The Old New World – Part 2

The Old New World – Part 1

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Ascending

The seven sets of stairs are extremely steep. You can barely see the top of them through the trees. I have tried to figure out why seven sets of stairs, seven landings with ten stairs each. Is that eleven stairs if you count the landing? So, is that seventy stairs with seven landings? Or just seventy-seven stairs?

Knowing a trivial amount of Hinduism, I do know that numerology plays into it…somehow.

The rainbow has seven colors
There are seven continents
There are seven seas
There are seven days
?

I know nothing.

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I do know that these stairs are very difficult to ascend so I just took the ten steps at a time. At each landing I turned to look at the valley opening up below.

By the time I reached the top the view was breathtaking. It overlooks the upper and lower linga roadways, the palace compounds, the reservoirs. Way off in the distant horizon you can see a thin white line – the mighty Mekong River.

A View Without a Room

 

Built along an East-West axis, the area extends 1.4 km as it climbs up the slope. Starting from the plain it then ends about 100m above. Here, where the stairs reach the top, the sanctuary is situated. On the terrace where the  sanctuary is located there is a cliff that drops down from the mountain. At the foot of the cliff the sacred spring flows.

Yoni Linga Time

The sanctuary originally had a large linga statue. They have found sections where waterlines carried water from the springs behind the building so that water continually flowed over the linga and would have run down and around the yoni. Yoni icons are found in both round and square base forms. It is a symbol for the divine feminine procreative energy. It is a Sanskrit word that literally means the womb or vagina. It is often seen in tandem with linga. 

Yoni with linga iconography is found in Shiva temples and archaeological sites in India and Southeast Asia. They originally date back to over 4,000 BCE. Not a new kid on the block.

A Sanctuary

The Sanctuary is, like the palaces below, indescribably beautiful. The original site was built in the 5th C. The current building was built in the 11th C.

Above each doorway, lintels have been carved with representations of Indra, Vishnu, ascetic Shiva. Scenes from the Ramayana can also be seen. Buddhism took over the compound after the fall of the Khmer empire in the 15th C.

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A Holy Trinity

Behind the sanctuary is a large boulder that has a carvings of bas-relief representing, again, the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity. In the centre is Shiva, principal god of the sanctuary, on the right is Brahma and on the left, Vishnu.

 

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Around the entire area at the base of the cliff there are small caves, massive boulders, views of the area below. Best of all, a kaleidoscope of butterflies drinking from the damp cliff edge above the natural springs.

Things are being done here. They have been for centuries.

I don’t understand why.

But I like it.

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For more information on Vat Phou:

http://www.vatphou-champassak.com/index.php/vat-phou-complex-temples-2/main-complex

https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/481

On Vishnu: https://www.ancient.eu/Vishnu/