The Wonder of Angkor Wat: praised by different writers
……To Khmer People, Angkor Wat is more than just an ancient pile of stones, it is more than just the remains of a highly advanced kingdom, it is more than just a tourist attraction – to the Khmers it is a symbol of hope…….
One of these temples- a rival to that of Solomon, and erected by some ancient Michael Angelo – might take an honourable place beside our most beautiful buildings. It is grander than anything left to us by Greece or Rome, and presents a sad contrast to the state of barbarism in which the nation is now plunged. (By Henry Mouhot, a French naturalist who visited Angkor in the year of 1858 – 60.)
The temple of Angkor, the great historical lagacy of Khmer civilization, stand majestically in Situ in northwest Cambodia. At the heart of the Khmer empire for over 500 years from the ninth to the fifteen century, the monuments constructed during that time belong to the classic period of Khmer art and are unrivalled in architectural greatness. “The temples startle with their splendour and perfection but beyond the emotions they evoke lie complex microcosms of the universe steeped in cosmology”. Khmer art of the period includes finely modelled sculptures of startling beauty. “Sensuous, yet never erotic, male and female forms stand in grandeur and dignity offering universal appeal, past and present”. Down Rooney,
The sculptural decoration of Angkor Wat is, if anything, even more astonishing than the architecture. That the main temple alone should constitute the largest religious building in all history, covering an area as great as that of the largest Pyramids, is astounding enough; that every square inch of such a structure should be carved and decorated, passes imagination. Yet so it has been, and with a loving care and skill which have infused the cold stone with pulsating life. (By Lost Cities of Asia, by Win Swaam.)
The best of this(Angkor) art combines a sensuous sweetness with luxuriant magnificence, blending joy with delight with intense intellectual and imaginative strength !!!
No film, no photograph, nothing can prepare one for Angkor and its smpact. It is even difficult to speak of it in other than superlative terms. For it is colossal, enormous, prodigious, startling, awesome…., (By Philip Rawson.),
