Chapter 10 Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia 387have devoutly given 5,324 villages, totaling 97,840 men and women, 444 chefs,
4,604 footmen, cooks, and others, 2,298 servants, of which 1,000 are dancers,
47,436 individuals making sacrificial offerings” (Freeman and Warner
1990:112). All this wealth was needed, plus slave and corvée labor, to keep the
construction projects going and to maintain a court ceremonial designed to
sustain a god-king in his heaven-on-earth capital. (These demands were what
hill people hid from in the highlands of “Zomia”; see chapter 4).
Angkor’s rulers built their monuments to Shiva in the ninth and tenth cen-
turies and to Vishnu in the next century, and they finally began to favor Buddha
from the twelfth century on. The greatest achievement of all, Angkor Wat, was
built by Suryavarman II for Vishnu. Its central sanctuary originally contained a
Shiva lingam, Suryavarman’s royal icon, but in later centuries it became a place
of pilgrimage for Theravada Buddhists, so it now contains images of the Bud-
dha—surrounded by bas reliefs of the voluptuous apsaras who once fluttered in
delight around Shiva’s lingam.
Seeing Angkor Wat from the air makes immediately visible what it was
designed to be: the largest man-made model of the cosmos ever built. A moat
1,400 by 1,600 yards is the ocean surrounding the world. A single causeway
crossing the moat into the heart of the cosmos, the summit of Mount Meru
(where reposed the Shiva lingam), is the route between earth and Heaven. Con-
centric enclosures around “Mount Meru” represent mountain chains encircling
the central continent. Angkor Wat was constructed so that if you stand in front
of the western entrance on the spring equinox, the beginning of the year accord-
ing to Hindu astronomy, the sun rises directly over the central tower. From
there throughout the year it illuminates the fabulous bas reliefs carved on the
inner wall of the third gallery; in the spring, light falls on depictions of the cre-
ation with the churning of the Ocean of Milk; on the side of the setting sun isAngkor Wat, built by Suryavarman II as a cosmic replica of the abode of the gods. Vast amounts
of labor were required to build these monumental cities and temples.