Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 2.djvu/476

 400 FURTHER INDIA. BOOK VIII. the palaces of the King and Queen respectively, whereas if the temple had been built for a palace, they would be found in the central enclosure. On the west side of Phimeanakas, and within the palace enclosure of Angkor Thorn, are the foundations of buildings, which are supposed to have been the residences of the King and his family ; the women's quarters occupying the whole width of the enclosure against the west wall, in which there is no entrance gate. At Vat Phu, near Bassak, on either side of the causeway leading to the temple, is a structure of about 150 ft. frontage with a rectangular court at the back and surrounded with a corridor vaulted like those in the temples : and those are considered to be palaces, though they may have been occupied only by the Kings of Bassak, who were subject to the Cambodian monarch. Again at Phnom Chisor, to which reference has been made, on the north side of the court the sills of the windows are 6 ft. from the ground, so that the corridor they lighted may have been occupied by women. But in all these cases the accommodation would barely be sufficient for a hunting box, and for a monarch like the King of Cambodia, whose retinue consisted of hundreds if not thousands, the temples of Angkor Vat and Beng Mealea, Ta Prohm and Prah-khan, are the only structures which could possibly hold them. As regard Bayon, situated within the city of Angkor Thorn and in proximity to the palace, that may have been occupied by the priests only, but in Angkor Vat and Beng Mealea the series of magnificent halls which figure in the enclosures would seem to have been provided for the needs of a great court ; this, however, is a subject which requires further investigation, on which it is hoped that other inscriptions found, when deciphered, may perhaps throw more light. The temple and the King's palace were the only buildings in Cambodia where permanence was obtained by vaulting them over in stone. As this, according to the Cambodian system of construction, could only be effected by horizontal courses of stone corbelled out, the dimensions of the galleries and halls were extremely limited in their width, and increased accommodation could only be met by their extension in length thus the outer corridor of Angkor Vat was 2,400 ft. in length, the cross halls in front of the second enclosure and those of the latter measure i, 800 ft., and the inner enclosure, including the passages leading to the sanctuary, about 900 ft. more, or altogether about 4,300 ft. of corridor, of which 3,300 ft, with the double aisles, was only about 1 8 ft. wide, and the remainder 10 ft. wide or less. Halls of greater width must have had roofs of timber covered with tiles, which have all disappeared long ago, and can never have had a long existence, as the termites or white ants in Cambodia