For an introduction to the Khmer dynasty, it is best to have "Chenla Fengtu Ji" written by Zhou Daguan as evidence!

The Khmer Empire was an ancient country located in Cambodia, the Indochina Peninsula of Southeast Asia. Khmer is also called Ji Mi and Ge Mi in ancient Chinese books. The most powerful period of rule, the Khmer state was established. The Khmer army had hundreds of war elephants and they conquered most of the surrounding areas. Around 400 AD, the Khmer people established a country called Chenla, which was most powerful during the reign of Jayavarman I around 700 AD. In the 13th century, people gradually grew tired of being forced to serve the god-king, and Khmer society began to disintegrate. In 1431, the invading Siamese army forced the Khmer people to abandon Angkor, and the Khmer Empire fell. Rise: Around 400 AD, the Khmer people established a country called Chenla, which was most powerful during the reign of Jayavarman I around 700 AD. The Khmers believed in Hinduism and accepted Buddhism during this period. Chenla declined and was briefly occupied by the Javanese for a period of time. In 802, Jayavarman II established the Khmer state as a god-king, with Angkor Thom as the capital of the empire. The Khmer army had hundreds of war elephants and conquered most of the surrounding areas. During the reigns of Suryavarman I and Suryavarman II from 1010 to 1150, the empire reached its peak. Decline In the 13th century, Khmer society began to disintegrate as people grew tired of being forced to serve the god-king. In 1431, the invading Siamese army forced the Khmer people to abandon Angkor. The Khmer Empire was destroyed, and the royal city of Angkor was lost in the jungle. The Khmer Empire was the largest continuous empire in Southeast Asia and is now Cambodia. The empire broke away from the kingdom of Chenla, which sometimes rules or vassalised parts of modern day Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. During the formation of the empire, the empire had intensive cultural, political and trade relations with Java and later with Srivijaya who placed the empire outside the southern borders of the Khmer state. Its greatest legacy is that Angkor was the capital during the zenith of the empire. Angkor bears testimony to the immense power and wealth of the Khmer Empire and the variety of belief systems it patronized over time. Cultural Heritage Angkor Wat Angkor was once the capital of the Khmer Empire, surrounded by thousands of temples, and the best Khmer classic buildings are also gathered here. Angkor Wat itself is the largest religious monument in the world. Bayon Temple is located in the center of Angkor Thom. Its corridors are 160 meters long from east to west and 140 meters long from north to south. There were originally wooden roofs above the corridors, but due to its age, only broken walls and huge stone pillars are left behind. People pay homage. It is worth mentioning that the walls of the temple still contain rich and vivid carvings. Records of ancient wars, the daily lives of ordinary people, and the scenery of the Tonle Sap Lake fully reveal the scene at that time. It is definitely a must-see. A precious historical site to see. The vivid murals seem to tell distant stories. Bayon Temple is divided into three floors. The lower two floors are square and the outer corridor walls are carved with story-telling reliefs; the top floor is round and has a pagoda. The bottom reliefs proceed clockwise from the east gate, and what you can see are: Expedition to Champa - Linga worship - Water battle - Water life - Winning victory - Cockfighting and chess - Army - Civil war - Big fish swallowing sheep - Victory parade -Circus-The Cham people sacked Angkor (from the plot point of view, this should be the beginning of the entire story). From the appearance, Bayon Temple is a pyramid-shaped building, with a gold-painted round pagoda at the top, which is built on a two-story hollow platform. According to religious consciousness, this means that the Buddha in heaven and the people on earth are closely connected. 48 pagodas of different sizes were built around it, and the central pagoda was surrounded by stars like the moon. Angkor Wat, also known as Angkor Temple, is located in northwest Cambodia. The original name was Vrah Vishnulok, meaning "Temple of Vishnu". Ancient Chinese books call it "Sangxiang Buddha House". It is the best-preserved temple among the Angkor monuments. It is famous for its magnificent architecture and detailed reliefs. It is also the largest temple in the world. ] Introduction Angkor Wat (Angkor Wat/Angkor Vat) In 1992, the United Nations listed the Angkor monuments as a world cultural heritage according to the cultural heritage selection criteria C (Ⅰ) (Ⅲ) (Ⅳ). Since then, Angkor Wat has become a tourist attraction in Cambodia. For more than a hundred years, countries around the world have invested heavily in the maintenance of Angkor Wat to protect this world cultural heritage. The shape of Angkor Wat has become a national symbol of Cambodia and is displayed on the Cambodian flag. In the 12th century, King Suryavarman II of the Angkor Dynasty hoped to build a magnificent cave temple on the ground as the capital and national temple of the Angkor Dynasty. So it took a nationwide effort and took about 35 years to build. Angkor Wat is the pinnacle of Khmer classical architectural art. It combines the two basic layouts of Khmer temple architecture: altar and cloister. The altar is composed of three rectangular floors with a cloister surrounding the Sumeru Platform. Each level is higher than the previous level, symbolizing Mount Sumeru, which is located in the center of the world in Indian mythology. On the top of the altar stand five pagodas arranged in a five-point plum blossom pattern, symbolizing the five peaks of Mount Xumi. A moat surrounds the temple, symbolizing the Aral Sea surrounding Mount Sumeru. History: In the mid-12th century, King Suryavarman II of Chenla made Angkor his capital. Suryavarman II believed in Vishnu, and the Brahmin priest who crowned the king: Divakara designed this national temple for the king to worship Vishnu, and named it the "Vishnu Temple".

Zhao Rushi of the Song Dynasty recorded in his annals that the name of the capital at that time was "Lue". Lokor comes from the Sanskrit word nagara, which means capital. In the 16th century, this temple was called "Angkor Wat"; "Angkor" comes from nagara, Wat is "temple" in Khmer, and "ngkor Wat" means "temple capital". In the second year of Yuanzhen (1296), Emperor Chengzong of the Yuan Dynasty, Tiemuir, sent Zhou Daguan as an envoy to Zhenla. The mission took the sea route from Wenzhou to the ocean, passed through Qizhouyang (off the coast of the Paracel Islands), Champa, Zhenpu, Chanan, Banlu Village, and Fo Village (Bodhisattva State), and crossed Danyang (today's Tonle Sap Lake) to the Kingdom of Angkor. Disembark. Zhou Daguan and his mission stayed in Angkor for one year. After returning to China, Zhou Daguan wrote a report on the customs and conditions of Zhenla, "The Customs of Zhenla". "Chen La Feng Tu Ji" calls Angkor Wat "Lu Ban's Tomb", and also says that after the death of the king, there is a pagoda to bury him, which shows that Angkor Wat is an imperial mausoleum. Some scholars believe that Angkor Wat is the royal mausoleum of Suryavarman II, based on three reasons: 1. Unlike most other temples in Angkor, which face east and face the rising sun, the main entrance of Angkor Wat faces west and faces the sunset; according to the Netherlands According to the research of archaeologist Bosch, in the funeral customs of India and Java, cemeteries are always facing west, and sacrificial temples are facing east. 2: The reliefs in the gallery are arranged in a counter-clockwise direction, which is the direction of the procession in the cemetery during Hindu funerals; 3: Suryavarman II and the god Vishnu in the Angkor Wat gallery have similar looks, implying that he will ascend to heaven and become Vishnu who will stay in Vishnu for a long time. The meaning of Shiva Temple. Wang Dayuan, a navigator of the Yuan Dynasty, visited Angkor between 1330 and 1339. He called Angkor Wat "Sangxiang Buddha House", which indicates that Angkor Wat had been converted into a Buddhist temple in the mid-14th century. Wang Dayuan also reported that Angkor Wat has a "stone bridge covered with gold for more than 40 feet", which is very gorgeous and has the saying of "wealth and wealth". In the first year of Yongle (1403), Emperor Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty sent Yin Shou as an envoy to Zhenla. Yin Shou started from Guangzhou via the sea route through Champa, passed Tamsui Lake (today's Tonle Sap Lake), Bodhisattva state, and arrived at Chenla via Angkor Wat. After Yin Shou returned to China, he drew pictures of the mountains, rivers, geography and Angkor capital of Chenla Kingdom and presented them to the emperor of the Ming Dynasty. The founder of the Ming Dynasty was overjoyed. Siam destroyed Angkor, the capital of Chenla, and moved the capital of Chenla to Phnom Penh. The following year, Angkor Wat was abandoned by the Khmer, and the forest gradually covered the uninhabited Angkor. Later, some Khmer hunters entered the forest for hunting and accidentally discovered the magnificent temple. Some local Buddhists also built huts next to the temple so that they could worship in the temple. However, most of the Angkor ruins are unknown to the world. In 1586, the Franciscan friar and traveler Antonio da Magdalena visited Angkor and reported his experiences of his visit to Angkor to the Portuguese historian Teogato do Coto : "The city is square in shape, with four gates and a moat surrounding it... The uniqueness of the architecture is incomparable, and its transcendence is beyond description." Danda Magdalena's report was regarded by the world as a strange story and laughed off. In 1857, Father Charles Emile Bouillevaux (1823-1913), a French missionary stationed in Battambang, wrote "Travel Diary of Indochina, Annam and Cambodia 1848-1856", reporting on the situation at Angkor. But it went unnoticed. In January 1861, French biologist Henri Mouhot accidentally discovered the magnificent ruins of an ancient temple in the virgin forest in search of tropical animals, and wrote the book "Travel Notes on the Kingdoms of Siam, Cambodia and Laos". Exaggeratedly, he said, "The magnificence of the temples here is far superior to everything left to us by ancient Greece and Rome. Walking out of the dense Angkor temples and returning to the world, it is like falling from a splendid civilization into a barbaric wilderness in an instant." This made the world aware of the Angkor was impressed. French photographer Emile Gsell was the first photographer in the world to take photos of Angkor Wat. The photos of Angkor Wat he published in 1866 allowed people to witness the majesty of Angkor Wat. In 1907, Siam returned Siem Reap, Battambang and other provinces to Cambodia. Starting in 1908, the French Far Eastern Institute began a decades-long meticulous restoration project on a large number of Angkor monuments, including Angkor Wat. The 190-meter-wide moat of Angkor Wat acts like a barrier to block the siege of the forest. Therefore, Angkor Wat is the most completely preserved than other Angkor monuments. But there are still overgrown trees, and some tree roots are deeply embedded in the gaps between the red soil bricks of some buildings, gradually widening the gaps, and finally pushing down the red soil bricks, causing the buildings to collapse. The restoration project involves several aspects: clearing away weeds, woods, soil, and termites, stabilizing the foundations, shoring up crumbling buildings, and then applying analysis developed by archaeologists working on the reconstruction of monuments in places such as Athens, Greece, and Java, Indonesia. Reconstruction techniques are used in the reconstruction of Angkor monuments. The construction of Angkor Wat was completed in 1911. In the 1930s, analytical reconstruction techniques began to be used to restore Angkor Wat. The analysis and reconstruction method requires that the original materials of the site must be used to restore the site according to the original ancient construction methods. Appropriate use of substitutes is only allowed when the original items do not exist. This work was suspended in the 1960s due to the political unrest in Cambodia, and was restarted in the 1990s. Angkor Wat became a Mahayana Buddhist temple in the mid-14th century, because in the 13th century King Jayavarman VII of Chenla adopted Mahayana Buddhism as the state religion. After Siam invaded Angkor in the early 15th century, Angkor Wat became a Theravada Buddhist temple because the Siamese believed in Theravada Buddhism. Since then, Angkor Wat has been a Theravada Theravada Buddhist temple and continues to this day.

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