These great galleried temples may be considered as the most typical, as they certainly are the most magnificent, of the temples of the Cambodians; but, besides these, there are ten or twelve great temples in Ongcor Thom and its neighbourhood, which anywhere else would be considered worthy of attention. Of these, one at Mount Bakeng, to the south of the city, is a five-storeyed pyramid, with sixty small pavilions on its steps, and a platform on its summit, which is now only encumbered with some débris; but whether they are the remains of a Sikra, or whether it was a well-temple like those in Java, is by no means clear.
To the east of the city is another somewhat similar—a pyramid, with three storeys, rising to a height of about 50 ft. It, however, is enclosed in a gallery, measuring 250 ft. each way, and seems to have had five pavilions on its summit.[651]
The other temples are not of such magnificence as to justify their being described here; their interest would be great in a monograph of the style, but, without illustrations, their dimensions, coupled with their unfamiliar names, would convey very little information to the reader.[652]
Civil Architecture.
The palaces and public buildings of Ongcor seem to be quite worthy of its temples, either as regards extent or richness of decoration. They are, however, as might be expected, in a more ruinous state; being less monumental in their mode of construction, and, what is more to our present purpose, they have neither been drawn nor photographed to such an extent as to render them intelligible.
A view of one of the gates of Ongcor Thom is given by Lieutenant Garnier, Plate 8; and as it is as remarkable as anything about the place, it is to be hoped that full details will be brought home by the present expedition. Fortunately, it is the gateway described by the Chinese visitor, in 1295,[653] as at the end of the great bridge, which was, and is, adorned by fifty-two giants, bearing on their arms the great seven-headed Naga that formed the parapet of the bridge.
On each side of the gate are three elephants, and on each angle the head of a great seven-headed Naga. Above these are figures of men and women, but the great feature is the four-faced mask of Brahma, as on the spires of the Baion ([Woodcut No. 378]). The details of the upper part also so far resemble those of that temple that they must be nearly the same age. This, therefore, cannot well be the four-faced figure of Brahma, which his ungrateful children set up to frighten their parent when they were tired of him (ante, page 680); but it is curious to find the legend repeated in stone and standing at this day. It may, however, be that the stone gave rise to the legend; but, whichever way it arose, it is equally interesting as material evidences of a history and of a religion of which, up to this time, we know little or nothing.
The walls of the cities were also of very great extent, and of dimensions commensurate with their importance. They seem generally to have been constructed of a coarse ferruginous stone in large blocks, and only the gates and ornamental parts were of the fine-grained sandstone of which the temples and palaces are built. Wonderful as these temples and palaces are, the circumstance that, perhaps, after all gives the highest idea of the civilization of these ancient Cambodians is the perfection of their roads and bridges. One great trunk road seems to have stretched for 300 miles across the country from Korat, in a south-easterly direction, to the Mekong river. It was a raised causeway, paved throughout like a Roman road, and every stream that it crossed was spanned by a bridge, many of which remain perfect to the present day. Dr. Bastian describes two of these: one, 400 ft. in length, and 50 ft. in breadth, richly ornamented by balustrades and cornices, and representations of snakes and the Snake king.[654] The extraordinary thing is, that it is constructed without radiating arches, but like every structure in the place, by a system of bracketing or horizontal arches, and without cement. Yet it has withstood, for five centuries at least, the violence of the tropical torrent which it spans.
Even if no vestiges of these roads or bridges remained, the sculptures of Nakhon Wat are sufficient to prove the state of perfection which the art of transport had reached in this community. In these there are numerous representations of chariots, all with wheels from 3 ft. to 5 ft. in height, and with sixteen spokes, which must be of metal, for no London coachmaker at the present day could frame anything so delicate in wood. The rims, too, are in metal, and, apparently, the wheel turns on the axle. Those who are aware how difficult a problem it is to make a perfect wheel will appreciate how much is involved in such a perfect solution of the problem as is here found. But it requires a knowledge of the clumsiness of the Romans and our mediæval forefathers in this respect, and the utter barbarism of the wheels represented in Indian sculptures and still used in India, to feel fully its importance as an index of high civilization.
If, however, the Cambodians were the only people who before the 13th century made such wheels as these, it is also probably true that their architects were the only ones who had sufficient mechanical skill to construct their roofs wholly of hewn stone, without the aid either of wood or concrete, and who could dovetail and join them so beautifully that they remain watertight and perfect after five centuries of neglect in a tropical climate. Nothing can exceed the skill and ingenuity with which the stones of the roofs are joggled and fitted into one another, unless it is the skill with which the joints of their plain walls are so polished and so evenly laid without cement of any kind. It is difficult to detect their joints even in a sun-picture, which generally reveals flaws not to be detected by the eye. Except in the works of the old pyramid-building Egyptians, I know of nothing to compare with it.