Indian Architecture (Buddhist and Hindu Periods) c43.38

c43.38

Yet all that is visible of Yasovarman's capital of Cambodia of the ninth century at the present day is an immense area of mounds and plantations, under the surface of which lie the remains of this once great city. Such complete obliteration leaves no material record of the architectural style that comprised this civic scheme, but fortunately several detached buildings, away from the site of the capital, provide sufficient evidence to enable this to be visualized Among these are the temples of Mébon, Pré Rup, and Banteay Srei, the last named, although small, is in many respects a typical example of its kind. Known to have been erected in A.D. 969, during the reign of Jayavarman V (965-1002), when the empire was beginning to become conscious of its power and domination, the temple of Banteay Srei, situated fifteen miles from Angkor, represents in every one of its sculptural stones that effort to obtain supreme richness in architectural design which is not infrequently indulged in by handicraftsmen and encouraged by their patrons in the orient As elaborate in its plan as in its plastic decoration, this temple suggests a stage in the evolution of the building art when this calling was largely in the hands of sculptors rather than in those of masons, although even if this should be the case, as a miniature replica of a larger original built in the grand manner it implies definite architectural knowledge and structural experience. If the buildings buried under the mounds and swamps marking the destroyed capital were of the same order, then this phase of the architectural development in Cambodia must have been rich in the extreme. The temple of Banteay Srei formerly named Isvarapura, consists of an assembly of several buildings comprising three shrines or sanctuaries with two other structures presumed to have been libraries or rooms for vestments, the principal external feature of the scheme as a whole being the grouping of its three towers and their architectural treatment. These towers or sikharas, show an originality in their design and a marked play of imagination in the shape of the curved arches over the doors and alcoves, elements repeated on the face of each story, the entire conception being so freshly ingenious as to bear but little relation to the sikharas of temples in any part of India (Plate CLIX).