At the eastern gallery is one of the most celebrated scenes, the Churning of the Sea of Milk, displaying 92 asuras and 88 devas utilizing the serpent Vasuki to churn the sea under Vishnu's direction (Mannikka counts only 91 asuras, and describes the asymmetrical numbers as representing the amount of days from the winter solstice to the spring equinox, and from the equinox to the summer solstice). It's followed by Vishnu defeating asuras (a 16th-century addition). The northern gallery shows Krishna's victory over Bana (where according to Glaize, "The workmanship is at its worst" and the fight between the Hindu gods and asuras. The north-west and south-west corner pavilions both feature much smaller-scale scenes, some unidentified but most from the Ramayana or the life of Krishna.
Construction techniques
The stones, as smooth as polished marble, were laid without mortar with very tight joints which were sometimes difficult to find. The blocks were held together by mortise and tenon joints in some cases, while in others they used dovetails and gravity. The blocks were presumably put in place by a mixture of elephants, coir ropes, pulleys and bamboo scaffolding. Henri Mouhot mentioned that many of the blocks had holes 2.5 cm in diameter and 3 cm deep, with more holes on the larger blocks. Some historians have mentioned that these were used to join them together with iron rods, but others claim they were used to hold temporary pegs to help manoeuvre them into place.
The monument was made out of enormous quantities of sandstone, just like Khafre's pyramid in Egypt (over 5 million tons). This sandstone had to be transported from Mount Kulen, a quarry about 25 miles (40 km) to the northeast. The stone was most probably transported by raft through the Siem Reap river. This would have to have been done with care to avoid overturning the rafts with such a large amount of weight. One modern engineer estimated it would take 300 years to accomplish Angkor Wat today. Yet the monument was begun once Suryavarman came to the throne and was finished right after his death, about 40 years.
Virtually all of its surfaces, columns, lintels even roofs are carved. There are miles of reliefs illustrating scenes from Indian literature including unicorns, griffins, winged dragons pulling chariots as well as warriors following an elephant-mounted leader and celestial dancing girls with elaborate hair styles. The gallery wall alone is embellished with almost 1,000 square metres of bas reliefs. Holes on some of the Angkor walls show that they may have been adorned with bronze sheets. These were highly prized in ancient times and were a primary target for robbers.
While excavating Khajuraho, Alex Evans, a stonemason and sculptor, re-created a stone statue under 4 feet (1.2 m), this took about 60 days to carve. Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehner also conducted experiments to quarry limestone which took 12 quarrymen 22 days to quarry about 400 tons of stone. The labours force to quarry, transport, carve and set up a lot of sandstone should have run into the thousands including many highly skilled artisans. The skills required to carve these statues were created hundreds of years earlier, as demonstrated by some artifacts which have been dated to the seventh century, before the Khmer came to power.
View of Angkor Wat across the moat
The Archaeological Survey of India performed restoration work on the temple between 1986 and 1992. Since the 1990s, Angkor Wat has seen continued conservation efforts and a massive increase in tourism. The temple is part of the Angkor World Heritage Site, established in 1992, that has provided some funding and has urged the Cambodian government to defend the site. The German Apsara Conservation Project (GACP) is working to protect the devatas and other bas-reliefs which enhance the temple from damage.
The organisation's survey found that around 20% of the devatas were in very poor condition, mostly because of natural erosion and deterioration of the stone however in part also due to earlier restoration efforts. Other work relates to the restoration of collapsed parts of the structure, and prevention of further collapse: the west facade of the upper level, for instance, has been buttressed by scaffolding since 2002, while a Japanese team finished repair of the north library of the outer enclosure in 2005. World Monuments Fund began work on the Churning of the Sea of Milk Gallery in 2008.
The site has been maintained by the private SOKIMEX group since 1990, which leased it from the Cambodian government. The inflow of tourists has so far caused relatively small damage, other than some graffiti; ropes and wooden steps have been launched to protect the bas-reliefs and floors, respectively. Tourism has also supplied some additional funds for maintenance-as of 2000 approximately 28% of ticket income across the whole Angkor site was spent on the temples-although most work is carried out by foreign government-sponsored teams rather than by the Cambodian authorities.
Direct links to Angkor Wat:
Angkorwat Part 1
Angkorwat Part 2
Angkorwat Part 3
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