Baphuon Temple
Baphuon Temple
Date: Built in early eleventh century
Religion: Hinduism
King: Udayadityavarman II (1049-1066)
Baphoun is considered as the third largest temple in the Angkor Archeological Park after Ankgor Wat and Bayon. This temple occupied an area of 425mby 238m.Baphoun designed like a mountain which is 25m tall. It symbolized Meru, a mythical mountain located in the center of the universe, which was the home of Hindu gods.Mr Chou Ta Kaun, a Chinese diplomat who stayed in Angkor Thom city for one year in 1295 named this temple as the Bronze Tower as its tower was covered by Bronze and there was a gold Linga sculpture in the central tower as well.
Baphoun is considered as the third largest temple in the Angkor Archeological Park after Ankgor Wat and Bayon. This temple occupied an area of 425mby 238m.Baphoun designed like a mountain which is 25m tall. It symbolized Meru, a mythical mountain located in the center of the universe, which was the home of Hindu gods.Mr Chou Ta Kaun, a Chinese diplomat who stayed in Angkor Thom city for one year in 1295 named this temple as the Bronze Tower as its tower was covered by Bronze and there was a gold Linga sculpture in the central tower as well.
Style: the main structure of Baphoun was designed as a pyramid with three levels. Each level of this temple was surrounded by galleries.
Bridge: Baphoun has the first design of an amazingstone bridge leading to the main shrine. This bridge is 220m long, supported three rows of round pillars.
Carvings: Baphoun has very interesting carvings about Hindu myths, hunters, animal fighting, and
human residences, carved into a square stone, which look like a photo frame. It was a unique style in the Angkor time.Reclining Buddha: today, there’s a huge reclining Buddha sculpture to the west structure of the temple which was added by King Ang Chan Raja in the 16thcentury.
enlightenment: the southern one was dedicated to Avaloketesvara, lord of universes. The northern one was dedicated to Prajnabaramita, Female perfect wisdom.
always full of water.
The French who worked in Angkor Conservation did not restore this temple, and they only cleared forest away from its structure. today this temple structure is very ruined and it needs to be restored urgently or it would collapse in the short future. APSARA authority has a project to preserve it, but it gets very little progress.
exceptionally beautiful and unique style of Bayon. Some visitors like Bayon temple, in the way its plan looks very mysterious with many gloomy and secret rooms.
when he looked at the faces wrote that:
best Buddha statue to keep in every tower. Besides this, he also mentioned about dozens of gold Buddha statues in the main shrine in the center.
him from anywere and he was very very scared.Then he decided to stop exploring floraand funa and stayed in Angkor Wat for one week. He hired local people to take him further into the jungle. He was extremely surprised to find more and more temples. Henry Marhout stayed one week in Angkor Wat. He did a survey on the local people and he painted pictures of those beautiful temples. He mentioned in his book that (It is unbelievable to have such a remarkable civilization like Angkor on the earth......regrettable, most 
of the beautiful temple structures havecollapsed and covered by dense forest....he continued that he hope one day the powerful people in the world will come here to help and to learn when and who created this great civilization because the local people who lived nearby the temple were full of hardship. they could not be able to preserve the temple at all since they faced poverty, disease, warfare and they just practiced animism and Buddhism). One year later, Henry Mahout died in Laos, because he was very sick of Malaria when he was just 35 
years old. his brother went to Loas and collected Henry’s book to publish a French book called Voyages in Siam, Cambodge and Laos.The French administration was very interested in that book, and then they sent two explorers, Delarport andDelagre, to explore Angkor and the countries along the Mekong River from South China Sea to China border. After the exploration mission had been finished, Delaport and Delagree suggested French administration to colonize Indochina region as earlier as possible because the British had already arrived in Asia.The French helped to protect Cambodia from the invasion of Siamese and Vietnamese from 1863-1884, but then they colonized Cambodia until 1953.
for restoration, preservation, and discovering Angkor site in 1908. The first job of the French in Angkor site was to clear forest away from the temple structures and to pave road to access the most important temple site. Then from 1916 to 1972 the temple structures in Angkor archaeological Park were cleared and restored with a big project of 1000 Cambodians and a dozen of French explorers.
60 000 foreign tourists.
The commander sat on the elephant and he was shaded by some umbrellas. They were Chinese armies who came to assist the Khmers.There were soldiers who did not wear armor, but they wore lucky strings to fight. There’re two soldiers blowing horns here and another man was beating the bell. on the top, there is a figure of king Jayavarman VII ridding on a horse and there’re a lot of women of the palace following him. Musician accompanies the warriors. Refugees were following the armies to the city transporting food with carts pulled by ox. 
There’re figures of two dogs walking in a shade under the cart. One cart was too heavy, so a man was assisting to push it. A man was leaning to blow to make fire for cooking. There’re two people sitting down and drinking. There is a turtle figure bitting a man’s bottom and his wife was pulling the turtle away. There was a man sharing fruit with his wife. On the top of the tree, there’re two men hunting the bird with crossbow, one guy was shooting while another one was pointing to tell where the bird was.
to the god of fire.
explore. Besides that, the trees growing from the broken towers and galleries, and vines entangle columns offer some different views from Taprom for photographer.
of Angkor.
several major highways that ran to Angkor, Koh Ker, Preah Vihear (in northern Cambodia) and northern Vietnam.
the universe and creatures successfully. That’s why the Hindu followers prayed to his Linga and his wife’s Yoni which were carved together. after the Brahmins had poured water on the top of Linga, they got holy water from the spout of Yoni sculpture to share with the king, and other Brahmins. Sometimes, The Brahmins poured milk on Linga instead of water, because milk is white color which is significant of Shiva’s sperm.
subsequently aligned along this axis.
There’re two lion statues guarding in the front. They’re in an action of seating. These lion statues were designed with the typical Khmer style of the9th century and the 10th century.
were used to take away rain water from the central part of temple.
nt site was established by a king Suryavarman I in early 11th century and it was used by other kings until the 13th century.
the ocean in meditation, absorbing the watery chaos below; from his navel there grows a lotus flower bearing the recreator, Brahma. 
steep, with steps in some places, the waterfall near the top is a nice cool place to relax. There’s also abundant wildlife, particularly butterflies, to enhance the visit.
Suryavarman I who crowned from 1010-1050AD.
Jayavarma II proclaimed independence from Java in 802 A.D.
Lakshmi at his feet. A lotus flower protrudes from his navel bearing the god Brahma. The river then ends with a waterfall and a pool.
mountain’s valley. Ku Len Mountain has two waterfalls. The first is between four and five metres high with a diameter of 20 to 25 metres. The second waterfall is 15 to 20 metres high and has a diameter of 10 to 15 metres. These sizes apply to the dry and rainy seasons.
grandmother. The two towers in the front are bigger than two towers at the back row. However, two towers on the right are in better condition than two towers on the left.
and better produced than bricks we use today. Instead of cement, they used the sticky leaf paste to bind the brick altogether.
. The Scholars consider Lolei temple’s inscriptions as the most beautiful hand script.
ral belief that’ living man live above the dead man and all lives. An addition, the number steps in the staircase must be odd as odd number is sacred that the evil spirits cannot climb into the house’...
was designed in the middle of the central pond. It has a form of a lotus bud and its base is surrounded by two big Naga sculptures. This shrine has a real door to the east and three blind doors on other sides.there’re figures of Buddha Avalokitesvara on its wall. The head of Buddha’s figure to the north door was stolen in 1982. Each corner of the central shrine originally had three headed elephant statue with lion statue riding on top which were made of bronze. A three headed elephant statue symbolized Indra who is a king of heaven, and the lion statue symbolized Kubera, the god of wealth. In the 14th century, Siamese conquered Angkor city. They took those bronze statues from this temple to Aryuthaya city in Thailand. In the 15th century, the Burmese conquered Aryuthaya, and they took those bronze statues to Mandalay city. Today those statues are still in the museum of Myanmar.
female demon who wanted to eat them.
Himalaya which provided Holy River for Hindu followers. Those Rivers are Ganga River, Brahmaputra River, Jumana River and Induse River. Today those rivers locate in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Before the cleaning ceremony began, the people had to ask the astrologer what element they had, before they cleaned sin and sickness. Then they invited the monks who were holy men to take a small boat to the central shrine to pray to a golden Buddha statue to take holy water. After that, the monk poured holy water into the drainage to run through to head statue to clean a sinner who was sitting under the spout in there. The people who had water element, had to go to this north structure to clean sin by holy water from the elephant mouth. In here, the sinner had to sit on a lotus pedestal and faced out to the north. The east structure had a human head for the people who had earth element. The south structure had a lion head for the people who had fire element. The west structure had a horse head for the people who had wind element.
