LTO Cambodia: Ramayana Murals

Friday, August 10, 2012

Ramayana Murals

Ramayana mural, gallery, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

The 'Silver Pagoda' sits next to the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. It is home to the 'Emerald Buddha' and is the pagoda where the King meets with monks and some Royal ceremonies are performed. The interior of the pagoda compound walls are covered with murals depicting stories from the Reamker, i.e. the Khmer version of the classic Indian epic the Ramayana. The murals stand over 3 and a half meters tall and stretch around 604 meters of wall. They were painted in 1903-1904 by a team of students working under the direction of artist Vichitre Chea and architect Oknha Tep Nimit Thneak. The murals are only partially protected from the elements by open cloisters that serve as galleries and have long shown signs of weathering and water damaged.

Yesterday The Cambodia Daily reported that a restoration project currently being conducted on the murals may actually be threatening their existence. ('Restoration Risks Destroying Palace Murals' The Cambodia Daily, August 9, 2012) According to the Daily, UNESCO sent a letter to the Palace in June expressing concerns about the restoration technique. Apparently concrete is being applied to the water damaged lower section which experts say will force moisture upward into the material underlying the murals, possibly destroying them entirely. According to the Daily, as of yesterday the restoration project continues unchanged and unabated.

I haven't been out to see the Ramayana frescoes in a couple of years and haven't seen the reported restoration project, but I have visited the frescoes many times over the years, taking lots of photos in the process. Most of the following photos were taken before 2009. This is what is under threat:

Ramayana mural, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Ramayana mural, men talking, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Ramayana mural, birds with dragon fly, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Ramayana mural, houses, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Ramayana mural, battle scene, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Ramayana mural, 3 soldiers, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Ramayana mural, women sitting, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Ramayana mural, men sitting, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Ramayana mural, women, Silver Pagoda, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

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Cambodia

Cambodia is Srok Khmer, the 'Land of the Khmer,' the primary ethnic group in the area since at least the Neolithic and an Indian influenced civilization with origins near 2000 years old. Centered on the lower Mekong and tributaries the Khmer people have dominated the region for millennia. From 2nd century AD Khmer kingdoms rose and fell, culminating in unification and the 500 year reign of the Angkorian Empire, the builders of the temples of Angkor near Siem Reap. The Empire stretched from Burma to the ocean. But by the 1400s Cambodia fell to centuries of change and decline squeezed between the expanding Siam and Vietnam. Colonized and by the French in the 1860s, independence 90 years later in 1954, a brief post-colonial 'golden period' under Sihanouk, coup in 70, civil war, fall to the communist Khmer Rouge in 75, 3 years 8 months 20 days of madness, Vietnamese rescue in 1979, occupation, low level war and international sanctions in the 80s, the UN, ostensive democracy and an adventure party destination in the 90s and now mainstreaming, tourism, rapid development, rapacious capitalism and NGOs, missionaries and other international busybodies aplenty.

Southeast Asia

As the term implies, Southeast Asia encompasses the southeastern corner of the Asian continent, loosely speaking, the area between India, China and Australia. It is made up of two distinct regions: the mainland zone, a bulbous peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean, bounded by China to the north and India to the west; and the insular (island) zone in the Pacific Ocean. The name 'Southeast Asia' is a comparatively recent invention, first coming into use into the 20th century and still a bit indefinite in definition. Mainland Southeast Asia is generally considered to include Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar) and peninsular Malaysia. The mainland is sometimes referred to as Indo-China though Indochina (Indochine) also designates the 19th/20th century French colonial conglomerate of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Sitting south of the Tropic of Cancer, most of mainland Southeast Asia lies in the hot, humid tropics and sub-tropics with a climate dominated by a monsoon cycle which divides the year into two distinct seasons: a dry season and an extremely wet monsoon season. Much of the mainland is mountainous and thickly jungled, with large river systems and wide, low-lying, flood-prone plains, much of which is, in modern times, deforested and blanketed with geometrical rice paddies. Several major river valleys including the Mekong River, the Red, Ma and Ka rivers and the group of rivers draining to the Chao Praya Delta played host to the rise of early civilization in the area. The Mekong River is one of the world's greatest rivers, the seventh largest on the planet, and since pre-history has been closely associated with the land of the Khmer.