ANGKOR and I

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115 An overview of Angkor art (of around 900 years) reveals three apexes. These are the Phnom Da style of the 6th to 7th century, the Banteay Srei style of the 10th century, and the Bayon style of the end of the 12th to the beginning of the 13th century. By restoring the finest example, namely the late 10th century architecture of Banteay Srei, Marchal, after a lapse of around 1000 years, revived the aesthetic sense that the Cambodians of that time had yearned for, and enabled them to perceive the thrill of the art through their very eyes. The embossed adornments of the dainty and graceful statues of the goddess are such, that viewers have no choice but to be enthralled. He later remarried a Cambodian woman and kept watch over the Angkor monuments until 1970. In 1961 when I happened to conduct an on-site investigation of the monuments, I encountered Dr. Marchal at the Banteay Samré site, and received various directives from him. His back seemed a little bent but on the ladder to the roof he stretched out, and I succeeded in asking him what his condition was when he used to run about as a young conservation officer. Illegal Excavation of André Malraux, the later French Minister of Culture The anecdote concerning the illegal excavation at the Angkor ruins of André Malraux (1911-1966), a writer, adventurer, and later minister of culture, occurred in December 1923. As a 21-year-old graduate of the Paris School of Oriental Languages, he arrived in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) from Marseille in the company of his new wife. He then sailed back up the Mekong River by boat and arrived via Phnom Penh at Siem Reap, the town where the Angkor monuments are located. Malraux came to the Banteay Srei temple with a friend. The archaeological site was then a heap of rubble piled high, but on detecting the gorgeous statue of the Goddess Devata, with a hero’s artistic dexterity and scrutiny he began removing the stones, and within three days they had placed seven stone blocks on a raft, and then