Speu Temple

Recorded today as Wat Speu. It was once an ancient brick temple site, today housing a contemporary monastery and pagoda.

Historical Notes

The modern pagoda of Spu rises, painted with brilliant colors, in the middle of a picturesque site. The rectangular mound on which it is built is formed of two stories of terraces and surrounded by a vast basin whose black waters are covered with lotuses. The high shades of the forests frame this basin on three of its sides; on the fourth, to the west, rise the cells of the monks and, very close. the huts of the village inhabited for the most part by Malays.

Four wooden footbridges, now impassable, starting from the corners, crossed the saras diagonally to reach the first terrace. This was surrounded by a wooden enclosure of which there are still a few stakes, dried skeletons, twisted by the rain and the sun, which the carelessness of the monks has left to crumble on the spot for centuries.

The vihara, erected on the second terrace, is backed on its W. side by a group of two brick sanctuaries, aligned N.-S., facing E. Their location. relative to the E.-W. ironworks, allows us to suppose that the initial plan included the construction of a third sanctuary, to the S. of the two caves, which would consequently be the sanctuary and the central sanctuary of a group of three.

The N. sanctuary is the smallest. It is entirely of brick, except for the frame and the ornamental device of the door.

The small columns have disappeared: they must have been round and ringed like those represented in the false doors of the three other facades. The decorative lintel is of type II; its headband is adorned with three scences: one in the center frames a figure wearing a conical mukuta, seated facing forward, knees apart and raised, joined hands: two lateral ones present kneeling characters, turned three-quarters towards the center, joined hands: two other characters, also coiled with mukuta, are kneeling in an identical position on the capitals of the columns.

Pilasters without ornaments frame this door and support a pointed pediment, on the tympanum of which is represented, sculpted in brick, a sanctuary with four openings with avant-corps and naves on the four sides. This ornamental motif is repeated on the other three sides which have false doors.

The sanctuary. which seems to us to have been the central sanctuary is of simpler ornamentation, but of greater artistic effect. The lintel and the threshold of the door are in sandstone, the uprights and all the rest of the building, in bricks. The faces divided into three panels by two slightly projecting pilasters come out of a basement with elegant moldings and are terminated by a cornice of a pretty profile included in the sets of moldings and are adorned with a very pleasing grid pattern. An unfinished corner, in the left part of the E facade, clearly indicates that this work was executed with a chisel in the mass and not molded.

The walls inside are bare. The corbelled vault with courses of two bricks is complete. At the base, however, the four sides do not meet: there remains a square opening measuring approximately .30m on the side, closed by a sandstone slab. The legs of this window are inclined more than usual; it results in that the terraces of the outer pyramidal part are very strongly set back from each other, which decreases a lot, and very fortunately, in the general silohette, important part of the construction. Pedestals, carved stones in large numbers are placed around the pagoda. We did not find a statue there.

AYMONIER

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

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..