[643] Mr. Thomson was informed that during the rains the whole was flooded, and the temple could be reached in boats.
[644] Outside the temple the sides of the causeways are in places ornamented with dwarf columns of circular form. They seem to simulate a bundle of eight reeds, and have tall capitals.
[645] Garnier, loc. cit., vol. i. p. 120. Bastian, vol. i. pp. 400, 415, 438, &c.
[646] In the extracts from the ‘Chinese Annals,’ translated by Abel Rémusat, in the first volume of the ‘Nouveaux Mélanges Asiatiques,’ he finds the earliest mention of the Cambodian kingdom in A.D. 616. From that period the accounts are tolerably consecutive to A.D. 1295, but before that nothing.
[647] ‘Nouveaux Mélanges Asiatiques,’ vol. i. p. 103.
[648] Bastian, vol. i. p. 404.
[649] Garnier, ‘Voyage,’ &c., vol. i. p. 74.
[650] ‘L’Art Khmer,’ p. 38.
[651] It would be interesting if among these we could identify that one of which the Chinese traveller gives the following description:—“A l’est de la ville est un autre temple de l’esprit nommé Pho-to-li, auquel on sacrifie des hommes. Chaque année le roi va dans ce temple faire lui-même un sacrifice humain pendant la nuit.”—‘Nouveaux Mélanges Asiatiques,’ vol. i. p. 83.
[652] At Buribun, on the other side of the lake, Dr. Bastian informs me there is a complete copy of the Nakhon Wat sculptures, carved in wood in the 16th century. The place was the residence of the kings of Cambodia after the fall of the capital, and as original art had then perished, they took this mode of adorning their palace. What a prize for any European museum!