National Geographic: Glories Of Angkor (2001) Movie Script
For hundreds of years, they lay in
darkness.
Their creators had been destroyed,
but their spirit could not be killed.
Gods had built them, some said.
Others insisted...
they had built themselves.
Yet most believed that powerful
spirits protected the vast stone city
deep in the Cambodian jungle.
And woe would come to whomever
disturbed its slumber.
Centuries apart, two men would fall
under Angkor's spell.
One was a naturalist,
lured by tales of exotic creatures
and a fabulous lost city.
The other was a diplomat, sent to
demand tribute
from a civilization far richer than
he'd ever imagined.
Their epic tales would inflame the
world's curiosity,
and light a fire in the darkness of
Cambodia's lost world.
The mystery of Angkor is what is
not known.
We don't know much about the
people.
Think about it with people, when it
was filled with worshippers,
the community were out in the
fields growing rice.
What was it like when it was
active and alive?
It's absolutely extraordinary,
the mystery is basically what is
this thing?
Why is it so big? Why is it
glittering in the sun like this?
What's it for?
It's mysterious, you feel that
something went on here
that's not going on there today,
but something went on there that's
different
from much of the rest of the world.
In Southeast Asia, an abandoned
city sprawls magnificently
across the heart of Cambodia.
Its hundreds of monuments
contain more stone than the
Egyptian Pyramids,
and cover more ground than
modern Paris.
This is Angkor,
the capital of an empire that once
controlled most of Southeast Asia.
They were called the Khmere.
And more than five hundred years
ago, they vanished
To the outside world, the city existed
only in obscure travelers' tales.
Until a Frenchman in the 19th century
brought Angkor to light.
He was a naturalist,
searching for unknown species of
plants and animals.
Almost by accident he uncovered
one of man's greatest creations.
In the 1850's Frenchman Henri
Mouhot might have been well
on his way to becoming the
world's first wildlife photographer.
A naturalist and a portrait painter,
Mouhot dabbled in the new,
devilish art of photography.
Mouhot was a born roamer
- by age 30 he'd crisscrossed
Europe and Russia.
But it was the tales of those who
ventured further abroad
that would lure him to the jungles
of Cambodia.
A book had just been published
in 1857
about the area of Southeast Asia.
In a sense it was the focus that
drew him.
The first Europeans to explore
Africa and Asia
were usually marginal people in
their own societies.
They didn't quite fit in.
And so they went to these other
places and explored them.
But in the process of exploring
them, they opened up new areas,
wrote about them, and provided
the raw information
that the European countries needed
to exploit these areas as colonies.
In 19th century Europe,
models for undaunted courage
were heroic explorers,
like Henry Morton Stanley.
While searching for the source of
e Nile,
Stanley watched most of his
companions
die of fever and warfare with
hostile peoples.
Stanley lost 60 pounds and his hair
turned white.
"We have wept so often we can
weep no more," he wrote.
But there was one more blow
ahead.
In his absence his fianc had
married another man.
For late 19th century explorers, it
was all in a day's work.
What they lost at home they
hoped to doubly gain abroad...
as the front-line troops of a new
surge of colonialism.
The revolution in manufacturing
that would transform Europe
was fueled - in part - by
adventurism abroad.
Great Britain, France, and
Germany
had developed huge appetites for
raw materials
and markets for their products.
This set off a land grab for Asia
and Africa, where minerals,
farmland, even labor could be
taken by force of arms.
They also wanted to bring
European culture
to the peoples of these regions.
It was a sort of cultural
imperialism.
They wanted to, in a sense,
bring what they considered the
best culture in the world
to people who they thought had
inferior cultures.
These allegedly 'inferior' cultures
weren't always happy to see the
Europeans.
Along with hostile armies,
explorers had to battle disease,
madness, and starvation.
Some were military men
who brought much-needed
professionalism to the trade.
Others were doomed amateurs
brimming with enthusiasm...
Henri Mouhot would take his
place among these.
Mouhot decided to devote his life
to studying new species of flora
and fauna.
It seemed likely he'd combine his
passions,
and become history's first
photographer of wildlife.
But fate stepped in.
He met and married an
Englishwoman, Anna Park.
She was a relative of one of the
great explorers of West Africa,
Mungo Park.
Perhaps Anna pressed Henri
to match Mungo's feats of daring
- or maybe Henri wasn't
suited for domestic life.
For less than two years
after they were wed,
Mouhot set out for Southeast Asia.
Mouhot intended to keep a diary
of his adventure
while documenting the natural world.
But on his quest for facts, he'd
encounter a profound mystery...
an abandoned city in the jungle...
a rival among the greatest
creations of man.
On the 27th April, 1858 I
embarked at London,
in a ship of very modest
pretensions...
Mouhot books passage on a
small boat.
The very first part of this trip
was bad.
The boat was small, the captain
was drunk all the time
and he writes of his perils on the
ship and the passengers being sick.
Mouhot is really interesting to me
because he went there without a
clearly defined program.
He was also went there on his own
funding.
In a sense he took a real chance
but there was just this wanderlust.
This, this chance to open up a new
area
to the rest of the world and he
in a sense seized the moment.
After pausing in Singapore and
Paknam,
Mouhot recovered his land-legs in
Bangkok,
famous in Europe as 'the Venice
of the East.'
At Bangkok's Royal Palace,
the Frenchman dined with Siam's
monk-turned-monarch, King Mongkut.
The cultured king grilled Mouhot for news of Europe.
He'd become an expert in foreign
affairs,
in order to defend his nation.
While countries around Siam fell
to European powers,
Mongkut would sign trade treaties
with many of them,
knowing that this would
discourage any one
from invading his kingdom.
To teach English to his children,
he'd hire the tutor Anna Leonowens.
Her memoirs would inspire the
musical The King and I.
Its clownish portrait of Mongkut
would become the modern
world's sole impression of a ruler
who almost single-handedly
saved Siam from colonization.
Mongkut's gifts were all but lost
on Mouhot as well.
Barely acquainted with Asia,
he was distracted by its 'peculiar'
customs.
Every inferior crouches before
a higher in rank.
He receives his orders with
abject submission and respect.
The whole of society is in a
state of prostration...
Despite such attacks on his
sensibilities,
Mouhot relished his journeys by
boat and even elephant
through uncharted regions of Siam,
and in time, to the frontier of
Cambodia.
He was warmly received by lesser
kings,
and met with enthusiastic curiosity
by all those unaccustomed
to having a farang, or white man,
parade into their midst.
Mouhot wasted little time on
making friends;
his goal was Science.
My principal object...
is to benefit those who in the quiet
of their homes
delight to follow the poor traveler
who with the sole object of being
useful to his fellow man...
crosses the ocean and sacrifices
family, comfort, health,
and all too often their life itself.
Nature has her lovers,
and those alone who have tasted
them know the joy she gives.
In the 19th century, the science of
natural history was in its infancy;
studying exotic species meant
shooting them,
or dunking them alive in jars of
spirits.
Mouhot's zoological treasure
included seven types of mammals,
ten reptiles, eight freshwater fish,
fifteen land shells, and a spider.
The spider still bears his name.
While Asia's animals enchanted
Mouhot,
its people bewildered him.
Their languages were gibberish to
his ears
- their religion had many spirits,
not one.
The people played music in alien
keys,
and filled their dances with
nightmarish creatures.
Yet the cultural divide that
separated Mouhot from his hosts
was about to be crossed... by the
most unlikely of people.
When Mouhot traveled throughout
southeast Asia,
he employed several helpers who
went with him.
Mouhot became attached to one
particular manservant called Phrai.
He even helped him with some of
his collecting.
He was a guide, he was an
interpreter, he said up the camp.
Phrai started out as a servant of
Mouhot,
but became his comrade and his
constant companion.
In fact we owe to Phrai our knowledge
of the expeditions of Mouhot.
On his expeditions
Mouhot kept meticulous records of
plants and animals,
and made charts of rivers and
mountains unheard of in Europe.
He cataloged the peoples he
encountered,
noting differences in their looks
and customs.
He turned himself into a one-man
research team.
And, in the tradition of great
explorers before him, he suffered...
Insects are in great numbers -
several of my books and maps have
been almost devoured in one night
We suffered terribly from mosquitoes,
and had to keep up the incessant fanning
to drive off these pestilent little
vampires.
There is a small species of leech...
you have to be constantly pulling
them off you by the dozens...
but you are sure to return home
covered in blood.
Scorpions, centipedes,
and above all, serpents, were the
enemies we most dreaded...
But remarkably, while Phrai and the
native bearers were frequently ill,
Mouhot's health couldn't
have been better.
I drank nothing but tea,
hoping by abstinence from cold
water from all wine and spirits,
to escape fever.
In spite of the heat, the fatigue,
and the privations inseparable
from such a journey,
I arrived among the Cambodians
in perfectly good health...
The people flocked to see my
collection,
and could not imagine what I should
do with so many animals and insects...
I offered the children my cigar-ends to smoke,
in return for which they would
run after butterflies
and bring them to me uninjured.
Once more in boats,
the Frenchman and his
companions journeyed north.
Their destination- the rumored
lost city of Angkor,
which interested Mouhot less than the
rare birds he hoped to collect there.
On the way they paused at a
lonely wilderness outpost
- a Catholic mission run by a
French priest.
Years of isolation, and dysentery,
had soured the priest's view of the
tropics,
and made him gloomy about
Mouhot's final push to the lost city.
Do you know where you're going?
The rains have begun and you are
going to almost certain death,
or will at least catch a fever,
which will be followed by years of
languor and suffering.
May God be with the poor traveler!
Mohout said he'd abide by God's will
but was going nonetheless.
After another leg of his river
journey
he reached a landmark he knew
only from legend
- the Ton LeSap Lake,
and marveled as the shorelines
grew apart by some five miles.
By now it'd been more than a year
since Mouhot had dined in
Bangkok's Royal Palace.
Rough travel had left him
ill-prepared
for what he was about to see,
a vision few Europeans had shared.
The lost city of Angkor was not a
rumor, but overwhelmingly real.
There are ruins of such grandeur,
remains of structures
which must have been raised at
such an immense cost of labor,
that at the first view, one is filled
with profound admiration,
and cannot but ask what has
become of this powerful race,
so civilized, so enlightened, the
authors of these gigantic works!
He came looking for insects,
came looking for flora, fauna,
new species.
He didn't come looking for
Angkor but he found it
and I think if any of us who may
have stumbled on Angkor as he did
would have been excited.
But whether we could have
recorded it in such detail
with such precision as Henri
Mouhot did is unlikely.
One of these temples... a rival to
that of Solomon,
and erected by some ancient
Michelangelo -
might take an honorable place beside
our most beautiful buildings.
It's grander than anything left to us
by Greece or Rome!
The natives enlightened the
stunned Mouhot-
it's the work of angels, they
said, or giants.
It was built by a magician-king.
It built itself.
Mouhot was not an archeologist,
nor an art historian, nor could he
read the Sanskrit engravings
that adorned the monuments of
Angkor.
Yet he was an illustrator.
With his customary zeal
he set out to sketch the most
magnificent
of the lost city's some 1,000 temples,
and describe them inch-by-inch.
The west side the gallery is
supported
by two rows of square columns,
on the east, blank windows have
been let into the wall,
with balconies of twisted columns
fourteen centimeters in diameter...
In the center of the causeway are
two elegant pavilions,
one on each side, having at each
extremity a portico
thirty-three meters sixty-six
centimeters in length...
Mouhot was a very keen observer.
He was a collector of information.
He had this natural history
background to describe things
in a very careful way.
So when he found the monuments
at Angkor,
he went ahead and approached them
in the same way he would
approach his zoological specimens,
with careful description.
The vaulted ceilings of the
galleries
are raised six meters from the
ground;
those of the second roof are four
meters thirty centimeters high...
The bas-reliefs represent combat
and procession...
Fabulous animals are busy
devouring some;
others are in irons and have had
their eyes put out.
He could tell that it was the results
of an ancient civilization
that had flourished in this area. He could also tell by the
inscriptions
on many of the, many of the
monuments -
they were mostly in Sanskrit and
old Khmere.
He could tell by these inscriptions,
even though he couldn't read them,
that these were a very learned
people
who had built all this and yet they
were gone without a trace.
Sad frailty of human things!
How many centuries and
thousands of generations
have passed away, of which history
will never tell us anything.
What treasures of art will remain
forever buried beneath these ruins.
How many distinguished artists,
kings, and warriors are
now forgotten.
Mouhot was deeply frustrated
by the mystery of who had
created the city of Angkor.
He noted the similarity
between the faces in the carvings
and the people living in the
surrounding forests.
But he couldn't bring
himself to believe
that these Cambodians were descended
from Angkor's peerless artists.
In fact, the artistry of Cambodia
had never died.
Though it never again reached the
heights of Angkor,
Khmere art flourished throughout
Southeast Asia.
Demand for replicas if its most
famous works
grows with Angkor's fame.
Oblivious of Cambodia's past,
Mouhot saw France in its future.
Only a full scale takeover,
he concluded, could correct the
nation's 'deplorable' condition.
The sooner the better.
European conquest wise and
protecting laws, and experience
would alone effect the
regeneration of this state.
I wish France to possess this land,
which would add a magnificent
jewel to her crown!
Though Mouhot wouldn't live to
see it,
France did intervene soon after
his expedition,
making Cambodia a protectorate
in 1864.
It would last nearly a century.
Mouhot's diary wasn't the cause.
But like explorer's tales before,
it fueled interest and imitation.
King Mongkut's tutor,
Anna Leonowens, was so moved
by Mouhot's description of Angkor
she'd later copy it for her own
book.
Angkor was never a lost city
in Asians' eyes.
They knew about it and from
the 16th century onwards,
Jesuit priests wrote it in
their diaries.
It's just that their diaries
were so confidential
it didn't reach a wide public.
Mouhot was the first person to
popularize Angkor.
And it was his sketches, his
descriptions
that really is why he was credited
with the discovery of Angkor.
With a saber in one hand, Phrai
pursues the fishes in the stream.
He and his shadow reflected on
the rocks and water
might easily be mistaken by the
natives for demons.
It is pleasant to the man devoted to
our good and beautiful mother Nature
to think that his work, his fatigues,
his troubles and dangers, are
useful to others.
I doubt not others will follow in
my steps,
and gather an abundant harvest
where I have
but cleared the ground.
Mouhot had been traveling for the
better part of three years.
The amateur enthusiast had
become an expert naturalist,
a skilled outdoorsman, a hardened
explorer.
He treated Phrai and his other
servants as his family,
whom he alternately nursed and
scolded,
and with whom he shed tears at
parting.
Yet even as his letters home turned
wistful and sentimental,
and his journey stretched from two
years to three,
he couldn't seem to turn back.
Only on the trail was he at peace.
Do not be anxious when you think
of your poor friend the traveler,
for you know that up to the
present time
everything has prospered with him.
And truly I experience a degree of
contentment, strength of soul,
and internal peace, which I have
never known before.
But the French priest's dire
warning finally came true.
The weather and mosquitoes were
the worst yet.
First Phrai fell sick.
For five days we were compelled
to remain in the forest;
it rained a great part of the day,
the torrents overflowed.
I never in my life passed such
wretched nights.
My poor Phrai was seized with a
dreadful fever,
and I myself felt very ill.
October 29, 1861.
Overcome by fever
the 35 year old Mouhot scratched
out his last journal entry.
Have pity on me, oh my God!
Phrai recovered and made sure his
master received a proper burial.
Then he brought Mouhot's
possessions out of the forest,
and put them on boats for Europe.
Most of the zoological samples
the naturalist had collected during
his journeys
had already been lost at sea.
But his journal made it safely back
to England.
Henri's widow Anna persuaded the
Royal Geographical Society
to publish Mouhot's diary.
The first edition did not sell;
there were no profits to share
with Anna.
Yet, owing chiefly to its
description of Angkor,
Mouhot's work remained in print
for a full century.
Generations of travelers and
explorers have encountered
the treasures of Khmere culture
with Mouhot's journal in hand.
And perhaps some took heart in
one of Henri's last letters home,
a fitting epitaph for Mouhot, and
his generation of explorers:
Courage, then, and hope!
Our perseverance and efforts will
be recompensed.
Adieu, adieu, Au revoir.
Do not forget me.
Shortly after Henri Mouhot alerted
the world to the wonders of Angkor,
the work of recovering its treasures
began.
Mouhot's meticulous descriptions
had inspired Europe to take
a closer look.
But the questions had only just
begun.
Who were Angkor's builders, the
empire called the Khmere?
What were their lives like?
Archeologists had no written record
to go on
- If the Khmere had chronicled
their story,
they probably did so on palm leaves
and paper.
Time had turned the perishable history
to dust.
With nothing known about their
builders,
Angkor's monuments seemed destined
to hold their tongues forever.
Then in 1902 a remarkable document
came to light
and a most unlikely voice
reverberated across eight centuries.
The fantastic civilization of the
Khmere,
thought to be forever beyond reach,
came to life in all its grandeur.
In about 10,000 words
this report captured the heart of the
lost kingdom of Angkor.
Its author was a diplomat sent to
Cambodia
by China's fearsome Mongol Dynasty.
The Mongols are famous for
their deadly mounted warriors,
and for tactics that routed European
armies.
At the end of the 13th century,
however, they took aim at Southeast
Asia.
In 1286 the Mongols struck deep into
what's now Vietnam.
A year later the capital of Burma
fell to the hordes.
Yet the infamous horsemen didn't
like fighting
in the alien jungle terrain
- perhaps this alone saved Angkor
from being next.
Instead, Mongol Emperor Timur
Khan gave orders for diplomats
to go to Angkor and collect tribute
from the Cambodian king.
This would appease the Khan while
allowing the envoys
to size up Angkor for possible
future attack.
One of these diplomats was
Zhou Dagoun.
Zhou Dagoun in his writing, never
said why he was there.
He was part of an embassy
which obviously meant that it was
some, trying to check out on trade,
check out, get the intelligence on
what this kingdom was like.
To show to Mongol Emperor
what sorts of people lay at the far
boundaries of his empire,
what sorts of products they had,
what they looked like.
The inhabitants are rude and ugly
and very black.
The indigenous women are very
lustful.
If a husband has to leave for a
distant mission,
that's alright for a couple of nights.
But after a dozen nights the woman
will certainly complain,
"Who am I, a ghost that needs no
one to sleep with?"
He was a keen observer, telling us
about the people, the daily lives.
Zhou Dagoun left us something very
special.
He has left the only first hand
record that we have of Angkor.
He was here when Angkor was a
kingdom.
But we have to always keep in mind
he was a foreigner,
so he was perceiving the kingdom
and what he knew
in his background which was
Chinese.
About Zhou Dagoun little is known.
He was probably about thirty
years old,
a diplomat, perhaps an aristocrat.
From the details he reported to
the Khan
emerge a character fascinated with
earthy pleasures.
He came from an obsessive prudish
kind of culture
and he saw in this tropical climate
and enjoyed seeing, women taking
off their scanty costumes
and getting into the river to bathe
with nothing on at all,
and he commented on this
not only because it was so barbarian
and rare and un Chinese
but I think also because he enjoyed
watching the spectacle.
Every three or four days
the women go and bathe in a river
outside the city.
Even the women from the noble
families
take part in these baths and aren't
ashamed.
Everyone can see them from the to
of their heads
to the bottom of their feet.
The Chinese, on their day off,
go and see it.
I've heard that there are those who
enter the water
to take advantage of the situation.
The water is always as hot as fire.
For Zhou Dagoun, his year in Angkor
would be full of such surprises
and contrasts.
He was Chinese, but from the
frigid plains,
a Mongol whose race worshipped
war above all things.
By contrast, the Khmere had
embraced Buddhism,
and its creed of compassion
and rebirth.
The city of one million enjoyed
a calendar
full of parades, festivals,
and holy days.
The Chinese who arrive as sailors
find it comfortable
that in this country one doesn't
have to wear clothes.
And since rice is easy to earn, and
women easy to persuade,
there are many who desert to stay.
As he cataloged Angkor's marvels,
Zhou Dagoun himself may have
thought about deserting for a life
in the jungle paradise.
As a spy of sorts, he no doubt
soon discovered
that all the Khmere's might and
majesty
largely depended on one thing
- water.
Three rice-harvests a year fed the
city of about one million,
and paid for everything from
temple building to defense.
To grow the rice, they had to tame
the water.
They harnessed the water from the
Ton Le Sap Lake
by building a series of canals, dikes,
and moats
from the lake up to the city of
Angkor.
During the rainy season,
when the lake began to rise
water was forced up these canals,
up above the city,
and collected in large reservoirs,
called barays for year-round use.
And in fact the system
that was employed at Angkor
a thousand years ago
is more advanced than any
irrigation system
used in Cambodia today.
The relationship between the king
and water has a very long history.
The whole reason that Angkor is
located on this plain
is because of the access of water.
So the king could provide fish and
rice
and therefore his people would
prosper
and his genealogy would continue.
Not surprisingly the symbol of
water - a snake -
is key to Khmere faith.
In Angkor, Zhou Dagoun would
have found
the revered reptile depicted
countless times,
in scenes said to reveal the secret
of immortality.
The churning of the ocean of milk
is known in Hindu mythology
- its much loved in Cambodia in
their art.
It's depicted with gods on one side
and demons on the other
and they're holding a large scaly
body of a serpent.
They pull left and right and left
and right
in a way that we would call a tug
of war.
They're churning to try to yield the
elixir of immortality.
Immortality was a daily pursuit
inside the Royal Palace,
the abode of Khmere Kings.
Kings had more than a thousand
concubines
- the most beautiful women
of the empire.
Scores are depicted at the Royal
Terrace... no two alike.
Concerning the concubines and the
girls of the palace,
I've heard that the number is
between three and five thousand.
When in a family there's
a beautiful girl,
she's immediately sent to the
palace.
As a foreigner, and an oddity,
Zhou Dagoun wasn't permitted to
enter the Royal Palace...
but he heard a legend about the
magic that took place inside.
In the Golden Tower
inside the palace the sovereign goes
to sleep in its highest part.
All the locals assert that inside the
tower there's a genie
- master of the whole territory of
the kingdom.
This genie appears every night in the
form of a woman.
Its with her that the sovereign lies
with and then has sex.
If one night the genie doesn't
appear,
this is because the time for the
barbarian king's death has come.
If the king doesn't show up even for
one night,
something terrible will happen.
He would comment on some of
their unusual customs
but then he would always draw
comparisons back to the way
we do things in China.
So I think he saw commonalties
between the Khmer and the Chinese.
In this country it's the women who
know about commerce.
If a Chinese arrives here and
immediately takes a woman,
its because he wants to take
advantage
of the woman's trading skills,
[which could easily exceed his own.]
Zhou Dagoun disapproved of most
Angkor customs
but praised one - the status of
women.
The envoy noted that women ran
commerce throughout the city,
and women intellectuals were among
the king's most trusted counselors.
Women figure prominently in
engravings on a temple at Angkor
called the Bayon.
They depict dozens of types of
business
and the daily activities of Khmere
life.
In fact everything the Mongols
wanted to know about the Khmere
was right here-agriculture, slaves,
rare goods.
For Zhou Dagoun it would have
been an intelligence goldmine.
Valuable products are the feathers
of the kingfisher,
elephant tusks, rhino's horn, and
beeswax.
The white rhinoceros horn is veined
and is the most precious;
the black one is inferior.
In general, the people of this
country are very simple.
When they see a Chinese,
they are respectfully frightened and
call him "Buddha".
Seeing him, they throw themselves
to the ground and bow low.
From Zhou Dagoun's reports we
know about the fact
that there were astronomers there.
We know about the fact that,
that various groups of people within
the court were scientists.
So this was an area of discovery.
This was the Renaissance area of
southeast Asia.
More than five centuries before
Europe's Renaissance,
Cambodian Michaelangelos sent
their masterpieces soaring skyward.
Reliefs at the Bayon acknowledged
the builders;
but one monument at Angkor made
them immortal.
The Chinese envoy Zhou Dagoun
was probably barred
from Angkor's greatest marvel, a
funery temple built for a king.
He skipped over it in his report,
mentioning only that a Chinese
artisan had probably built it.
No doubt the envoy coveted the
Khmere's timeless masterpiece
- Angkor Wat.
Over a century before Zhou
Dagoun arrived,
the last stone was fitted into place.
Archeologists have determined
that it took almost thirty years
to complete,
and was finished in time to bury
the king.
Some historians believe Angkor
Wat is a funery temple.
The main basis for this is that the
entrance is at the west.
In Hindu mythology this signifies
death.
When you enter you feel you're
moving from the world of man
to the world of the deities.
Look to the left. It's a battle.
It is a battle of war
and massacre and slaughter and
pillage and fire.
But at the east is the famous story
of the churning of the ocean of milk,
the beginning of life.
Never in his life would Zhou
Dagoun have seen anything like it.
The austere Mongol religion had
nothing to compare
to sacred mountains of stone.
Angkor Wat was built to please a
Hindu god,
but came to draw the devout of
many faiths.
Climbing the staircase reveals
levels of increasing holiness.
Then you continue to the next level.
The walls are bare in total contrast
to these reliefs, totally bare walls.
Why?
Because you look at the top and
what do you see but the pinnacle,
the image of Vishnu that would
have been housed inside this.
And so the bare walls provide a
quiet background
to carry your eye upward to the very
most sacred point of the temple.
According to tradition, priests
placed the king's ashes
inside the temple he built for
himself.
Yet the monarch didn't dwell in the
next world alone.
Attending him are 1700 enchanted
beings, called Apsaras.
The Apsaras are the celestial
nymphs, the beautiful women
that fly through the heavens and
dance for the gods.
And they stand ready
dressed in their jewelry and
beautiful costumes
to do whatever the gods would need
to make them happy
and for the kingdom to prosper.
These celestial nymphs were born
simply to please the gods,
can you imagine?
Angkor Wat had hardly claimed its
place on the horizon
when disaster struck.
Drawn by its increasing splendor
the Chams, from what's now Vietnam,
attacked and burned the city.
Countless inhabitants were killed,
or forced into exile.
By the time the capital was rebuilt,
a sea change had taken place.
His people had suffered...
so the king built a walled city,
Angkor Tom,
to protect them in time of war.
Like their king most of the Khmere
people abandoned Hinduism,
and followed in the Buddha's path.
Zhou Dagoun was familiar with
Buddhism,
a popular religion in China.
But he was awed by its
Cambodian face.
Above each gate of the enclosure,
there are five big Buddha heads
carved in stone,
their faces turned towards the four
cardinal points;
at the center is placed one
of these heads,
but this one is decorated in gold.
It's a kind face, it's a god of
compassion and wisdom.
This art feature had never before
been seen at Angkor,
and in fact there's not
a prototype known.
Some say that it represents the king
looking in all directions,
north-south-east-and west,
and that makes him the Ruler
of the Universe.
Everyday the king holds audiences
for affairs of state.
The king, sword in hand, appears
in the golden window.
All present join their hands and
touch the earth with their foreheads.
It is plain to see that these people,
though barbarians,
know what is due to a prince.
Zhou Dagoun arrived in Angkor
when its king had undisputed
control over an empire
of seemingly limitless potential.
Despite his glowing account,
his master, Timur Khan never
plundered the nation's treasures.
Perhaps Cambodia's climate was
too similar to that of Vietnam,
where the Mongols had tasted
rare defeat.
Or perhaps the Khmere seemed too
strong to tame.
Zhou Dagoun may have painted too
fine a portrait for invasion.
Maybe Timur decided it wasn't
really worth invading.
Or maybe there were plans
but other things were happening in
the middle kingdom
that in a sense blocked any future
expansion.
Yet the Khmere's story would soon
come to an end
whether the Mongol Khan
invaded or not.
Archeologists and historians have
pieced together the final chapter.
By Zhou Dagoun's time,
the land until it began to fail.
Rice harvests dropped, and stone
monument-building... ceased.
Maintenance of the reservoirs and
canals suffered.
The kings' sacred covenant with the
water... was broken.
Early in the 15th century the
kingdom of Siam
made profitable raids into Khmere
territory.
A climactic battle in 1431...
brought about the end.
All but abandoned,
the Khmere capital was lulled into
a centuries-long sleep
by the encroaching jungle.
Fortunately, Zhou Dagoun had long since
carried his chronicle to safety.
Angkor had won the envoy's
admiration,
and he repaid it with the only
surviving portrait
of Cambodia's ancient treasures.
Coming to Angkor for most people
is a bit of a pilgrimage
to a sacred place.
Somehow it just touches your soul.
Every time you see it looming out
of the forest
it hits you very, very hard.
The mystery is it doesn't explain
itself.
We don't know much
except from reports of Zhou Dagoun
of how they lived.
Yet, we can still see the monuments
they left and we can speculate
and we can dream about the
greatness of this civilization.
darkness.
Their creators had been destroyed,
but their spirit could not be killed.
Gods had built them, some said.
Others insisted...
they had built themselves.
Yet most believed that powerful
spirits protected the vast stone city
deep in the Cambodian jungle.
And woe would come to whomever
disturbed its slumber.
Centuries apart, two men would fall
under Angkor's spell.
One was a naturalist,
lured by tales of exotic creatures
and a fabulous lost city.
The other was a diplomat, sent to
demand tribute
from a civilization far richer than
he'd ever imagined.
Their epic tales would inflame the
world's curiosity,
and light a fire in the darkness of
Cambodia's lost world.
The mystery of Angkor is what is
not known.
We don't know much about the
people.
Think about it with people, when it
was filled with worshippers,
the community were out in the
fields growing rice.
What was it like when it was
active and alive?
It's absolutely extraordinary,
the mystery is basically what is
this thing?
Why is it so big? Why is it
glittering in the sun like this?
What's it for?
It's mysterious, you feel that
something went on here
that's not going on there today,
but something went on there that's
different
from much of the rest of the world.
In Southeast Asia, an abandoned
city sprawls magnificently
across the heart of Cambodia.
Its hundreds of monuments
contain more stone than the
Egyptian Pyramids,
and cover more ground than
modern Paris.
This is Angkor,
the capital of an empire that once
controlled most of Southeast Asia.
They were called the Khmere.
And more than five hundred years
ago, they vanished
To the outside world, the city existed
only in obscure travelers' tales.
Until a Frenchman in the 19th century
brought Angkor to light.
He was a naturalist,
searching for unknown species of
plants and animals.
Almost by accident he uncovered
one of man's greatest creations.
In the 1850's Frenchman Henri
Mouhot might have been well
on his way to becoming the
world's first wildlife photographer.
A naturalist and a portrait painter,
Mouhot dabbled in the new,
devilish art of photography.
Mouhot was a born roamer
- by age 30 he'd crisscrossed
Europe and Russia.
But it was the tales of those who
ventured further abroad
that would lure him to the jungles
of Cambodia.
A book had just been published
in 1857
about the area of Southeast Asia.
In a sense it was the focus that
drew him.
The first Europeans to explore
Africa and Asia
were usually marginal people in
their own societies.
They didn't quite fit in.
And so they went to these other
places and explored them.
But in the process of exploring
them, they opened up new areas,
wrote about them, and provided
the raw information
that the European countries needed
to exploit these areas as colonies.
In 19th century Europe,
models for undaunted courage
were heroic explorers,
like Henry Morton Stanley.
While searching for the source of
e Nile,
Stanley watched most of his
companions
die of fever and warfare with
hostile peoples.
Stanley lost 60 pounds and his hair
turned white.
"We have wept so often we can
weep no more," he wrote.
But there was one more blow
ahead.
In his absence his fianc had
married another man.
For late 19th century explorers, it
was all in a day's work.
What they lost at home they
hoped to doubly gain abroad...
as the front-line troops of a new
surge of colonialism.
The revolution in manufacturing
that would transform Europe
was fueled - in part - by
adventurism abroad.
Great Britain, France, and
Germany
had developed huge appetites for
raw materials
and markets for their products.
This set off a land grab for Asia
and Africa, where minerals,
farmland, even labor could be
taken by force of arms.
They also wanted to bring
European culture
to the peoples of these regions.
It was a sort of cultural
imperialism.
They wanted to, in a sense,
bring what they considered the
best culture in the world
to people who they thought had
inferior cultures.
These allegedly 'inferior' cultures
weren't always happy to see the
Europeans.
Along with hostile armies,
explorers had to battle disease,
madness, and starvation.
Some were military men
who brought much-needed
professionalism to the trade.
Others were doomed amateurs
brimming with enthusiasm...
Henri Mouhot would take his
place among these.
Mouhot decided to devote his life
to studying new species of flora
and fauna.
It seemed likely he'd combine his
passions,
and become history's first
photographer of wildlife.
But fate stepped in.
He met and married an
Englishwoman, Anna Park.
She was a relative of one of the
great explorers of West Africa,
Mungo Park.
Perhaps Anna pressed Henri
to match Mungo's feats of daring
- or maybe Henri wasn't
suited for domestic life.
For less than two years
after they were wed,
Mouhot set out for Southeast Asia.
Mouhot intended to keep a diary
of his adventure
while documenting the natural world.
But on his quest for facts, he'd
encounter a profound mystery...
an abandoned city in the jungle...
a rival among the greatest
creations of man.
On the 27th April, 1858 I
embarked at London,
in a ship of very modest
pretensions...
Mouhot books passage on a
small boat.
The very first part of this trip
was bad.
The boat was small, the captain
was drunk all the time
and he writes of his perils on the
ship and the passengers being sick.
Mouhot is really interesting to me
because he went there without a
clearly defined program.
He was also went there on his own
funding.
In a sense he took a real chance
but there was just this wanderlust.
This, this chance to open up a new
area
to the rest of the world and he
in a sense seized the moment.
After pausing in Singapore and
Paknam,
Mouhot recovered his land-legs in
Bangkok,
famous in Europe as 'the Venice
of the East.'
At Bangkok's Royal Palace,
the Frenchman dined with Siam's
monk-turned-monarch, King Mongkut.
The cultured king grilled Mouhot for news of Europe.
He'd become an expert in foreign
affairs,
in order to defend his nation.
While countries around Siam fell
to European powers,
Mongkut would sign trade treaties
with many of them,
knowing that this would
discourage any one
from invading his kingdom.
To teach English to his children,
he'd hire the tutor Anna Leonowens.
Her memoirs would inspire the
musical The King and I.
Its clownish portrait of Mongkut
would become the modern
world's sole impression of a ruler
who almost single-handedly
saved Siam from colonization.
Mongkut's gifts were all but lost
on Mouhot as well.
Barely acquainted with Asia,
he was distracted by its 'peculiar'
customs.
Every inferior crouches before
a higher in rank.
He receives his orders with
abject submission and respect.
The whole of society is in a
state of prostration...
Despite such attacks on his
sensibilities,
Mouhot relished his journeys by
boat and even elephant
through uncharted regions of Siam,
and in time, to the frontier of
Cambodia.
He was warmly received by lesser
kings,
and met with enthusiastic curiosity
by all those unaccustomed
to having a farang, or white man,
parade into their midst.
Mouhot wasted little time on
making friends;
his goal was Science.
My principal object...
is to benefit those who in the quiet
of their homes
delight to follow the poor traveler
who with the sole object of being
useful to his fellow man...
crosses the ocean and sacrifices
family, comfort, health,
and all too often their life itself.
Nature has her lovers,
and those alone who have tasted
them know the joy she gives.
In the 19th century, the science of
natural history was in its infancy;
studying exotic species meant
shooting them,
or dunking them alive in jars of
spirits.
Mouhot's zoological treasure
included seven types of mammals,
ten reptiles, eight freshwater fish,
fifteen land shells, and a spider.
The spider still bears his name.
While Asia's animals enchanted
Mouhot,
its people bewildered him.
Their languages were gibberish to
his ears
- their religion had many spirits,
not one.
The people played music in alien
keys,
and filled their dances with
nightmarish creatures.
Yet the cultural divide that
separated Mouhot from his hosts
was about to be crossed... by the
most unlikely of people.
When Mouhot traveled throughout
southeast Asia,
he employed several helpers who
went with him.
Mouhot became attached to one
particular manservant called Phrai.
He even helped him with some of
his collecting.
He was a guide, he was an
interpreter, he said up the camp.
Phrai started out as a servant of
Mouhot,
but became his comrade and his
constant companion.
In fact we owe to Phrai our knowledge
of the expeditions of Mouhot.
On his expeditions
Mouhot kept meticulous records of
plants and animals,
and made charts of rivers and
mountains unheard of in Europe.
He cataloged the peoples he
encountered,
noting differences in their looks
and customs.
He turned himself into a one-man
research team.
And, in the tradition of great
explorers before him, he suffered...
Insects are in great numbers -
several of my books and maps have
been almost devoured in one night
We suffered terribly from mosquitoes,
and had to keep up the incessant fanning
to drive off these pestilent little
vampires.
There is a small species of leech...
you have to be constantly pulling
them off you by the dozens...
but you are sure to return home
covered in blood.
Scorpions, centipedes,
and above all, serpents, were the
enemies we most dreaded...
But remarkably, while Phrai and the
native bearers were frequently ill,
Mouhot's health couldn't
have been better.
I drank nothing but tea,
hoping by abstinence from cold
water from all wine and spirits,
to escape fever.
In spite of the heat, the fatigue,
and the privations inseparable
from such a journey,
I arrived among the Cambodians
in perfectly good health...
The people flocked to see my
collection,
and could not imagine what I should
do with so many animals and insects...
I offered the children my cigar-ends to smoke,
in return for which they would
run after butterflies
and bring them to me uninjured.
Once more in boats,
the Frenchman and his
companions journeyed north.
Their destination- the rumored
lost city of Angkor,
which interested Mouhot less than the
rare birds he hoped to collect there.
On the way they paused at a
lonely wilderness outpost
- a Catholic mission run by a
French priest.
Years of isolation, and dysentery,
had soured the priest's view of the
tropics,
and made him gloomy about
Mouhot's final push to the lost city.
Do you know where you're going?
The rains have begun and you are
going to almost certain death,
or will at least catch a fever,
which will be followed by years of
languor and suffering.
May God be with the poor traveler!
Mohout said he'd abide by God's will
but was going nonetheless.
After another leg of his river
journey
he reached a landmark he knew
only from legend
- the Ton LeSap Lake,
and marveled as the shorelines
grew apart by some five miles.
By now it'd been more than a year
since Mouhot had dined in
Bangkok's Royal Palace.
Rough travel had left him
ill-prepared
for what he was about to see,
a vision few Europeans had shared.
The lost city of Angkor was not a
rumor, but overwhelmingly real.
There are ruins of such grandeur,
remains of structures
which must have been raised at
such an immense cost of labor,
that at the first view, one is filled
with profound admiration,
and cannot but ask what has
become of this powerful race,
so civilized, so enlightened, the
authors of these gigantic works!
He came looking for insects,
came looking for flora, fauna,
new species.
He didn't come looking for
Angkor but he found it
and I think if any of us who may
have stumbled on Angkor as he did
would have been excited.
But whether we could have
recorded it in such detail
with such precision as Henri
Mouhot did is unlikely.
One of these temples... a rival to
that of Solomon,
and erected by some ancient
Michelangelo -
might take an honorable place beside
our most beautiful buildings.
It's grander than anything left to us
by Greece or Rome!
The natives enlightened the
stunned Mouhot-
it's the work of angels, they
said, or giants.
It was built by a magician-king.
It built itself.
Mouhot was not an archeologist,
nor an art historian, nor could he
read the Sanskrit engravings
that adorned the monuments of
Angkor.
Yet he was an illustrator.
With his customary zeal
he set out to sketch the most
magnificent
of the lost city's some 1,000 temples,
and describe them inch-by-inch.
The west side the gallery is
supported
by two rows of square columns,
on the east, blank windows have
been let into the wall,
with balconies of twisted columns
fourteen centimeters in diameter...
In the center of the causeway are
two elegant pavilions,
one on each side, having at each
extremity a portico
thirty-three meters sixty-six
centimeters in length...
Mouhot was a very keen observer.
He was a collector of information.
He had this natural history
background to describe things
in a very careful way.
So when he found the monuments
at Angkor,
he went ahead and approached them
in the same way he would
approach his zoological specimens,
with careful description.
The vaulted ceilings of the
galleries
are raised six meters from the
ground;
those of the second roof are four
meters thirty centimeters high...
The bas-reliefs represent combat
and procession...
Fabulous animals are busy
devouring some;
others are in irons and have had
their eyes put out.
He could tell that it was the results
of an ancient civilization
that had flourished in this area. He could also tell by the
inscriptions
on many of the, many of the
monuments -
they were mostly in Sanskrit and
old Khmere.
He could tell by these inscriptions,
even though he couldn't read them,
that these were a very learned
people
who had built all this and yet they
were gone without a trace.
Sad frailty of human things!
How many centuries and
thousands of generations
have passed away, of which history
will never tell us anything.
What treasures of art will remain
forever buried beneath these ruins.
How many distinguished artists,
kings, and warriors are
now forgotten.
Mouhot was deeply frustrated
by the mystery of who had
created the city of Angkor.
He noted the similarity
between the faces in the carvings
and the people living in the
surrounding forests.
But he couldn't bring
himself to believe
that these Cambodians were descended
from Angkor's peerless artists.
In fact, the artistry of Cambodia
had never died.
Though it never again reached the
heights of Angkor,
Khmere art flourished throughout
Southeast Asia.
Demand for replicas if its most
famous works
grows with Angkor's fame.
Oblivious of Cambodia's past,
Mouhot saw France in its future.
Only a full scale takeover,
he concluded, could correct the
nation's 'deplorable' condition.
The sooner the better.
European conquest wise and
protecting laws, and experience
would alone effect the
regeneration of this state.
I wish France to possess this land,
which would add a magnificent
jewel to her crown!
Though Mouhot wouldn't live to
see it,
France did intervene soon after
his expedition,
making Cambodia a protectorate
in 1864.
It would last nearly a century.
Mouhot's diary wasn't the cause.
But like explorer's tales before,
it fueled interest and imitation.
King Mongkut's tutor,
Anna Leonowens, was so moved
by Mouhot's description of Angkor
she'd later copy it for her own
book.
Angkor was never a lost city
in Asians' eyes.
They knew about it and from
the 16th century onwards,
Jesuit priests wrote it in
their diaries.
It's just that their diaries
were so confidential
it didn't reach a wide public.
Mouhot was the first person to
popularize Angkor.
And it was his sketches, his
descriptions
that really is why he was credited
with the discovery of Angkor.
With a saber in one hand, Phrai
pursues the fishes in the stream.
He and his shadow reflected on
the rocks and water
might easily be mistaken by the
natives for demons.
It is pleasant to the man devoted to
our good and beautiful mother Nature
to think that his work, his fatigues,
his troubles and dangers, are
useful to others.
I doubt not others will follow in
my steps,
and gather an abundant harvest
where I have
but cleared the ground.
Mouhot had been traveling for the
better part of three years.
The amateur enthusiast had
become an expert naturalist,
a skilled outdoorsman, a hardened
explorer.
He treated Phrai and his other
servants as his family,
whom he alternately nursed and
scolded,
and with whom he shed tears at
parting.
Yet even as his letters home turned
wistful and sentimental,
and his journey stretched from two
years to three,
he couldn't seem to turn back.
Only on the trail was he at peace.
Do not be anxious when you think
of your poor friend the traveler,
for you know that up to the
present time
everything has prospered with him.
And truly I experience a degree of
contentment, strength of soul,
and internal peace, which I have
never known before.
But the French priest's dire
warning finally came true.
The weather and mosquitoes were
the worst yet.
First Phrai fell sick.
For five days we were compelled
to remain in the forest;
it rained a great part of the day,
the torrents overflowed.
I never in my life passed such
wretched nights.
My poor Phrai was seized with a
dreadful fever,
and I myself felt very ill.
October 29, 1861.
Overcome by fever
the 35 year old Mouhot scratched
out his last journal entry.
Have pity on me, oh my God!
Phrai recovered and made sure his
master received a proper burial.
Then he brought Mouhot's
possessions out of the forest,
and put them on boats for Europe.
Most of the zoological samples
the naturalist had collected during
his journeys
had already been lost at sea.
But his journal made it safely back
to England.
Henri's widow Anna persuaded the
Royal Geographical Society
to publish Mouhot's diary.
The first edition did not sell;
there were no profits to share
with Anna.
Yet, owing chiefly to its
description of Angkor,
Mouhot's work remained in print
for a full century.
Generations of travelers and
explorers have encountered
the treasures of Khmere culture
with Mouhot's journal in hand.
And perhaps some took heart in
one of Henri's last letters home,
a fitting epitaph for Mouhot, and
his generation of explorers:
Courage, then, and hope!
Our perseverance and efforts will
be recompensed.
Adieu, adieu, Au revoir.
Do not forget me.
Shortly after Henri Mouhot alerted
the world to the wonders of Angkor,
the work of recovering its treasures
began.
Mouhot's meticulous descriptions
had inspired Europe to take
a closer look.
But the questions had only just
begun.
Who were Angkor's builders, the
empire called the Khmere?
What were their lives like?
Archeologists had no written record
to go on
- If the Khmere had chronicled
their story,
they probably did so on palm leaves
and paper.
Time had turned the perishable history
to dust.
With nothing known about their
builders,
Angkor's monuments seemed destined
to hold their tongues forever.
Then in 1902 a remarkable document
came to light
and a most unlikely voice
reverberated across eight centuries.
The fantastic civilization of the
Khmere,
thought to be forever beyond reach,
came to life in all its grandeur.
In about 10,000 words
this report captured the heart of the
lost kingdom of Angkor.
Its author was a diplomat sent to
Cambodia
by China's fearsome Mongol Dynasty.
The Mongols are famous for
their deadly mounted warriors,
and for tactics that routed European
armies.
At the end of the 13th century,
however, they took aim at Southeast
Asia.
In 1286 the Mongols struck deep into
what's now Vietnam.
A year later the capital of Burma
fell to the hordes.
Yet the infamous horsemen didn't
like fighting
in the alien jungle terrain
- perhaps this alone saved Angkor
from being next.
Instead, Mongol Emperor Timur
Khan gave orders for diplomats
to go to Angkor and collect tribute
from the Cambodian king.
This would appease the Khan while
allowing the envoys
to size up Angkor for possible
future attack.
One of these diplomats was
Zhou Dagoun.
Zhou Dagoun in his writing, never
said why he was there.
He was part of an embassy
which obviously meant that it was
some, trying to check out on trade,
check out, get the intelligence on
what this kingdom was like.
To show to Mongol Emperor
what sorts of people lay at the far
boundaries of his empire,
what sorts of products they had,
what they looked like.
The inhabitants are rude and ugly
and very black.
The indigenous women are very
lustful.
If a husband has to leave for a
distant mission,
that's alright for a couple of nights.
But after a dozen nights the woman
will certainly complain,
"Who am I, a ghost that needs no
one to sleep with?"
He was a keen observer, telling us
about the people, the daily lives.
Zhou Dagoun left us something very
special.
He has left the only first hand
record that we have of Angkor.
He was here when Angkor was a
kingdom.
But we have to always keep in mind
he was a foreigner,
so he was perceiving the kingdom
and what he knew
in his background which was
Chinese.
About Zhou Dagoun little is known.
He was probably about thirty
years old,
a diplomat, perhaps an aristocrat.
From the details he reported to
the Khan
emerge a character fascinated with
earthy pleasures.
He came from an obsessive prudish
kind of culture
and he saw in this tropical climate
and enjoyed seeing, women taking
off their scanty costumes
and getting into the river to bathe
with nothing on at all,
and he commented on this
not only because it was so barbarian
and rare and un Chinese
but I think also because he enjoyed
watching the spectacle.
Every three or four days
the women go and bathe in a river
outside the city.
Even the women from the noble
families
take part in these baths and aren't
ashamed.
Everyone can see them from the to
of their heads
to the bottom of their feet.
The Chinese, on their day off,
go and see it.
I've heard that there are those who
enter the water
to take advantage of the situation.
The water is always as hot as fire.
For Zhou Dagoun, his year in Angkor
would be full of such surprises
and contrasts.
He was Chinese, but from the
frigid plains,
a Mongol whose race worshipped
war above all things.
By contrast, the Khmere had
embraced Buddhism,
and its creed of compassion
and rebirth.
The city of one million enjoyed
a calendar
full of parades, festivals,
and holy days.
The Chinese who arrive as sailors
find it comfortable
that in this country one doesn't
have to wear clothes.
And since rice is easy to earn, and
women easy to persuade,
there are many who desert to stay.
As he cataloged Angkor's marvels,
Zhou Dagoun himself may have
thought about deserting for a life
in the jungle paradise.
As a spy of sorts, he no doubt
soon discovered
that all the Khmere's might and
majesty
largely depended on one thing
- water.
Three rice-harvests a year fed the
city of about one million,
and paid for everything from
temple building to defense.
To grow the rice, they had to tame
the water.
They harnessed the water from the
Ton Le Sap Lake
by building a series of canals, dikes,
and moats
from the lake up to the city of
Angkor.
During the rainy season,
when the lake began to rise
water was forced up these canals,
up above the city,
and collected in large reservoirs,
called barays for year-round use.
And in fact the system
that was employed at Angkor
a thousand years ago
is more advanced than any
irrigation system
used in Cambodia today.
The relationship between the king
and water has a very long history.
The whole reason that Angkor is
located on this plain
is because of the access of water.
So the king could provide fish and
rice
and therefore his people would
prosper
and his genealogy would continue.
Not surprisingly the symbol of
water - a snake -
is key to Khmere faith.
In Angkor, Zhou Dagoun would
have found
the revered reptile depicted
countless times,
in scenes said to reveal the secret
of immortality.
The churning of the ocean of milk
is known in Hindu mythology
- its much loved in Cambodia in
their art.
It's depicted with gods on one side
and demons on the other
and they're holding a large scaly
body of a serpent.
They pull left and right and left
and right
in a way that we would call a tug
of war.
They're churning to try to yield the
elixir of immortality.
Immortality was a daily pursuit
inside the Royal Palace,
the abode of Khmere Kings.
Kings had more than a thousand
concubines
- the most beautiful women
of the empire.
Scores are depicted at the Royal
Terrace... no two alike.
Concerning the concubines and the
girls of the palace,
I've heard that the number is
between three and five thousand.
When in a family there's
a beautiful girl,
she's immediately sent to the
palace.
As a foreigner, and an oddity,
Zhou Dagoun wasn't permitted to
enter the Royal Palace...
but he heard a legend about the
magic that took place inside.
In the Golden Tower
inside the palace the sovereign goes
to sleep in its highest part.
All the locals assert that inside the
tower there's a genie
- master of the whole territory of
the kingdom.
This genie appears every night in the
form of a woman.
Its with her that the sovereign lies
with and then has sex.
If one night the genie doesn't
appear,
this is because the time for the
barbarian king's death has come.
If the king doesn't show up even for
one night,
something terrible will happen.
He would comment on some of
their unusual customs
but then he would always draw
comparisons back to the way
we do things in China.
So I think he saw commonalties
between the Khmer and the Chinese.
In this country it's the women who
know about commerce.
If a Chinese arrives here and
immediately takes a woman,
its because he wants to take
advantage
of the woman's trading skills,
[which could easily exceed his own.]
Zhou Dagoun disapproved of most
Angkor customs
but praised one - the status of
women.
The envoy noted that women ran
commerce throughout the city,
and women intellectuals were among
the king's most trusted counselors.
Women figure prominently in
engravings on a temple at Angkor
called the Bayon.
They depict dozens of types of
business
and the daily activities of Khmere
life.
In fact everything the Mongols
wanted to know about the Khmere
was right here-agriculture, slaves,
rare goods.
For Zhou Dagoun it would have
been an intelligence goldmine.
Valuable products are the feathers
of the kingfisher,
elephant tusks, rhino's horn, and
beeswax.
The white rhinoceros horn is veined
and is the most precious;
the black one is inferior.
In general, the people of this
country are very simple.
When they see a Chinese,
they are respectfully frightened and
call him "Buddha".
Seeing him, they throw themselves
to the ground and bow low.
From Zhou Dagoun's reports we
know about the fact
that there were astronomers there.
We know about the fact that,
that various groups of people within
the court were scientists.
So this was an area of discovery.
This was the Renaissance area of
southeast Asia.
More than five centuries before
Europe's Renaissance,
Cambodian Michaelangelos sent
their masterpieces soaring skyward.
Reliefs at the Bayon acknowledged
the builders;
but one monument at Angkor made
them immortal.
The Chinese envoy Zhou Dagoun
was probably barred
from Angkor's greatest marvel, a
funery temple built for a king.
He skipped over it in his report,
mentioning only that a Chinese
artisan had probably built it.
No doubt the envoy coveted the
Khmere's timeless masterpiece
- Angkor Wat.
Over a century before Zhou
Dagoun arrived,
the last stone was fitted into place.
Archeologists have determined
that it took almost thirty years
to complete,
and was finished in time to bury
the king.
Some historians believe Angkor
Wat is a funery temple.
The main basis for this is that the
entrance is at the west.
In Hindu mythology this signifies
death.
When you enter you feel you're
moving from the world of man
to the world of the deities.
Look to the left. It's a battle.
It is a battle of war
and massacre and slaughter and
pillage and fire.
But at the east is the famous story
of the churning of the ocean of milk,
the beginning of life.
Never in his life would Zhou
Dagoun have seen anything like it.
The austere Mongol religion had
nothing to compare
to sacred mountains of stone.
Angkor Wat was built to please a
Hindu god,
but came to draw the devout of
many faiths.
Climbing the staircase reveals
levels of increasing holiness.
Then you continue to the next level.
The walls are bare in total contrast
to these reliefs, totally bare walls.
Why?
Because you look at the top and
what do you see but the pinnacle,
the image of Vishnu that would
have been housed inside this.
And so the bare walls provide a
quiet background
to carry your eye upward to the very
most sacred point of the temple.
According to tradition, priests
placed the king's ashes
inside the temple he built for
himself.
Yet the monarch didn't dwell in the
next world alone.
Attending him are 1700 enchanted
beings, called Apsaras.
The Apsaras are the celestial
nymphs, the beautiful women
that fly through the heavens and
dance for the gods.
And they stand ready
dressed in their jewelry and
beautiful costumes
to do whatever the gods would need
to make them happy
and for the kingdom to prosper.
These celestial nymphs were born
simply to please the gods,
can you imagine?
Angkor Wat had hardly claimed its
place on the horizon
when disaster struck.
Drawn by its increasing splendor
the Chams, from what's now Vietnam,
attacked and burned the city.
Countless inhabitants were killed,
or forced into exile.
By the time the capital was rebuilt,
a sea change had taken place.
His people had suffered...
so the king built a walled city,
Angkor Tom,
to protect them in time of war.
Like their king most of the Khmere
people abandoned Hinduism,
and followed in the Buddha's path.
Zhou Dagoun was familiar with
Buddhism,
a popular religion in China.
But he was awed by its
Cambodian face.
Above each gate of the enclosure,
there are five big Buddha heads
carved in stone,
their faces turned towards the four
cardinal points;
at the center is placed one
of these heads,
but this one is decorated in gold.
It's a kind face, it's a god of
compassion and wisdom.
This art feature had never before
been seen at Angkor,
and in fact there's not
a prototype known.
Some say that it represents the king
looking in all directions,
north-south-east-and west,
and that makes him the Ruler
of the Universe.
Everyday the king holds audiences
for affairs of state.
The king, sword in hand, appears
in the golden window.
All present join their hands and
touch the earth with their foreheads.
It is plain to see that these people,
though barbarians,
know what is due to a prince.
Zhou Dagoun arrived in Angkor
when its king had undisputed
control over an empire
of seemingly limitless potential.
Despite his glowing account,
his master, Timur Khan never
plundered the nation's treasures.
Perhaps Cambodia's climate was
too similar to that of Vietnam,
where the Mongols had tasted
rare defeat.
Or perhaps the Khmere seemed too
strong to tame.
Zhou Dagoun may have painted too
fine a portrait for invasion.
Maybe Timur decided it wasn't
really worth invading.
Or maybe there were plans
but other things were happening in
the middle kingdom
that in a sense blocked any future
expansion.
Yet the Khmere's story would soon
come to an end
whether the Mongol Khan
invaded or not.
Archeologists and historians have
pieced together the final chapter.
By Zhou Dagoun's time,
the land until it began to fail.
Rice harvests dropped, and stone
monument-building... ceased.
Maintenance of the reservoirs and
canals suffered.
The kings' sacred covenant with the
water... was broken.
Early in the 15th century the
kingdom of Siam
made profitable raids into Khmere
territory.
A climactic battle in 1431...
brought about the end.
All but abandoned,
the Khmere capital was lulled into
a centuries-long sleep
by the encroaching jungle.
Fortunately, Zhou Dagoun had long since
carried his chronicle to safety.
Angkor had won the envoy's
admiration,
and he repaid it with the only
surviving portrait
of Cambodia's ancient treasures.
Coming to Angkor for most people
is a bit of a pilgrimage
to a sacred place.
Somehow it just touches your soul.
Every time you see it looming out
of the forest
it hits you very, very hard.
The mystery is it doesn't explain
itself.
We don't know much
except from reports of Zhou Dagoun
of how they lived.
Yet, we can still see the monuments
they left and we can speculate
and we can dream about the
greatness of this civilization.