Wat Enteak Komar

Also recorded as Vat Eng Khna, Wat Prasat Noren Enkoma, Neak Vihear, and other names. It is a site where stunning ancient temple remains were found in the 1900s and today features a beautiful old wooden vihara that is demarcated with ornate sema stones. To the east is a large basin.

Located north of Kampong Thom city with a good road leading to the site, it’s an easy stop en route to the Sambor Prei Kuk group of temples.

The wooden pagoda is quite beautiful, the traditional style, open, and a type which many including myself cherish to see. The balan, or pedestal for the Buddha, is also a stunning piece of work. Demarcating the vihara are sandstone sema pairs, still retaining their original pedestals which is a rare sight and seem likely to be recycled pedestals from the ancient site.

Historical Images via EFEO Fonds Cambodge

Lintel A listed below, on display at the Phnom Penh National Museum, and according to the Met Museum, who displayed it some ago, belongs to the mid-7th century and depicts both mythical and actual events:

.. recording the legitimizing ceremony of a local king. The myth, in the upper register, the Lingodbhavamurti, tells of a dispute between Brahma and Vishnu, resolved when a flaming pillar appears before the two gods and Shiva reveals himself as the supreme authority. Below, an enthroned king is lustrated by priests. This ritual bathing, abhisheka, is, in the context of kingship, associated with consecration and the conferring of divine status.

Met Museum – https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/77653

Lintel B, of the 7-8th c, depicts three deities set in medallions of the decorative band, with hanging lotus, emitting from the mouth of a Makara with a person on its back and assisted by mythical lion figures. Note the circular floral pattern to the side of the Makara.

Historical Notes

Prasat Khna (from a very common name of a tree and place name), between the Stung Sên and this bristling of mounds, is a small monument entirely built in limonite, comprising a wall of about thirty meters by twenty. two meters high and decorated with a monumental door, then, inside. a kiosk and a sanctuary tower. In this place was found a stele with four faces, two of which were formerly covered by an inscription of about forty-eight lines. engraved in a square script. thin, slender, which indicates for its date the tenth century aka. Unfortunately, only a few letters are recognizable. the stone is so worn and chipped. We cannot even say what the language of this document was.

Le Cambodge, Aymonier, 1901

Prasat Eng Khna. At this point, situated about 13 kilometers, as the crow flies, to the S. of the Sambuor group, is a modern pagoda, erected on the site of an ancient sanctuary, the materials of which were used by the bonzes to build the foundation of the vihara. There remain, apart from that, other vestiges than a rather pretty statue of the meditating Buddha, which is a sculpture of the good period.

Inscription of Vat Kedei Char.- M. Aymonier had found (placed?) in this pagoda, which is located about 8 kilometers from the Residence of Kompong Thom, a sandstone stele that had subsequently been brought to the Residence and which, after our passage, was sent to the museum of the EFEO.

Its upper end is in the form of an upside-down brace; it is cut in a single block with its molded base. It measures 6m. 57 in total height, and 0 m. 46 only without the base, on 0 m. 26 wide and 0 m. 07 thick. It bears twenty-six lines on one of the large faces, thirty-four on the other; twenty-six on one edge and thirteen on the other. These inscriptions, in Sanskrit and Khmer, are partly illegible; they date from 864 caka = 942 A.D.

Inventaire descriptif des monuments du Cambodge. Tome 1, E. Lunet de La Jonquière

There’s something important to note here, on La Jonquière’s map he lists Pr Khna and Vat Kedei Char as two separate places albeit close by, although, in his notes he lumps them together as do later publications. There does not appear to be a pagoda where he mapped Vat Kedei Char although there are two further south and one opposite the river.

Inscription

• K. 157 – stele – multiple lines of Sanskrit & Khmer over four sides – IC VI, p. 123, Kunthea Chhom 2023

The stele discovered by AYMONIER at Wat Kdei Car, north of Kompon Thom’, and used by BERGAIGNE from 1884, was for a time confused with an inscription from Kompon Thom (K. 444, kept in Hanoi at the L. Finot Museum) , then reported missing”. It was found in 1938 by Mr. DALET who took a good stamping of it. It is a small stele bearing a Sanskrit inscription of 14 and 15 lines on its two large faces, a Khmer inscription of 20 and 23 lines on its two small faces, and all around the base an additional line which completes both the Sanskrit text of the B side and the Khmer inscription.

The Sanskrit inscription, which consists of 19 stanzas, is entirely in çloka, except for stanza XIV, which relates the foundation and which is a vasantatilaka.

This text, of Buddhist inspiration, does not include any invocation and begins ex abrupto with the mention of King Harşavarman II and his accession in 863 çaka = 941 AD. BERGAIGNE read this date 864 by giving the word veda the value of 4 , which he usually has. But it also has the value of 3, for example in the date of accession of Jayavarman VII on the hospital stele. This value must be preferred here, because it is indirectly confirmed by the testimony of an inscription of Phnom Bayan which places in 863 c. a foundation made during the reign of Harşavarman II.

Stanza II presents the author of the inscription, Virendravikhyāta, and the following relate to the arrangement by this one of a wooded land offered by the king, and to the consecration of an image of Lokeça (VII)

Inscriptions du Cambodge, George Coedes

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..