Thai Roads to Ancient Khmer

“Everyone in our village speaks Khmer,” said Michael, a Canadian ex-pat who I had just met in a small sidewalk cafe. “Some can speak a bit of Thai, but not much. They even dress Khmer.” At this I was genuinely surprised. For our meeting was in Thailand, the café in Surin, a small provincial city in the country's north-east district of Isan. The village Michael lives in is just a little out of town.

Come to think of it, my new companion's revelation should hardly have surprised. I had been traveling in Isan for several days. My object: to discover the most ancient and important temple ruins in the district. And these are all Khmer.

Isan Village Dancers

Accompanied by a local guide, I would visit four such sites, all of which pre-date Angkor Wat. And not only pre-date it, but inspired that wondrous masterpiece as well. They continue to inspire.

Isan's southern boundary is defined by the Dongrek mountain range. It runs east-west, forming a natural frontier between this part of Thailand and Cambodia . From the Thai side the mountains loom only as a set of modest hills. But from the lowlands of Cambodia they soar dramatically and shear, nigh impossible to cross. The Dongreks notwithstanding, the Khmer Empire spilled irresistibly north through the 8th and 9th centuries AD, swallowing all before it as it spread. The principalities it established flourished, gaining semi independence from their founder. They provided material and military support for the Empire as required, plus three of its greatest kings - Jayavarman VI, Jayavarman VII and Suryavarman II.

What's left of them now are mainly temple ruins. There are hundreds of them. With one exception, the principle ones are considerable distances apart, requiring drives for the modern day visitor of up to three hours at a time. The roads though are good, and Isan's Khorat Plateau is famously flat. You also get to see a lot of local life along the way: farm life mainly, exotic little markets and intriguing rural villages that seem, like their inhabitants, to be disinclined to ever change.

But there has been at least one fundamental change. This is in religious beliefs. Now essentially Buddhist, the people of these districts once worshipped Hindu deities, notably Vishnu and Shiva. They also knew the Buddha, to whom the famous Wat Phimai was dedicated. And as always they paid homage to their animistic spirits, as they continue to today.

Evidence of Hindu worship is no better seen than on the first great ruin that I visited. This was Preah Vihear. An axial temple, it sprawls for nearly one kilometre up the slopes of a south-projecting spur in the central Dongrek Mountains, culminating mightily at its overhanging edge. The temple's only access is in Thailand, to which country you would expect it to belong. But in fact it's in Cambodia, as dictated by the International Court of Justice in 1968.

Preah Vihear - Still Cambodian

Built in stages from the 9th century to the 12th, Preah Vihear is one of those eerie lonely ancient monuments that might somehow be conjured up in fiction. It is now disentangled from the jungle, but its setting is still wild. You are somehow not surprised to see a wrecked Russian military helicopter lying adjacent to the first of the temple's wrecked pavilions. No more such unworthies, you'd imagine, would ever dare intrude.

The Stairway at Preah Viharn

Preah Vihear presents the visitor with something of a physical challenge. Its five cruciform entrance pavilions (gopuras) are linked by long upward stepping causeways and steep crumbled stairways. The first causeway stretches 78 metres. There to greet you at its top are two massive 7 headed naga snakes, whose unlikely function is to speed a soul to paradise. They immediately do. For paradise at Preah Vihear is represented by its art. The best of this is encased in the pediments and lintels, which are fantastically preserved. The themes, of course, are Hindu: Vishnu reclining, the ten-armed Shiva dancing, and Shiva with his consort riding Nandin. Another classic is the Churning of the Sea of Milk . There is something almost comic about its stylised treatment here, with Mount Mandara represented by a post, and the great sea by a humble kitchen pot!

The temple's central tower has collapsed. Left standing are the galleries that surround it, and the central sanctuary (mandapa) to which the tower was attached. It is an incongruous feeling to enter this tiny corbel-roofed sanctum of the Hindu deities, and do as modern day pilgrims do: pay homage to the Buddha. A small door in the gallery leads out to the escarpment. Here you gaze across the jungle swathed cliff face - a five hundred metre drop - to the mist-enshrouded plains of Cambodia below.

The Buddha Shrine

Phnom Rung lies some 190 km due west of Preah Vihear, with whom it has some elements in common. It too crowns a lofty hill - an extinct volcano. And it too is approached via a long steep causeway and by crumbled sets of steps. These plus a series of naga-sided bridges (false bridges actually) and broad cruciform platforms lead to a gopura and the central sanctuary. The site is surprisingly complete, having undergone thorough restoration through the 1970's and 80's.

The temple's most captivating art work graces the antechamber (mandapa) of the central sanctuary. The large pediment depicts the 10-armed Shiva Nantaraj in princely dancing mode, suitably admired by his elephant-headed son, Ganesh, and two female attendants. The lintel below has something of a history. It was “procured” by the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1960's, and only reluctantly returned in 1988. The piece is well deserving of the publicity it achieved. In it Vishnu is seen in all his noble splendour, reclining on the ubiquitous naga and surrounded by a bewildering yet improbably harmonious swirl of Hindu denizens, monkeys and parrots in their midst.

Phnom Rung

Phnom Rung's semi pyramidal central tower (prasat) is definitively Khmer. It rises in five gently inward sloping tiers, each a diminished replica of the one that came before. There is barely any surface that's not elegantly rendered or carved. The pink sandstone lends a softness which enhances the whole sanctuary's aesthetic appeal.

Neither Phnom Rung or Preah Vihear supported local village life. Their difficult locations saw to that. One temple that did so was Muang Tam. It stands amidst rice fields in the lowlands at the foot of Phnom Rung. It is a true community shrine. The village that attends it now is relatively new. But there was one in ancient times as well. Typically Khmer, the temple is laid out as a microcosm of the Hindu cosmic universe. The central tower (now collapsed) represents Mount Meru , the moat and ponds the oceans, the outer buildings the continents. Though built in the late 9th and early 10th centuries, Muang Tam's lintel artwork loses little in comparison to that of its more recent and more highly vaunted sister shrine atop the hill.

Phimai

Isan's most celebrated Khmer temple is Phimai. This for good reason. Its lofty tiered tower surpasses even that of Phnom Rung, both in height and architectural perfection. But what mainly sets it apart are the blissfully accessible leafy grounds in which it stands. For Phimai like Muang Tam is a community shrine, a much larger one and better preserved. The bustling town that surrounds it was doubtless no less bustling (though quieter) a thousand years ago. There are no steep climbs to challenge patrons here, no restricted views. This is a place you can savour at your leisure, exploring every “continent”, perusing every “ocean”, standing always in awe of lofty “Meru” as you do. The effect can be quite thrilling.

Though typically Hindu in its layout, Phimai is devoted to Buddha. This is reflected in its statuary (the originals of which are now held in museums) and its most important art. The Mahayana Buddhism here pre-dates that which Jayavarman VII brought to Angkor in 1181. But Phimai's version is much more arcane. Known as “Tantric Buddhism”, it is intrinsically mixed with ancient Hindu magic and animistic ghosts. Its representative art is mostly confined to the inner sanctuary (the exterior retains the Hindu iconology), where the divine one is depicted in typical meditative postures surmounting with his wisdom all manner of temptation and rude demonic threat.

You leave Phimai feeling you could almost do the same. Doubtless that's the way it's meant to be.

The Khmer temples of Isan were abandoned around the same time as was Angkor - in 1431. But like Angkor they survived. They did so in the captive hands of nature - that most capricious of custodians - that had one will to enshroud and another to entangle and destroy. True romantics might begrudge their long denied release. Others, a fraction more mundane, embrace it with delight. Having seen these ancient wonders for myself - splendidly replenished as they are - I think I have to count myself among the more mundane.