ANGKOR and I

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84 to the north, Vientiane in Laos was around 510 kilometers away by river and land (part of the journey being by river), and about 410 kilometers away to the west lay the Prasat Muang Singh Temple (West Thailand). Subsequently, after crossing the Tanin Dai mountain range isthmus, about 40 kms away lay the port of Dawei, facing the Bay of Bengal. Further south, from the port city of the Angkor capital city (Phnom Krom) there was a river route to Angkor Borei via Phnom Penh through the Tonle Sap Lake, and the route to the South China Sea was utilized. By land however there lay a route from the port city of Champa to the South China Sea, via the Preah Khan temple (Kompong Svay). Transcending the Historical Viewpoint Centered on Western Europe Earlier I used the expression “Pax Angkorica.” Yet the history of the Angkor dynasty cannot be forcibly thrust into viewpoints of historical development centered on Western Europe, and neither can it be explained by using Asian-type concepts of theories of autocracy. Why was Angkor Wat built? And why did a population of around 400,000 individuals converge over there? The Angkor was an international city, a key base linking the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea, and on weighing up the network of people and objects, as well as the maintenance of peace by the army of war elephants, we see that the mystery ceases to remain a mystery. Furthermore, the Angkor was a city in the heavens, erected on the basis of Cambodia’s unique religious view of the cosmos. Hence, using ox-cart caravans many villagers came on visits to Angkor Wat, and the inscriptions inform us that hundreds of people from present-day northeastern Thailand (Phimai) had arrived in Angkor. Even in the 16th century after the collapse of the Angkor dynasty the “Angkor pilgrimages” continued, and in the 17th century, Christian missionaries visiting the