Bat Chum

Angkor has more than a thousand sanctuaries and almost none of them names a builder. Bat Chum is the exception. Three brick towers on a single platform, a moat, one eastern gateway: a small foundation, and by Angkorian standards a modest one. What makes it exceptional is written on the doorjambs. Each of the three towers carries a separate Buddhist inscription, and together they name Kavindrarimathana, the Buddhist minister of King Rajendravarman II, as the man who built it — and record him as responsible for the Srah Srang reservoir and the East Mebon as well. During excavations in 1952 flagstones incised with a yantra were recovered from the northern and central towers, which George Coedès matched, with difficulty, to the deities named in the inscriptions. The brick is now badly eroded and the monastery and timber houses that once stood beside the towers are gone entirely.