Page:Angkor from Siamese pov - Damrong - 1925.pdf/9

 the case of Khmer monuments in Siam, such as those of Bimai, where one can easily recognise the traces of non-completion. Other monuments bear the same testimony. I made further observations at Angkor Wat with the same results. I then recollected an old tradition with us here in Siam that whoever builds a monastery should leave something to his posterity to complete, otherwise he, too, completes his own life! We may possibly, then, have got this idea from the Khmer, though of course the formation of such an idea is not likely before a nation has spent the energy of its life. The more likely reason is that these monuments were conceived on such a great scale, that they necessarily took more than a single life-time to complete. Therefore the construction of a monument would conveniently pass through three probable stages, first, just enough would be built for sacrificial purposes; then exterior carvings would be added if the builder were still living; last of all, the interior engraving more often than not would be left to a later generation to complete.

Another remarkable feature of the Angkor Monuments is that all the more important ones changed in their religious symbolism. Some were at first Hindu, but afterwards were converted to Buddhist purposes, whilst others originally Buddhist became Hindu. You can see alterations in the carving plainly enough. Why so? One would perhaps think that at one time or another there were religious changes by force, somewhat in the same way as the Church of St. Sophia at Constantinople became a Moslem Mosque. But I do not think this could have been the case because no vestiges of religious persecutions or fighting are to be found in Khmer history. In the inscriptions of the Khmer Kings, we find monarchs professing one of these religions in preference to the other, or even both simultaneously, but the outstanding fact is that there never existed any hostility between the two at all. I believe Professor Finot, the President of the Ecôle Française d'Extrême Orient, is right in thinking that whist Buddhism, which is after all simply a code of morality, appealed to the greater number of people, Hinduism with its codes of temporal laws and customs would be the instrument of