Rihla (The Journey) – was the short title of a 14th Century (1355 CE) book
written in Fez by the Islamic legal scholar Ibn Jazayy al-Kalbi of Granada who
recorded and then transcribed the dictated travelogue of the Tangerian, Ibn
Battuta. The book’s full title was A Gift
to Those who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling
and somehow the title of Ibn Jazayy's book captures the ethos of many of the city
and country journeys I have been lucky to take in past years.
This rihla is about Angkor, Cambodia.
"O
Kings …I implore you, you who are anxious to protect my foundation…protect it
against evil forces…protect each portion of the sacred material, even the
smallest one, made of wood or stone, against looters, people committing
sacrilidges and other scoundrels.”
Royal
Edict of Khmer King Jayavarman VII (1125-1218 CE),
Ta
Prohm Temple Foundation Stele Inscription,
Angkor,
Cambodia
I
thought of these verses, of this posthumous request of one King to his
successors to look after his legacy, on reading the Judgement handed down by the International Court of Justice on the
11 November 2013 in Cambodia v. Thailand
concerning a Request for Interpretation of the Judgement of 15 June 1962 in the
Case Concerning the Temple of Preah
Vihear.
The
Temple of Preah Vihear sits high on an outcrop of the Dangrek escarpment and
right on the border of Thailand and Cambodia, a border defined by 11 maps drawn
up in 1907 by four French Officers following the 1904 Treaty between Siam
(Thailand) and Indo-China (Incorporating Cambodia). The border on the Dangrek
–Commission of Delimitation between Indo-China and Siam map showed it to pass
north of the Temple leaving the Temple in Cambodia.
Following Cambodian independence on 9th November 1953 (almost 60 years to the day before
the recent judgement!) Thailand occupied the Temple prompting Cambodia to
appeal to the ICJ. In a Judgement handed down on the 15 June 1962 the ICJ
confirmed the Temple to be in Cambodia and obliged Thailand to remove its
occupying forces. Thailand complied but
only by a couple of metres and erected a barbed-wire fence surrounding the
site.
Cambodia
went back to the ICJ filing a request, on the 28 April 2011, for a essentially
what amounted to a ‘geographical’ Interpretation of the 1962 judgement as well
as seeking an immediate injunction on Thailand’s incursions into Cambodian
sovereign territory at the site. This Injunction was granted on the 18 July
2011 pending the full hearing of the case.
The
Court was fully pre-occupied with interpretation of what constituted
‘watersheds’, ‘vicinity’, ‘region’, ‘temple area’ and ‘territory’ but was
adamant that it was not dealing with the delimitation of the Thai-Cambodian
border as a whole but only that of a small area of sovereign territory. In a
fine line of reasoning, however, the Judgement then endorsed the territorial sovereignty of
Cambodia over the Preah Vihear temple complex by 'geographically' moving the disputed zone back north westwards along the
promontory to the foothills of a nearby hill, Phnom Trap, about 1 km beyond
Thailand’s barbed-wire fence (Accordingly,
the Court considers that the promontory of Preah Vihear ends at the foot of the
hill of Phnom Trap, that is to say where the ground begins to rise from the
valley –para.98).
In almost
identical words (800 years apart), to Jayavarman VII’s Royal Edict of the 12th
century quoted above, the Court reiterated (para 106) that ‘each State is under an obligation not to
“take any deliberate measures which might damage directly or indirectly” such
heritage.’
Whether
this happens or not remains to be seen!
The
Preah Vihear (Sacred Shrine) temple is located at the northern border of what
would have been the greatest extent of the Khmer Kingdom under King Jayavarman VII.
Originally constructed in the 9th Century it was dedicated to the
Hindu God Shiva, the Destroyer and God of the North and the Mountains. A little
later it became a centre of Brahminism under Suryavarman II (1113-1150) and
then converted to a Buddhist centre of worship, which it has remained.
The
impetus for the pre-eminence of Buddhism in Cambodia after its decline elsewhere
in the 7-10th centuries was the accession of Jayavarman VII to the
Khmer Kingdom in 1181. Jayavarman (Protégé of Victory) traced his Royal lineage
back through his mother to Asperas Mera founder of the Khmer race. With the
encouragement of his second wife Rajendradevi, a noted Buddhist teacher and
poet, Jayavarman replaced the state religion of Brahmanism with Mahayana
Buddhism, and in particular Bodhisattva ancestor worship, and thus laid the
foundation – despite a Hindu iconoclastic reaction by followers of Shiva in the
mid-13th century – for the later incorporation of peaceful Theravada
Buddhism from Sri Lanka as the predominant religious practice in Cambodia.
Jayavarman
was a prodigious builder of temples and public buildings (some 102 hospitals –
divided into large, medium and small with very defined staffing and management
rules – and over 121 rest lodges or dharmasalas on the main roads in his
kingdom.
I
had a chance to visit Angkor in April 2013. Humidity and time defeated my best
efforts to cover as much ground as possible, and I suspect like the stories of
the 1001 nights, you could return again and again and still not finish the
story. The entire World Heritage Site is one of the most visited in the world,
and deservedly so but the experience however would be so much better if it were
not for the ugly shanty-town of restaurants and kiosks that surround the
entrance and the lack of a properly designed, air-conditioned and funded
interpretative centre.
Angkor
provides an enormous cash-flow to the local and national economy, the majority
of which must be being siphoned off as there is little evidence of it being
ploughed back into infrastructure, to cope with the amount of visitors. That
said the former capital of the Khmer Kingdom is truly monumental in its scale
and artistry, although the Khmer sculptors were much more circumspect in their
depiction of Vedic sexual shenanigans than their rhapsodic Indian
counterparts.
After
Suryavarman II, the builder of Angkor Wat, Jayavarman VII was responsible for most
of the buildings now seen in Angkor. One of the most famous of these
foundations was the Temple of Ta Prohm (Eye of Brahmin), the Rajavihara or Royal
Buddhist monastery and university built in honour of his mother Sri Jayarajacudamani
(he placed a statute of his mother in the guise of Prajnaparamita, mother of
the Buddha) in 1186. It was constructed around the same time as the great European masterpiece, Chartres Cathedral.
As a structure it is notable for many reasons but
primarily for the decision of the restoration authorities to leave the large
jungle roots and trees which were growing through its walls in situ as a testimony to the notion of the
heritage of the Khmer Kingdom being lost to the jungle with the abandonment of
Angkor in the 17th Century. The two predominant types of tree that
entangle the ruins of Ta Prohm are the huge trunks of the silk-cotton tree, Ceiba Pentandra and the strangler fig, Ficus gibbosa with multiple grey roots.
Before
you enter into the inner complex a circumambulation of the area between the
fourth enclosure wall and the double-moated fifth enclosure will reveal the 90
or so ruins of monks cells. Within the Temple proper the first building you encounter
coming from the West Gate is the Hall of the Dancers, where access is
restricted due to restoration works.
There is a small medallion on the western wall of the Southern side-chapel showing unusually Buddha (or a statue of the Buddha) being attacked by two figures with sticks, a medallion that features in a number of the buildings that Jayavarman VII commissioned. It may represent the story of Mara's soldiers trying to prevent Gautama mediating at the Bodhi Tree, therefore preventing his enlightenment but experts are unsure. In a strange was it almost predicts the anti-Buddhism iconoclastic reaction that was to happen fifty years later.
Ta Prohm is a microcosm of
everything that the Khmer Kingdom was and became at its apogee. It also was the
temple that featured in the film Lara Croft – Tomb Raider, a poignant title and
reminder of so many looted Khmer treasures now located in museums around the
world, looted by the ‘scoundrels’ that Jayarvarman warned against and that the
International Court of Justice have tried legislating for by defining what a 'foothill' is!
