Aedicule in Temple Architecture?

Dr Uday Dokras

Notation for aedicules and their placement on a temple has been adapted from the system developed in
Prof. Adam Hardy’s pioneering Indian Temple Architecture: Form and Transformation: The Karnata
Dravida Tradition (Abhinav Publications, New Delhi, 1995.) They have been supplemented and modified
to conform more closely with Khmer practice.

A small shrine intended to frame, shelter and honour a holy object, fulfilling a
similar function to a tabernacle. They consist of two or four columns supporting a
domed or flat roof, and are either open on all sides or set into a wall. A continuous
tradition of Drāviḍa (south Indian) temple architecture flourished in Karnataka, southwest
India, between the seventh and thirteenth centuries. This article focuses on the eleventh-
century temples, arguing that the later forms can only be understood in relation to the
constantly developing tradition, looked at as a whole. A formal analysis is put forward,
based primarily on the evidence of the monuments themselves. From the monuments, an
appropriate way of seeing can be deduced, allowing an understanding of both individual
temple compositions and of the way in which the forms evolve. A clear evolutionary
pattern emerges, tending toward dynamism and fusion. Seen retrospectively, there is a
sense of inevitability, as if the inherent potential of the architectural language is unfolding.
Yet there is great inventiveness. The article illustrates the nature of this inventiveness and
discusses its relationship to the evolutionary pattern. It concludes that it was not fixed
forms that were passed down, but a way of creating, and that the sense of evolutionary
direction this produced can be understood in relation to the world view the temples
embody.
Hardy, A. (2001). Tradition and Transformation: Continuity and Ingenuity in the Temples
of Karnataka. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 60(2), 180–199.
https://doi.org/10.2307/991703
Burrell, B. (2006). False Fronts: Separating the Aedicular Facade from the Imperial Cult in
Roman Asia Minor. American Journal of Archaeology, 110(3), 437–469.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40024551

AEDICULAR PROLIFERATION: of PHNOM BAKHENG- Bakheng Hill

Phnom Bakheng

"Temple of Mount Meru"

Phnom Bakheng is an ancient Hindu temple which is also called Bakheng Hill for
its location on the top of an isolated hill. The temple has been made in concordance
of a Hindu legend of Mount Meru, that talks of a temple on a hill which forms the

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center of the universe. The temple is fast depleting now, however, place has gained
attention from tourists for its amazing panorama. You can choose to climb up the
rather steep staircase or take an elephant ride to the temple. The place often gets
crowded during sunrise and sunset, however, it is worth visiting at any time of the
day. Do not forget to explore the ruins with their awe inspiring architecture even as
you take in the fascinating views. A must go for everyone touring the city.

Phnom Bakheng is among the list of best temples in Siem Reap. Phnom Bakheng is
a temple mountain in honor of the Hindu god Shiva and one of the oldest temples
in the Angkor Archaeological Park. Thanks to its location on a 60-meter high hill,
Phnom Bakheng became a very popular tourist spot for its magnificent sunset
views over Angkor Wat.
Built at the end of the 9th century, more than 200 years before Angkor Wat,
Phnom Bakheng used to be the principal temple of the area. Due to its location on
top of a hill, nowadays it’s the most popular temple in Siem Reap to catch the
sunset at.

Phnom Bakheng is built to honor and represent Mount Meru the home of the
Hindu gods (that’s why it’s on top of a hill). It is structured in a pyramid form of 7
layers, each symbolizing one of the seven heavens. During his reign, King
Jasovarman I (889 – 910 CE) moved the capital of his empire from Roluos to the
location which is now known as Angkor. Here, he created an enormous city of 16
square kilometers; bigger than Angkor Thom, which was built later. In the center of
this city, King Jasovarman built his State Temple on top of a natural hill, known as
Phnom Bakheng hill.
From the upper terrace of the temple, you get an incredible panoramic view of the
dense Cambodian jungle and Angkor Wat in the distance.
Location: Angkor Archaeological Park, Krong Siem Reap 17000 cambodia

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When Yasovarman I (889-915) succeeded Indravarman I, he erected a temple in
honor of his parents, as his father had for his at Preah Ko (879,) usually regarded
as the first temple of the Angkorian era. This second ancestral temple, Lolei, was
built in the middle of his father’s baray at Hariharayala (Roluos) setting a
precedent for other later island temples such as East Mebon (953) built in
Yasovarman’s own Yasoharatataka or East Baray by Rajendravarman, West Mebon
(c.1055) in the West Baray by Udayadityavarman II and Neak Pean (c.1200) by
Jayavarman VII in his own Jayatataka Baray. Then Yasovarman I built a new
capital at Yasodharapura a few miles from the future sites of Angkor Wat and
Angkor Thom, centered around his own state temple mountain located on the crest
of an actual mountain, or at least a hill, rising 78m above the Angkorian plain
named Phnom Bakheng (phnom is Khmer for hill.) Thus, he built not only a temple
mountain but a mountain temple including the actual topography in the temple’s
symbolic meaning, setting a precedent for more ambitious syntheses of nature and
architecture such as Preah Vihear (11th Century) and Phnom Rung (1113 -1150.)
At the same time Yashovarman I built Phnom Bakheng, he erected two less
ambitious mountain temples, each composed of three shrines and ancillary
buildings, on the summits of the only other hills in the area, Phnom Krom, 140m
above the Tonle Sap lake to the south, and Phnom Bok, 240m above the future
East Baray to the north, projecting vectors of authority from his temples across the
entire Angkorian plain.

Like the Bakong, Yashovarman I’s pyramid had five-levels or terraces with a plinth
on the uppermost one supporting a panchayatana or quincunx of shrines,
surrounded on its terraces by sixty small shrines and forty-four medium-sized ones
around its base. Phnom Bakheng thus turns an actual mountain into the cella or
base of a five-tier man-made “temple mountain” which acts as its shikhara, with
108 shrines, each itself an aedicule of a temple mountain, strung around these five
levels like the talas or haras of a Dravida vimana. Thus the temple itself, the
towers of its panchayatana and those around its terraces and base could all be
read as smaller replicas, “aedicules” and antefixes of the combined hill and
pyramid, itself a symbol of the cosmic, “Platonic Form” of mountains, Mt. Meru, at
whose base Phnom Bakheng sat, though at an incalculable distance from it. This
creates an infinite regress of original and simulacrum, signified and signifier, as
characteristic of Indic as postmodern thought.

Of all the temple mountains the Khmer built, Phnom Bakheng seems most
cognizant of its possible Javanese precedent, Borobudur, (see figure 10,) in the
multiple small, identical shrines lining its five terraces which are, however, too
narrow to allow circumambulation, thus precluding the need for mural bas reliefs
and the didactic purpose of its putative original. The forty-four large shrines
surrounding the pyramid’s base also recall the phalanx of 224 pevara or
guardian candi or small shrines standing watch at Candi Siwa at Roro Jonggrang
(Prambanan,) Java. Nonetheless, the Bakheng’s 108 shrines would be an
impressive number of aedicules on the shikhara of all but the most ambitious
Indonesian and Indian temples.

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4
A Khmer Stonehenge?
Man the Measurer or All Things
Phnom Bakheng, like every other Khmer monument, is constructed using precise
mathematical calculations, leading some to the conclusion it must have functioned
as some sort of astronomical or astrological instrument, at a time when there was
no distinction between the two. In the absence of historical evidence, an exegete is
free to choose among a plethora of possible sidereal phenomena and methods of
measuring Khmer temples which are necessarily somewhat arbitrary. These have
included: number of footsteps, (but whose foot?) distance from the outer edges of a
structure (generally used in this introduction,) distance from a structure’s center,
ratios of a temple’s length, width or diagonal, its intercolumniation, its inter-
fenestration, arc-seconds of the azimuth or path of the sun or moon, etc. Under
these circumstances, most such theories must be regarded as ingenious or merely
ingenuous, creative or simply credulous, suggestive or just obsessive. Jean Fillozat
of the EFEO, École Française d’Extrême Orient, for example, noticed that from any

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point around the Bakheng only thirty-three shrines are visible – which coincides
with the number of years it takes a lunar calendar of 354 days and solar calendar
of 365 to come into sync, (as well, one might add, as the number of Vedic deities,
the levels of consciousness in Buddhist cosmology, Christ’s age at his death, a
third of one hundred and any number of other related and unrelated phenomena.)
He also noted that each quadrant contained twenty-eight towers, equal to the days
of a four-week lunar month, while six times the sixty terrace shrines plus the five
towers on their summit equals 365, the days in a solar year. With a little more
arithmetic, one could soon discover that a four year lunar cycle has 1416 days and
a solar or Gregorian cycle, 1461 days, the same four digits and hence the same
sum, twelve, equal to the number of months in a year (or hours of sunlight at the
equinox, half a 24-hour day or eggs in a dozen, for that matter.) These two four-
year cycles are also forty-five days out of sync, the number of the 44 shrines
around the base plus the central one. Phnom Bakheng, the temple itself, could
even be pressed into service to provide the “intercalation” or “embolism” of 366
shrines each leap year. Since any of these congruities may have resulted from
serendipity or even wishful-thinking, the only conclusion to be drawn from them is
that the temple could have functioned as an observatory, - not that it did.

Numerology figured as prominently in the Vastu Shastra and Khmer life as

astrology with which it is intertwined; it determined the date to begin a temple’s
construction or to start a war; it was used to calculate the size of a pada for a
mandala; the “sum” of the letters of a donor’s name could decide which god a
temple honored and almost every number had numerous interpretations. Special
attention was paid to the ratio between the dimensions of a temple’s parts, like
Pythagoras’ or Palladio’s harmonic fractions or Corbusier’s “golden mean ratio” or
“modulor.” For example, 108, the number of shrines at Phnom Bakheng (less the
center one) was regarded as especially auspicious since 108 has so many
“auspicious” factors – 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, 18, 27, 54, (although, as noted, most
numbers could be auspicious, ominous or both.) The sum of the digits in 108
equals nine; a “magic square” can be constructed around that number because as
the initial digits of its multiples increase, their final digits decrease by an equal
amount, so all equal nine – 18, 27, 36, 45, 63, 72, 81, 90, 108, 117, 126, 135, 144,
153, 162, 171, 180, 207, 216, 225, 234, 243, 252, 261, 270, 432. (99 might appear
to present an exception but adding 1 to 9 =10 while subtracting 1 from 0 = equals -
1, the sum of which is also 9; although the Indians invented zero they overlooked
negative numbers, so this anomaly may have caused needless perplexity.)

The fact that the total number of shrines is 109 not 108 might also seem to present
a problem but, in fact, it would only have made that number more auspicious from
the point of view of temple’s shthapakas or architects, since 109 is an irrational
number and therefore cannot be factored, endowing it with both mystery, unity and
“adamantine” invulnerability. The Vastu Shastra, attached special significance to a
number’s “remainder” after factoring; this might be related to the consistent
asymmetry of Khmer temples, their unfinished state or simply an irrational
fascination with the irrational, closely allied to the numerological, the magical and
hence the sacral. 109’s remainder is one, the uniquely indivisible singularity and
origin of all other numbers, thus associated with the primal bindu, the seed of all,
the absolute, Brahman, atman, the uncreated creator and primum
mobile. Buddhism is more rigorous numerologically than Hinduism: since zero
precedes even one, sunyata or nothing is regarded as the ultimate uncreated or
not “dependently originated” reality.

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VIEW FROM THE SOUTHEAST EDGE OF THE 1ST ENCLOSURE, PHNOM
BAKHENG (907)

SHIVA, 5TH TERRACE, PHNOM BAKHENG (907)

´The Temple in its Terms: Two Asymmetries

Phnom Bakheng was carved from the rocky summit of its eponymous hill, paring
away the five terraces of its pyramid and then leveling the remainder to make its
1st enclosure. A 2nd enclosure surrounded the hill itself with four gopura and a
moat. On its east, a path for elephants and an unbroken flight of stairs for hardy
pedestrians led from the 2nd (outer) enclosure and present-day highway between
Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom up to the 1st (inner) enclosure. Like the Bakong,
Phnom Bakheng displays asymmetry along its east-west axis but it has a second
asymmetry as well, between the center of the central tower and the center of the
stepped pyramid it crowns. The temple’s 1st enclosure is a rectangle, 120m x190m,
its length more than 1/3 longer than its width. Within this rectangle, the central
tower and hence the north-south axis of the mandala is set-back to the west by the
difference between its western and eastern margins (11 and 12, shaded pink) which
equals 14.3% of the 1st enclosure’s length. (The Bakong’s 1st enclosure also had a
western and eastern strip separating its pyramid and peripheral shrines from the

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profane world of the “charnel grounds” beyond (see figure 13.) Diagonals drawn
through the central shrine to the north and southern enclosure walls (5, blue lines)
define the mandala’s east and west “threshold lines” (3, dotted lavender lines)
forming a 120m square which can be divided into a 64-pada manduka mandala
(lavender grid) which contains and organizes the temple’s 109 shrines and its five
terraces. The plinth (10) on which the temple’s quincunx or panchayatana of five
towers rests occupies the mandala’s four central Brahma padas, while the
twelve devika padas contain the pyramid’s upper three terraces, on the west, and
upper two, on the east. This second asymmetry results from positioning the
quincunx of towers (and hence the mandala's and the temple’s center) 7m to the
west on the pyramid's 5th terrace, equal to 3.6% of the enclosure’s length or, the
width of two terraces (shaded green.) This has a number of consequences: 1) the
center of the pyramid (4, orange diagonals) and the center of the quincunx of
towers and north-south axis (5, blue diagonals) are separated by 1.8% of the
enclosure’s length or 3.5 m (the width of 9, the purple bar;) 2) the pyramid or 1st
terrace is thus flush with the eastern row of shrines but separated from the
western by the width of two terraces (7, shaded green;) 3) the diagonals (4, orange
lines) drawn through the pyramid’s midpoint intersect the front corners of the
eastern row of shrines but the backs of the western; 4) diagonals drawn through
the central tower (5, blue lines) intersect the four corners of the mandala
containing all 109 shrines and cut through the rear corners of both the eastern and
western rows of peripheral shrines.

FIGURE 15: ANALYSIS OF SITE PLAN, PHNOM BAKHENG (907)

1 Stairway from the foot of the hill to the 1st enclosure
2 Elephant Path from the highway between Angkor Wat and
Angkor Thom to the 1st enclosure
3 East and west “threshold lines” of a manduka mandala
4 Diagonals drawn through the midpoint of the pyramid
5 Diagonals drawn through the central tower (north-south axis)

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6 Westward set-back of the central tower and quincunx of
shrines on the 5th terrace (shaded green)
7 Corresponding westward set-back of the western row of
peripheral shrines (shaded green)
8 Line marking the midpoint of the 1st enclosure’s length
9 Difference between the midpoints of the mandala, central
shrine and north-south axis and the pyramid (shaded purple)
10 Plinth with quincunx of 5 tower shrines
11 Western margin between the 109 shrines and the western
enclosure wall (shaded pink)
12 Eastern margin between the 109 shrines and the eastern
enclosure wall (also shaded pink)

The net westward setback of Phnom Bakheng’s 109 shrines by 14.3% might be
explained, in part, because it is the point at which the temple’s broad expanse
becomes entirely visible to a visitor reaching the top of the staircase from the road
below. Today a photographer still has trouble framing the temple’s width from this
position – even without showing the entire quincunx of towers, as in the photograph
on the previous page. The westward setback of most Khmer temple mountains serves
to lengthen the “liturgical axis” both to increase the “spiritual distance” between the
shrine and the profane world outside (and here below) and to provide space for rites
preparatory to viewing the “awakened god” within his shrine. The reason for the
second asymmetry, between the plinth with its quincunx of towers and the pyramid is
more difficult to rationalize. One could at least note that the space it opens between
the pyramid’s western edge and the eastern-facing steps of the western row of
peripheral shrines is necessary to enter them but this result could probably have
been attained more directly and without violating the temple’s symmetry. As with the
Bakong, another reason might be adduced from the visual experience of the
worshipper approaching the shrine along its “liturgical axis,” as with the net
westward set-back. The additional 7m set-back of the quincunx of shrines on the 5th
terrace increases the distance between the shrines and the eastern, “liturgically
privileged” staircase to them so that, at its top, the quincunx of shrines can be seen
as an ensemble, which would not be the case if the eastern two towers were closer to
that terrace’s edge. The 7m space opened could also provide a prominent space at the
culmination of the “processional path” where public rituals would be performed and
notables congregate before receiving the darshan of the resident deity, Shiva,
venerated within the shrine. This same setback would, at the same time, delay the
full view of the shrines to anyone ascending the eastern staircase until they stepped
onto the terrace because the terraces at Phnom Bakheng are so much steeper than at
the previous temple mountain, the Bakong.* As noted in reference to numerology, the
pyramid’s slope affects so many other relationships and is, in turn, determined by so
many variable factors, it is impossible to know what motivated this seemingly
insignificant but, nonetheless, deliberate asymmetry. Did the temple’s designers care
if the quincunx of shrines appeared dramatically or gradually? Did it matter to them if
the entire shrine and towers or just a part were visible from the 1st enclosure’s
eastern entrance?

While this slight asymmetry might make the towers appear marginally more abruptly
or seem a little more distant and celestial, it is certain, and surely more significant,
that the incline of the pyramid parallels and hence extends the slope of the hill so
that architecture and topography are rhymed as two tiers of a single temple
mountain. The appropriation of landscape to serve a larger symbolic objective also
incorporated the surrounding “city on a plain,” Yasodharapura, in a cosmological

9
geography, transforming secular terrain into a sacred landscape where hill and
temple, aedicule and ideal, merged. Mt. Meru’s summit and Phnom Bakheng’s upper
terrace became the place where the god, Shiva, entered his two earthly avatars,
the devaraja linga and, perhaps, the Khmer king. Thus, the city received the
deity’s darshan whenever it looked up at the temple, knowing the god was there,
though his image might be occluded or mediated by the visage of the monarch. Two
centuries later, traffic passing on the road below Phnom Bakheng, soldiers and
elephants, nobles and peasants, oxcarts and palanquins, on their way to Angkor
Thom, would again become actors in a symbolic, architectural drama. As they
crossed the bridge over the moat to the city’s south gate, between two rows
of asuras, demons, and devas, gods, twisting the naga, Vasuki, its balustrades,
they would re-enact the Khmer creation myth, “The Churning of the Ocean of Milk,”
the Samudra Manthan, to extract amrita, the elixir of immortality. Just as the
demons had been promised a drop in return for their participation,but in the end only
the gods got to sip, one might observe – no doubt, tendentiously – that the quotidian
business of the Khmer Empire ultimately served only the monarch’s pretensions of a
posthumous divinity, as the monuments of Angkor testify so eloquently.

*The slope of the pyramid can be calculated by dividing half the difference between
the widths of 1st and 5th terraces ( 76 - 47/2 = 14.5m ) by their height (five times the
height of a terrace or 2.6m x 5 = 13m, then adding the height of the shrine’s plinth
(1.6m) resulting in a height of 14.6m and a ratio of width to height of 14.5/14.6,
roughly a slope of 45°. Since the distance of the central tower to the edge of the 5th
terrace equals half that terrace’s width plus half its eastward offset (9, the purple bar
in figure 15) or 23.5m + 3.5m = 27m, the central tower would need to have been 27m
high before its peak became visible from the foot of the eastern steps. At the level of
the 4th terrace, (10.4m off the ground and the last point where the pyramid’s slope
would restrict sight lines to 45°) the top of a tower 16.6m tall (including its plinth)
would become visible; (in the absence of the 3.5m westward offset, a 16.6m tower’s
top would become visible from the stairs between the 2nd and 3rd terraces.) In any
event, the central tower of Phnom Bakheng, would have appeared marginally later as
a result of the 7% westward remove.

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 The Dharmaraja Ratha of the Konark temple as an example of aedicular vertical
expansion edited article byhttps://www.templemountains.org/dharmaraja-ratha-
structure-components-terminology-of-southern-indian-karnata-dravida-vimana.html

The ratha’s name commemorates the eldest of the Pandava brothers, heroes of
the Mahabharata, whose surrogate father, Yama, was the Dharmaraja or judge of the dead. Ratha, in
this case, signifies the vehicle or chariot of a god, cf. the Surya Temple at Konark and the Kailasa at
Ellora. The shrine’s roof or tower, here a Dravida alpa vimana, is based on a 9 x 9-pada
paramasayika mandala, arranged in a pyramid of 4 concentric squares, talas or tiers with 32, 24, 16 and
9 padas, each occupied by a single aedicule or shrine, except for the nine central Brahma padas, which
hold a crowning, octagonal kuta aedicule.
A prototype for “vertical expansion” can once again be found among the rock-cut monoliths of
Mamallapuram, the vimana of the Dharmaraja Yudhishthira Ratha in figure below (Vimana is the
Dravida or Southern Indian term for the Nagara or Northern Indian shikhara.).

The matrix to the photograph’s right shows the repeated pattern in which the three types of aedicules,
described beneath it, are strung; the aedicules circled in purple in the photograph have been shaded
purple in the corresponding diamond.

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 KO S K HP

FIGURE 8: ANALYSIS OF AEDICULES OF THE DHARMARAJA YUDHISHTHIRA RATHA,

MAMALLAPURAM (c.650)

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S = shala aedicule

K = kuta aedicule

HP = harantara-panjara aedicule

K-O = octagonal kuta aedicule

K=a square kuta aedicule or “cap,” a single cella shrine, like the nearby Draupadi Ratha in
figure 3, except sometimes open-sided and surrounded by a vedi/vedika, fence, railing, altar; it rises
above a vyalamala (Nagara prati) representing the joists or rafters of its putative 1st story (cf., the
non-structural triglyphs of a Doric frieze or the dentils of an Ionic architrave.)
S=a rectangular, barrel-vaulted shala aedicule with ogival or “horseshoe-shaped,” open gables at
either end, patterned after the gavaksha windows at the opening of rock-cut Buddhist chaitya/
caitya halls, themselves imitations of earlier, rectangular or apsidalshrines made with bent bamboo,
rush or palm frond roofs.

HP= a harantara-panjara aedicule, a panjara aedicule (i.e., a shala aedicule seen end-on,)
which projects as a dormer or window, (the ubiquitous gavaksha or kudu,) into the harantara, the
barrel-vauled cloister or gallery linking the hara or "necklace" of shrine aedicules around the prastara or
parapet of a tala of a Dravida temple. Although, as here, it appears to rise on a stambha or column from
the cloister's vedi or railing, since the vedi is only a molding and the pillar only a pilaster, the aedicule ia
referred to as arpita or “applied.”

K-O=the octagonal kuta aedicule occupying the nine central or Brahma padas which crowns
the vimana of this Dravida shrine.

Two-Story Aedicules: The 1st tala with its hara of kuta, shala and harantara-panjara aedicules
rests on the eave (kapota) of the ratha’s full-height ground floor. Prof. Hardy stresses that aedicules
have two-stories, a ground floor, solid-walled, pillared or pilastered, with a shrine and roof above it.
The compressed “intermediate floors” of the upper two talas can be glimpsed, in the photograph
above, in the shadows behind the roofs of the aedicules of the lower two talas, visible only as pilasters
and over-size potikas (brackets.) These support the kapotas or eaves of these stories on top of which
rest the hara of shrines of each tala.

This introduction departs from this usage in sometimes referring to a discrete, “standard” Khmer
shrine or prasat as an “aedicule,” including both the ground floor shrine and the four, “aedicular”
layers constituting its tower (prang, vimana, shikhara,) in this case, one aedicule per tala or tier.
These might more accurately be described as compressed replicas emerging from a shrine in a vertical
version of what Hardy refers to as “staggering” or “telescoping.” The Khmer used this same type of
shrine with remarkably little variation over five centuries where it appears as an aedicule, in the
traditional sense, only as antefixes on the corners of the emergent aedicules or talas of its tower.They
built their temples, not by accreting such miniature aedicules, but by projecting at a distance, near
duplicates of their prasats as corner shrines, gopuras or quincunxes of towers, accounting for the
greater horizontal extension of Khmer temples compared with their compact Indian counterparts.

Whenever possible on this website, the notation for aedicules and their placement on a temple has
been adapted from the system developed in Prof. Adam Hardy’s pioneering Indian Temple
Architecture: Form and Transformation: The Karnata Dravida Tradition (Abhinav
Publications, New Delhi, 1995.) They have been supplemented and modified to conform more
closely with Khmer practice.

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AEDICULARREPLICATION & PROJECTION: Ak Yom

The Khmers’ preference for their single-cell prasat or shrine “aedicule” inhibited them from
expanding their temples by “aedicular expansion” – either by lining the tiers of their pyramids with
miniature shrines like Dravida temples, such as the Dharmaraja Ratha in figure 8, or by having them
emerge from the shikhara, like the Kandariya Mahadeva or Rajarani Temples in figures 6 and 9. This
limited them to “vertical expansion” but here too they avoided innovation, simply stacking four,
identical, compressed aedicular tiers of the standard shrine below them. This restricted Khmer
architectural vocabulary was clearly an aesthetic choice of classical severity and traditional forms but
it also presented an artistic challenge: how to build the largest possible structures from the fewest
parts without monotony or repetition, rather like a canon in music or sestina in poetry? “Linear
expansion” was inimical to the goal of erecting a symmetrical “temple mountain” or pyramid, so
subtle asymmetries were employed to inject tension and dynamism into most of the seven temple
mountains examined in the remainder of this introduction. Khmer architects preferred to replicate and
then project, rather than miniaturize and stylize, their canonical shrine or “aedicule,” (module or
prototype might be a more accurate term.) They would symmetrically array them around a central
tower, extending at regular intervals the temple’s dimensions, until they grew into the largest religious
structures ever built. A precedent for what might be called “aedicular multiplication” is suggested by
the Shiva shrine, Candi Siwa (c.850) at Prambanan in Java which replicated itself: 1) in the Brahma
and Vishnu temples on either side of it; 2) then in the vahana or “vehicle” shrines in front of each,
forming two rows of three, the configuration of the earliest Angkorian temple, Preah Ko
(880;) 3) next, two apit or “flanking,” 4) four kelir or “screening” and 5) four patok or “corner”
shrines “protected” this central core of six and defined the boundaries of the temples’ enclosure within
which 6) no fewer than 224 pervara or “guardian” shrines stood in ranks like a Roman phalanx, for a
numerologically pregnant total of 240 shrines in all.

CANDI SIWA, PRAMBANAN, JAVA (c.850)

No Khmer temple, with the possible exception of Phnom Bakheng with 109 shrines, even approached the
aedicular prolixity. of Prambanan. The earliest Khmer multi-shrine (or “multi-aedicular”) temples
consisted of rows of nearly identical prasats, six at Preah Ko (880,) three at Phnom Krom, Phnom Bok
and Prasat Bei (all 889-915,) five at Prasat Kravan (921) and nine at Prasat Thom in Koh Ker (928-944.)

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Over the centuries, these prasats became spaced further apart and arranged as crosses
or panchayatanas, (quincunxes, five objects in an “x” or chiastic pattern,) which marked the corners and
cardinal gopuras of concentric enclosures, levels or terraces, joined together first by laterite walls lined
by narrow “service” buildings and, ultimately, by long, gabled galleries defining the outlines of the tiers
or terraces of increasingly larger and more complex pyramids or “temple mountains.” This prasat or
shrine type and its replicas do not meet Adam Hardy’s rigorous definition of an aedicule 1) because they
are discrete aedes not components within the structure of which they are a miniature and 2) because they
are often not much more miniature than the structures they imitate; (this is a characteristic they share with
the subsidiary deities of a mandala, each of whom usually occupies an equal-sized pada.)The Khmer
conceived these derivative structures more as reflections or emanations of the central tower shrine, itself a
smaller version or “aedicule” of the temple mountain which it crowned, in turn an "aedicule" or
simulacrum of Mt. Meru. These projected shrines marked the corners of tiers or terraces like the antefixes
on the tiers of the shikharas of their central towers and were then linked together by galleries like
the harantara or “necklaces” of aedicules of a Dravida vimana.

This emphasis on the symmetrical, lateral extension of terraces resulted over-time in de-emphasizing the
central tower in comparison with the nearly equal-sized shrines arrayed around it, so it became less a
climax than the center of a matrix. This relaxation of momentum along the liturgical axis was off-set by
an integration of the temple’s peripheral parts into a coherent ensemble with a firmly defined structure.
This tendency can be noted as early as Koh Ker (928-944) and at Banteay Srei (968,) Preah Vihear (11th
Century,) as well as, Banteay Samre and Beng Mealea, built at the same time as Angkor Wat (1113-
1150,) which epitomizes their opposite, a centrally-focused massif. This fissiparous clinamen would
reappear in the jumbled inner enclosures of Jayavarman VII’s late monastic foundations, Ta Prohm and
Preah Khan (1181-1220,) where it serves a contrary purpose, disintegrating an ordered hierarchy among
the temple’s parts. Finally, this ”spirit ofconfusion" is transfigured by the “face towers” on the upper
terrace of the Bayon into a diffuse, undifferentiated but pervasive presence. A similar phenomenon can be
observed, quite independently, in the increasing size of the gopuras and the number of enclosures, but
not their central shrines, at the well-known “temple cities” of South India, the Virupaksha Temple at
Hampi (15th Century,) the Ranganathaswamy at Tiruchirappalli (1371, illustrated on page 12,) and the
Meenakshi at Madurai (16th Century.)

The Khmer proclivity for replicating their basic shrine aedicule and then arranging them orthogonally or
diagonally in rows or matrices traces a developmental vector stretching over five centuries (700-1200)
achieving its classic expression at Angkor Wat (1113-1150.) The stages of its evolution and its distinctive
architectural markers or genome will be illustrated in the following brief analyses of seven Khmer
"temple mountains" whose traits can be summarized as 1) aedicular replication and
projection 2) integration of asymmetry into a symmetrical mandala 3) axial and lateral (cruciform)
expansion 4) de-emphasis of axial focus in favor of a balanced array of shrines and, finally, 5) a shift
from orthogonal, not so much to radial symmetry or even asymmetry, as entropy at the Bayon.
https://www.templemountains.org/ak-yom-the-first-khmer-temple-mountai.html

Ak Yom: The First Temple Mountain?

Ak Yum (Khmer: ប្សាទអកយំ) is an ancient temple in the Angkor region of Cambodia. Helen
Jessup dates the temple to the 8th century, and states it is the oldest known example of "temple
mountain" in Southeast Asia.[3][4]
The origins and repair history of the temple are unclear. Stone carrying inscriptions, including one
with a date corresponding to Saturday 10 June 674 AD during the reign of king Jayavarman I. The
first structure on the site was a single-chamber brick sanctuary, probably constructed in the latter part
of the 8th century. Later it was remade into a larger stepped pyramid structure, with a base
approximately 100 meters square. The expansion probably took place in the early 9th Century during
the reign of King Jayavarman II, who is widely recognized as the founder of the Khmer Empire.
When the West Baray reservoir was built in the 11th Century, Ak Yum was partially buried by the
southern dikeThe site was excavated in the 1932 under the direction of archaeologist George Trouvé

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This architectural trope and tropism can be discerned in embryonic form in an unexpected
archeological find of 1932 which offers an indigenous Khmer “interpretation” of a temple mountain
half a century before construction began at Borobudur, a century before Candi Siwa at Prambanan and
nearly two before the first Angkorian multi-tiered temple, the Bakong. Helen Ibbitson Jessups has
noted that the first step pyramid in the Hindu-Buddhist ambit was built not in India, China or Java but
just north of the runway of the Siem Reap airport, a few miles from Angkor Wat. Although today
only the unprepossessing and therefore rarely visited foundations of a modest 100m square enclosure
and truncated prasat remain, one may detect in them some nascent characteristics of the celebrated
Khmer pyramids of the next five centuries. An inscription dates the temple’s dedication to Saturday,
10 June, 674, but it probably refers to an earlier shrine on the site since the colonettes scattered around
the site are in the Kompong Preah style of the early 8th Century, a period of disunity when the Khmer
appear to have been driven northwest to this area from Sambor Prei Kuk by a Srivijayan incursion.
The dates found on the door jambs, 704 and 714, are more likely to be accurate.

Ak Yom or Ak Yum was dedicated to Gambhiresvara, the “Lord of the Profound Depths” or “of the
Hidden Knowledge,” a rare, chthonic epithet of Shiva occurring only three times in the epigraphic
record. Shiva is most often portrayed as an ascetic, living among hermits and wild beasts high up in
the caves of snowy Mt. Kailasa (or Kailash,) an actual 21,000’ peak in the Tibetan Himalayas. This
modest temple seems to have lost whatever importance it may once have had by the middle of the
11th Century, since Udayaditiyavarman II (1050-1066) felt no compunction about burying it beneath
the southern embankment of his 7.8 km by 2.1 km West Baray or reservoir, which accounts for its
belated discovery.

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THE SHRINE FROM THE NORTHWEST,
AK YOM (700 - 725

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