ANGKOR and I

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114 made great contributions towards relief activities concerning the monuments, to the extent that people would often say, “if there is Marchal there is Angkor.” Marchal first set about restoring the Banteay Srei temple. At about 35 kms northeast of Siem Reap town the ruins of the elegant Banteay Srei (meaning “fortress of women”) were located within a field in 1907, and this great discovery was at once published in the Paris newspapers. This temple uses crimson sandstone, and the three shrines on the third wall in particular are lined up on a platform of around a meter’s height, with figures having themes from Hindu myths closely engraved on the lintels, gables, and wall surfaces. Judged from the standpoint of composition, representation, iconography and so on Banteay Srei is a place where the essence of Angkor art converges, a small temple of soaring artistic value that has earned for it the label “Jewelry Museum.” Amid the line-up of these dainty and elegant sculptures and embossed carvings the figures of goddesses, Devata, reverently holding flower branches and set on recesses at four corners of the northern tower, are eye-catching. The statues are small with limbs of about a meter, yet the ineffable feeling of liveliness they evoke and their comeliness of form, are striking. In course of time we came to refer to this goddess as the Mona Lisa of the east. As I shall clarify later, this was the site of the 1923 illegal excavation by André Malraux. In 1931, Marchal learned the Anastylosis mode of building from a Dutch conservation officer from the Netherland’s territory of Java, and utilized this method to fully restore the Banteay Srei temple. “Anastylosis is a method of rebuilding an edifice by restoring the original parts found on the spot. At the time of returning the stones some iron material is passed on both sides, and structural reinforcement is done by hardening with cement.” The construction that is currently in progress on the western approach is effected by using a special building method, so as to preserve the original retaining wall at the time of its erection.