The Middle Period

The several centuries following this event constituted what can best be seen as a distinct historical period in political, religious, linguistic and artistic terms. While introducing certain innovations that were to become defining elements of modern Cambodia, this transitio-nal period maintained strong roots in the Angkorian past, and this ancient heritage is discernible in vestigial forms.

More or less constant aggression by the Siamese to the west and eventually the Vietnamese,as well as divisive internal conflict, provoked frequent displacements of the seat of power and a general trend of retreat into the interior of the country. Moreover, the introduction of Theravada Buddhism at once reflected and encouraged a progressive dispersion of central power in both institutional and geographical terms : the Khmer monarch of the middle period commanded significantly less authority than his Angkorian ancestors.

It is undoubtedly for its lack of monumental construction that the middle period stands in most striking contrast to Angkorian times. Temple design was thus conceived in conformity with the ideology and practices of Theravada, and with the concurrent influence of precedents in neighboring Siam. An open and functional space capable of housing large numbers of people, especially during ceremonial occasions, took the place of the narrow and exclusive Brahmanic cella.

The art of this period is relatively unknown, since only a few pieces remain (mainly because of thereplacement of stone by wood ). Although thematic range was greatly reduced, as it was primarily the Buddha's image which was henceforth to merit reproduction, in the pieces remaining today, one sees an art still refined in technical and aesthetic terms.In concordance with these changes, epigraphic sources both diminish in number and evolve in nature over the middle period. The vast majority of inscriptions from this period date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Functioning within the Theravada faith, Middle Khmer inscriptions are exclusively votive. Recording pious acts and wishes, they reveal factual historical information only indirectly.

Although Angkor was abandoned as a capital city in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, the region has been continuously inhabited up to modern times. Siamese rule over the city following its siege was ephemeral, yet the proximity of the region to belligerent Siamese armies prohibited the Khmer monarchy from ever reinstalling a viable seat of power there, with the exception of the second half of the sixteenth century.

Many sites within the Angkor region proper were partially maintained, and others even grew in importance under the influence of the Theravada faith. Middle Khmer religious and artistic expression would indeed seem to have reached its height in this region so laden with remains of ancestral glory when King Ang Chan, followed by his son and grandson, reoccupied the ancient site. Inspired undoubtedly by Angkorian models, these kings exploited existent urban infrastructures, transformed religious cults and made original religious foundations at Angkor while simultaneously maintaining the capital of Longvek in the south of the country.

One of the most impressive vestiges within Angkor Thom of middle Khmer Buddhist expression can be seen at the Baphuon temple : middle Khmer artisans transformed an upper portion of the Baphuon's western facade into a 60-meter image of the Buddha entering nirvana. Similar reconstruction occurred at the summit of the Bakheng, the site of the first great monument in what was henceforth the city of Angkor. The central sanctuary and portions of its four satellite sanctuaries were transformed between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries into an enormous seated Buddha.

The prestige of Angkor's Buddhist cult is evident throughout the Angkor area. The Phnom Kulen is known, for example, to have been a site of pilgrimage in the sixteenth century. Numerous other sites, such as the Prasat Prei near Angkor Wat which was first abandoned in the thirteenth century, are known to have been reanimated by a Buddhist cult around this same time.It is indeed the temple of Angkor Wat that has continuously maintained Cambodia's most important religious cult.

With the fall of the southern capital of Longvek to the Siamese in the end of the sixteenth century, engendering increasingly destructive internal conflict, Angkor was to be again abandoned as a royal residence. But while it was no longer a royal residence, the Angkor region was still not abandoned either by its local populations or by Buddhist pilgrims.