Prasat Pros (Sa Khla Temple)

The tall brick temple is also known as Prasat Pros, Prasat Soklor, Prasat Kalo, and signposted as Brasath Bros/Brasath Soklor. The temple is located on a large mound in the plains to the north of Kampong Leang’s beautiful cluster of mountains. It is quite ornate featuring rich carvings and decoration crafted into its elaborate brickwork and belongs to the 7-8th-century Chenla era.

The temple opens to the east with a sandstone doorway that originally featured decorated round columns, fragments of which are seen inside the temple. In recent times some stairs with a naga balustrade were added. The original sandstone lintel is decayed and broken laying at the front of the temple. Around the other sides, you notice the depictions of palaces decorating the walls on either side of the ornate pilasters, false doors, and lintel all formed into the brickwork. Inside you’ll see some remnants including pedestal, fragments of door columns, fragments of a small Buddha statue, pedestal, and a large alcove above the lintel that likely would have once held a sacred deposit.

The site, and several sites in the area, can be reached via a long dirt road, rough in places, originating in the city Stueng Saen or so I am told, via Kampong Chhnang city via ferry and sealed road.

Update 06/2022 – Yes you can take a ferry from Kampong Chhnang city (car, moto and passenger options) to Kampong Leang, also, the temple is under restoration!

Historical Notes

This temple rises towards the northern extremity of the eastern slopes of Phnom Tuk Meas. It is a brick sanctuary, square, open to the east, raised on a small hill of ground which dominates the plain from a height of 3 meters.

The ornamentation of the external faces is of the same style as that of the main monument of Prah Srei. We find the same doors and false doors protruding from the facade, the same ornate pilasters, the same sanctuaries sculpted in high relief on the panels. The door is without projecting body; it has a sandstone frame, with banded polygonal columns, but the decorative lintel has disappeared.

The superimposed floors reproduce the ornamental arrangements of the main body, accentuating however the projections of the false doors and the pilasters; the upper part of the monument thus approaches the octagonal shape, and this silhouette. very elaborate, very ornate with moldings and sculptures, does not lack a certain elegance. The entire building is in a fairly good state of preservation.

The walls inside are bare, the corbelled vault is rounded in ogive; the whole rests on a raised base of about 0 m. 80. A small staircase, the steps of which have disappeared, preceded the east entry.

Inventaire descriptif des monuments du Cambodge, E. Lunet de Lajonquière, 1901

Rodney Charles LHuillier

Living in Asia for over a decade and now residing in beautiful Siem Reap. Rodney Charles L'Huillier has spent over seven years in Cambodia and is the author of Ancient Cambodia (2024) and Essential Siem Reap (2017, 2019). Contact via [email protected] - more..