81 unattended, since the ruins were located in a remote areas, we had to make use of a helicopter. Those five major ruins were indeed left abandoned during the long civil war, and they thus remained buried in the jungles, in a devastated condition. The investigating team comprised groups of experts, as for instance those of the history group, archeology group, architecture group, applied geology group, and water conservancy group, and we particularly included 11 Cambodian research students as well. As they were slated to be involved in restoration work in the future, there was an ulterior motive for us to include them. After estimating the scale of the ruins from an inspection of the inscriptions found in the field, we made drawings of the collapsed edifices. We also collected tiles, studied remains we believe were those of blast furnaces, summarized in a report collection the outcome of the study of stone deterioration by the resonance method, and so on. [Investigation the Angkor Monuments, No. 8, 2001]. We then compared it with present-day topographic maps and constructed a hypothesis concerning the scale the fields in the area had in the past, and activities in the villages that were side businesses, and estimated the economic scale of the area. In a depopulated area of the dense jungle we confirmed the fact that the temple construction had led to the development of the area. By attracting donations via the erection of temples in these regions the development of the regions progressed, and in the course of a few hundreds of years they grew into regional bases. It is believed the rājakāhryya (service tax to the king) of the people of the vicinity as well as their desire to acquire “merit” drew a great deal of wealth to the temple (which was a form of investment). We granted this the tentative title of “Temple Leading Development Method.” Erection of temples entailed vast amounts of manpower as well as time, and as families also take up residences, soon a self-sufficient village gets formed. To supply food for people engaged in the construction an artificial reservoir was built, and it appears as though they used a unique irrigation technology (Takoshi Irrigation
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