Poetry
ល្បើកអង្គរវត្ត
Not translated into English
Anonymous · 1620
Synopsis
The poem tells how Prince Ketumala, son of the god Indra in a previous life, is taken to heaven by his father, but cannot remain there, his human smell being unbearable to the deities. To keep his promise, Indra sends his architect, Preah Pisnukar, down to earth, who has the forest around Phnom Bakheng cleared, the finest stones brought, and a palace built for his son. The poet then describes, gallery after gallery, the bas-reliefs of the temple: ornaments, gods, hells, a king in a palanquin, and above all, at length, the episodes of the Rāmakerti.
Context
According to the philologist Saveros Pou, the poem was composed in 1620, and its author would be a certain Pang, whose name appears in the preamble; Grégory Mikaelian sees in it a cosmogonic text commissioned by the kings of Oudong to refound royal power. Rich in alliterations and rhymes, it employs three metres and runs to thirty-one pages in the edition by Étienne Aymonier, who published it and translated passages of it in 1878. Prince Ketumala takes the place of King Suryavarman II, the true builder of the temple in the twelfth century, whose memory had by then faded.
Who it is for
For anyone visiting Angkor Wat who wants to look at the temple through the eyes of a seventeenth-century Khmer poet.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the oldest original literary work in Khmer, it has been studied by Moura, Nhok Them, Saveros Pou and Khing Hoc Dy.