HISTORICAL SITE
FEBRUARY 3, 2022
Get To Know The Majestic Of Angkor Wat Temple
Get to know the majestic of Angkor Wat temple, one of the biggest temples in the world and a World Cultural Heritage.
Angkor Wat was built as a state temple by King Suryawarman II at Yasodarapura, the capital of the Kambuja Desa Kingdom. Angkor Wat is one of the main temples in the Angkor region, built between 1113 and 1150. It is located on the plains of Angkor, Cambodia, which is also filled with other beautiful temples.
Angkor Wat is a royal heritage of Cambodia which is very popular all over the world. According to the Westport Library, Angkor Wat was originally built as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu. This temple was converted into a Buddhist temple in the 14th century.
For 2,000 years Cambodian civilization absorbed influences from India and China. Civilizations spanned from the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of Funan and Chenla (1st-8th centuries) to the classical times of the Angkor period (9th-15th centuries). They then moved to other Southeast Asian civilizations, as reported by the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The name Angkor Wat comes from the words angkor (Sanskrit) which means “country” and wat (Khmer language) which means “temple”. Physically, Angkor Wat is a square-shaped worship area with a length of 1500 meters and a width of 1300 meters.
Angkor Wat is the largest religious building (temple) in the world in terms of area because it occupies an area of 162.6 hectares (1,626 km² ).
According to myth, Angkor Wat was built on the orders of Lord Indra to serve as the palace of his son, Precha Ket Mealea. According to the accounts of the 13th-century Chinese traveler Zhou Daguan, there are those who believe that Angkor Wat was built overnight by the god undagi.
The National Geographic website writes that an American astronomer named Robert Stancel researched and observed the size and dimensions of the temple related to astronomy. As a result, Angkor Wat has a system of alignment with the sun and moon. The Cambodian calendar itself is a luni-solar calendar, which is a calendar that is calculated based on the phase of the moon and the position of the sun.
According to Cambodian legend, the architect of Angkor Wat was Gunadharma. Meanwhile, in the Indonesian cultural legend, it is stated that Gunadharma was the architect of the Borobudur Temple.
However, the differences between Angkor Wat and Borobudur temple are quite a lot, Angkor Wat was originally built as a Hindu temple and then only served as a Buddhist temple as the local community’s belief changed to Buddhism. On the other hand, since the beginning of its construction, Borobudur Temple has been a Buddhist temple.
This temple is one of the important symbols of the Cambodian state, and is a major source of national pride which is an important element in Cambodia’s diplomatic relations with France, the United States and Thailand. The image of Angkor Wat has been part of various versions of the Cambodian flag, starting with the first version introduced around 1863.
This historic building has a sprawling complex of more than a thousand buildings. Angkor Wat is also one of the greatest cultural wonders in the world. The artistic beauty of the ancient architecture made this temple designated by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage in 1992.
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