Lolei
Site
Lolei consists of four brick temple towers grouped together on a terrace. The king built Lolei for his ancestors. One for his grandfather, one for his grandmother, one for his father, and one for his mother. The two front towers are for the males while the two towers at the back are for the females. The two taller towers are for his grandparents while the two shorter towers are for his parents. Originally, the towers were enclosed by an outer wall access through which was through a gopura, but neither wall nor gopura has survived to the present. Today, the temple is next to a monastery, just as in the 9th century it was next to an ashrama.
The temple towers are known for their decorative elements, including their false doors, their carved lintels, and their carved devatas and dvarapalas which flank both real and false doors. Some of the motifs represented in the lintels and other sandstone carvings are the sky-god Indra mounted on the elephant Airavata, serpent-like monsters called makaras, and multi-headed nagas.
Footnotes
- ^ Coedès, George (1968). Walter F. Vella (ed.). The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. trans.Susan Brown Cowing. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-0368-1.
- ^ Higham, C., 2001, The Civilization of Angkor, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 9781842125847
- ^ Jessup, p.77; Freeman and Jacques, pp.202 ff.
- ^ Freeman and Jacques, p.202.
References
- Michael Freeman and Claude Jacques, Ancient Angkor (Bangkok: River Books, 1999.)
- Helen Ibbetson Jessup, Art & Architecture of Cambodia (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004.)
See also