Cambodia has a unique reservoir called West Baray. It is an artificial reservoir of the Khmer culture and is distinguished by its impressive size, regular shape and exact location relative to the cardinal points. And the temple that was built in the middle of the reservoir. And the main question, of course, is how did the ancient Khmers manage to accomplish such a volume of work and why was it actually done?
The word barai itself is translated from the Khmer language as "man-made reservoir". West Baray is located west of Angor Thoma, one of the capitals of the Khmer Empire. The reservoir is about 2 kilometers wide, 8 kilometers long, and 5 meters deep. During the periods of the highest water filling, the bari contained up to eighty million cubic meters of water.
It is believed that this imposing structure was created during the reign of several kings of the Khmer Empire - during its heyday in about 11-12 centuries. Typically, reservoirs are built by constructing a dam that blocks the river bed across the river so that water fills some lowland. But the West Barai is exclusively the result of the labor of the ancient Khmers, who had to manually or with the help of some currently unknown technologies to extract the soil.
View of the West Baray from above - you can see its regular geometric shape and the island exactly in the center.
In addition, West Baray is oriented strictly from east to west. And it's not very clear - why exactly? After all, it is believed that this reservoir had a purely pragmatic goal - its construction was a forced measure in the struggle for the harvest, and, accordingly, for the economy and prosperity of the ancient state. The result of the construction was the ability to collect three crops per year.
But in addition to the irrigation purpose, the West Barai also had a cult significance for the Khmers. A temple called Western Mebon was built in the middle of the reservoir. The entire complex built symbolized the world ocean surrounding Mount Meru, sacred in the cosmology of Hinduism and Buddhism, which the Khmers considered the center of all material universes.
The island on which the Western Mebon Temple is located.
In the texts of ancient Indian literature in Sanskrit - the Puranas - it is described that the height of Mount Mera is more than one hundred thousand kilometers and that it is located on one of the continents of the Earth, in the far north.
Promotional video:
The Western Mebon temple has the shape of a regular square with sides of 100 meters each. On each side, at a distance of about 30 meters from each other, there are towers, the tops of which are made in the shape of a lotus. A fragment of a large bronze sculpture of the god Vishnu was also found on the territory. During the dry season, when the water level in the bar drops, the temple can be reached by land, but during the rainy season it turns into an island.
Western Mebon.
But there is one more question, a definite answer to which has not yet been found. Even if we assume that this huge "hole" 8 kilometers long was dug by people, it is not clear where all the excavated ground has gone? There are no noticeable embankments or dumps around.
There is an assumption that, perhaps, the barai is actually not just a man-made lake, but rather a quarry, which eventually filled with water. Or maybe the ancient inhabitants of these places pursued two goals at once - the creation of a reservoir and the extraction of something useful. But why?
The Prasat Bei Temple in Cambodia is made of laterite.
It was suggested that the so-called laterite could be mined here - this is a rather unusual material for us, which can be compared, to make it clearer, with clay. Laterite is mined from a shallow depth, sometimes literally from a dozen centimeters, is easily cut, but in the open air it quickly hardens, essentially becoming a stone.
It is mined in many places in Cambodia, including used as a building material. Many local temples were built with their laterite. So it is possible that all this time the local residents simply mined and produced building material here, which they then transported to the actual construction site.
For example, this is how laterite is being mined in Burkina Faso - exactly the same * construction * of West Baray could look like.
But one more mystery awaits us. It is believed that during the construction of the Western Barai, the ancient Khmers partially used the buildings of the earlier periods. The foundations of walls, steps and fragments of clay utensils found at the bottom of the western part of the reservoir are proof of this.
In other words, this barai was not digging in an "open field", but in the place where some ancient settlement was located earlier, which was already a fossil for that time. This means that people lived here long before the 11-12 centuries, but then everything fell into desolation? For what reason and who lived here?
East and West Baray, satellite view.
It is clear that since there is a Western Barai, then there must be an Eastern one. The way it is. East Baray was located on the other, respectively - east, side from Angor-Thoma. In terms of its size, this structure was slightly smaller - 1.7 kilometers wide and 7.1 kilometers long. It is believed that it was built around the 9th century, that is, a couple of centuries earlier than West Baray.
That only adds to the mystery, of course - the total construction time in this way is equal to four centuries. That is, for 400 years, the local Khmers consistently built huge rectangular lakes one after another? By the way, in the center of East Baray there was a temple - East Mebon.
One of the entrances to Eastern Mebon.
One must think that at the time of construction it was all called simply Mebon and Barai, and the names on the cardinal points appeared precisely during the construction of the second reservoir. If we accept the theory of a quarry, then perhaps in a couple of centuries in one place the same laterite just ended and it began to be mined in another place?
Is it possible that the West Barai in its extant form was being built on the site of some old similar structure - just expanding? Hence the finds of walls and utensils at the bottom of the reservoir. In general, as we can see, there are many questions and even more theories and ideas.
The modern embankment of West Baray.
But today, as such, the East Baray does not exist - there is no water here, the former banks and the huge platform itself of the correct shape are visible. The former bottom of the lake is given over to rice fields and buildings of local residents.
But West Barai lives. Now the western part of the lake is filled with water throughout the year, and the eastern part is filled during the rainy season. Locals come to West Baray to swim and have picnics.