Ta Prohm

Coordinates: 13°26′06″N 103°53′21″E / 13.43500°N 103.88917°E / 13.43500; 103.88917
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Ta Prohm
Siem Reap
DeityPrajnaparamita
Location
LocationAngkor
CountryCambodia
Ta Prohm is located in Cambodia
Ta Prohm
Location in Cambodia
Geographic coordinates13°26′06″N 103°53′21″E / 13.43500°N 103.88917°E / 13.43500; 103.88917
Architecture
FounderJayavarman VII
Completed1186; 838 years ago (1186)

Ta Prohm (

Mahayana Buddhist monastery and center of learning dedicated to his mother.[1] Almost 80,000 people were required to live in or visit the temple, including over 2,700 officials and 615 dancers.[1]

The temple is referred to as the "Tomb Raider Temple" or the "Angelina Jolie Temple" due to its depiction in the film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001).[1][2]

The temple was built without mortar and, after it was abandoned, trees took root in the loosened stones.

World Heritage List
since 1992.

History

Foundation and expansion

In 1186 A.D., Jayavarman VII embarked on a massive program of construction and public works. Rajavihara ("monastery of the king"), today known as Ta Prohm ("ancestor Brahma"), was one of the first temples founded pursuant to that program. The stele commemorating the foundation gives a date of 1186 A.D.[4]

Jayavarman VII constructed Rajavihara in honour of his family. The temple's main image, representing

Lokesvara and was modelled on the king's father.[6]

The temple's stele records that the site was home to more than 12,500 people (including 18 high priests and 615 dancers), with an additional 80,000 inhabitants in the surrounding villages working to provide services and supplies. The stele also notes that the temple amassed considerable riches, including gold, pearls, and silks.[7] Expansions and additions to Ta Prohm continued as late as the rule of Srindravarman at the end of the 13th century.

Abandonment and restoration

spung
running along the gallery of the second enclosure.

After the fall of the

École française d'Extrême-Orient decided that Ta Prohm would be left largely as it had been found, as a "concession to the general taste for the picturesque." According to pioneering Angkor scholar Maurice Glaize, Ta Prohm was singled out because it was "one of the most imposing [temples] and the one which had best merged with the jungle, but not yet to the point of becoming a part of it".[8] Nevertheless, much work has been done to stabilize the ruins, to permit access, and to maintain "this condition of apparent neglect."[6]

In 1992,

World Heritage List. The conservation and restoration of Ta Prohm is a partnership project of the Archaeological Survey of India and the APSARA (Authority for the Protection and Management of Angkor and the Region of Siem Reap).[9]

By 2013, the Archaeological Survey of India restored most parts of the temple complex, some of which were constructed from scratch.[9] Wooden walkways, platforms, and roped railings were put in place around the site to protect the monument from further damages from tourists.

In November 2022, a renovation of the Hall of Dancers was completed.[10]

The site

Plan of the temple, showing the relative locations of the main features.
Bas relief on Ta Prohm wall
A bas-relief over an entrance at Ta Prohm includes this intense meditating or praying figure.
The "dinosaur of Ta Prohm", one of the reliefs of the temple popular in pseudoscience

Layout

The design of Ta Prohm is that of a typical "flat" Khmer temple, as opposed to a temple-pyramid or

cardinal points, although access today is now only possible from the east and west. In the 13th century, face towers similar to those found at the Bayon were added to the gopuras. Some of the face towers have collapsed. At one time, moats could be found inside and outside the fourth enclosure. The presence of two moats led some historians to speculate that the 12th/13th remain of Ta Prohm is an expansion of a more ancient Buddhist shrine on the same site.[11]

The three inner enclosures of the temple proper are

libraries in the southeast corners of the first and third enclosures; the satellite temples on the north and south sides of the third enclosure; the Hall of Dancers between the third and fourth eastern gopuras; and a House of Fire
east of the fourth eastern gopura.

Representational art

Ta Prohm does not have many narrative

dvarapalas
or temple guardians.

Trees

The trees growing out of the ruins are perhaps the most distinctive feature of Ta Prohm, and "have prompted more writers to descriptive excess than any other feature of Angkor."

Ficus gibbosa)[14] or gold apple (Diospyros decandra).[13] Angkor scholar Maurice Glaize observed, "On every side, in fantastic over-scale, the trunks of the silk-cotton trees soar skywards under a shadowy green canopy, their long spreading skirts trailing the ground and their endless roots coiling more like reptiles than plants."[15]

In popular media

Ta Prohm was used as a location in the film

jasmine flower and then fell through the earth into the temple, with the forthcoming scenes filmed at Pinewood Studios.[1]

Gallery

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Ta Prohm". Lonely Planet.
  2. ^ Shoard, Catherine (25 November 2010). "Holy Jolie: Cambodian temple takes Angelina's name". The Guardian.
  3. ^ a b c "Ta Prohm". Atlas Obscura.
  4. ^ Glaize, p.143. For the text of the foundational stele and its translation into French, see Coèdes, "La stèle de Ta-Prohm."
  5. ISBN 978-0-8248-0368-1
    .
  6. ^ a b c Freeman and Jacques, p.136.
  7. ^ Glaize, p.143.
  8. ^ Glaize, p.141.
  9. ^ a b "ASI rebuilding the glory of Buddhist complex in Cambodia". The Hindu. Archived from the original on 2012-07-31.
  10. ^ Sokny, Chea (15 November 2022). "Ta Prohm's 'Hall of Dancers' set for tourists". The Phnom Penh Post.
  11. ISBN 9789971694050
    .
  12. ^ Glaize, p.145.
  13. ^ a b Dehra Dun, "ASI to conserve trees at Cambodian temple", 13 June 2008, The Tribune, Chandigarh, India, accessed 2009-05-09
  14. ^ Freeman and Jacques, p.137.
  15. ^ Glaize, pp.143-145.

Further reading

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