Tram Preal Temple

Prasat Pratal Cho 311 (M. H. 617).

The monument which, L. de Lajonquière named after Pr. Chenh, is located 17 km away to the east of Cam Khsan (Choam Khsant village), at the foot of Sam Padu. It is a temple of the type with successive oriented enclosures.

The main one, opened by a small gopura, contains three brick towers, the central one preceded by a forebody. They are gathered on a common laterite terrace. Greatly reduced in the east-west direction, the second enclosure, of laterite, encloses two elongated brick buildings aligned north-south and opens with a larger brick gopura with three passages.

Here again, occurs the displacement of the main axis to the south; it is approximately 1/16 (1 m. -70 for 27 m. 30 of total width). Large voids in the plan seem to call for libraries: the absence of any rubble would suggest that they only existed in light construction.

Of the three towers, the north one is reduced to the threshold of its eastern door, the other two have their interiors intact. In the central tower, the collapsed forebody is recognizable by its eastern door of which remains the bare frame.

The southern tower is the least ruined; it leans towards the South; it remained in ruin. It has the usual square plan, redente, with four doors, three of which are false. Its door, with columns in octagonal prisms, is walled up by a termite mound; its west lintel, carved, features a central motif of an unknown character, with spread legs, under a niche. The door is crowned by an ogival pediment with a recessed tympanum and this form of pediment is even better marked on the false doors; their leaves are indicated in the brickwork. The first floor has very deteriorated large false bays.

Gopura I, constructed of brick, and the buildings of the north-south elongated enclosure II – only the door frames remain, double doorframes on the side buildings because they had vestibules. The laterite wall has a curved coping without spikes. The gopura II, cruciform shaped, offered three passages: it is extremely ruined.

In front of the central tower is a pedestal. The statue of a woman with four arms and the capstone reported by L. de Lajonquiere seem to have disappeared.

Here we have the rare opposition in the same ensemble, especially in this order, of the low and long U-shaped pediment reversed to the central tower and of the pointed pediment to the South tower. It is the false door N. of the median tower which offers us this pediment above a finely profiled frame. with a decoration of volutes and corner leaves engraved with a pretty design and the regrooved tympanum. At the gates of the south tower, the pediment is in trefoil ogive, but it has remained in ruin.

The dating of the monument is uncertain; it seems linked to the long plan system which does not seem to have gone beyond the reign of Jayavarman V.

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