Bakong (Khmer: ប្រាសាទបាគង) is the first mountain of the sandstone temple built by the rulers of the Khmer empire in Angkor, near modern Siem Reap in Cambodia. In the last decades of the 9th century AD, it served as the official state temple of King Indravarman I in the ancient city of Hariharalaya, located in an area now called Roluos.

The Bakong structure took the form of a stepped pyramid, popularly identified as the mountain of the temple of architecture of the Khmer temple. The striking resemblance of Bakong and Borobudur temple in Java, going to architectural details such as the gates and stairs to the upper terraces, strongly suggests that Borobudur was served as the Bakong prototype. There must have been exchanges of travelers, if not mission, between the Khmer kingdom and the Sailendras in Java. Transmit to Cambodia not only ideas but also technical and architectural details of Borobudur, including arched gateways in corbelling method.

History

In 802 AD, the first king of Angkor Jayavarman II declared the sovereignty of Cambodia. After ups and downs, he established his capital at Hariharalaya. A few decades later, his successors built Bakong in stages [2] as the first mountain of the sandstone temple at Angkor. The inscription in his stela (classified as K.826) says that in the 881 king Indravarman I dedicate the temple to the god Shiva and consecrated his central religious image, a lingam whose name Sri Indresvara was a combination of the king himself and the suffix "Esvara" that represented Shiva ("Iśvara"). According to George Coedès, the cult devarāja consisted in the idea of ​​divine royalty as legitimacy of the real power [6]: 103 but later authors declared that it does not necessarily involve the cult of the physical personality of the own one ruler.

Bakong enjoyed its status as the state temple of Angkor for only a few years, but later additions of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries testify that it was not abandoned. In the late 9th century, the son of Indravarman and successor Yasovarman, I moved the capital of Hariharalaya to the area north of Siem Reap now known as Angkor, where he founded the new city of Yaśodharapura around a new temple mountain called Bakheng .