RIVERS AND LAKES OF ANGKOR

Dr Uday Dokras
Introduction: International trade brought South Asian Hindu and Buddhist traditions to
mainland Southeast Asia. This economic foundation allowed new political states to form in
the Mekong Delta area, which were led by rulers who presented themselves as god-kings
(devarajas). The pre-Angkor kings claimed to be incarnations of Shiva or Vishnu, and their
names reflect this affiliation. Their authority is also based on South
Asian chakravartin (universal king) concepts of rulership that came to Southeast Asia in the
form of Sanskrit texts. The Mekong River supported canal and irrigation systems that in turn
led to a long period of agricultural prosperity; moreover, this river functioned as a highway
supplying trade goods and raw materials from the interior to international maritime trade
networks linked to China, Java, and South Asia. This maritime trade system provided an
alternative to the overland trade network that connected India and China via the Central
Asian Silk Road.

Our most complete accounts of the pre-Angkorian kingdoms come from Chinese records; the
earliest of these kingdoms was Funan in the Mekong Delta area. By the early sixth century,
Chinese sources tell of multi-armed (Hindu) deities being venerated, and mention missions to
China from named kings. In the seventh century, Funan was in decline and the state of Zhenla
emerged in the northern Mekong Delta. Archaeological remains of cities, temples, isolated
sites, and images allow for a clearer understanding of political centers even if these sites are
difficult to relate to the states mentioned in the Chinese sources. The city of Angkor Borei
was established in the early centuries of the Common Era and by the third century had
become a regional capital of Funan in the area of the Mekong Delta. By the late sixth century,
rulers and other wealthy patrons from this rich trading center began to sponsor the production
of Buddhist Theravadin and Mahayana images. An early and rare monumental image of the
Buddha (2005.512) relates to the production of large-scale Buddhist imagery that began to
appear across South Asia. Such monumental Buddhas occur from Bamiyan in Afghanistan to
Ajanta in western India.

The establishment of Hindu temple complexes was widespread in this early period, an
important center being the site of Prasat Andet. In the seventh and eighth centuries, a cult
surrounding the veneration of a composite of Vishnu (Hari) and Shiva (Hara) was popular in
the Mekong Delta area (1977.241). Most popular of all were images of Shiva (1987.17) and
his nonanthropomorphic representation as a linga (1994.510). Shiva was also depicted as half
male and half female (1993.387.4) to indicate the relationship of the unified whole; the
conceptual male half is given a manifest existence through the active female presence
(prakrti). Also important was Ganesha (1982.220.7), who is the Hindu elephant-headed son
of Shiva and Parvati. As a deity who removes obstacles, Ganesha is a god of success; in this
sense, he is a deity that has great importance in terms of everyday existence. He was
venerated before turning to other gods, thus removing potential obstacles between the
worshipper and the divine. In Southeast Asia, Ganesha had a more independent status than in
India; his images were often housed in separate temples as primary icons of worship.

The early artistic heritage of peninsular Thailand is related to the pre-Angkorian tradition.
Lingas attest to the popularity of the Hindu god Shiva, though many Buddhist images have
also been found, such as a standing Avalokiteshvara (1982.64). A number of small kingdoms

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likely flourished on the peninsula. The later artistic heritage in this area shows close affinities
to the enigmatic kingdom of Shrivijaya, which was probably centered in Sumatra.

It is remarkable that the body of pre-Angkorian sculpture known from numerous sites in
southern Cambodia and Vietnam as well as peninsular Thailand shows an overall stylistic
coherence. Although this extraordinarily brilliant material has clear affinities with South
Asian Pallava, Andhran (28.105), and Gupta (1979.6) production, in many ways it reflects an
artistic vocabulary that has been transformed into a purely Southeast Asian idiom. The ovoid
facial features of Gupta sculpture have been replaced with a different physiognomy; the
figures are more austere in expression and more naturalistic. Today these regions are mostly
Buddhist, but in the seventh and eighth centuries both Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as
concepts of asceticism, engaged these new Southeast Asian patrons. Although the links to
Indian artistic traditions are clear, even the earliest Pre-Angkorian sculpture is distinctly
Southeast Asian in style. Remarkably, some wood images have been found, raising the
possibility that works in more perishable materials preceded stone icons.1

Zhou Daguan's 'The Customs of Cambodia' and John Tully's 'A Short History of
Cambodia' give a good and quick overview on medieval Angkor. Karl A. Wittfogel,
'Oriental Despotism - A Comparative Study of Total Power' is a grand basic work on
the evolvement of the first civilizations and the comparison of Oriental hydraulic
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civilizations with their western contemporaries, the classic Greece and feudal Europe.

In it's heyday Angkor was completely unknown for the western world. No Westerner has
ever been in Angkor when it was still a vivid society. Although Marco Polo visited
Angkor's neighbours, the Cham, in 1288 CE, he didn't mention Angkor in his travel
narrative. Neither did the Italian friar Odoric of Pordenone, who travelled in Indochina in
the 14th century. Angkor does not appear in a single western record. The
first Westerners who arrived at Angkor were Portuguese in the mid 16th century. At that
time the empires 'glory' was already history. Later, when, they couldn't believe that the
barbarous Khmer People once built such a site as Angkor Wat. explorers like Henri
Mouhot arrived in the mid 19th century Mouhot believed falsely the ruins were much,
much older than they are and belonged to another people. Even the savage Khmer of the
time themselves didn't believe that the monuments were the work of their ancestors; they
thought they were built by giants a long time ago, as Adolf Bastian was told when he
came here short after Mouhot.

Angkor was a historic late-comer. It represents historically a first-generation civilization,

on the level with those of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the early civilizations at the
Ganges and Yangze Rivers. It's origins are clearly Indian, as it's predecessors Funan and
Chenla were. All these have in common that they based on a hydraulic 'backbone'. The
beginning of all the grand Oriental civilizations was the massive extension of an irrigation
system to cultivate grain, in our case rice. Those ancient people who learned to built
irrigation canals learnt also to built dikes.

Citation-Behrendt, Kurt. “Pre-Angkor Traditions: The Mekong Delta and Peninsular

Thailand.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum
of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pang/hd_pang.htm (August 2007

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Those who built dikes learned to built walls. Those who built walls learned to built
towers. Those who built towers learned to built buildings such as monuments, and this
technique was developed higher and sophisticated until the construction of the famous
historical buildings like Angkor Wat, the Bayon, Ta Prohm, Preah Khan and many more.
The requirements for such monumental architectures lay in the central organization of a
huge working force. The irrigation system allowed a large surplus of food, feeding
hundreds of thousands, later millions, who were under the central command of a despot in
total power. Apart from a ruling cast of priests, the whole population was in different
degrees enslaved. The large population allowed, beside the workforce, also a big army
which was sent into the neighbouring countries to conquer the riches of their people and
to enslave them to further support the empire's workforce.

The French École d’Extrême-Orient who first excavated the ruins of Angkor
Wat and Angkor Thom from the jungle and started the scientific research of it's
pastconsequent to the publication of Mouhot’s “discovery.” Today’s historical research is
mostly based on the excarvation of the ancient ruins and the carvings in their walls who
tell us many stories about the past. The Angkorean libraries therefore are all empty, the
old Khmer writings, written on palm leaves, are gone. They couldn't stand the tropical
climate.

Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan: The only existing handed down written source on Angkor
is the one of the Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan (also: Chou Ta-Kwan), who spent about a
year in Angkor. That was in 1296/97 CE. Zhou Daguan wrote a report titled 'The Customs
of Cambodia' for the Chinese emperor.

Numerous Monarchies: In the more than 600 years between 802 CE and 1431 CE,
Angkor had 28 kings in total. To be a king required basically a proofed bloodline back to
the founder of Angkor, Jayavarman II. Since there were many who could 'prove' or claim
that, there were always several aspirators for the throne. And some wouldn't necessarily
accept the ruling king, but challenging his rule. The close family members of the king,
who were grown up with him for example, knew of course that the claim of being a divine
being was mere invention and supported by a lot of hocus-pocus. Everybody around the
king had to swear an oath of loyalty. Breaking the oath was to be punished with eternal
damnation. Nevertheless, there were always members of the royal court who tried to oust
the king and replace his position. A prominent example of a coup d'etat in Angkor is the
case of Suryavarman II, who killed his predecessor and took the throne over. He ordered
later the construction of Angkor Wat.

Empires come and go, they rise and fall. They are always built on a highly stratified class
society, violence, exploitation, injustice and are not sustainable. They are a vehicle for
class struggle, for the sake of a very small part of the population on top of the social
pyramid. The weening egotism of the ruling class of Angkor is perfectly expressed in
monumental Angkor Wat, which was built on the blood, the skulls and bones of at least
ten thousands of slaves and workers, primarily to serve as a graveyard for one person only
- godking Suryavarman II. Angkor Wat is a monument of insanity, and makes a great
symbol for imperialism.
It can be that the mental change and consequently the alteration in lifestyle led to a lack
of workers to maintain the great irrigation system. With the decline of the irrigation
system, the whole society came in trouble. The organization of Angkor was focused over

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all it's history on a strong centralized power. The new religion of Theravada Buddhism
has been somewhat counterproductive to the idea of governmentally organized great state
projects and workforces.

Theravada also sets the barriers of taking lives higher. It's a very bad thing to kill for
one's kharma and next reincarnation. That didn't stop Khmers from killing, of course, but
it's at least hampering aggressive, warlike ambitions.

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 All temples in a single frame ( Picture above)

Ecological degradation. Another often claimed possible reason of Angkors decline lies
in ecological degradation. Particularly the deforestation in the greater Angkor region until
up to the Mount Kulen slopes had a great impact on the water system. Fertile soil might

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have been washed out after heavy rainfalls, floods might have appeared, draughts
therefore in the dry season and silt blocked the canals. Maybe even the amount of rain
was reduced due to the disappearance of the forests.

Aforestation: There must have been a great demand for timber to build houses and as an
energy resource for a growing population, as well as the extension of farmlands was
directed into the surrounding forests. One has to keep in mind that the population in the
area what is now roughly Angkor Archaeological Park reached a million inhabitants.
Blocked canals containing mostly standing water are a great habitat for mosquitoes. The
outspread of malaria and dengue might have been an issue as well.
Well, if the environmental degradation theory is correct, it would be a warning also for
contemporary Cambodia. The environmental crisis in Cambodia with the large scale
deforestation is much larger in scale than it had ever could been in ancient Angkor,
which could trigger a local disaster.

THE NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF ANGKOR’S WATER MANAGEMENT

1
SYSTEM
The hydraulic systems at the Angkor complexes deserve special comment, as they also
played a role in enhancing the king’s legitimate rule. As has been noted, the traditional
conviction among the Khmer was that their monarch was the source of his subjects’ material
welfare. Symbolizing the king’s magical capacity to fulfill his obligation, the naga, the water
spirit, was widely portrayed in Khmer art and was a central figure of popular religion
(Jacques: 1997; 2006). Zhou Daguan, Mongol envoy to Angkor in 1296, reported that the
Khmer people believed that their ruler slept with a naga princess, and that the result of their
union was the country’s prosperity (Paul: 1967/1992, 31). This reportimplies that the
Khmermonarch enjoyed a ritualrelationship with this traditional spirit of the soil and water,
the source of the fertility that guaranteed the earth’s productivity. In this same tradition
Yasovarman I (r. 889– 910) constructed an artificial lake (baray) named Yasodharatataka
(also known as the east baray) northeast of his new capital city of Yasodharapura

(Angkor) at the end of the ninth century: According to the inscription reporting this
event, the king wished to ‘‘facilitate an outlet for his abundant glory in the direction of the
underworld’’ (Barth and Bergaigne: 1885–1893, 407). This underworld, also depicted as the
place from which Khmer monarchs judged the dead, was the abode of the nagas, as well as
also the source of fertility from which Angkor’s kings ‘‘spread everywhere and ceaselessly
the amrita (ambrosia) of this immaculate glory’’ (Barth and Bergaigne: 1885– 1893, 426,
473, 502; Wolters: 1982, 85–92). This was the first of two lakes that would be constructed at
Angkor. The other, the west baray, was probably initiated by Suryavarman I in the eleventh
century. Scholars have debated whether the barays were a critical source of water for the
Angkor region’s agricultural production in a technical sense. Archeologists had assumed that
water seeped through the dike base of Yasovarman’s lake (which measured 4 miles long by 1
mile wide—6.5 kilometers long by 1.5 kilometers wide) into collector channels outside the
dike, which subsequently carried the water to surrounding fields. Similarly, it was speculated
that the baray begun by Suryavarman I at least doubled the potential cultivated land in the
Angkor region, thereby providing the economic wealth to fund the dramatic expansion of the
Khmer state during his reign (Groslier: 1979b, 108–12, 179). French scholars viewed the
resulting economic prosperity as responsible for the impressive urban development, recorded
in Khmer inscriptions, which took place in the tenth and eleventh centuries (Bourge: 1970,
308). However, reevaluations of the Angkor era water management system questioned

6
whether these lakes were actually used for traditional irrigation agriculture, though, as the
focus of Khmer religion, they were important symbolicallyinthe Khmersystemof‘‘theocratic
hydraulics’’(Higham:2001, 155–61). Studies conducted in the late 1970s noted that Angkor-
era agriculture was based not on centralized irrigation systems but on bunded-field
transplanted wet-rice cultivation.

Hydraulic engineering at Angkor

This system allowed the planting of approximately fifty million fields covering twelve and a
half million acres/five million hectares . In the Angkor region floodwaters would slowly rise
from the Great Lake, the Tonle Sap, to its tributaries, but would rapidly recede after the rainy
season. In part, this rainy season flooding at Angkor was the consequence of the Mekong
River. As is still the case today, when the Mekong River fills with rainy season water it has so
much force that it seals off the river that flows southeast from the Tonle Sap and intersects
with the Mekong at modern-day Phnom Penh. When this river network backs up, it causes
vast flooding upstream. When the Mekong recedes, the impact on Angkor is like removing
the stopper from the sink; water in Angkor’s fields swiftly drains into the Mekong River.

In the Angkor era a network of dams and bunds diverted and retained the receding
floodwaters of the Tonle Sap after the rainy season. Though the Khmer lacked the technology
to build large-scale dams, they depended instead on a network of earthworks on regional
streams to retard and spread floodwaters into clay-based ponds during the rainy season, which
stored the water for later use. Earthworks were concentrated downriver from Angkor on the
edge of the Tonle Sap, to retain the floodwaters . The most recent studies have mapped a vast
water management network that extends 386 square miles , which allowed Angkor to remain
agriculturally productive in the nonrainy season by producing multiple rice crops a year. To
sustain additional resident urban populations there were periodic new extensions dating from
the ninth to the fourteenth century. The system tapped water from successive natural rivers
flowing from Angkor’s northeast to the southwest; north-south channels eventually delivered
water to the baray reservoirs and temple moats, which were connected by channels that
managed a water flow from northwest to southeast (across the slope of the land), to
eventually drain into the Tonle Sap.

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The waterworks also conveyed important symbolic messages. We saw one set of these
messages in the baray of Yasovarman. Others were built into the complexes that supplied the
barays. The Phnom Kulen ‘‘mountain,’’ which was located upriver from Yasovarman’s lake
some thirty miles (fifty kilometers) northwest of Angkor, near the headwaters of the Siem
Reap, was one source of the Angkor ritual complex’s water supply, which in turn flowed
from Angkor to the Tonle Sap. A network of small earth dams regulated the flow of water
downstream from Phnom Kulen to Angkor, where this water filled the collection of reservoirs
that surrounded the court’s temples. Throughout the Angkor region Khmer temples were
constructed at the intersection of moats and roads that were oriented east-west and north-
south; this was done purposely to project the image of a mandala, a geometric sacred space
intended to symbolize the universe, that had been initiated by Khmer monarchs . In addition
to being constructed in a manner consistent with the Indian and Khmer cosmological focus on
east-west and north-south orientation, the water management network was consecrated with
traditional symbols of fertility.

A number of naga and linga phallic symbols were carved in the rocky riverbed at the Phnom
Kulen mountain source, mutually denoting the sanctity of the water that flowed from the
mountain region to Angkor using traditional and Hindu fertility symbols. Notably, it was at
Phnom Kulen that Jayavarman II had consecrated his devaraja cult (the emblem of the
unification of the Khmer realm), making it the original Mount Mahendra, the center of the
heaven on earth, prior to the establishment of his new capital downriver at Hariharalaya and
the subsequent consecration of a new symbolic Mount Mahendra temple mountain there. This
mountain consisted of the king’s sacred focal temple complex, surrounded by a cosmic
ocean, that is, the various baray reservoirs that reinforced the intended message that the
king’s paramount temple was indeed a heaven on earth.. The original Mount Mahendra at
Phnom Kulen was thus not only a source of legitimacy for later monarchs who drew upon the
protective powers of Jayavarman’s devaraja cult, but was also seen quite correctly as the
source of the sacred waters that filled Angkor’s surrounding baray. Together, this ritual/court
complex symbolically enhanced the possibilities for success among the monarch’s loyal
1
subjects.

The top of the south gate of Angkor Thom the four heads of a Boddhisattva look in all
directions and see anything. It's the godking Jayavarman VII, who smiles the 'Smile of
Angkor'. Angkor was the most significant state and civilization in Southeast Asia for
about 600 years. It was remarkable above all for it's hydraulic architecture, represented in
a vast irrigation and canal system, topped by numerous monuments. It preserved a
cultural long-term influence on Indochina until today.

But it was not only extraordinary for Southeast Asia. Angkor stands the comparison with
the other great empires of world's history. Angkor city was a huge, sophisticated urban
center and, at its height, the greatest preindustrial city in history. It was home for up to a
million people in its best times. A huge transport and irrigation infrastructure was part of
it. The construction of Angkor Wat alone, that was the empire's state temple in the
12th century, was a gigantic feat. The whole organization of the building site was a major
challenge. It included the procurement of a huge amount of stone material from
the quarries in Kulen and the transport of all the many tons of stone over a distance of

8
40km to the building site, the workmanship into all the absolute precisely fitting single
pieces, the procession of the material's surface into all the brilliant carvings.

All temples in a single frame

THE RIVER MEKONG

Water was key to the Khmer kingdom's prosperity: for irrigation, for drinking and for food
from the fish that swam up the Mekong into the Tonle Sap River and the lake of the same
name. The Mekong, or Mekong River, is a trans-boundary river in East Asia and Southeast
Asia. It is the world's twelfth longest river and the sixth longest in Asia. Its estimated length
is 4,909 km (3,050 mi), and it drains an area of 795,000 km2 (307,000 sq mi), discharging
475 km3 (114 cu mi) of water annually. From the Tibetan Plateau the river runs
through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The extreme seasonal
variations in flow and the presence of rapids and waterfalls in the Mekong
make navigation difficult. Even so, the river is a major trade route between western China
and Southeast Asia. The river is called Mékóng in Khemer and Tônlé Mékóng . It has no
Sanskrit name.
The earliest known settlements date to 210 BCE, with Ban Chiang being an excellent
example of early Iron Age culture. The earliest recorded civilization was the 1st
century Indianised-Khmer culture of Funan, in the Mekong delta. Excavations at Oc Eo, near
modern An Giang, have found coins from as far away as the Roman Empire. This was
succeeded by the Khmer culture Chenla state around the 5th century. The Khmer
empire of Angkor was the last great Indianized state in the region. From around the time of
the fall of the Khmer empire, the Mekong was the front line between the emergent states
of Siam and Tonkin (North Vietnam), with Laos and Cambodia, then on the coast, torn
between their influence.

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The first European to encounter the Mekong was the Portuguese António de Faria in 1540. A
European map of 1563 depicts the river, although even by then little was known of the river
upstream of the delta. European interest was sporadic: the Spanish and Portuguese mounted
some missionary and trade expeditions, while the Dutch Gerrit van Wuysthoff led an
expedition up the river as far as Vientiane in 1641–42.
It originates in the "three rivers source area" on the Tibetan Plateau in the Sanjiangyuan
National Nature Reserve. The reserve protects the headwaters of, from north to south,
the Yellow (Huang He), the Yangtze, and the Mekong Rivers.[3] It flows through the Tibetan
Autonomous Region and then southeast into Yunnan Province, and then the Three Parallel
Rivers Area in the Hengduan Mountains, along with the Yangtze to its east and the Salween
River (Nu Jiang in Chinese) to its west.
Then the Mekong meets the China–Myanmar border and flows about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi)
along that border until it reaches the tripoint of China, Myanmar and Laos. From there it
flows southwest and forms the border of Myanmar and Laos for about 100 kilometres (62 mi)
until it arrives at the tripoint of Myanmar, Laos, and Thailand. This is also the point of
confluence between the Ruak River (which follows the Thai–Myanmar border) and the
Mekong. The area of this tripoint is sometimes termed the Golden Triangle, although the term
also refers to the much larger area of those three countries that was notorious as a drug
producing region.
From the Golden Triangle tripoint, the Mekong turns southeast to briefly form the border of
Laos with Thailand.
Khon Pi Long is a series of rapids along a 1.6-kilometre section of the Mekong River
dividing Chiang Rai and Bokeo Province in Laos. The name of the rapids means 'where the
ghost lost its way'.[11] It then turns east into the interior of Laos, flowing first east and then
south for some 400 kilometres (250 mi) before meeting the border with Thailand again. Once
more, it defines the Laos-Thailand border for some 850 kilometres (530 mi) as it flows first
east, passing the capital of Laos, Vientiane, then turns south. A second time, the river leaves
the border and flows east into Laos soon passing the city of Pakse. Thereafter, it turns and
runs more or less directly south, crossing into Cambodia.
At Phnom Penh the river is joined on the right bank by the river and lake system the Tonlé
Sap. When the Mekong is low, the Tonle Sap is a tributary: water flows from the lake and
river into the Mekong. When the Mekong floods, the flow reverses: the floodwaters of the
Mekong flow up the Tonle Sap.
Immediately after the Sap River joins the Mekong by Phnom Penh, the Bassac
River branches off the right (west) bank. The Bassac River is the first and main distributary
of the Mekong. This is the beginning of the Mekong Delta. The two rivers, the Bassac to the
west and the Mekong to the east, enter Vietnam shortly after this. In Vietnam, the Bassac is
called the Hậu River (Sông Hậu or Hậu Giang); the main, eastern, branch of the Mekong is
called the Tiền River or Tiền Giang. In Vietnam, distributaries of the eastern (main, Mekong)
branch include the Mỹ Tho River, the Ba Lai River, the Hàm Luông River, and the Cổ Chiên
River. Downstream from the Golden Triangle, the river flows for a further 2,600 km
(1,600 mi) through Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia before entering the South China Sea via a
complex delta system in Vietnam.

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Greater_Mekong_Subregion_Economic_Corridors

In Cambodia: As the Mekong enters Cambodia, over 95% of its flows have already joined
the river. From here on downstream the terrain is flat and water levels rather than flow
volumes determine the movement of water across the landscape. The seasonal cycle of
changing water levels at Phnom Penh results in the unique "flow reversal" of water into and
out of the Great Lake via the Tonle Sap River. Phnom Penh also marks the beginning of the
delta system of the Mekong River. Here the mainstream begins to break up into an increasing
number of branches.
In Cambodia, wet rice is the main crop and is grown on the flood plains of the Tonle Sap,
Mekong, and Bassac (the Mekong delta distributary known as the Hậu in Vietnam) Rivers.
More than half of Cambodia remains covered with mixed evergreen and deciduous broadleaf
forest, but forest cover has decreased from 73% in 1973 to 63% in 1993. Here, the river
landscape is flat. Small changes in water level determine the direction of water movement,

11
including the large-scale reversal of flow into and out of the Tonle Sap basin from the
Mekong River.

Water flow

Table 1: Country share of Mekong River Basin (MRB) and water flows
By taking into account hydrological regimes, physiography land use, and existing, planned
and potential resource developments, the Mekong is divided into six distinct reaches. Of
these only 3 are in Cambodia and we shall discuss these alone.

China Myanmar Laos Thailand Cambodia Vietnam Total

Basin area 165,00

24,000 202,000 184,000 55,000 65,000 795,000
(km2) 0

Catchment
21 3 25 23 20 8 100
as % of MRB

Flow as % of
16 2 35 18 18 11 100
MRB

Reach 4: Pakse to Kratie. The main hydrological contributions to the mainstream in this
reach come from the Se Kong, Se San, and Sre Pok catchments. Together, these rivers make
up the largest hydrological sub-component of the lower basin. Over 25% of the mean annual
flow volume to the mainstream at Kratie comes from these three river basins. They are the
key element in the hydrology of this part of the system, especially to the Tonle Sap flow
reversal.
Reach 5: Kratie to Phnom Penh. This reach includes the hydraulic complexities of the
Cambodian floodplain, the Tonle Sap and the Great Lake. By this stage, over 95% of the total
flow has entered the Mekong system. The focus turns from hydrology and water discharge to
the assessment of water level, over- bank storage and flooding and the hydrodynamics that
determine the timing, duration and volume of the seasonal flow reversal into and out of the
Great Lake.
Reach 6: Phnom Penh to the South China Sea. Here the mainstream divides into a complex
and increasingly controlled and artificial system of branches and canals. Key features of flow
behaviour are tidal influences and salt water intrusion. Every year, 35–50% of this reach is
flooded during the rainy season. The impact of road embankments and similar infrastructure
developments on the movement of this flood water is an increasingly important consequence
of development

Natural phenomena of the Mekong in Cambodia

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The low tide level of the river in Cambodia is lower than the high tide level out at sea, and
the flow of the Mekong inverts with the tides throughout its stretch in Vietnam and up to
Phnom Penh. The very flat Mekong delta area in Vietnam is thus prone to flooding,
especially in the provinces of An Giang and Dong Thap (Đồng Tháp), near the Cambodian
border. The Greater Mekong Subregion, (GMS) or just Greater Mekong, is a trans-national
region of the Mekong River basin in Southeast Asia.
The region is home to more than 300 million people. It came into being with the launch of a
development program in 1992 by the Asian Development Bank that brought together the six
Asian countries of Cambodia, China (specifically Yunnan Province and the Guangxi Zhuang
Autonomous Region), Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, and Vietnam.[1]
The Greater Mekong holds irreplaceable natural and cultural riches and is considered one of
the world's most significant biodiversity hotspots. The region is an important food provider
and the site of many large-scale construction projects with social and economic implications.
The Foundation of Angkor
Bakong,, the main temple of the Roluos Group. Roluos, respectively Hariharalaya, was
one of the very first capitals of Angkor, an already existing town adapted by Jayavarman
II at the founding time of the empire in the early 9th century. Image by Asienreisender,
2006
In the late 8th century, a local king with a close connection to the Sailendra
dynasty in Java, leader of one of the petty Khmer states in the Mekong Delta, decided to
move it's capital riverupwards into the region of the great lake of Southeast Asia,
the Tonle Sap. Jayavarman II, who was supposedly reigning for 48 years (802 to 850 CE,
however, the exact timespan of his reign is controversial), overcame the Javanese mastery
and founded a state which would last over 600 years as Southeast Asia's dominating
empire. However, we don't know much about Jayavarman II. There is nothing about him
to find in Chinese chronicles, and the Khmer traces, consisting only of the rare stone
inscriptions they left in the monuments of the Roluos Group, give little information.
According to temple inscriptions, the foundation of Angkor can be dated for the year 802
CE. In the time before the king managed anyhow to unify all the Khmer petty states to a
single unit, ruled by himself.

In Jayavarman IIth reign the new empire's capital was moved three times to three
different sites near the great lake. The first and last one was Roluos, where the king
eventually died. The reason for shifting the capital was probably due to pressure coming
from the Champa empire. The Champa were the arch rivals of the old Khmer. Another
reason for the shift was the fact that the great lake region was far away from the seaside
and therefore out of the direct access of the powerful fleet of the Javanese empire.

Jayavarman II and his son and successor Jayavarman III let built some smaller
monuments and shrines. The obsession to build big and ever bigger monuments began in
the years before 900 CE. King Indravarman I let a first large baray (an artificial lake)
built, together with Preah Ko and Bakong. His successor, Yasovarman I ordered another
baray and the construction of Phnom Bakheng, where a whole mountain was shaped as a
pyramid and topped with a great temple. It's situated between Angkor Wat and Angkor
Thom and famous for tourists watching the sunsets at Angkor. In Yasovarman Ith reign
falls also the construction of the large easter baray, for which the Siem Reap River was
split.

13
Each succeeding Khmer king ordered more and bigger monuments, topping the
predecessors. Takeo temple was built in the reign of Jayavarman V, and Suryavarman I
ordered the construction of the huge west baray, famous Preah Vihar in the Dangrek
Mountains and a number of other temples. Suryavarman II then ordered famous Angkor
Wat as a personal mausoleum. His successor let Bakong temple expand and Jayavarman
VII, who fought the Champas out of of Angkor, ordered Angkor Thom's construction with
the Bayon, Ta Prohm, Preah Khan, Banteay Chhmar, 102 hospitals and large waterworks,
and additionally a number of smaller and medium-sized temples, some of them further
away from the capital Angkor itself.

The Bayon
The ruins of the Bayon, the central piece and state temple in Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom
was a whole new capital what was ordered by Jayavarman VII in the late 12th century.
The name of this king is connected to a great deal of buildings in the whole empire who
were built in his reign, which not exceeded 40 years. The construction speed was
breathtaking. For many of the construction workers it must have been neckbreaking as
well. Jayavarman VIIIth reign marks the climax of Angkor's building activities. In a fast
speed monument after monument was built. All these big constructions were
accompanied by an infrastructure of streets, canals, bridges, hospitals and rest houses. In
the Angkorean empire a wide network of roads was built and maintained.
They were well done as highways who led through the swampy marshlands of Indochina,
while the bridges were of remarkable quality and artfully made.
The rich travelled carried on biers or on the back of elephants or horses, while the poor
either rode on water buffaloes or walked. Waterways were very much in use. Particularly
in the rainy season many travellers went by boat over large distances to their destinations.

The main reason why the Angkorean empire could employ so many people in
construction work lies in the fertility of the plains around Tonle Sap Lake and the
abundance of fish in the lake and surrounding rivers. According to Zhou Daguan, the
ancient Khmer could harvest four rice crops a year. That would have made an enormous
difference to the usual once-a-year harvest. Maybe it's exaggerated or it was exceptional,
and there were three or two harvests 'only', varying according to weather conditions and
crop pests, but anyway, it still enabled the Khmer elites to spare a great number of
farmers and deploy them into other tasks. Particularly recruiting them into the army.

The West Baray

14
The huge west baray, west of Angkor Thom, was/is the largest artificial water reservoir in
Angkor. It's rectangular shaped and measures roughly eight to two kilometers. It was part
of a gigantic hydraulic system which allowed the empire growing big. The French
archeologist Bernard-Philippe Groslier published two articles in 1974 and 1979, in which
he introduced the 'hydraulic city' hypothesis. According to Groslier the four great barays
(three are known today, another one was recently discovered on satellite images) and the
sophisticated canal system of Angkor served, beside other purposes, as an irrigation
system.

15
Angkorean Canal

The remaining canal between west baray and Angkor Thom's outer moat.
This idea sounds very plausible, but came under dispute. Other experts pointed out that
there are no hints for an irrigation system, and the barays do not have a connection to the
canal system. The rice paddies were encircled with small dikes, catching and keeping rain
water, as as it is in practice still today.
Above all the Mekong and Tonle Sap river system show a peculiar behaviour every year.
In the annual rainy season, when the water level of the Mekong River is rising
considerably, the water at the lower Mekong can not drain quick enough into the South
China Sea. The water is therefore partially flowing riverupwards into the Tonle Sap
River, filling up the great Tonle Sap Lake and flooding the flat plains around. It comes
with a considerable amount of silt which enriches the fertility of the whole region. This
natural irrigation system is seen as causal for the fertility of the region around Angkor.
The barays therefore served, in the view of some scholars, merely religious purposes.

Similarly, water was life to Angkor too.

According to some of the inscriptions of the Angkorean buildings the water infrastructure
had multiple purposes, religious as well as that of a transport and an irrigation system. It
would be very weired to build such an enormous canal net with huge, several square
kilometers large artificial lakes and then not to use it for all possible purposes,
particularly rice field irrigation. First comes food, and all culture is built then on top of a
filled stomach. Also the last revelations of the LIDAR research, which shows a greater
extend of the canal and water system as previously known, support the idea that the
system was used for multiple purposes, including irrigation.
Probably the barays served additionally also as fish ponds, as swimming pools, for ritual
bathings and as tools of flood control.

16
The Barey

What we see being left from the water and irrigation system is just a fraction of what
there was in the past. The LIDAR satellite images show a fine net of small canals
penetrating the whole landscape, particularly Angkor Thom. Angkor Thom was a 'city in
the city'. It was home for the huge royal family in the royal palace, the high nobility and
an elitarian circle with a large staff of functionaries, who were also residents or at least
worked there.

The map still only shows a part of the whole extension of the ancient city of Angkor. It
stretched widely out in all the four directions of the compass. In the southeast there is
the Roluos Group (now more on the map), one of the very first capitals of Angkor. Some
kilometers northeast lies Banteay Srey (not on the map), a very particular site with a very
distinctive architectonical and ornamental style. Alltogether there are some hundred major
temple sites in Angkor, and additionally some nine hundred middle-sized and smaller
monuments. The map shows the ancient Angkor City site as it looks now as Angkor
Archaeological Park.

What we see nowadays, when visiting the ancient Khmer sites, is merely a skeleton of the
former state of the infrastructure. Very most of the material is long since rotten away.
Only the most solid stone parts of the constructions are left.
.

The Lotus Temple on a Pond

17
The connection with water is immediately apparent at Angkor today. Angkor Wat (meaning
"Capital Temple") and the larger Angkor Thom ("Capital City") are both surrounded by
perfectly square moats. Two five-mile-long rectangular reservoirs glitter nearby, the West
Baray and the East Baray. Within the immediate neighborhood, there are also three other
major barays and numerous small ones.Some twenty miles to the south of Siem Reap, a
seemingly inexhaustible supply of freshwater stretches across 16,000 square kilometers of
Cambodia. This is the Tonle Sap, Southeast Asia's largest freshwater lake.It may seem odd
that a civilization built on the edge of Southeast Asia's "great lake" should need to rely on a
complicated irrigation system, but the lake is extremely seasonal.

During the monsoon season, the vast amount of water pouring through the watershed causes
the Mekong River to actually back up behind its delta, and begin to flow backward. The
water flows out over the 16,000 square kilometer lake-bed, remaining for about 4 months.
However, once the dry season returns, the lake shrinks down to 2,700 square kilometers,
leaving the Angkor Wat area high and dry. The other problem with Tonle Sap, from an
Angkorian point of view, is that it is at a lower elevation than the ancient city. Kings and
engineers knew better than to site their wonderful buildings too close to the erratic lake/river,
but they did not have the technology to make water run uphill.

Blue color for the two rivers The Mekong to the left and the Puok to the right

Greater Mekong
Subregion

Mekong River

18
 Basin

Upper Mekong Lower Mekong

Basin (UMB) Basin (LMB)

Cambodian
Northern Southern Khorat
Annamite Range Floodplain – Great
Highlands Uplands Plateau
Lake Ecosystem

Cultivated Deciduous Tonle Sap Tonle Sap

Wetlands
Lands Forests River Lake

Swamps
Aquatic
and
Habitats
Marshes

Engineering Marvel
In order to provide a year-round supply of water for irrigating rice crops, the engineers of the
Khmer Empire connected a region the size of modern-day New York City with an elaborate
system of reservoirs, canals, and dams. Rather than using the water of Tonle Sap, the
reservoirs collect monsoon rainwater and store it for the dry months. NASA photographs
reveal the traces of these ancient waterworks, hidden at ground level by the thick tropical
rainforest. A steady water supply allowed for three or even four plantings of the notoriously
thirsty rice crop per year and also left enough water for ritual use.

According to Hindu mythology, which the Khmer people absorbed from Indian traders, the
gods live on the five-peaked Mount Meru, surrounded by an ocean. To replicate this
geography, the Khmer king Suryavarman II designed a five-towered temple surrounded by an
enormous moat. Construction on his lovely design began in 1140; the temple later came to be
known as Angkor Wat.

19
In keeping with the aquatic nature of the site, each of Angkor Wat's five towers is shaped like
an unopened lotus blossom. The temple at Tah Prohm alone was served by more than 12,000
courtiers, priests, dancing girls and engineers at its height — to say nothing of the empire's
great armies, or the legions of farmers who fed all the others. Throughout its history, the
Khmer Empire was constantly at battle with the Chams (from southern Vietnam) as well as
different Thai peoples. Greater Angkor probably encompassed between 600,000 and 1
million inhabitants — at a time when London had perhaps 30,000 people. All of these
soldiers, bureaucrats, and citizens relied upon rice and fish — thus, they relied upon the
waterworks.

The nature and even the existence of water management at Angkor has been the subject of
considerable debate since the 1970s. Recent work at Angkor by the EFEO and the Greater
Angkor Project has mapped a vast water management network extending across
approximately 1000 sq km. From the new map an outline can be provide of the development
of the network between the 8th-9th and the 14th centuries. Each large extension of the
network tapped water from a succession of natural rivers flowing from NE to SW. Each river
was further north and was tapped further to the west. The network had five major components
- E-W embankments that trapped water flowing from the north and northeast; N-S channels
that eventually delivered water to large reservoirs (baray); the baray and the large temple
moats; embankments and channels oriented from NW to SE that could distribute water back
from west to east across the slope of the land; and channels oriented towards the southwest
which could dispose of water rapidly to the lake, the Tonle Sap. Significantly the later major
channels, such as the Angkor Wat canal and the canal that pre-dated the current Siem Reap
river, were drains that served to dispose of water into the lake.

A water management network with three distinct interconnected operational zones for
control, storage and distribution has been identified. The old debate about whether or not
there was a functional water management network in Angkor that could have assisted flood
control and irrigation is at an end, replaced, fortunately, by further developing issues about
the role of system, its development and its relationship to the demise of Angkor. The
magnitude of the features that make up the network relates to the use of sand with a small
admixture of clay as a means to control water – a remarkable feat of engineering. The vast
scale and extreme stability of the infrastructure is an intriguing corollary of its technology
and might itself help to explain how the continuity and order of Khmer society endured
despite the inherent instability of the medieval Khmer state prior to the 13th century. How the
network was managed and the degree to which the state ever participated directly in its day-
to-day operation is a key issue and may itself be central to what eventually happened to
Angkor.

There are indications that the network had developed into an involuted system but one that
was both generating stresses due to its inertia and may also have been facing external changes
as well. If this was the case then Angkor faced a serious conundrum because the massive
stability of its infrastructure was somehow both implicated in the changes and cumulatively
unable to deal with them. The last additions to the network from the 12th century onwards
increasingly served to dispose of water rather than to hold and distribute it. The potentially
serious implication is that from the 12th century onwards Angkor was, perhaps, having to
1
cope with and try to manage increased water flow from the northern catchments.

20
The region had an extensive hydraulic network stretching across more than a thousand square
kilometres. The network can still be seen in radar and satellite images, and the main features
are still evident from the ground. One is a channel which runs through Angkor to the Tonle
Sap Lake. Now known as the Siem Reap River, it starts in Phnom Kulen and flows through
the modern provincial capital before reaching the lake. In pre-Angkorian times, however, this
watercourse didn't exist.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WATER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF ANGKOR: A

PROVISIONAL MODEL Roland Fletcher, Christophe Pottier, Damian Evans, Matti
Kummu-https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03026457/document

Collapse
The very system that allowed the Khmer to support such a large population may have been
their undoing, however. The water system of the region may have played a key role in the
city operation but is not clearly understood how it worked and how and when it collapsed.
The Tonle Sap Lake is not filling up with sediment contrary to the earlier belief. Angkor was
related very closely to the lake. It was an important source of nourishment and one of the key
features of the transportation system. The annual flood creates an optimum condition to
cultivate floating and recession rice. The Angkor area was perfectly situated from
hydrological point of view: the lake was close but the city was safe from the flood, the high
ground water table offered a secured water supply also during the dry season, and the shallow
slope of the terrain offered good possibilities of manage the water. Even thought the situation
was optimal Khmers had problems with sedimentation and erosion in their hydraulic
network.
______________________________________________________________________
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
228974042_The_natural_environment_and_historical_water_management_of_Angkor_C
ambodia?enrichId=rgreq-0f70e3e0ead0f8fef22523e8ff9c9a5e-
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XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIyODk3NDA0MjtBUzozNDU1NjEyMzc2MDY0M
DBAMTQ1OTM5OTYyNzM0Ng%3D%3D&el=1_x_3&_esc=publicationCoverPdf

Is the Siem Reap River a river? Greater Angkor Project 2005, Matti Kummu and Terry
Lustig say thatb recent archaeological work shows s early as the 13th century, the water system was
coming under severe strain. A flood evidently destroyed part of the earthworks at West Baray in the
mid-1200s; rather than repairing the breach, the Angkorian engineers apparently removed the stone
rubble and used it in other projects, idling that section of the irrigation system.

A century later, during the early phase of what is known as the "Little Ice Age" in Europe,
Asia's monsoons became very unpredictable. According to the rings of long-lived po
mu cypress trees, Angkor suffered from two-decades-long drought cycles, from 1362 to 1392,
and 1415 to 1440. Angkor had already lost control of much of its empire by this time. The
extreme drought crippled what remained of the once-glorious Khmer Empire, leaving it
vulnerable to repeated attacks and sackings by the Thais.

By 1431, the Khmer people had abandoned the urban center at Angkor. Power shifted south,
to the area around the present-day capital at Phnom Penh. Some scholars suggest that the
capital was moved to better take advantage of coastal trading opportunities. Perhaps the
upkeep on Angkor's waterworks was simply too burdensome.

In any case, monks continued to worship at the temple of Angkor Wat itself, but the rest of
the 100+ temples and other buildings of the Angkor complex were abandoned. Gradually, the
sites were reclaimed by the forest. Although the Khmer people knew that these marvelous
ruins stood there, amidst the jungle trees, the outside world did not know about the temples of
Angkor until French explorers began to write about the place in the mid-nineteenth century.
Over the past 150 years, scholars and scientists from Cambodia and around the world have
worked to restore the Khmer buildings and unravel the mysteries of the Khmer Empire. Their
work has revealed that Angkor Wat truly is like a lotus blossom — floating atop a watery
realm.

The moats surrounding the temples of Angkor were envisioned as earthly models of the
ocean that surrounds the world. A Sanskrit inscription compares the moats and reservoirs
at Angkor with tributaries of the sacred Ganges River in India. The ruler who oversaw the
building of Angkor Wat was Suryavarman II a devout Hindu and a Vaisnavite. According to
Hindu mythology, which the Khmer people absorbed from Indian traders, the gods live on the
five-peaked Mount Meru, surrounded by an ocean. To replicate this geography, the Khmer
king Suryavarman II designed a five-towered temple surrounded by an enormous moat.

Although Angkor’s connection to the river network was made in the early 20th century, the
compartmentalized studies that have been carried out so far on the subject of Angkor’s relati
onship to its watery environment have resulted in interpretations that do not reflect the compl
exity of the subject. It will be argued here that archaeologists who do not integrate maritime a
pproaches in studies of cultures like Angkor, where waterways play an important role in their
environment, are likely to miss important aspects of fluvial cultures. By applying concepts su
ch as the Maritime Cultural Landscape, it will be possible to push beyond the boundaries of t
errestrial approaches and discover how the environmental conditions of cultures like Angkor
with river networks as the main means of communication resulted in the development of spe
cific cognitive and functional traits that gave form to fluvial cultural landscapes. An example

22
of such an approach is offered as a conclusion in an analysis of masonry bridges in Angkor’s
transport network.

Analysing the problem in the context of water transport, we see that the environment and the
resources available made temporary structures more suitable, not only because they could
accommodate river transport and therefore retain river navigability and road access, but also
because they could be safely removed during the rainy season, at which point pontoons,
boats, and rafts would be used to movepeople across rivers far more safely. Therefore, when
the kings of Angkor chose to block waterways with masonry bridges, they did so knowing
what it was at stake, the proof of which is found in the choice of rivers that were blocked and
the ones that were left open for navigation (see discussion in Walker Vadillo 2016: 66-119).

This choice should therefore be seen as a conscious decision to block rivers either to control
access by water, and/or because the river was expendable (i.e. did not have great economic or
political value), and land transport therefore took precedence over water transport. The
logical question that follows is why now, what changes could have prompted sacrificing
rivers in the 12th or 13th c. in a region where rivers are known to be extremely important for
communications and connectivity? Following Bruguier’s idea that masonry bridges were part
of important economic zones (2000: 535-536), it could be argued that bridges were used to
force a stop, but the services provided in these areas and the economic opportunities they
offered would have been appealing enough to traders to stop on their own accord when
bridges were made of wood, as pointed out above. Fast troop deployment has also been
considered but it should be noted that the iconography clearly shows some troops being
deployed by water in the bas-reliefs of Bayon and Banteay Chmar, while armies on foot
crossed rivers using pontoon structures even when the deployment included elephants.

The change from wooden to masonry bridges therefore suggest alterations to the way the
people of Angkor managed their landscape, which leads us to raise questions as to what
prompted the change at this time. While improvements in road transport technology could be
proposed, the iconography and the ethnography does not indicate great changes to pulled
carts, which have remained roughly the same until the present. However, the climatic
variation documented in the 13th c., which brought about long periods of low rainfall, does
provide grounds to suspect that changes in landscape management could have been due to a
diminished capacity of waterborne transport. As explained above, navigability of rivers
depends on water levels, so a reduction of rainfall in monsoonal rivers would have resulted in
considerable restrictions to navigation and waterborne transport, especially in small and
medium-size rivers. If we consider the knock-on effect that prolonged low-rainfall would
have had in Angkor’s transport network, it seems logical to propose that during the 13th c.
small and medium-sized rivers lost their strategic value in Angkor’s transport network, at the
same time that road transport gained importance around the core of the capital. In this
context, it would make sense for the kings of Angkor to choose to seal off economically-
irrelevant rivers by using masonry bridges that would enhance road transport. If this analysis
is correct, the majority of the bridges should date to around the mid-13th c. So by taking a
maritime approach and envisioning how masonry bridges relate to navigation, new avenues
of research can be suggested in the discussion of Angkorian masonry bridges.

A moat could be defined as a deep, wide ditch, normally filled with water, surrounding a
fortified habitation such as a castle, fort or even town. It was originally intended as a defense
against attacks. But as years went by and attacks became more and more rare and castles have
also lost their original use, the moats have become mostly ornamental.

23
Angkor Wat itself is surrounded by a 650-foot-wide (200 m) moat that encompasses a
perimeter of more than 3 miles (5 km). This moat is 13 feet deep (4 m) and would have
helped stabilize the temple's foundation, preventing groundwater from rising too high or
falling too low.
Angkor Wat's main entrance was to the west (a direction associated with Vishnu) across a
stone causeway, with guardian lions marking the way. Recently, archaeologists found
the remains of eight towers made of sandstone and laterite by the western gateway. These
towers may be the remains of shrines that were in use before Angkor Wat was fully
constructed. To the east of the temple was a second, more modest, entrance.
The heart of the temple was the central tower, entered by way of a steep staircase, a statue of
Vishnu at top. This tower "was at once the symbolic center of the nation and the actual center
where secular and sacred power joined forces," writes researcher Eleanor Mannikka in the
book "Angkor: Celestial Temples of the Khmer Empire" (Abbeville Press, 2002). "From that
unparalleled space, Vishnu and the king ruled over the Khmer people."

A carved stone lion statue stands on guard near a causeway over the huge water reservoir and
moat surrounding Angkor Wat, the largest temple complex at the ancient city of Angkor.
Angkor Wat, like many Hindu and Buddhist Southeast Asian temples, was designed as a
"mandala," a geometric design of a perfected world usually with square nested walls and
passages leading past deity images towards a high central tower.

Water, with its life-giving and purifying qualities, is central to Khmer cosmology and all
varieties of Hindu religion. The moats surrounding the temples of Angkor were envisioned as
earthly models of the ocean that surrounds the world. A Sanskrit inscription compares the
moats and reservoirs at Angkor with tributaries of the sacred Ganges River in India. Angkor
was the royal capital of the Khmer empire from 802-1431 A.D. Angkor's long-lasting
prosperity was based on the local abundance of three resources: water, fish, and the rice crops
grown on soil nourished by annual rains, rivers, and controlled water reservoirs. The area's
unique source of water is the "Great Lake," Tonlé Sap, which connects to the Mekong River
and multiplies in size after the annual monsoon rains.

These natural resources allowed the Khmer population at Angkor to reach an estimated one
million inhabitants. The "footprint" of Angkor's stone monuments spans about eighteen by
eight miles. During its peak, Angkor's influence extended far, into what are now Vietnam,
Laos, Thailand, Burma, and Malaysia. The ruler who oversaw the building of Angkor Wat
was Suryavarman II. He ruled the Khmer empire by 1113 A.D. and began an ambitious
building and imperial expansion project. Angkor Wat's stone buildings, built within nested
square walls, took over thirty years to complete.

The sandstone for Angkor's temples was quarried from a mountain range some twenty miles
northeast of the royal city. The task of transporting the stones would have been enormous,
involving weights comparable to the construction of the larger pyramids in Egypt. The stones
used were carefully "dressed" so that they would fit together perfectly without the use of
mortar.

24
Despite their brilliance as stone carvers, the Khmer never mastered the engineering principles
of staggered block joints and vaulted arches, as used by the Egyptians and Romans. Instead,
the Khmer often piled stones directly on top of each other so the joints lined up, and later
split apart easily. They also built "corbel" or "false" arches above walls, which did not
distribute the stones' weight well. Such building practices led to a more rapid crumbling of
Khmer stone structures over time. The Angkor Wat complex was designed as an earthly
model of Mount Meru, home of the Hindu god Vishnu. Mount Meru's five peaks are
conceived as surrounded by mountain ranges and oceans, represented architecturally by the
outer walls and moats. At Angkor Wat, the sacred monuments rise in tiers toward the center
tower, with higher towers at every corner of the concentric squares.

The fact that the main central tower of Angkor Wat faces west, symbolizing death in
Southeast Asia, when virtually all other Khmer temples face east to the rising sun, has
suggested the idea that Suryavarman II intended the monument to be his tomb as well as a
temple. Other scholars have suggested that the western orientation is connected with the
temple's dedication to Vishnu, or with astronomical measurements designed into the temple
complex.
Classical Khmer kings promoted the idea (known as "devaraja") that there was an intersection
of the ruling king and a validating god. Usually the Hindu god chosen for this personal
identification was Siva, but sometimes it was Vishnu, or even a godly image of Buddha or
Buddhist saints. Khmer temples often portray the ruling king incarnated as the favored god,

25
whose shrines are within a monument on earth that models the design of the cosmos and
heavens.

Bas-relief carvings on the central temple walls at Angkor Wat illustrate scenes from the
Mahabharata and Ramayana, two epic tales from India that were important to classical
kingdoms, philosophy, and art throughout Southeast Asia. Both epics include heroes, such as
Rama and Krishna, who are earthly incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu, as well as animal
deities such as Garuda (a bird) and Hanuman (a monkey).

Angkor Wat is also famous for its bas-relief sculptures of dancing female divinities (each
called an apsaras) created for the entertainment of the Hindu gods. These female deities, who
wear pointed crowns, are often depicted in dance poses.

In contrast to the intricately carved outer wall, the interiors of the stone temples are usually
bare. Small holes on some walls along with inscriptions describing the grandeur of Angkor,
suggest the idea that there originally were interior murals, possibly of bronze, which long ago
were removed and re-forged. When the French assumed rule over the Angkor area in the late
1800s, they marvelled at the ruins and debated their origins. Many of the puzzles were solved
by translating inscriptions on stone slabs at Angkor, and other stones resting as far away as
Laos.
The stone inscriptions, written either in the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit or in an old
form of Khmer transcribed with a Sanskritic form of writing, describe the accomplishments
of Khmer kings during their reigns, royal accounting practices, rice production, and even the
amount of medicines used in imperial hospitals. Apparently the human dwellings at Angkor,
even those of the kings, were made of wood and they perished long before the remaining
stone temples.
Ultimately, it was the ascending Siamese kingdom, based in what is now Thailand, that
sacked Angkor in 1431 and ended the kingdom's regional power.

Although the Angkor Wat site originally was dedicated to the Hindu God Vishnu and most of
its images are from Hindu scriptures, the temple later became used as a shrine for Theravada
Buddhists. Theravada Buddhism is the dominant religion among the contemporary Khmer
people of Cambodia (as well as majorities in Thailand and Burma) although it is influenced
by earlier local ideas and practices, as well as the Hindu antecedents of Buddhism.
Detail of the area immediately to the east of Angkor Wat showing hydraulic features.

26
View of the moat that surrounds the temple from the Ta Kou entrance (east side) to the Angkor
Wat.

preliminary map of archaeological features visible in the LiDAR data (LiDAR courtesy of KALC).

Angkor Wat ("Capital Temple") is a temple complex in Cambodia and the largest religious
monument in the world measuring 162.6 hectares. It was originally constructed in early 12th
century by King Suryavarman II as a Hindu temple dedicated to the god Vishnu for the
Khmer Empire and gradually transforming into a Buddhist temple towards the end of the 12th
century. As the best-preserved temple at the site, it is the only one to have remained a
significant religious center since its foundation. The temple is at the top of the high classical
style of Khmer architecture. It has become a symbol of Cambodia (national flag) and it is the
country's prime attraction for visitors.

27
Angkor Wat combines two basic plans of Khmer temple architecture: the temple-mountain
and the later galleried temple. It is designed to represent Mount Meru. Within the moat is the
outer wall 3.6 kilometers long and there are three rectangular galleries, each raised above the
next. At the center of the temple stands a quincunx of towers. Unlike most Angkorian
temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west; scholars are divided as to the significance of
this. The temple is admired for the grandeur and harmony of the architecture, its extensive
bas-reliefs, and for the numerous devatas (deity) adorning its walls.

Angkor Wat moat drying ‘could affect foundations’(Voun Dara 2019)

The Angkor Wat moat has so far lost more than 10,000 cubic metres of water in the drought,
says Phoeun Sokhim, the deputy director of the Department of Water Management at the
Apsara Authority. A historian has raised fears that the drought currently gripping Cambodia could
affect the foundations of the Kingdom's globally renowned Angkor Wat, while the temple complex's
Apsara Authority management has said that, while it was prepared, it was not expecting such a
problem.
Diep Sophal, a professor of history at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, said if the water
in Angkor Wat's iconic moat was to dry out to such a degree that the temple's foundations
were exposed, the resulting natural degradation could lead to the building's structural
integrity being compromised.

He also expressed concern that the loss of the moat would discourage tourists from visiting
the Unesco World Heritage Site.
“Scientists have discovered that Angkor Wat stands solidly due to its sandstone construction
and the sandstone in its foundations beneath the moat. According to scientists, if the moat
dries out, the foundations being exposed must surely be problematic,” Sophal said.
However, he said he expected the Apsara Authority would monitor the situation to avoid such
an issue.

Phoeun Sokhim, the deputy director of the Department of Water Management at the Apsara
Authority, on Friday said the Angkor Wat moat had so far lost more than 10,000 cubic metres
of water in the drought.

“The dry season this year is compounded by the El Nino phenomenon, making the weather so
hot that lots of water has been lost to evaporation."
“Although the water evaporation is on a large scale, it has not affected the amount of water in
the Angkor Wat moat because it is able to store more than one million cubic metres,” Sokhim
said.
The Apsara Authority restored the ancient water system from the Tonle Om river in the
archaeological park to Angkor Thom and then the 4km to Angkor Wat, he said.
“This means water in the moat of the Angkor Wat temple remains balanced without drying
out, maintaining the beauty of the site.”

Apsara Authority spokesman Long Kosal on Sunday said that even though water evaporation
was currently high, it would not create problems for Angkor Wat as its moat could store
millions of cubic metres of water.

“The Apsara Authority is also regularly cooperating with the Siem Reap Water Supply
Authority to manage water. We are not worried about this because we have solutions to fully
address any challenges. We have not ignored the issue,” Kosal said.

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The sheer size of only the water body of Angkor Wat one square kilometre, containing about
4 million cubic metres water. Because of its moat that is wider in size and in proportion than
at any other Khmer temple (except those Mebons in Barays), Angkor Wat can be called an
island temple, too. Angkor island temples (Mebons)

1. Devata at Lolei in Roluos

2. East Mebon quincunx

3. West Mebon landing place
4. Neak Pean

BARAYS
West Baray:The largest structure built by the ancient Khmer was not Angkor Wat, but the
West Baray. Even huger than Angkor’s impressive temple monuments were reservoir dams
encircling vast artificial lakes. The reservoirs called Barays are charateristics of all major
cities of the Angkorean era, not known before or after this classic age of Khmer history.
Barays were characteristic elements of Koh Ker, Beng Mealea, Phimai and Sukothai in
Thailand, Preah Khan Kampong Svay and Banteay Chhmar. (Jacques Durmaçay claims that
there was one earlier Baray from the late eigth century at Wat Phu in today’s southern Laos,
but Wat Phu during this early period was dominated by Cham more than by Khmer.) The
largest man-made water body of the Khmer civilization, in the Angkorean era as well as
today, is the West Baray. It covers 16 square kilometres and contained almost 50 million
cubic metres water. Today the eastern part of it is swamp area. The West Baray is rarely
visited by tourists, but it is quite popular with locals for its picnicking spots and waterfront
sheds. It’s small island tempel West Mebon has been under renovation during recent years,
but the island can be reached by motorboat.

Indratataka at Roluos ; The first imposing artificial lake of the Khmer was the Indratataka
at Roluos, also called the Baray of Lolei. This Baray, now dry, covered an area of 2.5 square
kilometres and stored 7,500,000 cubic metres water. It is sometimes ascribed to the half-
legendary founder of the Khmer empire Jayavarman II, but more probably it is the work of
the ingenious historical king Indravarman I, who shaped Roluos as the first imperial Khmer
city. Angkor founder Yashovarman I, who was Indravarman’s son, finalized his father’s
reservoir and built a temple, the Lolei, on an artificial island in the centre of this reservoir.
According to this example, later major reservoirs had their respective island temples, too.
They are usually called Mebons. Many Mebons are not situated in the very centre of the lake,
but shifted slightly northwards.

There are four major reservoirs in the core area of Angkor, the first one was
Yashovarman’s East Baray, covering 12.5 square kilometres, with a capacity of 37 million
cubic metres. The East Baray dried up and is farmland with paddy cultivation now. So it’s
erstwhile island temple East Mebon is not surrounded by water any more.

Srah Srang, a much smaller reservoir built under Rajendravarman II in the middle of the

29
tenth century, is still an impressive artificial lake, but it lost its island temple, of which only
foundations under the water level remain. It covers 0.3 square kilometres and has a capacity
of about 1 million cubic metres.

Moat of Angkor Wat: The largest temple building of the entire world is only half of the
construction work done for the Angkor Wat. The other half is its moat. It is even huger than
the Srah Srang reservoir. The sheer size of only the water body of Angkor Wat one square
kilometre, containing about 4 million cubic metres water. Because of its moat that is wider in
size and in proportion than at any other Khmer temple (except those Mebons in Barays),
Angkor Wat can be called an island temple, too.

However, the highlight of ancient Khmer water architecture is not big in size, but impresses
by its charming beauty. Neak Pean is Angkor’s island tempel par excellence. It is situated in
the centre of Angkor’s last reservoir. This northern Baray was built by Jayavarman VII. The
area is almost 3 square kilometres large, the capacity was almost 9 million cubic metres.

30
Neak Pean or the entwined serpents is one of the ancient sites that has gained a lot of
attention due to its astonishing architecture. It is an artificial island with a Buddhist temple on
a circular island in Jayatataka Baray. Base one its architecture this temple is thought to be
associated with Preah Khan temple; It is the “Mebon” of the Preah Khan Baray. This temple
was completely constructed in the 12th century, during the reign of King Jayavarman VII.

As the study has shown that during King Jayavarman VII reign, he had built many hospitals.
Neak Pean is also one of those, which means it was constructed for medical purposes. Neak
Pean is also believed to present Anavatapta, a mythical lake in the Himalayas. Water
contained in this mythical lake is thought to have the ability to cure all illnesses. Neak Pean is
one of several sites described by Zhou Daguan. In the 13th century, he was a Chinese
emissary who visited Angkor in its heyday. However, what we see today does not correspond
to Zhou’s description of the site does not fully correspond. Hence, it suggests that either Neak
Pean was remodeled or Zhou misremembered.

Historical significance

Barays were not the only elements of Angkor’s water management system. Actually, it also
consisted of a whole network of numerous smaller reservoirs and moats and canals,
distributing and storing the water of the the streams from Phnom Kulen. Bernard-Philippe
Groslier (not to be confused with the even more important Angkor researcher George
Groslier, who was his brother) called Angkor a “hydraulic city”. He assumed a huge
population of almost 2 million people depended on paddy cultivation irrigated by a water
system, of which the Barays were the core elements. His hypothesis was in compliance with
Marxist theories about “hydraulic civilizations” requiring enourmous bureaucratic control for
developping and maintaining huge irrigation systems. “hydraulic civilizations” were believed
to be marking ancient Asian cultures as despotic in contrast to Western ones.

Reason for the Barays: Jacques Dumarçay supposed, the reason for the existence of many

31
Barays in Angkor was, that new ones were required after earlier ones had begun to silt up and
because of siltation the dams were raised several times. Roland Fletcher critized the siltation
model, because Yashovarman I had started the construction of the East Baray immediately
after finalizing his father’s Baray Indratataka and water levels depend on the height of intake
points, not that of dams. However, archaeological evidence indicates, that indeed changing
water ressources led to construction modifications at Angkor’s Barays. On the other hand,
some critics of the “hydraulic city” model suggested, that Barays were no functional
buildings at all, but only sacred architecture with cosmic symbolism, this means, a special
kind of temples, with only enourmously enlarged moats. Reasons for this assumption of
religious funtions only were missing evidence, how the outlet of water should have worked,
or even topographic calculations, that water supply by the Barays would have been
technically impossible or at least effectless. So the answer to the question, what was the
purpose the vast Barays served for, is crucial for an understanding of the economic basis of
the Angkor civilization.

Role of the Barays: It seems that both parties are partially right, after recent studies by
Christophe Pottier of the École française d’Extrême-Orient indeed found outlets of the
Eastern and Western Baray, surprisingly at their eastern dams, instead of the longer southern
dams where the water should be expected to leave according to natural inclination. But there
were dispersion canals, too.

However, the Barays seem to have played a much less important role in contributing to water
supplies for wet rice cultivation than those plenty of smaller reservoirs of villagers that served
for regulating seasonal changes of water supply, too. So the dimensions of the Barays remain
to be a mystery. Fletcher and Pottier came to the conclusion, that Barays served not so much
for wet rice cultivation in the areas in their immediate neighbourhood below their dams, but
for transporting water seasonally along long canals in order to support paddy cultivation in
the area of the Tonle Sap, where seasonal water levels change more dramatically. So the
Barays could have served more for supporting flood-retreat paddy farming than for wet rice
cultivation. But the full understanding of the Khmer water management system – and its
changes in the course of time – will remain to be the major field of research in southeastasien
history, for future anthropologists and scientists, and may be a clue to solve the other famous
puzzle: What were the reasons for the decline of the Angkorian empire?

Beyond doubt, Barays were not mere functional buildings, but religious monuments at the
same time. Maybe they served for royal water and fertility ceremonies and festivals. So be
aware, the Mebon island temples you are visiting today are only a small interior part of those
ancient gigantic sacred monuments.
__________

Indratataka: 3.8 km long and 800 m wide Baray at the Lolei temple in Roluos

32
Lolei, sometimes spelt Loley, is the youngest and smallest of the three most important Roluos
temples, less photogenic than the similar Preah Ko. But the historical background of the Lolei
temple is remarkable in many respects. It was consecrated in 893, its promoter was
Yashovarman I (889-910), who shifted the capital from Hariharalaya, the present-day Roluos,
to a new 16 square kilometres large fortified city called Yashodharapura. It encompassed the
area of the later Angkor Wat and was the first city and capital in the area we call Angkor.
Thus, Yashovarman, who erected the Lolei temple in commemoration of his father, Roluos-
king Indravarman I, can be titled the founder or initial king of the most famous ancient
Khmer capital Angkor, where the Bakheng became his state temple. Yashovarman also
constructed the East Baray, the main source of Angkor's water supply and economical wealth
during four centuries to come. But Yashovarman also completed the 3.8 km long and 800 m
wide Baray of his father's capital Roluos. This tank once called Indratataka, "sea of Indra",
like the East Baray, is dry now. The Lolei was built on an artificial island slightly north to the
centre of this reservoir, which therefore is also called the Baray of Lolei. As the Bakong in
Rolous was a kind of model for Angkor's Khmer temple-pyramids, so the Lolei became the
prototype for the Khmer lake-temples, particularly the East- and West-Mebon in the East-
and West-Barays of Angkor. The embankments of the elongated rectangular Baray of Lolei
run strictly east-west and north-south, slightly divergent from the natural inclination.
Similarly the later Angkor Barays extended in east-west-direction.

The ancestor temple Lolei consists of four brick towers, dedicated not only to the parents,
but also to the maternal grandparents of Yashovarman I. The southwest tower is half broken,
the southeast Prasat collapsed in 1968. There is some speculation that two more Prasats were
planned at the northern side, making the Lolei even more alike Preah Ko, which was built by
Yashovarman's father and predecessor Indravarman. However, the northern towers were
never erected. The four Prasats were covered with stucco, some parts of excellent quality are
still visible. Sandstone lintels and colonettes bear exquisite stone carvings. The false doors
are monolithic. The eastern towers are protected by male guardian sculptures called
Dvarapalas, they show with characteristics of Shiva, whereas the western towers dedicated to
female ancestors show female devatas instead. A small cruciform sandstone channel in
between the four towers is an unusual feature. A square pedestal, supposedly for a Linga, is
placed at the intersection of these channels.

Trapeang Srangae moat

Island Temples; In a certain sense almost all majr Angkor temples can be called „island
temples“ insofar as they are surrounded by moats. On the other hand, island temples in
Barays can be interprted as normal temples with an extraordinarily wide moat.

A Southeastasian temple, in compliance with Indian examples, was an ample Mandala, a

geometric pattern representing the the cosmic structure spiritually, with an arrangement of
symbols of minor deities surrounding the main idol in the centre. The exterorior enclosure

33
waals formed a square or at least a rectangle according to the four cardinal directions. It is
typical for Khmer temples that the borderline between sacred and profane areas was
additionally emphasized by rectangular moats. Water, because of its life-giving and purifying
qualities, played a core role in the imperial ideology of the agrarian Khmer culture. An
inscription compares moats and reservoirs of Angkor with tributaries of India’s sacred river
Ganges. Furthermore, moats symbolized the exterior ocean of the world.

There are some temples of which the moats are better preserved than the stone structures
themselves. An Example for this is Trapeang Srangae, situated to the east of Preah Ko and to
the north-east of Bakong in Roluos. The wide rmoat in the jungle is in a sound condition,
solely from the east it allows access to a temple compound, in which otherwise only
foundation walls and some lintels ares scattered on the ground.

Trapeangs

Trapeang Phong marshland

Apart from moats there was another form of Khmer water architecture, viz. Trapeangs.
Trapeang temples have no continuous expanses of water, but smalöler separate ponds around
them or in front of them. Such a single pond is called a Trapeang. A Trapeang was
discovered at the temple Trapeang Phing in Roluos, too, but it is hardly recognizable for
today’s visitors. However, Trapeang Phong is an “island temple” in another respect. It is
situated in the swamp zone of the Great Lake Tonle Sap, thus, during the summer and autumn
months it can be visited only by boat, you have to ask the locals for hiring one. Then you
really enjoy the atmosphere of travelling to an island.

Originally Trapeang Phong was an ensemble of füur Prasat towers in irregular order. But
three of them are hardly recognizable. The fourth one is a brick tower in a fair condition. The
tall superstructure has four tiers.Trapeang Phong is from the middle of the ninth century, this
mean, besides Prei Monti, located 1 km further north, it is one of the erliest temples of the
dawning Angkorian era.
__________

34
2 nd Large East Mebon Island temple

Apart from the Angkor Wat, the East Mebon was the largest Khmer island temple, but it is
not situated on an island any more since the East Baray dried up during the first half of the
scond millennium. Inscriptions state that Kavindrarimathana was charged by the king to build
edifices in the middle of Lake Yashodhara, the East Baray.

The East Mebon is an imperial symbol of continuity of the dynasty as well as the capital. The
builder Rajendravarman II was a cousin of his predecessor Harshavarman II. Harshavarman
had not been the designated heir to the trone, but was supported by Rajendravarman in
seizing power. Those days Koh Ker, not Angkor, was the Khmer capital. After
Harshavarman’s death his powerful supporter became king, but could have been regarded as
a usurper. Building the East Mebon was a means to the end to legitimize his rule. It did so by
insinuating a continuity of a higher order: The East Mebon was not only Rajendravarman’s
ancestor temple, it meant a shift back from Koh Ker to Angkor, the city of Rajendravarman’s
uncle Yashovarman, who had been a fully legitimate heir to the throne. Like Yashovarman
had honoured his predecessor Indravarman by building the island temple Lolei in King
Indravarman’s reservoir Indratataka, now Rajendravarman built a similar, but much bigger
ancestor temple on an island of King Yashovarman’s reservoir Yashodharatataka, the East
Baray. Obviously, this analogy serves to emphasize the continuity of Angkorian rule.

However, there is something special and mysterious: Why is the East Mebon not simply an
island temple on ground level, but a kind of elevated temple pyramid at the same time? And
why is it not only an ancestor temple, but a state temple, too? It contained the state Lingam
bearing the king’s name, the Linga Rajendreshvara. This is exactly in the tradions of royal
state temples. And this is all the more surprising as Rajendravarman built the largest temple
mountain of the tenth century, too. Pre Rup’s architect was the same who constructed the
East Mebon. So did Rajendravarman build two state temples, in contrast to all other Khmer
kings before and after him? But in case he had only one, it must have been the East Mebon
and not Pre Rup, because the name of the Lingam of the East Mebon symbolizing the king’s
power is that of the king, the name of the Pre Rup Lingam refers not to the living, but to a
deseased king. Many believe, that Pre Rup was not Rajendravarman’s state temple, but his
funerary temple. The ambiguity of the East Mebon’s function – ancestor and state temple at
the same time – could be the reason for its hybrid type of architecture, partly flat temple on
an island like Lolei, partly temple mountain like Indravarman’s Bakong and Yashovarman’s
Bakheng.

The East Mebon was a three-tiered temple pyramid with a low inclination angle, neither a
temple mountain nor a flat temple. Today it seems to be taller than it really was, because the
visitor will view it from the bottom of the former lake. What seems to be a first tier of the
pyramid now, was indeed just above the water surface. To judge by the laterite steps that
surround the East Mebon platform, the original depth of water was approximately three
35
metres.

The lower tiers were of laterite. The upper tier, measuring 30 m by 30 m, was built in
sandstone and has five brick Prasats in quincunx order. The towers were similar in style to
the Roluos period of King Indravarman I. For a more detailed description of the architecture
of the East Mebon please visit our page “Angkor pyramids”.
__________

Srah Srang reservoir

Real Barays retained water above ground level behind elevated dams. In contrast to Barays,
Srahs were artificial swales dug into the ground. Srah Srang, also spelt Sras Srang, is a
combination, both dug and embanked. In size it is midway, too, namely between Baray lake
and Trapeang pool. Unlike to the nearby East Baray the Srah Srang reservoir dug out below
the natural water level, is filled with water. Now it is not a place for ritual baths any more, but
a quite scenic rectangular lake.

Nothing remains of the Mebon island temple of Srah Srang, though it had one, its basement is
now under the water level, but can be recognized at the end of dry season even without diving
for it. It is not placed in the centre.

French archeologists found a necropolis close to the rexervoir. Srah Srang, the “Royal Bath”,
is ascribed to the reign of Rajendravarman II, but sometimes supposed to be from a much
later date, namely from the Buddhist Bayon style period of King Jayavarman VII at the end
of the 12th century. Certainly a first Srah was constructed already in the 10th century, but it
got a new laterit and sandstone cladding in the 12th century. The platform with Naga
balustrades and lion guardians is definitely in the style of Bayon and was connected to the
nearby first major flat temple of Jayavarman VII, Banteay Kdei.

The platform was under renovation and the sculptures removed for restauration in 2013. The
platform is a popular sunrise point of Angkor. Its immediate surrounding offers the best
restaurant area inside the Archaeological Park.
__________

36
West Mebon island temple

The West Mebon is located on an artificial island of almost 200 m diameter in the centre of
the West Baray, which was the largest artificial lake of the Khmer empire, 8 km long and 2
km wide, like the East Baray elongated on an East-West-axis. Baray and Mebon are from the
middle of the 10th century, most probably begun under Suryavarman I and finalized by
Udayadityavarman II.

Unlike the East Mebon, the West Mebon island temple was flat, on ground level. Only the
eastern enclosure wall of the temple copound of 70 metres square is preserved. Originally it
had three Gopuram gates with small towers on each side, only two towers are preserved.
They are covered with bas-reliefs depicting animals in the style of Baphuon. The wall was
rounded on top, with little niches. Inside the compound was a basin filled with water. A
causeway from the east ended in a cross in the centre of this basin with foundations of a
sanctuary.

No inscription has been found here, but an inscription of Preah Khan mentions that the island
temple was dedicated to Vishnu. In 1936 parts of a gigantic bronze sculpture of the reclining
Vishnu were excavated on the island, modern local legend has it, that it was discovered after
a villager’s dream that a Buddha statue asked to be unburied.

In 2013 dykes were built to protect the West Mebon island. Restauration work at the temple
was ongoing 2914. The island can be reached by hiring a boat at the southern dam of the
Baray, where the modern outlet is located and the paved road from Siem Reap ends at the
lake. The West Baray is popular with locals as a weekend picnic spot.
__________

Angkor Wat Moat

Major Khmer temples have moats, the vastest Khmer temple has the largest moat, the outside
perimeter extends more than five kilometres, the width is almost 200 metres. That’s the size
of an impressive reservoir. And it really served for irrigation, too, disperson canals habe been
discovered.

37
The Moat that is a Lake:Angkor moats are actually Lakes and not like the European Moats.
Due to its dimensions and its proportions, water, that charakteristic element of Khmer
architecture, is more dominant at the Angkor Wat than at any other temple in the world.
Digging and cladding it required as much work force as the construction of the gigantic
temple proper. The jungle had to be removed, depending on the original ground level at least
1,5 million or even 4 million cubic metres earth had to be removed. Much of the soil was
transported to the core of the new artificial island and has been contained inside the outer
walls of the temple enclosures, with laterite structures and sandstone cladding, making
Angkor Wat an artificial mountain.

The moat of Angkor Wat played and continues to play a crucial role for the stability and the
state of preservation of this extraordinary monument. The underground is silt and sand and
swamp. In this day and age construction of high buildings is not permitted in the Siem Reap
area because of the inapplicable condition of the soil. But ancient engineers used several
technical tricks, not all of them fully understood till the present day, to stabilize the
enourmous temple stucture that was created as a ship of stone in a swamp, Angkor Wat is not
supported by underground constructions like Venice or the Taj Mahal, indeed, Angkor Wat
swims. But changing water quantities in the underground due to seasonal changes of water
levels, if not equally distributed below the monument, could fracture it. The ingenious giant
moat contributes to keep the underground density relatively stable all year round. It does so
by collecting the run-off of the temple compound during the rainy season, for reducing the
water quantity below the temple builing, in order to reduce upwards surge. On the other hand,
during the dry season, the soil below the temple compound can absorb water from the moat.
Thus the moat prevented groundwater from both rising too high or falling too low. By the
way, one reason why the Baphuon, Angkor’s second largest temple, collapsed after only a
few centuries, was the lack of a moat.

Furthermore, the moat is one main reason why Angkor Wat has never been reconquered by
the jungle. The forest did not spread as much across this wide moat as in the case of temples
with narrow moats. Angkor Wat’s moat also served as a defensive bulwark for the city on the
temple island.

The moat surrounded the external (counted fourth from the centre) enclosure of the temple
compound, its laterite walls are bordered by sandstone steps. The moat is crossed only on two
axes, from the east by a simple earth dam, that could erstwhile have served to transport
construction materials and sustainment supply to the island, and from the west by a
prestigious sandstone causeway, 200 metres long and 12 metres wide. Pillars along its sides
that support its corbelled edge, of which only a few are still visible. A slightly elevated

38
cruciform terrace, guarded by lion sculptures, precedes the causeway. Both sides are flanked
by Naga-balustrades.

The Naga-serpents, of course, indicate the mythic symbolism of the moat’s water. It
reprensents the cosmic ocean, in contrast to the temple mountain that symbolizes the cosmic
mountain called Meru.

Neak Pean island temple

A major task of Buddhist kings, particularly for an emperor, a “Chakravartin”, was the
construction of reservoirs. So Angkor’s king introducing Mahayana-Buddhism as state cult,
Jayavarman VII, built a new reservoir, the Jayatataka, this means “Victory Lake”. Today this
reservoir is a swamp and usually called called "Veal Reach Dak" by locals, meaning "plain of
the royal reservoir". On maps and in guidebooks you will also find the names “Northern
Baray” or “Baray of Preah Khan”, since it is situated in the very same east-west axis of the
Preah Khan temple, in front of it to the east. The Jayatataka measures 3,500 m by 900 m. The
island of 350 m diameter with a temple in the centre of this North Baray is called Neak Pean.

39
40
Jayavarman VII. is famous for building hospitals in accordance with the Mahayana-Buddhist
teaching of care as means of salvation or highest end in itself. Neak Pean was not one of
those famous hospitals, but most probably a kind of spa for pilgrims, who could bath in
sacred pools fed with holy water. Neak Pean seems to have been dedicated to the Buddha
originally, but later on was changed to the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, who is called
Lokeshvara in Cambodia. Lokeshvara is the healer of the sick and lame. Lokeshvara did not
play a significant role in the Khmer religion and iconography before Jayavarman VII. Even in
the early phase of his Jayavarman’s reign Lokeshvara was less venerated than the Buddha.
But this changed in the second half of his reign, when Angkor Thom and the Bayon temple
became the major projects of this king.

The inscription of Preah Khan claims the water that the water of the Jayatataka was holier
than that of Prayag. Prayag is the modern Allahabad in India, where Ganges and Jamuna and
the mythical Saraswati meet, the junction of three rivers is called a Triveni Sangam.
Accordingly, the inscription of Preah Khan mentions as Angkor’s three holy waters the East
Baray for Shiva, the West Baray for Vishnu and Jayavarman’s new North Baray for Buddha.

The original name of the island temple was Rajashri, “king’s shining”. The modern name
“Neak Pean” means “coiled serpents” and alludes to the imposing Naga balustrades around
the basis of the circular central Prasat, raising their heads to the east and tails to the west.
Neak Pean’s design is unique in Khmer architecture, though it is not the only round Prasat,
that of the Bayon has a circular layout, too. But the circular platform surrounded by the
bodies of the two Nagas (Neak) mentioned above is unprecedented.

Neak Pean’s exceptional beauty emanates from another unparalleled feature, Neak Pean is
first and foremost an ensemble of ponds in a Mandala layout, it’s circular central shrine is an
island within the island. The central platform of 14 m diameter is situated in the middle of a
square basin of 70 metres. Its sandstone foundation has eight steps running around the
platform. The upper step has the layout of a lotus. Thus the core sanctuary springs up from a
lotus bud on a pond.

41
This central Prasat is faced by a statue of the horse Balaha placed in the pond, partly under
water. It is depicted saving drowning sailors clinging to his flanks and tail. Horse-king Balaha
(Valaha) was an incarnation of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara. It was identified with a flying
white horse with five heads rescuing devotees from a sinking ship threatened by a female sea
demon trying to devour them.

The larger pond sits at the axis of a cross of four more square ponds in the cardinal directions,
each of them 24 m by 24 m. Originally the five ponds were surrounded by eight more square
pools in a lotus pattern.

There are four sandstone structures at the cardinal points of the central pond, connecting it to
the neigbouring smaller ponds. During the rainy season, only the roofs can be seen. Inside
those four structures, there are gargoyles of four different forms: a lion to the south pool, a
horse to the west, an elephant to the north, and a man's face to the east. It seems that water
would only emerge from the gargoyles' mouthes when priests or pilgrims poured water from
the main pond into the small receptacle above the backside of the gargoyles.

An inscription stated that Neak Pean was "a sacred island, drawing its charm from its ponds
and clearing away the sins of those who approach it". This is why Neak Pean is supposed to
have served an absolution function and medical purposes. The water of the ponds was
thought to have sacred healing power. The water was consecrated by flowing through the
mouth of one of the sacred animals mentioned above. Maybe, they symbolized the four
elements, lion for fire, horse for air, elephant for water, and man for earth. It is assumed, each
sick person was sent to the pool of that element believed to be of specific healing power for
his desease or according to his astrological character.

There is another interpretation of Neak Pean, namely that its central pond symbolizes the
mythical lake Anavatapta. The location of the real lake associated with Anavatapta is in the
Himalayas, near Mt. Kailash. In this area there are springs of the most important and sacred
rivers of India, leaving into four different directions (approximately). The rivers are Ganga,
Jamuna, Indus and Brahmaputra. The four springs at Anavatapta are said to be spewed from
the mouths of a lion, an elephant, a horse, and a bull. In Buddhist traditions those four
animals became common symbols of the four directions, representing this world. For
example, they are well-known from the Ashoka capital in Sarnath. They are a common motif
at Budhist temples in Sri Lanka, too. The bull is replaced by a man at Neak Pean. This is
strange and a reason to doubt Neak Pean's association with the Anavatapta myth. However,
the bull is also removed from 12th century moonstones in Sri Lanka. Already at the capitals
of the four cardinal direction gates (Toranas) of the great stupa in Sanchi in India bull and
horse are missing and replaced by a second kind of elephant and by dwarfs with human faces.
By the way, both interpretations of Neak Pean, medical pilgrimage site and Anavatapta
symbol, do not at all contradict each other, as Lake Anavatapta was believed to be of healing
power, too.

42
a

The Balaha sculpture and the animal and human gargoyles should be seen during the dry
season. But visitors are not allowed to enter the area of the pools any more. They only can
view the arrangement of pools from the northern edge. This is why the wet season, when the
pools are full of water, is now more recommendable for a visit.

There are figures of Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara on the wall of the central Prasat, which is
built of sandstone. Above the one to the north, whose head was stolen in 1982, there is a
pediment carving depicting prince Siddharta's "Great Departure" from his life in a palace to a
search for salvation. The east pediment shows the cutting of his hair, symbol for the begin of
his life as a hermit, the west pediment depicts him meditating under a tree. Each corner has
statues depicting Airavata, the three-headed elephant being the mount of Indra.

Neak Pean had lion statues, which were made of bronze. They possibly symbolized Kubera,
the god of wealth. In the 14th century, Siamese invaders conquered Angkor. The bronze lions
from Neak Pean were looted and brought to the Siam capital Ayyuthaya. But when the
Burmese seized Ayyuthaya, they took the Neak Pean bronze lions to Mandalay, where those
statues remained to be till the present day.

Though dedicated to Buddha and Lokeshvara, Neak Pean contained several Hindu images,
too. A stone sculpture of Vishnu was found on the west side of the island, and Lingas at the
north side. Maybe, Neak Pean was even a former royal Hindu site.

There is a wooden footbridge from the car park at the Grand Circuit route crossing the
Northern Baray swamp and leading to the observation platform of Neak Pean. As already
mentioned, access to the pond area is not permitted any more.
The West Baray reservoir in the Angkor Archaeological Park can store some 56 million cubic
metres of water and the North Baray some five million, he said, while there were millions
more cubic metres in the Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom moats.

43
the moat surrounding Angkor Wat, 2 football field wide, 50 feet deep (JamesTanSL, Jul
2009)

Investigating the use of land during the medieval period at the celebrated ceremonial area of
Angkor, the authors took a soil column over 2.5m deep from the inner moat of the Bakong
temple. The dated pollen sequence showed that the temple moat was dug in the eighth
century AD and that the agriculture of the immediate area subsequently flourished. In the
tenth century AD agriculture declined and the moat became choked with water-plants. It was
at this time, according to historical documents, that a new centre at Phnom Bakeng was
founded by Yasovarman I. 1

Stage 1: Moat as Cosmic Sea

The outermost boundary of a Khmer temple was often surrounded by a moat, a body of water
symbolic of the Cosmic Sea (blue highlights above). For Hindus, the Cosmic Sea is the
source of creative energy and life, the starting point for the journey toward salvation.The
temple visitor begins his journey by crossing the sea on causeways lined with serpents, beasts
similarly intimately associated with both Hindu and Khmer myths of creation (we explore the
serpent in detail in our guidebook to Angkor).

Stage 2: Enclosure Walls as Sacred Mountain Ranges

Continuing on his way to the center of the temple, the visitor passes through a series of
massive enclosure walls; these walls recreate sacred mountain ranges, symbolic of obstacles
that must be overcome on the path to enlightenment (green highlights in Fig. 1).
Monumental tower
gateways, called gopurams, grant the visitor passage through the walls, each successive one
revealing a more sacred area, farther removed from the outside world.

44
The combination of concentric enclosure walls with large gateways was derived directly from
South Indian Hindu architectural precedent. Enclosure walls make their first appearance very
early in the Khmer building tradition — at the late 9th century pre-Angkor site of Roluos in
the temples of Preah Ko, Bakong and Lolei — and are a constant feature in all subsequent
temples.
Stage 3: Five Sanctuary Towers as Mount Meru

At the center of the temple stand sanctuaries with tower superstructures (red highlights
above).
 The mountain residence of the gods. Under Hindu cosmology, the gods have always
been associated with mountains. The sanctuary’s form, dominated by its large tower,
recreates the appearance of the gods’ mountaintop residence, Mount Meru. The
mountaintop residence of the gods carried particular symbolic resonance for the Khmer
people.
 God’s cave. The sanctuary proper, located directly under the tower, is where an image of
the deity resides (see exhibit at right). Its dark interior is designed to represent the cave
into which god descends from his mountain home and becomes accessible to human
beings.
 The sacred intersection. At the Hindu temple’s sanctuary, the worlds of the divine and
living connect: the god’s vertical axis (mountaintop to cave) intersects with the visitor’s
horizontal axis (temple entrance to cave). The entire universe emanates from this
intersection, as unity with god is the goal of earthly existence. In Hinduism, god is
believed to temporarily physically inhabit his representation in the sanctuary; the Hindu
temple is arranged to enable the direct devotee-to-deity interaction that necessarily
follows. Unlike other faiths, there is no religious intermediary and no abstraction; god is
manifest before the devotee’s eyes, a profound encounter.
It is here, among the peaks of Mount Meru, that the visitor’s symbolic journey ends in
nirvana: the pairs of opposites characteristic of worldly existence (e.g., good versus bad, right
versus wrong) fuse into a single infinite everythingness beyond space and time.

1.T Vegetation and land-use at Angkor, Cambodia: A dated pollen sequence from the Bakong
temple moat,Dan Penny,Christophe Pottier,Roland Fletcher
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236597655_Vegetation_and_land-
use_at_Angkor_Cambodia_A_dated_pollen_sequence_from_the_Bakong_temple_moathe city of
Angkor, capital of the Khmer empire from the 9th to 15th century CE, is well known for its
impressive temples, but recent research has uncovered an extensive channel network
stretching across over 1000 km2. The channel network with large reservoirs (termed baray)
formed the structure of the city and was the basis for its water management. The annual long
dry season associated with the monsoon climate has challenged water management for
centuries, and the extensive water management system must have played an important role in
the mitigation of such marked seasonality. However, by changing the natural water courses
with off-take channels the original catchments were also reshaped. Moreover, severe
problems of erosion and sedimentation in human built channels evolved and impacted on the
whole water management system. This paper describes the present hydrology of the area and
discusses the impacts of water management on hydrology during the Angkor era. The paper,
moreover, attempts to summarise lessons that could be learnt from Angkorian water
management that might apply to present challenges within the field.

45
Water Technologies of the Khmer Civilization: Angkor

Angkor (of the Khmer culture) covered more than 160 square kilometers in northern
Cambodia, situated on the edge of the Great Lake (Tonle Sap). The Classic Angkor
civilization was part of the Khmer culture (between AD 802 and 1327). Prior to AD 802 the
Khmer political landscape consisted of a number of independent kingdoms (Coe, 2003).
Angkor became the imperial capital of the Khmer Empire. Ancient Angkor was a vast
complex of temples built from the 8th to the 13th century AD. Angkor has been referred to
as the world’s first mega city and a hydraulic city. A study by Evans, et al (2007) concluded
that the area of Angkor’s urban complex was roughly 900 to 1,100 square kilometers which is
almost four times the size of present day New York City. Angkor was a low density city with
dwellings and water tanks spread over the area and connected by roads. Angkor is located in
the Lower Mekong Basin which is subject to an annual cycle of monsoons causing alternation
between a wet rainy season (summer monsoon) and a strongly marked dry season. The heavy
rainfall during the summer monsoon causes the Mekong River and its tributaries to rise and
flood low-lying areas. Snow melt in Southwestern China and Tibet flowing down the
1
Mekong contribute to the flood volume.
__________________________________________
Water management in Angkor: Human impacts on hydrology and sediment transportation,

Matti Kummu,March 2009,Journal of Environmental Management 90(3):1413-21

The Tonle Sap River, a tributary of the Mekong, reverses flow because of the back water
effects from the large flows in the Delta of the Mekong and causes the water levels in the
Great Lake (Tonle Sap) to rise. Floods subside during the winter monsoon and again river
flow is toward the Delta causing the water levels in the Great Lake (Tonle Sap) to lower.
Total rainfall in the Lower Mekong Basin fluctuates from year to year and is never very high,
with an average of 150 cm per year in area of Angkor. In Phnom Penh the mean rainfall is
143 cm and can be as high as 231 cm and as low as 97 cm.

46
 IDL TIFF file

The simulated natural color image was acquired on February 17, 2004, by the Advanced
Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on
NASA’s Terra satellite. It is centered near 13.4 degrees North latitude, 103.9 degrees East
longitude, and covers an area of 22.4 x 29.9 km. In this image, water is black and blue,
vegetation is bright green, and bare earth is pink. Satellite of Angkor (Courtesy of NASA)
The Angkor Wat temple complex is visible in the above image as the small black frame just
below the image center. North of Angkor Wat is the larger square of Angkor Thom, the inner
royal city built in the 12th century. The now dry moat around Angkor Thom is still visible as
a pale pink square cut through the surrounding green vegetation. Within the square is a
palace, homes for priests and government officials, and government administration
buildings. West of Angkor Thom is the vast Western Baray, a reservoir built in the 11th
century. The earthen walls constructed to hold water form a perfect rectangle, oriented
exactly east-west. Possibly the Western Baray and its predecessor, the Eastern Baray, were
built to provide water to the city, control water levels on the Siem Reap River, and provide
irrigation water to the surrounding plain. The smaller Eastern Baray is also visible in this
image. (Adapted from

47
NASA)

Map of Angkor showing surface features such as topography and waterways. (Modified
figure courtesy of NASA with print added)

Barays The ability to store water was accomplished by constructing large reservoirs called
barays. These reservoirs had inlet and outlet control structures so that they were used both in
the time of drought and flooding. There were four large barays which had the respective
approximate storage volumes (Coe, 2003): West Baray (48 million m 3), East Baray (37.2
million m3), Preah Khan (Jayatataka) Baray (8.7 million m 3), and Indratataka Baray (7.5
million m3). The approximate surface areas of these barays are West Baray (16 million m 2),
East Baray (12.4 million m2), Jayatataka Baray (2.9 million m2), and Indratataka Baray (2.5
million m2). The West Baray even holds water today. All of these barays may not have been
functional at the same time, but one thing is for certain the water management system
including the barays and other water infrastructure such as moats, canals, etc. required
constant maintenance. A vast canal system was built that was used for both irrigation and
transportation.
Angkor Wat Angkor Wat is the world’s largest religious monument. it has been referred to
as a pyramid of three levels with each side enclosed by a well developed gallery of with four
gopuras and corner towers, and crowned by five towers in a quincunx (Freeman and Jacques,
2013).

48
Satellite photo of Angkor Wat inside the moat (Courtesy of NASA)

At entrance

Entrance/bridge to Angkor Wat. Entrance to Angkor Wat is from the West as compared to
the other temples which have the entrance from the East. Moat surrounding Angkor Wat
showing bridge. The moat defines the outer limits of Angkor Wat, which has walls faced
with laterite and sandstone. Reservoir along entrance to Angkor Wat showing pond on left
side (to the north) of the entrance
walkway

49
Reservoir along entrance to Angkor Wat showing reservoir on right side (south side) of the
entrance

50
 Stone basin on second level of Angkor
Wat

51
On the second level of Angkor Wat there were four stone rectangular basins (one shown
above) in the cruciform cloister. These basins were most likely made water proof using a
layer if
clay.

Model of Angkor Wat at the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand

Neak
Peann

52
53
Preah Khan Preah Khan
entrance

54
Moat

Preah Khan baray Preah Khan baray

Ta Prohm Entrance to Ta Prohm
Sras Srang
Two photos below are of Sras Srang, a large
reservoir.

55
Sras Srang

56
Angkor Thom Elephant’s Terrace

57
The Bayon is situated at the center of the Angkor Thom. Remains of bridge near Siem Reap
River Above two photos are of a bridge at Angkor

References
Acker, R (1998) New geographical tests of the hydraulic thesis at Angkor, South East Asia
Research¸6(1), pp. 5-47.
Evans D, Pottier C, Fletcher R, Hensley S, Tapley I, Milne A, Barbetti M (2007) A
comprehensive archaeological map of the world’s largest preindustrial complex at Angkor,
Cambodia, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(36), 14277-14282
Freeman, M. and Jacques, C., Ancient Angkor, Books Guides, River Books Ltd, Bangkok,
2013.
Groslier, B.-P. and J. Arthaud (1957) The Arts and Civilization of Angkor, Praeger, New
York National Geographic (2009) Angkor: Why an Ancient Civilization Collapsed, July, pp
36-55
Stone R. (2006) The End of Angkor, Science, 311(5766), 1364-1368
https://ancientwatertechnologies.com/2015/05/21/water-technologies-of-the-khmer-
civilization-angkor/

“Puok River: As a pre-industrial settlement, Angkor is unique in terms of its scale and
impact on the natural environment. Recent mapping of the extent of urban environment at

58
Angkor has revealed that its water management infrastructure covered an area in excess of
1,000 km2 . In order to ‘feed’ this enormous and convoluted water management system, the
Puok River was truncated and its seasonal fl ow captured, probably only partially in the fi rst
instance, but ultimately creating an entirely new catchment. Massive engineering structures
such as that discovered recently at Bam Penh Reach were required to control this system.
The subsequent capture of the majority of Puok River fl ow by the newly created Siem Reap
channel - intentional or not – led to dramatic incision in the upper to middle reaches of what
became the Siem Reap River. This would have had a signifi cant effect in central and
southern Angkor, as higher discharge and larger sediment loads moved through the system,
and on communities of the downstream Puok River, whose access to seasonal fl ow in the
Puok River would have been greatly reduced. Clearly, Angkor represents an excellent
illustration of the profound impact that a pre-industrial, agrarian, ‘traditional’ society can
have upon the natural environment. The extent to which these environmental impacts brought
about conditions inimical to viable social life at Angkor, as fi rst proposed by Groslier,
remains to be demonstrated in detail.”

__________________________________________________________________________

Chapter: Did traditional cultures live in harmony with nature? lessons from Angkor,
Cambodia-In book: Modern Myths of the Mekong - A Critical Review of Water and
Development Concepts, Principles and Policies, 2008,Publisher: Helsinki University of
Technology. Finland,Editors: O. Varis, M. Keskinen, M.
Kummu-https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236627154_Did_traditional_cultures_liv
e_in_harmony_with_nature_lessons_from_Angkor_Cambodia9.7

59
Tonlé Sap

60
Tonlé Sap , literally 'large river' (tonlé); 'fresh, not salty' (sap), commonly translated as 'great
lake') is a seasonally inundated freshwater lake, Tonlé Sap Lake, and an attached river, the
120 km (75 mi) long Tonlé Sap River, that connects the lake to the Mekong River. The lake
is drained during the dry season by the Sab River (Tônlé Sab) across the Véal Pôc plain
southeastward to the Mekong River.They form the central part of a complex hydrological
system, in the 12,876 km2 (4,971 sq mi) Cambodian floodplain covered with a mosaic of
natural and agricultural habitats that the Mekong replenishes with water and sediments
annually. The central plain formation is the result of millions of years of Mekong alluvial
deposition and discharge. From a geological perspective, the Tonlé Sap Lake and Tonlé Sap
River are a current freeze-frame representation of the slowly but continuously shifting lower
Mekong basin. Annual fluctuation of the Mekong's water volume, supplemented by the Asian
monsoon regime, causes a unique[2] flow reversal of the Tonlé Sap River. [3] The largest
freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, it contains an exceptional large variety of interconnected
eco-regions with a high degree of biodiversity and is therefore a biodiversity hotspot. It was
designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 1997.

Importance: Tonle Sap River, which despite its 120km length is an almighty force. Branching
off the Tonle Sap Lake, the river pumps life throughout Cambodia, with its fish providing
more than 50% of the population’s protein intake. Be it fish for food and trade, water for
farming, or nutrition for fertile land, this great ecosystem is pivotal to life in the country.

The Great Tonle Sap: The Tonle Sap River connects the Tonle Sap Lake with the Mekong
River in Phnom Penh, and has played a huge part in civilisation for centuries. Water from the
lake supplied the Khmer Empire’s population, all the way back from when Angkor Wat stood
as the capital in the 12th century to today, feeding the livelihoods of swathes of Cambodians.
With fishermen landing more than 400,000 tons of fish out of the Tonle Sap Lake annually, it

61
is Southeast Asia’s largest freshwater lake. In 1997 it was designated a UNESCO biosphere
reserve. The lake also stands as one of the richest inland fishing areas in the world, home to
149 fish species including (despite its name), the Mekong giant catfish.

A remarkable natural phenomenon: What makes the Tonle Sap even more remarkable is
that the flow of the river changes direction every year. During monsoon season, swelling
waters from the Mekong River (which meet the Tonle Sap in Phnom Penh), hammer against
the Tonle’s flow. The might of the Mekong is so strong that it reverses the flow of the water,
pushing it back upstream and into the lake.

This incredible natural phenomenon sees the lake rise by up to tenfold in some places, where
the water increases from one to 10-metres deep. As dry season creeps in and the water starts
to ebb, the Tonle Sap flows back towards the capital, significantly emptying out the lake.

Before and After Flooding

Area: Tonlé Sap Lake occupies a geological depression (the lowest lying area) of the
vast alluvial and lacustrine floodplain in the lower Mekong basin, which has been induced by
the collision of the Indian Plate with the Eurasian Plate. The lake's size, length and water
volume varies considerably over the course of a year from an area of around
2,500 km2 (965 sq mi), a volume of 1 km3 (0.24 cu mi) and a length of 160 km (99 mi) at the
end of the dry season in late-April to an area of up to 16,000 km2 (6,178 sq mi), a volume of

62
80 km3 (19 cu mi) and a length of 250 km (160 mi) as the Mekong maximum and the peak of
the southwest monsoon's precipitation culminate in September and early-October.
As one of the world's most varied and productive ecosystems the region has always been of
central importance for Cambodia's food supply. It proved capable of largely maintaining
the Angkorian civilization, the largest pre-industrial settlement complex in world history.
[8]
Directly and indirectly it affects the livelihood of large numbers of a predominantly rural
population.
The lake and its surrounding ecosystems have come under increasing pressure
from deforestation, infrastructure development and climate change in recent years.
All Mekong riparian states have constructed a series of dams to exploit the river's
hydroelectric potential. A succession of international facilities that dam the river's
mainstream is thought to be a serious threat to the Tonlé Sap eco-region by reducing flow
into the lake and reducing connectivity. Climate change caused a number of severe droughts
in Cambodia during the 2010s, which have further reduced the annual river flow into the
lake. Fisheries and food security of the population have been affected. Satellite imaging
suggested the low water levels during 2019 was driven by a particular severe drought and
was exacerbated by the withholding of water in hydropower dams in China.
The lower Mekong basin (LMB) encompasses the lower half of the Mekong River's length
of 2,600 km (1,600 mi) and the surrounding drainage basin of around
607,000 km2 (234,000 sq mi). It is divided into five distinct physiographic units: the northern
highlands; the Annamite chain; the southern uplands; the Korat Plateau; and the Mekong
plain. These regions each have distinct geology, climate, vegetation and human-use patterns.
The lower Mekong basin rests on an ancient block of continental crust that has remained
relatively stable since the Jurassic Period, a period of over 150 million years. Large areas
were covered by an inland sea during the upper Mesozoic Era, during which thick red-
bed sandstones and evaporites were deposited.
The Sekong, Sesan, and Srepok Rivers—collectively called the 3S Basin—are the dominant
tributaries. All three enter the Mekong on the eastern bank. At the southern end of the basin,
the mainstream breaks up into a complex network of branching and reconnecting channels.
One of these branches forms the Tonlé Sap River. The western and central parts of the
southern basin make up the great lake.[17]
The lower Mekong basin experiences two monsoon periods: rain from May to October and a
dry season from November to March. The annual rainfall is between 1,000 and 3,000 mm,
locally up to 4,000 mm, falling almost entirely during the rainy season. [18] Water levels reach
their height in September and October.

Greater Mekong
Subregion

Mekong River

63
 Basin

Upper
Lower Mekong
Mekong Basin
Basin (LMB)
(UMB)

Cambodian
Northern Southern Khorat
Annamite Range Floodplain – Great
Highlands Uplands Plateau
Lake Ecosystem

Cultivated Deciduous Tonle Sap Tonle Sap

Wetlands
Lands Forests River Lake

Swamps
Aquatic
and
Habitats
Marshes

The Great Lake Ecosystem featuring Cambodian floodplain

The Cambodian floodplain or the Mekong Plain is a vast low-lying area traversed by the
Mekong River. Only a relatively small portion of the plain consists of fluviatile deposits of
the young Mekong. The plain encompasses most of lowland Cambodia and the Mekong delta
of Vietnam, a small part of southern Laos, and a small part of eastern Thailand
in Chantaburi and Prachinburi Provinces. It is bordered by the Dangrek Mountains on the
north, the Elephant and Cardomom mountains on the south, and the southern Annamite
Range on the east. The plain is about 800 kilometers from north to south and 600 kilometers
from east to west. It is mostly less than 100 meters in elevation, but a few higher
outcroppings are scattered throughout the plain and much of northern Cambodia is
characterized by rolling and dissected plains between 100 and 200 meters elevation. The

64
plain is the result of erosion and sedimentation. The sediments vary in depth from at least 500
meters near the mouth of the Mekong to only about 30 meters at Phnom Penh, with bedrock
outcroppings in isolated hills above the plain in several places.
The Tonlé Sap is the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia and one of the richest inland
fishing grounds in the world. The lake functions as a natural flood water reservoir for the
Mekong system as a whole by regulating the floods downstream from Phnom Penh during the
wet season and makes an important supplement to the dry season flow to the Mekong delta.
[21]

Wetlands, flooded forests, and deciduous forests

A belt of freshwater mangroves known as the "flooded forest" surrounds the lake. The
floodplains in turn are surrounded by low hills, covered with evergreen or deciduous seasonal
tropical forest dominated by species
of Dipterocarpaceae, Leguminosae, Lythraceae, Fagaceae and in some
places Pinaceae, Podocarpaceae, or bamboo. The eco-region consists of a mosaic of habitats
for a great number of species. The forest gradually yields to bushes and finally grassland with
increasing distance from the lake. On higher quality soils or at higher elevation, areas of
mixed deciduous forest and semi-evergreen forests occur. This variety of vegetation types
accounts for the quantity and diversity of species of the Great Lake ecosystem. Interlocking
forest, grassland, and marshland patches provide refuge for the local wildlife.
The lake's flooded forest and the surrounding floodplains are of utmost importance for
Cambodia's agriculture as the region represents the cultural heart of Cambodia, the center of
the national freshwater fishery industry, the nation's primary protein source.
Threats to the lake include widespread pollution, stress through growth of the local
population which is dependent on the lake for subsistence and livelihood, over-harvesting of
fish and other aquatic, often endangered, species, habitat destruction, and potential changes in
the hydrology, such as the construction and operation of dams, that disrupt the lake's natural
flood cycle. However, concerns that the lake is rapidly filling with sediment seem to be
unfounded at the present time.

INFLOW FROM THE MEKONG RIVER

65
Tonlé Sap over the course of one year

Inflow starts in May or June with maximum rates of flow of around 10,000 m3/s
(350,000 cu ft/s) by late-August and ends in October or November, amplified by precipitation
of the annual monsoon. In November the lake reaches its maximum size. The annual
monsoon coincides to cease around this time of the year.

66
Map of Tonlé Sap lake, river, and drainage basin

67
 As the Mekong River is at its minimum flow around this time of the year and its water level
falls deeper than the Tonlé Sap Lake, the Tonlé Sap River and surrounding wetlands, waters
of the lake's basin drains via the Tonlé Sap River into the Mekong. As a result, the 115-
kilometre-long (71 mi) Tonlé Sap River flows six months a year from southeast (Mekong) to
northwest (lake) and six months a year in the opposite direction. The mean annual reverse
flow volume in the Tonlé Sap is 30 km3 (7.2 cu mi), or about half of the maximum lake
volume. A further 10 percent is estimated to enter the system by overland flow from the
Mekong. The Mekong branches off into several arms near Phnom Penh and reaches
Vietnamese territory south of Koh Thom and Loek Daek Districts of Kandal Province.
There is extreme hydrodynamic complexity in both time and space and it becomes impossible
to measure channel discharge. Water levels, not flow rates and volumes, determine the
movement of water across the landscape.
Sedimentation: Although the large amount of sediment in the Tonlé Sap Lake basin is a
natural phenomenon, rapid rates of development and resource exploitation has focused the
attention of observers who fear the basin is in danger of filling with sediment. These fears
were first reported by local people who noticed some areas becoming shallower. With
increased sedimentation, already vague transit routes between capital and regional centers
would likely be shut down altogether and could restrict the migration of fish into the lake.
Because sediment contains nutrients that fuel food webs, the Tonlé Sap benefits from the
influx. Sediment-bound phosphorus serves as food for phytoplankton through higher plants,
and research has shown that the metabolizing of the chemical contributes to food abundance
and quality. Internal nutrient cycling, therefore, plays an essential role in productivity of a
floodplain. The nutrients bound to suspended sediments are important for the Tonlé Sap
system, particularly its long-term sustainability. The reversal of the Tonlé Sap River's flow
also acts as a safety valve to prevent flooding further downstream. During the dry season
(December to April) Tonlé Sap provides around 50 percent of the flow to the Mekong Delta
in Vietnam.
The lake occupies a depression created due to the geological stress induced by the collision of
the Indian subcontinent with Asia. In recent years, there have been concerns from scientists
about the building of high dams and other changed hydrological parameters in southern
China and Laos that has threatened the strength and volume of the reverse flow into Tonlé
Sap, which in turn decreases nesting, breeding, spawning, and feeding habitats in the
floodplain, which results in adverse impacts on fish productivity and overall biodiversity.

Puok River
Puok River: As a pre-industrial settlement, Angkor is unique in terms of its scale and impact on the
natural environment. Recent mapping of the extent of urban environment at Angkor has revealed that
its water management infrastructure covered an area in excess of 1,000 km2 . In order to ‘feed’ this
enormous and convoluted water management system, the Puok River was truncated and its seasonal fl
ow captured, probably only partially in the fi rst instance, but ultimately creating an entirely new
catchment. Massive engineering structures such as that discovered recently at Bam Penh Reach were
required to control this system. The subsequent capture of the majority of Puok River fl ow by the
newly created Siem Reap channel - intentional or not – led to dramatic incision in the upper to middle
reaches of what became the Siem Reap River. This would have had a signifi cant effect in central and
southern Angkor, as higher discharge and larger sediment loads moved through the system, and on
communities of the downstream Puok River, whose access to seasonal fl ow in the Puok River would
have been greatly reduced. Clearly, Angkor represents an excellent illustration of the profound impact
that a pre-industrial, agrarian, ‘traditional’ society can have upon the natural environment. The extent

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to which these environmental impacts brought about conditions inimical to viable social life at
Angkor, as fi rst proposed by Groslier, remains to be demonstrated in detail.

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3D Movie of Moat

https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/visualising-angkor-the-moat-of-angkor-wat-tom-
chandler-brent-mckee-mike-yeates/ngHhRLR72EY60A?hl=en

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