Wat Bakong () is a

Theravada ''Theravāda'' (; 'School of the Elders'; ) is Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school's adherents, termed ''Theravādins'' (anglicized from Pali ''theravādī''), have preserved their version of the Buddha's teaching or ''Dharma (Buddhi ...

Buddhist pagoda on the precincts of the Prasat Bakong in the Ruluos archeological area of the Siemreap Province.

History

In 1890, the French explorer Lucien Fournereau climbed up the Prasat Bakong and witnessed the presence of a Buddhist pagoda which sheltered ancient

stele A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stela ...

s. In the 1930s, French tourists were surprised by the Brahmanic rites which continued to be celebrated in the Buddhist pagoda on top an Angkorian temple as in the nearby

Preah Ko Preah Ko (, "The Sacred Bull") was the first temple to be built in the ancient and now defunct city of Hariharalaya (in the area that today is called Roluos), some 15 kilometers south-east of the main group of temples at Angkor, Cambodia. The t ...

. The Wat Bakong was restructured in 1939. From the top of Wat Bakong which was going under archeological excavations and restoration, the Buddhist pagoda was displaced to the west wall of the temples precinct. In 1960, more than twenty years after its construction, the presence of this new pagoda in the precinct of the ancient temple was still criticized as an "hideous modern pagoda that disfigures Bakong". By 2011, the perception of its presence had changed and the paintings of the pagoda, now considered valuable cultural heritage, underwent restoration to restore the decoration of the pagoda as it was in 1946. The restored pagoda was inaugurated on 12 December 2011, in presence of Deputy Prime Minister

Sok An Sok An (; 16 April 1950 – 15 March 2017) was a Cambodian academic and politician. He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Takéo in 1993, then assumed additional roles of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Office of the Council of ...

. In 2020, the monks of Wat Bakong collaborated with locals authorities to protect what are considered sacred fishes from the drought that dried up the

moat A moat is a deep, broad ditch dug around a castle, fortification, building, or town, historically to provide it with a preliminary line of defence. Moats can be dry or filled with water. In some places, moats evolved into more extensive water d ...

surrounding the temple.

Architecture

The shape of the pagoda is quite unique: its has a gallery to the north and to the south and on the east side a porch nine meters long with decorated panels. In both interior and exterior panels, scenes of daily Khmer life are enterwined with elements associated to the presence of the French, during the

French protectorate of Cambodia The French protectorate of Cambodia (; ) refers to the Kingdom of Cambodia when it was a French protectorate within French Indochina, a collection of Southeast Asian protectorates within the French colonial empire. The protectorate was establi ...

: French military, French flags, airplanes, a truck and a French bicycle.

Porch

Under the porch, on the inside, seven paintings of the '' Vessantara Jātaka'' are set between the columns while on the exterior, themes of other '' Jātaka tales'' are evoked.

Interior

The paintings inside the pagoda, above and under the

bays A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

, describe stereotypical scenes of the life of the Buddha. The roof is ornated with characters floating over clouds as well as legendary animals.

References

Bibliography

* {{morecat, date=October 2023 20th-century Buddhist temples Religious buildings and structures completed in 1939 Pagodas Buddhist temples