The art and architecture of India - Buddhist, Hindu, Jain (Art Ebook)

410 CEYLON AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA
of the great temple cities of South India such
as Madura, but these, of course, were sacred
enclosures not comprising any secular buildings.
The last Khmer building of any size to be
dedicated at Angkor was the Bayon, erected in
the early years of the thirteenth century as the
centre of the new capital of Angkor Thorn [339].
The Bayon, as it stands to-day, represents four
different remodellings [340]. It was first planned
as a horizontal temple :
of this stage only the
outer galleries survive. There followed the
erection of an inner gallery system, raised on a
podium and connected by sixteen chapels to the
outer system. Finally, the central tower and its
subsidiary spires were built over the original
structures. At a later (Hindu) period the sixteen
chapels were entirely demolished. Probably the
temple was finished and converted to Mahayana
Buddhist usage by Jayavarman VII to celebrate
his restoration of the capital following its sack
by the Chams in 1177. The thirteenth-century
Chinese pilgrim Chou Ta-kuan, who visited
Cambodia in 1296, says of the royal city of
Angkor Thorn:
The city wall is twenty It in circumference. Outside
the wall there is a wide moat, beyond which there are
340. Angkor Thom, the Bayon
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The inner galleries built in the form of a cross with recessed corners. This first stage corresponds to
a primary state of the central block of which only a fragment of the basement has been recovered.
The four angles of the inner galleries commenced at the same level as the preceding galleries but at
a later date.
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The outer galleries.
The sixteen passages or chapels, which afterwards were intentionally demolished, and the two libraries.