185. The God Kings of Angkor Wat
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In the northwest of cambodia, beyond the waters of the great lake, a line of blue mountains rise raptly from the rich planes of right paddy that stretched up from the banks of the mekong. At first, these hills climbed sharply from the flat plane. Then, quite suddenly, they crash into a long, straight sandstone plata, which seems to float mysteriously above the low clouds of winter cumulus.

These are the heights of po. Coolen, the mountains of lights, es. For cambodians, these hunting hills are a sacred space, the birth place, not just of the great empire of ankle, but also of the holy rivers, which water its plains and lap around its most holy temples. Here, just two years after salomon had declared the birth of the holy roman empire in italy, another Young warrior, the car prince drive in the second, performed a similar ceremony on pro couldn't, initiating yet another world changing empire. This one was arguably of even greater consequence than that founded .

in the Peters. Hello, and welcome .

to empire with me.

And a very vely again. And if you might, so beautiful. Ly.

you really do right. But I .

quickly, I I didn't .

too dressing up.

but you do just you too. I have seen you to dressing up. You are you going blue shirt? You get full .

mobile spender.

What do you have is we've .

got some gie baska doing A A spoke version of the good as questions. We uncle, he's so fabulous.

Anyway, look right down to business, my friend. Then we're talking about what i'm wearing tonight, which now i'm going to rethink. You're wearing a bu shirt anyway.

We're talking about the origins of the care empire, otherwise known as the empire of ankle. And for most people, William k. Will mean one thing that it'll a resonate with the care rouge because of movies.

And we talked about these things, the killing fields and so on. The case was the popularity given name for the cp. K, the communist party of camping chair, because this a very modern history with roots in a very ancient civilization at the ancient that we're talking about today.

You're right. That's what people in britain, people in the west, to associate with the word command. But it's odd because the command rules you to likes saying the red students or something.

or the two to gang or something like that, you know.

something very is touching to, yeah, the word red communist st. The thing that in a set least, communism in the out of history, a very hierarchical and very royal kingdom ruled by god, kings, the beverages, who sort of believe that they actually increased the god in their ruling and were regarded as day is, as well as month. So very far cry from the quality of the community with their village republics.

indeed. And also, I mean, we cannot over restin ate the wealth of this great care kingdom. How, how filthy, stinking Richard we thinking here.

Well, I simply were the richest, most powerful state on earth at the time. The camera MPA lasted for about four hundred, five hundred years. IT had what were then the bigger cities in the world, creating the largest temples ever built.

And uncle what, on its own, the most celebrated and largest, but by no means so the unique. There are many other sort of second, third, forth, right tembes that are almost as big. But uncle what on its own is four times the enterprise of the vacation city is the largest region, monument or? And what's so odd is that IT hardly figures, as you say, in western curriculum.

Yeah, we have one of the most sophisticated and largest and richest empires and history, arguably the richest and most powerful of all, medieval emps. You know, more powerful than bianti building larger remains, which are still there by large. And because it's in this country, which has been closed off for a lot of the last half century, with one of the color, most gusty regimes ever produced by communism.

No, I could be the worst. I think along with you, mars, china and people just don't know IT and don't know the extraordinary history. And I had said when I was researching the golden road in the five years I spent immediately after to lock down, traveling around and looking at these extraordinary words that I was writing about nothing compared with the time I spent in cambodia.

You go into the jungles of cambodia, which is one of the most of heartbreaking, the beautiful countries i've ever been in. And you know, IT doesn't just uncle, what there are these no mess temples all over the city. And while anchor is quite tied up, you know, the grasses cut and all the vegetation was restrained hundred and fifty years ago, because IT was immediately recognized as one of the great wonders of the world.

There are only slightly smaller temples all over cambodia, which are still, you know, collapsing with vine creeping in alto, them with amazing strangler vine and these enormous fig trees, which, such a feature of cambodian jungles, spiring through the extraordinary stonework and sort of emerging out of roots. There is a reason that when Angela a. Jolie was doing tom rather, that they sort of filled up a bit and ankle, what the IT totally incapable tes.

That image of a lost civilization in the jungle. You know, such a romantic idea in general. But given the beauty of the command countries and the brilliance of commerce culture, the combination is a complete knockout, is still a very unvisited country, and I would recommend IT to anyone for the next big .

ambitious trip. Also, I think the meal period is so interesting. If you interested in that period of history and you want to learn more, you can be part of our empire club.

Because where we're discussing all of these things, one of the things we talked about this is the map monday and the world's the idea of what the world was actually like here in in the west. And you know what you need to do, go to emp, poor U K. Dot com to go and have a listen to us pratling about some of these amazing things.

But this is an era where golds and powers are links together. William, when you mention charleen in a couple of times. And charley man, for those who don't know, is the man who begins, if you like, gives birth to the holly roman empire in europe. So power on earth and power and heavens are inextricably linked in two sides of the world here AI.

But I think you can get a far clearer view in the indu system king ship, specifically in its nation in cambodia, that the .

king is the hip is the al dia.

And what you find in cambodia is that, from the beginning with drive in the second, the person talking about guy, the fan is emma e. His sculptures of himself, his royal portraits, sculptures are tagged onto the body of vision. So there is within discuss and his council. And so we know what he looks like, but he's depicted as visio, which you don't get an india, you don't get, you know, to king showing themselves to be. Lw.

whatever is, I think I could be seen slightly blast, famous these days, couldn't have a human's head on the gold body in. For those who don't know, that statue of vision they discuss, or the chat or that you're talking about, is vishneva role in the universe, that he has the entire universe spinning on the top of his finger, all of creation. He keeps IT going. He keeps IT turning. He keeps its winning.

But he also has a, he represents his sacred weapon. And the discuss is a throwing. And so, for example, when he's fighting demons, he appears in many sculptures throwing his. And this is a real weapon that that was used later, the one thousand nine hundred.

and by the sea. Yes, I seen there. Yes.

theyve used IT in warfare. Yeah, you have these razor sharp throwing disks, which you wants to keep them away from if you I .

don't think you've ever been subjected to this. But in the thousand nine hundred and eighty, there were a whole school of indian films about goals. Pretty learn a lot of my religion from movies like copies of movies.

And they would have these terrible special effects where suddenly the discuss would take off from the finger of god. And just, you know, IT would be the worst. I would be like they put Sparklers around a place or something. And IT would just very slowly make its way, ross, to a man dressed as a deem. His head would fall off, obviously, to, anyway, look, prince javan, what's his origin story tell about so is a very.

very important character, because IT seemed, I mean, first thing said is that everything we know about about this crucial period d of history comes from a small handful of inscriptions, many of which are quite a lot later, including the most famous of all, which is in the temple, just over what's now the tie border. And a huge amand of early command history, particularly the whole period of over. On the second has been reconstructed on the basis of a single description made four hundred years later with its own exter ground. And so IT may not be in any sense.

And accurate representation of what happened four hundred is any about what traditionally is believed to happened? Is that java, in the second was originally a hostage over the sea on the island of driver, which was at that point a very advanced buddh kingdom ruled by the sea lords of three vaga, which sides like something out of game of thrones, but each kind of was IT was confederation of island seekings, who controlled fleets that became very rich by controlling the molecules rates. If you look at the geography of southeast stadia, if you're trying to get from india to china, much the quickest way is through the molecular states.

And it's very narrow. And so has been prone both to parallel, but also to control by a powerful sea lord throughout its history who tax people. And river aga seems to have gained a lot of its wealth by basically enforcing a toll on all shipping moving between india and china.

And this was the kingdom which built bora door, which we discussed in our last episode, the great buddhist ingham. And the theory is that java, in the second as a hostage in java, may have seen barbero being built. And when he escaped or certain, he made his way back to cambodia by hackle, by crook, in eighty nine, two, he declares his independence from the control of these sea loads who are over the sea and a different religion. They are bodied.

see a hostage, because they basically take people from ships, say, OK you, if you want to see your loved one back, pays the money. And and is that why he's been taken to doing a how old he was.

what he's taken, he's a hostage, because he's from one of the noble families of campus, is under the rule of these budda seekings the cylinder at this period. And at least according to this later inscription, what happens is that somehow he escapes from java, where is a hostage for the good behavior of his family, and he makes his way back to cambodia, where he breaks free from the seekings river aga. And declares himself independent and he has a magical ceremony on plum collin, those hills which describing in the reading at the beginning, which not only declared the beginning of a new hindu kingdom in cambodia, he also performs magic rituals with a shavit piece, a piece of lord shiver, which will ensure, according to the inscription, that holy cambodia is never again ruled by.

So I mean, just a couple of observations. For many indian listeners, this is going to be mind blowing because these are names that are familiar in india. I java, you know, they are named that exist in india today. This is an ethnically cambodian man who has names that feel sound indian. So you know that the whole thing of the spread of indian influence.

you really feel that and see, is so this is the whole extraordinary story of the influence in southeast asia. And it's very important to somehow get the baLance right. There's a famous quote from to goal who visits this area in the early twenty twenty century, and he says, when he goes ancle everywhere, I could see india, but I could not recognize IT.

And what he meant by that is that everything is grown from indian seeds. These are indian ideas developed in india. The iconography of the god's, the idea of of a hindu kingdom.

freezes from the mahar a. You know, all of those things are stupid.

slow, but .

they don't look .

the same very clearly care. They were the very short care longer e, which is go to some pot. It's different. It's a different civilization, but it's grown out of the same seeds. So it's a kind of great muddling thing. If you're an indian use to the different sorts of hinduism in india, because this is again, a completely different version.

Yes, same meet, different gravy. My brother would .

say it's a next a very it's true.

Look at we talked about how buddies exported their religion and you know, be through the straight of commerce, mostly on on ships and over mountains. But, you know, the religion was Carried on cards of goals, if you like. But what about this religious spread of hindu ism? I mean, we're pundits doing the same thing.

Why is IT that? He knows the tantric ritual. So, you know, most people live in india wouldn't know, only only a select number of piece would know those tantric rituals are, how do you know this correct?

And here we have a paradox because in the laws of menu, which are the kind of the basic laws uh of a hindu king, which now available in the penguin classic, which lay down the classical form of hindu law in the hindu kingdom, in that system, problems are not allowed to travel.

right? So how does this, why my mind is not working. What they are not allow to move anywhere. So someone broke a rule, even the Williams, someone must have broken in a rule.

So there is all sorts of ways which clearly the problem got around this. Because we see these sculptures. There's a wonderful sculpture at a place called camp gn.

Tom, where you have a single local ruler is one sof graph, looking chiefly with a sort of warra mash who's clearly a big, beefy sort of local strongman. And he's in little pavilion. And on either side of, in stretching along this intl, are about sort of an either side.

Sixteen brom's, all in their longest, all with their hair piled up. And one of them is pouring some liquid from a pot onto his head. And this is the ambition ery. This is the conception. But clearly, IT was made worthwhile for the romans to make this potentially cost destroying trip decision.

Yeah, cause you don't break these rules lightly.

well, you do have an awareness that not necessarily what they were allowed to do. So some claimed to have arrived by yoga. Otherwise they didn't cross the maxi meditated. They were over separated.

naughty Brown.

I would actually see that quite a descriptions. But what is even more exciting is the idea that they got run this rule by turning cambodia into an extension of the indian holy land.

They didn't leave. They didn't leave IT this place.

Yeah, right. And you're see an expression of that at the place where the reading at the beginning of episode starts because plum collin is, as I said, the source of the spring, which turns into the river, which water seem rep an ankle and just about five hundred yards from where the water bubbles out of the, and where there is a little shine in the nine century, around the time to drive out in the second. Someone has, at some point during the stream and on the bed of the rock of the river, they have carved from bank to bank, chive, linguis and yones, the male and female principle, which seems to be a sort of form of baptising the river. I need to turn this into a holy river to turn IT .

into a version of the ganger I was struck when you were talking about. I love IT transact mountain, which i'm just now imagining is just covered and peppered with these wonderful fruit. He ren ams, the highest pay henri and i'm out handle to hindu is entirely spiritual. It's mentioned in the ramon.

It's mentioned .

in the poet into out mhra. So they haven't left.

They haven't left in that because this is a new a new indian .

holy land and administrative looper.

good. yeah. And you find all these cities being rebuilt again. So the earlier city of bangkok, which is now you and our outside modern bangkok, is iota, which is another version of iodide .

birth place of lada ma. For those who don't know, again, another another very important place in.

and if you go just over the border to there is a question, is one of the very first indeed names the site of the great book of of the mahabharata? yeah. So you have this whole area, in other words, imagined a new as a hinder hurdly land. And one of the things that is powering this is the arrival festival of sanscrit as a holy language, which becomes the court language, the language of descriptions.

And it's very interesting that the inscriptions are never written in sort of the kind of coded latter that you sometimes get in in western elisia's al tax, which, you know, which would make cro or any of the great roman writers out rule their eyes with ora, yeah. The sunscreen in cambodia is perfect. IT is absolutely grammatically without any errors. And you actually to get impression that the commerce, a formal bookish than the indus in india, the endless references to ober tax by cada, there's a whole temple. There's a wonderful temple built by one of the chief ministers outside simp, which is almost a kind of show off place where he's he's just put every sculpture of every great hindu text that he's ever read to show off his learning right.

So chair arman, who who now has got this direct link with with him, the gold has been annointed by the golds in a country which he is turning name by name, mounted by river, by stream, into into a an extension almost of old india. He is a military tactics as well. He starts military campaigns with great success, create and starts a massin land.

So in the second, like, is a world leader. And that man, he doesn't just conquer by winning Victories, but by gathering and alliance of chieftains and by sort of very extensive intermarriage with his potential rivals. So he gathers a great number of wives who are from all the leading plans.

And by the time he is heading into old age, is not only the whole of modern cambodia, which has become the beginning of this new kingdom of ankle, but those the border regions of vietnam. Am, and quite a lot of northern thailand is absorbed in ted. And in the inscriptions they talk about his kingdom stretching from the mountain of lights, es to the hills of bengal, or something lovely version of these.

Oh yeah, no, I know it's in your book, the land of cardamoms and mangoes, which is probably what you say, thailand. okay. So he is conquering, and is he conquer and converting? I mean, our people then becoming hindu. Under his rain, they suddenly change their religions.

So this is what we don't know, because as they say, all we have is the inscriptions. And as in any a ruling elite, the descriptions tend to be about the other scratch and the kings. And we don't know so much about the common people.

Now the impression were getting is that there is already a basics are in cambodia before all this, which is not totally to similar to this out of animism that also existed in southern india before the rival of of hinduism, buza there. So there is a worship of the spirits of the rivers, the spirits of the trees, particularly the big sort of stranger figs and enormous trees in the forest. And this is the basis in india for, you know, the actress and the magas to figure in hindu myth too, pre hindu, pre buddied live analyst religion, which exists in both places.

So there's a similar foundation and induces m fits very neatly on top of that. But what you get very clearly impression is that hinduism is something that appeals to the rulers. And the brom's are aiming for the patronage of the rulers and focusing on them OK how much the common farmers working in the paddy fields were.

Also part of this is not clear how far they went to a wishing, for example, their ancestors. Yeah, which was, again, another important thing in the southeast stage, which is not an indian thing. You also get the clear impression that a lot of the laws of manu are completely known by the me, the south day.

I like, for example, of fact, they love their book. Yeah, which horrify a good bramin. But these guys are sitting there all over ankle.

Watch of pictures of, you know, pigeons being sort of boiled and cut up and and served an enormous fees, and their references to bear a being served by the press. There also references to female Brown, that's crazy person in temples. So you have women problems Operating in the command tembes, which you'd never, ever get in.

okay. So this is again, it's sort of similar bit difference that you know they meet different gravy. And the the other thing that is striking, if you do have a hindi zia of the lands of this this hindu king, so you're actually not meant to be able to convert hinduism.

You're born in hynd. M is part of, you know, the comic cycle. Your born is what .

you're going to be. No, have told that to the problem?

No, I know. But I I, I think this is all fascinating. No, look, there is also a mythologizing of the origin of this hindu empire that involves a dragon king and travellin throne. Can you tell us about that?

Because I love is this is interesting, because IT has echoes to a miss witches also present in india and in the south indian version of this story is the foundation myth of the palaver, kings of catch per that we talked about in the last upside, we talked, remember about mcAndrew and pala, who builds all those wonderful sculptures at mama pora. So in this story we get the arrival of the coast of cambodia.

Of a south indian Brown named cardinal and he said to arrived and thrown a travelling in the direction of a local nypa mara, the daughter of the local nag king, others, the local pending, who'd power out to meet him when his boat first stupids on the horizon, which wasn't a very sort of polite thing to do. He then shot his arrow into her boat and frightened mirror into marrying him. He gave her close to ab because he was naked and would shiver himself, presided over the ceremony.

And then you get fascinating bit of the miss, that mars father sama, who was a dragon king, enlarge the possessions of a ison, and all by drinking up the water that covered the country, which seems be a reference to the beginning of hydro ics, that you begin to get the control of the waters of the mecon, which is the basis of the entire prosperity of the combing dom. Because unlike the three vega buddh kings who are taxing, trade and existed of the profit, the comer kingdom was always based on the prosperity of its hydrology, agriculture and the increase of enormous rice harvest, which got larger and larger. They got Better and Better, controlling the water and learning how to grow, rising in paddy fields.

So you seem to have, in this myth, several things happening. You have the story of indians arriving and marrying into the roll family. You have the idea of possibly the indians bringing hydro c logy, which allows the locals to begin controlling the waters of the mon and the monsoon waters and learning how to do advanced wet rice agriculture to get more than one harvest.

Deo, indeed, at the high to the Cameron party, is meant to have been for rice crops cy year, which was the also enormous amount of food, allowing kingdoms like anchor to grow capital cities more than a million people strong, and to field enormous armies. So you get rather like in early mess potentia with the first city states like oran audit, where the beginnings of agriculture lead to a highly organized urban life, where people lives are suddenly run by a king or a god king. This is happening in twelve century ankle on a much, much greater scale, right? And I remember when I was visiting plum cool in the place where IT all started.

You see the first of many of these cities up on the mountain of problem, and it's still in the jungle. Uh, it's rather like being of a Victorian explorer when you go there, because there is no road leading to the prayer where job in the second declared his new kingdom, you have to go on the back of. But I SAT pelion behind this guy in the bar who offered to drive me there.

And you bump ed through irrigation runners and through all not and and mango watches. And suddenly there, in the middle of jungle, is enormous. Big step parameter, until recently, surrounded by landmines exist, was a place where the command reach hang out longest when they got kicked out of the rest of the kingdom.

So we used to be quite a danger space to visit. And to this day, and there's no facilities for tourists, there's no roads to the sites, you can go there and see the very first of the kingdoms of ankle. And just when I was there, there was a whole series of people from, I think, the university chicago, who be using liar, which is this new archaic logical technology, which can see through the jungle and plot foundations hidden by the canopy. And using this new technology, they'd mapped this entire city, which was completely invisible beneath the jungle, the first great city of ankle.

Okay, well, look, let's take a break here. And when we come back from the break, i'd really like to know about, okay, it's one thing to say you are god king, but what does that look like in your court? And what does that look like in your rules? And what does that look like in your governance of the increasing number of people who come under your canopy?

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Welcome back. So just before the break, we were giving you a rather William was giving you from his modest but the golden road has listen much more detail if you want to have a look that IT is a really super, super reading today. We're recording this on publication day, so a kind of officious, ready to be talking about this. But we were talking about sort of the recreation, the extension of india and that house of the promise might have justified being in a different country because promise weren't allowed to travel.

And how, you know you have the evidence of this fast growing wealthy beyond your wildest st dreams empire of jail ARM in the second, growing and increasing and creating things like uncle, what? And I just wanted to know, you know, the brand who must see this all of piling up around them, both wealth and also buildings, and struck, did they have control where they politicians as well, where they in the court, where they whispering in the king's ear. I mean, how much were Brown running things at this time?

I think they were running everything. And the Brown arrive in large number from the six and seven century java, from probably more like the eighth century in cambodia. And why are they welcomed at these courts? Because they bring with them a package of incredibly useful boxes of, they are firstly literate.

There is no written language in cambodia before the brothers bring IT to them, and these guys bring the south indian script, and they bring with them the methods of administration. They are numerous. They know book keeping.

And they basically transfer their system of braminical administration, which is already establish now in all the kingdoms of india. By this stage, they just translate, over the way, bengal, and set themselves up, running the courts of the local chiefs. So these guys you've been building themselves up by didn't have the power in war.

And local strong men sudenly become the beloved of the god, the beloved of shiver. And what's interesting is you get different waves of these sort of hindu missionary's coming. Initially, the first wave seem to be vision up in.

Otherwise they follow lord vision, and they set up temples to the different income nations of load vision new, like lad rama and low krysta. What you find by the tenth century is the rival of some completely different bunch of holy men called the partial parties who follow lord shiver. And the partial parties have been around in central india and north india and central india from very early times.

They mentioned in the mahabharat and version of the paran. And even when zang, our friend the the buddesby anderly butin monk, comes across them when he is traveling through afghanistan. And these guys do not sleep in beds, they sleep in ashes, incremation grants, and they bathe themselves, not in water, but in the ashes of the cremation fires.

So they are ghostly White, covered in ash and very spooky looking. They are scholars, they are poets. They dance to lord chivers drums. But they're also administrators and and strong man. And these guys turn up in the sculptures of cambodia from the tenth century, scary looking guys with riders, and they seem to sort of take over.

It's like, for example, in eleven century france, the in order and the colony order of monks are two rival orders of monks who are different times advise different french and spanish kings. The same sort of thing is going on here with the partial part is coming a different order of holy men, uh, who are competing with the previous version of romance, who have been there before them. So you get this whole world now of a dominance of of these magical sv vite ash covered month who claim to be able to perform all sorts of wonders that their rivals don't.

okay. And this would be appealing to a god king who actually, from what you're saying, probably does believe he is a good thing. Because if you're surrounding yourself with magic and people who say they can create miracles from their ash cover of fingertips, and that is all that you are surrounded with, you will start to believe that you are the divine.

And this is there from the beginning. Remember when we are talking about the only man who makes java an free from the control of java, his name is hanna dma. And he has magic spells as cities, which no one else has obtained, says the description. And he is a scientist in magic science, right? So you get the impression that these guys are claiming all sorts of sort of wonder working capacity rather like A A milan yes, the budge's fashion of this um in the last episode .

like that episode yes, one of the things that these bush buthter would have brought with them and maybe transformed again the change to make IT cambodian, tell me about death dancing, you know, their death drums and the spirit drama ex, that's such a visual thing in my head of of almost working dervish type ex to see that is brought on by this.

So this is really interesting. You asked, quite rightly, a few minutes ago, yes, what are the ordinary people in the fields doing? Are they converting to hindus? The science are.

The early on, they weren't really a sort of brought into this that they were Carrying on doing. Their ancestors ship in the fields while all this prominent stuff was going on in the court in the city. And the brom's were focusing on the rulers, but not particularly on the ordinary people. What the push putters change is that they have this tradition of spirit drumming and death dancing, which has a .

drum called I miss no, no.

that's right. When you see that image of of the dancing shape of the famous cut .

image of yeah in the round secure.

one of the things that nor shiver is holding is a drum. And he's dancing the world into first destruction, then we creating IT.

Yes, can I explain that a little bit? I grow up to tradition. So I know IT, as you would know, Christianity do the whole thing, is that shiva is the destroyer.

But he's not evil. He he's a meant to be of the trivia. The most innocent bullyin th is one of his name, which is like the innocent one. You have to have destruction. To have renewal is the whole .

philosophy behind IT with breaking IT.

But also things need to be renewed and refresh, and also evil needs to be destroy. A lot of the stories involving shiver when he opens his third eye, he has a third eye, the middle of his head. And if you look at these status when IT opens, and, god forbid, or anywhere near IT when IT opens, anything that he sees is reduced to ashes.

The drum is not just the drum of death, is sort of also the heartbeat of the universe. But when he dances and when he thun is with his feet and his drum, than everything collapses. So that's how you know, everything is raised to the ground so that you may go again. And that is, if you are familiar with chef iconography, there is something, or the nutshell, is the dancing aspects of him, when it's bitters and circled.

And it's a beautiful thing. Many people in their house.

I should just say.

those who can see a little at this mode, which immediately put up her hands in the year in the form that don't have the terrible place. So much, so .

many things .

you don't .

know about me, but anyway, yes, so they have taken the dance of destruction to get to their extacy. That's interesting.

And so what's significant is that this provided a link to the ordinary people of cambodia. One of the things that is there in the arch logical record in the earliest phase in cambodia and in thailand and in life, are ancient bronze kettle drums, which date back centuries before this, and implies that there was a similar sort of tradition of spirit dancing, of sum sort, which existed in cambodia.

And the historian theory, which seems to be completely reasonable, that the partial putters, because of their dancing and their drummer, had a link to the ordinary people of cambodia that the previous version of romans did not have. yes. And they invite the local people interns. And this is the point when hindus begins to spread much or widely through the countryside.

because it's got the same taste. Now it's it's familiar. That is also very interesting.

And there are many inscriptions at this period just read, one, the dance of the god who has the moon for his died, and that's not shiver. The play of whose glorious feet causes the earth to shake and tremble in the eight directions. A dance which causes indra, god of the winds to well and moon, and which causes the palaces of the god's sweet dance, which render space insignificant with shooting rays from the blender of his nine modes of dance. And that's talking about the different kinds of dance you get, which is erotic, serious, heroic, odious, comic, pathetic, marvellous, terrible and peaced.

If only strictly had those on their panel, I think this .

is definitely what do you .

think Marks from the jury audience? What makes .

for that be .

so much? Ah okay. So I think you talk about some of the indian cotton that were not adopted.

I really like, you know this this love of pork and put your beer. Yeah, but we skipped over the one that is really different in cambodia. And I want to go into cause a girl.

But women, I mean, women, when leading prayer, women were in charge temps. I mean, what was their own? Because you have the dark in in india o who were servants of the .

temple of the temple, but in the of the tragic versions of a tempo prostitutes kind of at the service of the of the temple brand and visitors, right? This is completely different. In cambodia you get references to several of the king's insisting on the daughters of romans inheriting the temple. So you have something impossible to imagine in india, which is women brom's running the temples.

That's amazing.

I love that. great.

I love that so much was a car system as there was an india .

is again to be another aspect which failed to make IT across the and go, wow. So you have a costless women LED hindooism, which eats poor, can drinks me? yeah.

Well, I mean, sort of easy to sign up to for women at least. okay. And the science you said, you know, there was magic, but there was also science you, I mean, you talk about. And I find this extraordinary, this idea of these ash covered almost, they don't feel human because if you've seen them, we traveled in india, you know, they do feel sort of different and above, and they they look fierce and focus. But they have scientific know how as well as literacy.

that, I mean, what you get the impression is that the commers with formal, bookish, that anyone in india, and once they got sad spread, they taught IT with incredible accuracy and enthusiasm. And we have, in particular, this one temple, which some people say is the most beautiful of all the temples in cb dia ankle. What is the most famous? Because it's just the simply the biggest, but outside, same rip to the north.

There's a tiny temple, gorgeous jew box called bte ray. And this was built by a prime minister, not by of the kings. A guy called the yva a and he is famous for his learning.

And the temple actually contains two buildings, which is supposed to be libraries, which had slots for all the palese manuscripts. And you get the present that he spent his life reading these manuscrip, because you get on the walls, references to the most obscure science create literature and god. I mean, the sculptures are spectacular.

There's a famous image of dog ga, the extraordinary good yeah mother got us. And my favorite historian of indian arts, Stellar commish, talked about the image, or dogar, with a senior pattern of limbs rounded by the sap of youth, which that is a lovely. And you have all these images that which have no precedent in india, and you you get the impression that the king has taken them from his reading.

So he's like this very bookish guy sitting there. So i'll have one of those. So you have as well as sort of well known images like raven shaking, mk ki lash, to attract the attention of lord shiver, that's the demon king of the rai ana, which is that you also see in in a Laura, you get many other images from the rame and the mahar, which which known in india, but which exists here. And you have this lovely little lines ript as you come into this temple where yard raha talks about, the curricular said with his kid brother. And so we get a reading list, something you'd find nowhere in india of all the text, uh, that he thinks that the Younger brother should read, just become a gentle man.

But I I love this. I mean, so learn IT. I get learn IT. But also to what I was actually trying to get out is is scientific. Know how say you have, you know, these promos or whoever IT is on a bookish king, but they're able to do things that others have not been able to do, apart from you need these amazing constructions of these extraordinary temples. You got large scale dams, reservoir canal systems. And, you know, an agricultural policy that means, you know, crops for longer, a fishing policy that will allow, you know, if any, of the ways on quotas or what, but there's abundance of fish all year around because there are rules and stipulations on this, the science behind IT.

this method in this. And when you look down from plum coulton over the planes of cambodia, you can see if a miles and miles that every inch of this landscape has been controlled by locks, by water systems, by canals, by irrigation runs, and there's nothing casual about this landscape is sound like, you know, you wonder through the the orcas and IT looks like, you know, virgin territory, we just have a every single inch of the planes around cambodia has been tamed and or ized and turned into the most productive soil in southeast ast asia. And I love the fact .

that is a chinese ambassage who who is writing back going bloody, how these comers have got this sorted. You know, he is talking about how controlled irrigation, how they could harvest, start to four iced crops a year. He talks about doubling more than fifty million flooded planes into harvest using something called floating rice. Another techniques, you know what floating rice is, and this is what the chinese .

ambassador king about. Yes, I is way to take the shoots of the rice. And you organize in such a way that they're not actually in soil. They are growing on the water surface. In other ways, you can have a sort second law of rice growing and the same area .

to tear rice. Prog, its its genius. So look, that actually leads me to another question, which is so clearly chinese had sent ambassadors to jammin. I mean, with this, a thriving metals is of international trade and visitation. Or did he do so very much to increase his his landa that he didn't really need to bother with the rest of the world?

Well, yes, there was a lot of international trade, clearly. And the Michael was the big motorway, which you find many chinese junk sAiling up. But IT does seem that the prosperity of the kingdom depended not so much .

on the on outside.

on outside, but but I was, I was just the brilliant organization of the harvest. And the massive amount of rice switch is produced, which allowed the city of anchor to grow to one point five million people at a time when london is about fifteen thousand people.

That's just not that. I mean that those are good figures, put things in inspective.

And you, this is stuff that studies, one knows to feel, go to very good history classes a little bit about the bizarre I empire and comes down to open or something, but this is something much bigger and much more sophisticated and much more scientifically advanced and IT barely figures and anyone's imagination, other than as sort the background to Angela jolie, swing springing through temporary too. Yeah.

yeah. And so tell me, I mean, we talk to at the beginning of this about this empire of the company lasting, you said four hundred years, four hundred years. Do we know what happened to java and how he died and where all of his and you know those who came after, where they are successful as him?

So there is this long succession looking who you know inevitably, like in in british story, and not necessarily direct dependence. So they claim to be collator or something, is also a strange cousins who had turned an endless military cools and so on, the last of which is by this extraordinary ruler, syria ARM. In the second, that means syria is the sun good, and that means he who is protected by the sun and serve about in the second, again, is some very distant cousin of the crow line, who comes to power very bloody in eleven thirteen and is annointed by descendant of the same bramin who had annointed java in the second. And you get a dennehy of of royal Browns as well as the didn't.

That's interesting.

And we have the descriptions which talk about the gifts during this conception of two fans of peak up fathers with golden handles for White parasols, ear ornaments and golden balls, workers, elephants and sacred brand cattle. But this is the man, sir, our in the second, who begins work on the big one on ankle.

What, and he's an interesting character, is not only is he a great warlord, he is a diplomat, and he is in direct touch with the famous charlik's of south india, the guys who invent the chiller bronzes, who are now themselves great power. They make raids into south east dasia. And according to inscription on the temple in tangible, the child is actually conquer several of the ports in the molecules rates that they defeat three vagina and kidnap the king back to tangible with them.

And the commerce as the lander wer in cambodia, stretching out through thailand laws and parts of IT now, and the chollas as this naval power Operating and south and create lines. And they give gifts to each other that the kings' of aran gives a golden charity to the world king in tangle. And the great achievement to the environment is ankle, what which he begins work on in eleven twenty two.

And he, unusually, is a devoted of this new rather than achieve, which has been the dominant feature of a role. Life for the previous two or three hundred years, and the complex doesn't get finished in his lifetime, is such a vast undertaking that IT takes three decades of hard labor to compete. The mote alone takes five thousand men.

Ten years of digging while the temple incited contains more stone than the largest egyptian parameter. Yet no water is used. It's all done with a sort of joints and tenants, rather than line water. And this I mean, I don't know if you haven't any interview.

No, no, my brother has.

but it's one.

So here .

and what's lovely bad is, is the sort of jungles around IT is still complete. The intact is not in the urban world that you're coming to IT from.

You're coming to IT from trees and and vine and out of these trees of the cambodian jungle, this sort a mountain of minging rising and successive ranges, great tumbling squeeze of prints and capitals and category pillars, and lost James and everywhere, these scoped figures of lions and dragons and elephants, god's and god links, but particularly the dancing goals. We have hundreds of thousands of images of command out and girls, all individually scoped with individual features and with the humanity of actual portraits. You get the impression this girl is new. yeah.

And what extraordinary is that? As well as being a temple in the hindu tradition, IT contains within IT the ashes of syria, a in the second. And like a sort of budget stupa, you'd never have that in in the hindu temple. You never have A A barrier within the main temple, but the bars of ankle, uh, and this is my favorite with a couple guns, which is the shape of a five on the dice.

And so .

the central dot, if you like, of the five on the dice is this tomb tower. Western environment ashes are in third. So both a barrier chapel to the greatest of all the commercials and the greatest to do temple ever able.

On that note, till the next time we meet, it's goodbye for me and I are .

in good bye me. William. Don't pool.