16th August, 2012 (our 37th wedding anniversary).
Angkor Thom (literally: "Great City") was the last and most enduring capital city of the Khmer Empire. The city was surrounded by 8 metre high walls, and flanked by a moat, with gates at each of the cardinal points.
We entered the city by the Nāga Bridge to the south gate.
This Nāga bridge crossed the Siem Reap River, a tributary of the Tonle Sap.
In the river we passed three beautiful boats, one with a nāga (seven-headed serpent) at the prow, and two with garudas (large mythical bird or bird-like creatures).
Nāga bridges are causeways or bridges lined by stone balustrades shaped as nāgas (seven-headed serpents).
Once you get over all the people, you can see that this bridge has a row of devas (benevolent supernatural beings) on the left and asuras (power-seeking deities, sometimes considered sinful and materialistic) on the right, each row holding a nāga in the attitude of a tug-of-war. The 54 devas pull the head of the nāga while on the other side, the 54 asuras push the tail.
This appears to be a reference to the myth, popular in Angkor, of the Churning of the Sea of Milk, where the devas (good guys, on the left, in conical hats) and asuras (bad guys, on the right, in crown-like hats) used the nāga king Vasuki in order to the churn the Sea of Milk in quest of the amrita or elixir of immortality.
You can see Pat with Dorothy (green shirt) and Woodley (red backpack) crossing the bridge on the side of the good guys.
Jan on the side of the bridge with the devas (good guys).
This is the last picture ever taken of this hat, as I dropped it in a later temple taking photos while juggling backpack, camera bag, sunglasses, water bottle etc. Quite sad really, as that hat had been to the Middle East, America, Central Australia, New Zealand …. not to mention hours of playground duty. Oh well, maybe some Cambodian will get to wear it.
These devas are in pretty good shape for being about a thousand years old. Notice that they are all different from each other:
Although I suspect these two have had head transplants …..
….. and one of these would like one!
No comments:
Post a Comment