Bat Chum Temple

Prasat Bat Chum (Khmer: ប្រាសាទបាទជុំ) is a small temple located to the northeast of Angkor Wat and south of Srah Srang. It features three brick shrines aligned on a north-south axis and open to the east. According to its inscription, it was conceived by Kavindrarimathana, a Buddhist minister of Khmer king Rajendravarman, at the middle of the 10th century.

The site is surrounded by a moat with a causeway on the east and features a large basin 380m to its east, measuring 180m x 390m.

Gallery 2020

Restoration works at the site have been ongoing for some time, highlighting how fragile these ancient wonders are and the difficulty in restoring and strengthening.

Gallery 2024

Inscriptions 

via CIK

• K. 266 – doorjamb south shrine – Sanskrit & Khmer – Coedes 1908
• K. 267- doorjamb central shrine – Sanskrit & Khmer – Coedes 1908
• K. 268 – doorjamb north shrine – Sanskrit – Coedes 1908
• K. 948 – slab (Yantra) – six characters – Coedes 1952, p. 465

Historical Notes

Bath and Bergaine provided a translation of the sites inscriptions in 1882, followed by a documentation by Aymonier in in 1904 and later by Lajonquiere in 1911 whose description follows:

Prasat Bat Chum. Under this name is a group of three brick sanctuaries, located 300 meters S. of Sras Srang. Regularly placed and oriented on a N.-S. line, open to the E., with false doors on their other faces, they are raised on a common terrace formed by a limonite base wall, 1 meter high and cut by a median entablature. A porch framed by supports bearing lions, is attached to the eastern face of the terrace and leads to the door of the central sanctum.

The ornamentation of these buildings, quite ruined, is limited to the decorative devices of their door: frames, columns and decorative lintels, type III. In the central sanctuary, the middle medallion of the lintel represented Indra on the three-headed elephant; the head and bust of this divinity have been broken, the side heads of his mount are masked by lions rising from the origins of the scrolls. On the doors of the extreme sanctuary no division is represented. We can only see on the S. a lion, and on the N. an elephant represented frontally, which formed the central motif of the decoration.

A large ditch basin, interrupted only by a roadway with access to the E., serves as an enclosure for the temple.

From: Inventaire Descriptif Monuments du Cambodge, 1911

Trouve and Marchal would investigate the site in the early-mid 1900s, and in more recent times, Pottier would carry out an excavation. More on those in the next update.

Historical Images

Via EFEO, Banyan and Fonds Cambodge. Photos taken between 1952 and 1962.

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