Baset Temple – Battambang

Located northeast of Battambang city and sometimes referred to as Prasat Baset/Basaet, Baset Temple, or Prasat Barsaet, it’s the ruins of a large and grandiose ancient temple complex estimated around 400 m x 150 m centering on a large central temple surrounded by six small temples with two libraries. It’s believed to date to the 11th century and King Suryavarman I, while it’s noted that inscriptions on the site do record earlier dates.

Why do I say grandiose? Well, the aforementioned temples were surrounded by an enclosure wall that had false gopura on the north and south, with large entrances to the east and west. All this was surrounded by a moat, and fronted by two peristyle buildings on the east. THIS, was then surrounded by another enclosure with entrance gopura on the east and west.

Were not done yet. Extending eastward was a long causeway, flanked by a small basin to the north and a long hall of some sort on the south. After 250 m or so it joined another gopura and possible outer enclosure. It would have been something quite special in its day, and you can still certainly get that feeling exploring the ruins of the site today.

Remember this site is quite long, and remains, much very curious and many interesting decorated remains are seen to the west of the temple and all the way east past the end of the pagoda in the adjacent monastery. The basin mentioned earlier is also on the monastery grounds and you can easily pick up the base structure of the long hall mentioned and follow the trail of remnants leading east through the monastery too. Bollards, pedestals, pillars, etc are also seen.

Remnants of the first east gopura

Remnants of the second east gopura

It was a highly decorated site and you’ll surely enjoy wandering around discovering the lintels and pediments on the standing temples along with decorative embellishments on all that spread far and wide around the site.

Remnants of the first west gopura

The site is a joy to visit and is highly recommended that you do. The site appears to be kept nicely and there are donation boxes at the site to drop some notes in.

Stay tuned I will return to this page to update with 360 images and an overview of the inscriptions plus references.

It is also a site under current archeological research (2018-ongoing) into the habitation of the area predating, during, and post the era of the temple site by the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts in collaboration with the University of Hawai’i at Manoa (Miriam Stark) and the University of Oregon (Ashley Carter).

Historical Notes

These historical notes come from Lunet Lajonquire’s site report in the very early 1900s, it provides important insight into the original nature and configuration of the site. A machine translation from French follows:

Wat Baset. This monument is located E. N. E. of Battambang and about 14 kilometers. The Stung Chas, an old arm of the Stung Sang Ke closed by the Siamese and very silted up now, flows 1 kilometer S. of the monument; on the other hand, the flooded forest begins at an hour’s walk towards the E., delimiting, on this side, the beautiful plain of rice fields in which one enters as soon as one has passed, on leaving the chief town, the curtain of huts and pagodas spread out on the right bank of the Sang Ke.

This temple, which had a fairly large development, is far from having been completed. On the other hand, so many materials have been taken from it for different constructions that whole parts are unrecognizable and certain inscriptions have disappeared.

The original plan seems to have included only a square sanctuary, in sandstone, open on all four sides; each of these doors was preceded by an illuminated avant-corps; that of E. is itself welded to a sandstone nave, the two long sides of which are pierced with projecting doors, between two windows with baluster bars; an avant-corps with blind faces, perhaps not finished, also precedes its gate E. This set of constructions has been badly abused. The vault of the sanctuary has completely collapsed, the blocks now obstruct the anterior room, and mask its openings; the avant-corps roads no longer exist; as for the covering system of the nave, vault and lateral semi-vaults, it is totally lacking, and the absence of any debris may lead one to believe that they were not even started; the walls of the aisles are however intact and the abutments of the vault, surmounted by the architraves of the interior colonnade, appear whole up to their upper cornice; they just bowed to each other.

The interior of the nave has a fairly complete decoration; on the outside it remains unfinished. The decorative lintels of the doors of the sanctuary, the only ones still in place, are of type III and present the following figures: at the W. and E. doors, Indra on the three-headed elephant, this last panel is unfinished; to the N., probably Visnu seated on a throne: his right hand which rests on his raised knee holds, in fact, it seems, a lotus bud; at S.. Civa on Nandin is depicted, but his head is broken.

New sanctuaries were added later to this main sanctuary:

1. A and A’, built on its N.-S. and at equal distance, so as to form with him a group of three regularly arranged and oriented. These brick shrines are completely ruined, and their walls have been razed to the foundations; all that remains, with heaps of debris, are the door frames and the decorative pieces left in their raw state;
2. B a small sandstone sanctuary that hardly rises above the first of the tiers of the dome; it is square, open to the E.. with false doors on the other sides. The decoration work has barely been sketched out. A superb religious fig tree covers it almost entirely with the tight network of its roots;
3. C is also a sandstone sanctuary with the same characteristics as B and whose carvings have not been started
4. E. The same is true of E in the S. part of the enclosure:
5. D was probably a brick sanctuary, of which only a shapeless heap of debris remains, without even a trace of the frame lies from his door.

First enclosure. A brick wall, of which only fragments can be found, bounded around this group of sanctuaries. a courtyard of 66 meters towards E-W. over 56 meters in a N.-S direction.

Are wall leaned, probably along the faces N.-S. and inside galleries in brick of which only a few door and window frames and a few rooms remain of a molded sandstone base It was, elsewhere, interrupted, on the E. and W. faces by large brick gopuras, probably with three passages, of which only fragments of the molded base, → some door and window frames and also peristyle landings remain.

Old buildings. Inside this first enclosure, we still recognize the traces, F and F’, of two buildings, annexes regularly arranged and oriented. They were of brick, open to the W.; that of the S. was preceded by a avant-corps. They are currently only heaps of debris leaning against the molded frames of the doors.

Second enclosure. A new brick wall, of which only remains also remain, determined a second enclosure which measured 80 meters in the N.-S direction. and perhaps 134 meters E.-W. It was also interrupted at E. and to W. by two gopuras, presenting the same characteristics as those of the first enclosure, and just as ruined; ‘that of E. has even so completely disappeared that one can wonder if it was built.

The space between these two enclosures appears to have been occupied by a basin-ditch interrupted to the W. by a paved road joining the two gopuras. To the E, this causeway, which had a more considerable development, was further bordered by two galleries facing each other, of which all that remains, it is true, are the sandstone bases, molded, and a few pillars indicating that they were open on their interior faces.

Third enclosure. A largely destroyed embankment constituted the third enclosure; it is hardly possible to fix the exact dimensions, the ground having been leveled everywhere for the establishment of various plantations, banana trees, colon, etc. Face W., a little more distinct, seems to have been about fifty meters away from the corresponding side of the second enclosure.

A l’E. the new courtyard was, on the other hand, to extend much more widely, because we recognize there a whole set of constructions of which the few vestiges spared by the demolishers show us the importance.

If we continue, in fact, to follow the axial avenue, leaving the gopura E. of the second enclosure, we find first to the left, that is to say to the N. of the avenue, a square basin measuring 1 meters on a side, whose walls are lined with steps of limonite and which still retains water in all season.

At the level of the basin, the avenue is then blocked in a rather unexpected way by a small construction which does not correspond to any of the ordinary arrangements of temples, and of which there remain only two axial gates opposite and separated by an interval of meters; these two doors are normally decorated, but the decorative lintels are indistinct.

The avenue extends, beyond, over a length of 160 meters to a square pilaster, 2.5m high and measuring .43m on .43 in horizontal section, moreover decorated with an ovate capital and plinths, which no doubt marks the peristyle of a gopura that was not built or which has been demolished.

Parallel to the avenue, and to the S., over a length of about 10 meters between the double door and the gopura landing of which we have just spoken, door frames, molded window frames, peristyle pillars, wall debris in brick are the remains of one or more gallery bodies which have been almost completely demolished.

Inventaire descriptif des monuments du Cambodge, E. Lunet de Lajonquière, 1902

Inscriptions

• K. 205 – doorjamb – 18 lines of Sanskrit + 25 lines of Khmer – IC III, p. 3
• K. 206 – doorjamb – 45 lines of Khmer – IC III, p. 11
• K. 207 – doorjamb – 10 lines of Sanskrit – IC III, p. 16
• K. 208 (K 585/587) – doorjamb – 30 lines of Sanskrit + 38 lines of Khmer – IC VI, p. 287; IC III, p. 122
• K. 447 – stele – 22 lines of Sanskrit + 5 lines of Khmer – IC II, p. 193