depict the scenes carved in small squares. The narrative themes are realistic depiction of daily life and the forest scenes. At this site there are more things that make visitor astonishing, with the great view of natural surroundings, the lush grass, the shade of highly trees, and the shallow with clear watering.
There is a large pond on the left side of temple, which local believe that it’s the sacred place, with the holy watering since the ancient time. However, it was also abandoned since long time as the temple was ruined, so there have no many people know about it holy water on this great pond. The guide at the temple said that in ancient time, The Baphoun was called The Tower of Bronze; it was the massive temple-mountain, which was very sacred. The watering pond was used for the God and divinity as the holiness, and then regular people take it in belief of healthy, lucky and happiness.
For many times that I has been in Angkor area, but my first time visited the Baphoun temple at the day re-opened, it like the astonishing in my feeling, with the wonderful view of construction, the great captures stone, the carving’s base relief’s, the massive of concrete rectangular stone remain by centuries.
A big thanks to the EFEO team and French government who helped Cambodia people restored the wonderful temple of Baphoun. If you are in Angkor area, Baphoun is waiting for your visit with the warm welcome heart.

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