Ta Prohm: Angkor's Jungle Temple and Its History

Ta Prohm is a temple-monastery at Angkor in Cambodia, founded in 1186 by the Khmer king Jayavarman VII and dedicated to his mother. Its foundation inscription gives a rare, detailed picture of how a great Khmer religious institution was staffed and supplied. Left largely to the forest by early 20th-century conservators, its ruins, gripped by the roots of giant trees, are now among the most photographed sights in Southeast Asia.

Background: Jayavarman VII’s Buddhist kingship

Jayavarman VII came to power after Cham forces plundered the Khmer capital in 1177 (see Cham Sack of Angkor). Crowned in 1181, he launched the largest building programme in Angkor’s history, including the new walled capital of Angkor Thom with the Bayon at its centre.

Unlike most earlier Khmer kings, Jayavarman VII was a Mahayana Buddhist. He honoured his parents by building two great temple-monasteries. Ta Prohm, founded in 1186, was dedicated to his mother, and Preah Khan, founded in 1191, to his father.

Foundation and purpose

Ta Prohm’s original name was Rajavihara, “royal monastery”. Its main sanctuary held a statue of Prajnaparamita, the goddess personifying the Buddhist “Perfection of Wisdom”, carved in the likeness of the king’s mother. Preah Khan, by contrast, held an image of the bodhisattva Lokeshvara in the likeness of his father.

The temple was more than a shrine. It was a monastery with resident monks and teachers, a religious school and an institution that controlled land and labour across a wide area. It also housed images of many other divinities in its chapels and galleries.

The Ta Prohm inscription

The temple’s Sanskrit foundation stele, first published by the French scholar George Coedes in 1906, is one of the most informative documents of the Khmer Empire. It lists the people and goods attached to the temple, though its figures, like those of all royal inscriptions, may include some exaggeration.

According to the inscription, 12,640 people lived and worked at the temple, including 18 high priests, 2,740 officials, 2,202 assistants and 615 dancers. A further 79,365 people from 3,140 villages were assigned to supply it with rice, honey, wax and other goods.

The temple’s treasure is said to have included large quantities of gold and silver dishes, 35 diamonds, more than 40,000 pearls and thousands of other precious stones, together with Chinese silk and other imported cloth. The inscription also records that the king founded 102 hospitals across the kingdom, each with its own staff and supplies.

Architecture

Ta Prohm is built on a single level, unlike the stepped temple-mountains of earlier kings. An outer laterite wall about 1,000 by 650 metres encloses the site, which once included a town of wooden houses that have long since disappeared. Inside are several concentric galleries around a central sanctuary, with towers, courtyards, libraries and a “hall of dancers”.

The temple was enlarged by later additions, which makes its plan crowded and maze-like. The entrance gates are topped with face towers in the style of the Bayon. The walls carry carvings of devatas (female divine figures), scenes from Buddhist stories and dense floral decoration. Many Buddhist images were later defaced during the Hindu reaction of the 13th century.

How the temple worked

Ta Prohm was the centre of an economic network as well as a place of worship. The villages assigned to it delivered rice, oil, honey, wax, cloth and other products, some of which supported the resident community and some of which were offered in rituals. The inscription sets out in detail the quantities of rice and other foods to be supplied.

The temple’s calendar included major festivals, during which lamps were lit, offerings made and images bathed. The 615 dancers mentioned in the inscription performed in temple ceremonies, and the hall of dancers inside the complex may have been used for such rites.

Historians use this information to understand how the Khmer state worked. Temples acted as stores of wealth and redistributors of goods, tying villages across the countryside to the capital. Royal foundations on this scale also show how much the kingdom’s labour and resources were committed to religion under Jayavarman VII, a commitment some scholars think contributed to the strain on the empire in the following centuries.

Ta Prohm and Preah Khan

Ta Prohm and Preah Khan were designed as a pair. Both are flat, sprawling monastic complexes rather than temple-mountains, both were dedicated to a parent of the king in the form of a Buddhist deity, and both carry long foundation inscriptions. Together with the Bayon, they express Jayavarman VII’s vision of a Buddhist kingdom in which the royal family was linked to the divine through compassion and wisdom.

Preah Khan, founded in 1191 on the site where Jayavarman VII is believed to have won a victory over the Chams, may also have served for a time as a temporary royal residence while Angkor Thom was being built.

The jungle temple

After the Khmer capital moved south in the 15th century (see Fall of Angkor), Ta Prohm, like many monuments at Angkor, was gradually overtaken by forest. Silk-cotton trees and strangler figs grew on the galleries, their roots splitting the stone blocks and wrapping around the walls.

When the French School of the Far East (EFEO) began conserving Angkor in the early 20th century, it chose to leave Ta Prohm largely as it was found. The idea was to preserve one temple in the condition that had captivated 19th-century travellers. Paths were cleared and the structure supported, but the trees were mostly left in place. The French conservators cut back smaller vegetation that threatened the stonework while keeping the largest trees.

Since the 2000s the Archaeological Survey of India, working with the Cambodian APSARA authority, has carried out restoration at Ta Prohm, dismantling and rebuilding unstable sections and building walkways. The work has involved difficult choices about how far to intervene, since the trees both damage the stone and now help hold parts of the temple together.

Myths and facts

• Myth: the “stegosaurus” carving proves people saw dinosaurs. A small roundel on one doorway is sometimes claimed to show a stegosaurus. Archaeologists interpret it as an ordinary animal, perhaps a rhinoceros, boar or chameleon, with the background decoration of leaves forming the apparent “plates” on its back.
• Myth: Ta Prohm was untouched until modern times. In fact it was cleared, studied and stabilised by conservators, who deliberately kept its overgrown appearance.
• Fact: the temple’s fame grew greatly after scenes for the 2001 film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider were shot there.

Timeline

• 1177: Cham forces sack the Khmer capital.
• 1181: Jayavarman VII is crowned.
• 1186: Ta Prohm (Rajavihara) is founded and dedicated to the king’s mother.
• 1191: Preah Khan is founded and dedicated to the king’s father.
• c. 1218: Death of Jayavarman VII.
• 1906: George Coedes publishes the temple’s foundation inscription.
• 1992: Angkor is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• 2001: Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is filmed partly at Ta Prohm.

Why it matters

Ta Prohm shows the scale of the religious institutions of the Khmer Empire, which commanded tens of thousands of people and great wealth. Its inscription is a key source for the economy and society of Angkor, and its tree-covered ruins have shaped how the world imagines lost civilisations. The temple also raises lasting questions about how best to conserve ancient monuments.