Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/448

 376 FURTHER INDIA. BOOK VIII. at Phnom Penh l on the Me-kong, the present capital of what remains of the great Cambodian kingdom. TEMPLES. Broadly speaking, the temples, the relative position of which is shown in Woodcut No. 458, may be divided into four classes : firstly, those in which the enclosures, generally three in number, are all more or less on the same level, such as in the temples of Ta Prohm, Kedei, and Pre Rup ; secondly, the pyramid temples, which consist of a series of narrow terraces rising one above the other as Phimeanakas and Bapuon ; thirdly, those in which the two first classes would seem to be combined, where the enclosures, one within the other, are each raised from 15 to 20 ft. above the level of that outside, so as to give the whole a pyramidal form, such as in those of Angkor Vat and Bayon ; and fourthly, the smaller temples, consisting of three or five sanctuaries placed side by side, the centre one being the most important, the whole surrounded by a wall or moat. The enclosures consist either of a moat within which may have been some kind of timber palisade now gone, or a stone wall 8 to 10 ft. high, with cresting at the top. In a large number of temples one or more of the enclosures take the form of a gallery or corridor, which is roofed over with horizontal courses of stone corbelled over till they meet at the top. The nature of this construction limits the width of the corridor to 7, or at the utmost 10 ft., so that if a greater width is required, an aisle is provided on one or both sides. An example of this is shown in Woodcut No. 461, a section of the corridor at Angkor Vat.' In this case the support on the left consisted of a solid wall, the roof over the aisle being at a lower level than that over the corridor, but there are instances in which this system of con- struction is employed over the vestibules and halls leading to a sanctuary, in which case the outer supports are walls, the inner ones piers, constituting in plan what might be described as a nave and aisles. The approaches to the temples acquire considerable import- ance, not only on account of their great length, but because they consist of causeways raised from 10 to 12 ft. above the ground, necessitated by the fact that from June to October the valley of the Me-kong, where all the more important Cambodian temples are found, is flooded, and the raised causeways form the only means of communication between the towns and temples : the whole valley, in fact, is mapped out with roads arranged at right angles to one another, along which the caravans pass. In the approaches to the principal temples and the great 1 Lat. 11 33' N., long. 104 57' E,