Taken with Nikon D60, dated May 2009
Angkor Thom ("Great City"), the capital of Jayavarman VII, is an ancient Khmer city just north of Angkor Wat. The city is quadrangular in shape, walled and surrounded by a gigantic moat. There are five causeways that leads to gates or entrance of the city, one for each cardinal point namely North, South, East, West and the final gate named Victory Gate leading to the Royal Palace area. The exquisitely decorated gateways are 75 feet high and are wide enough to allow procession of elephants to pass through. On the top of gateway has four giant faces of the Bodhisattva, Avolokitesvara in the four cardinal direction. At the base, on both sides of the gate are stone three-headed elephants who plucks lotus flowers with his trunks.
Taken with Nikon D60, dated May 2009
The causeways have a row of torsos of 54 Devas ("guardian gods) on the left and 54 Asuras ("demons god") on the right, each group is holding a huge naga (multi-headed snakes) in the attitude of a tug-of-war. The posture here is apparently a reference to the popular myth of Angkor, the Churning of the Sea of Milk, which is also depicted in Angkor Wat. In this myth, the Devas pulled the snake in one direction and the gods pushed in the other, the ocean began to churn and precipitate the elements. By alternating back and forth, the ocean was "milked", forming the earth and the cosmos anew.
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