Neak Pean

Listen first. Under your feet, the planks of a long wooden walkway creak softly. On both sides, still water stretches away, broken by the pale trunks of dead trees standing in the shallows. Dragonflies cross the surface. Somewhere a frog calls, then stops. The air is thick and warm, and it smells of mud and lotus. You are walking out across an ancient reservoir toward one of the strangest small temples in all of Angkor.

This is Neak Pean. The name is Khmer, and it means "the entwined serpents." Hold on to that image, because you will soon see it carved in stone. Unlike the great temple-mountains nearby, Neak Pean does not tower over anything. It is low, quiet and compact. It was never meant to impress you with height. It was meant to heal you with water.

The temple belongs to the reign of Jayavarman the Seventh, the king who ruled the Khmer Empire in the late twelfth century and into the early thirteenth. He was a Buddhist ruler, and an unusually busy builder. He raised the walled city of Angkor Thom, the Bayon with its stone faces, and the nearby monastery of Preah Khan. Inscriptions from his reign also describe a network of hospitals across the empire. That interest in healing helps explain this place.

Neak Pean once stood at the centre of a huge rectangular reservoir, called a baray, known as Jayatataka. The reservoir lay just east of Preah Khan. In the dry months much of it now becomes grass and scrub. In the rainy season, water returns, and the walkway you crossed becomes the only dry path. So the island temple sits inside a sea of water, the way the king's architects intended.

Now look at the layout ahead. There is one large square pool. In its centre rises a small round island, and on that island stands a single tower-shrine. Around the large pool, at the four cardinal points, sit four smaller square pools. It is a precise, almost mathematical design... a diagram of the world drawn in water and stone.

That diagram has a meaning. Many scholars connect Neak Pean with Anavatapta, a sacred lake in Buddhist and Hindu tradition. The lake was believed to lie high in the Himalayas, and four great rivers were said to flow out of it. Its water was believed to wash away illness and sin. Here, the central pool plays the part of that holy lake, and the four smaller pools receive its waters.

Look closely at the base of the round island. Two great serpents, called nagas, wrap around it. Their bodies coil together, and their tails meet at the back. In Khmer art, nagas are water spirits and guardians. They often mark the line between the human world and the world of the gods. These two coiled serpents are the source of the temple's name. It is one of the clearest naga images at Angkor.

The central shrine itself is dedicated to Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion. In Mahayana Buddhism, a bodhisattva is an enlightened being who delays final peace in order to help others. Jayavarman the Seventh honoured this figure across his temples. On the shrine's walls you can still make out carved panels and false doors. Time and weather have softened them, but their outlines are still visible in the stone.

Now comes a detail many visitors miss. Each of the four small pools connects to the main pool through a small chapel. Inside each chapel, water once poured out through a spout carved as a head. On one side it is an elephant. On another, a lion. On another, a horse. And on the fourth, a human head. Pilgrims stood beneath these spouts and let the sacred water fall over them.

Think about what that meant. A visitor arrived ill, or troubled, or simply hoping. Priests directed the water from the central lake through one of these four heads. Each direction carried its own symbolic power. Historians still discuss exactly how the ritual worked. But the idea is clear enough: you came here, you were washed, and you left feeling cleansed of what weighed on you.

In the eastern part of the main pool, look for a large sculpture of a horse with figures clinging to its sides. This is Balaha, a flying horse from Buddhist legend. According to the story, a group of merchants was shipwrecked on an island of demons. The horse, a form of Avalokiteshvara, carried them back across the sea to safety. Here the tale becomes a stone image of rescue.

Today, you cannot walk down into the pools. You view the temple from the edges, and that distance has its own value. You see the whole design at once, the square around the circle, the four small basins waiting at the points of the compass. In the rainy season the pools may hold water. In the dry season the stone floors show, and you can see how the channels were laid out.

As you turn to leave, pause for a moment on the walkway. Look back at the low tower on its island, ringed by its two stone serpents. Listen again to the water, the insects, the creak of the planks. For centuries, people walked toward this spot hoping to be made well. You are walking away from it now... perhaps a little quieter than when you arrived.