Temple Mountains of Cambodia and the Jain Hill temples of India (original) (raw)

In many ancient religions, mountain tops-from the Greeks' Mt. Olympus to the highest Himalayas of Hindu mythologywere believed to be the privileged home of the gods. Southeast Asia, largely dependent on India for its principal religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, is no exception. On the island of Java in Indonesia, for example, the ancient holy site of Dieng was established in the crater of an extinct volcano. Its name in old Javanese, Di Hyang (in Sanskrit, Devalaya), means, in effect, "home of the Gods." In Cambodia, in the classic Khmer architecture of the Angkorean period, we find a temple type in which the sanctuary is built atop a stepped pyramid. Nineteenth century archaeologists called these "temple-mountains." Each important sovereign was apparently obliged to build one in order to establish his power .