1-7 (the “crown of sonnets” that begins and ends with Zeus): an epitome of the pantheon of the gods as found in Hesiod’s Theogony [finished but not included in this manuscript: see Indian and Taiwanese editions of Selected Poems]
8-39: in situ descriptions of Oklahoma City interwoven with paraphrases of Hesiod’s Work and Days, concluding with a celebration of Athena [finished but not included in this manuscript (two of the original 34 sonnets will be removed to make room for the new 68 and 69)]
40: an epitome of the Shield of Aeneas passage in Vergil’s Aeneid VIII, itself an epitome of his own epic and its political order [yet to be written]
41: an epitome of the Shield of Achilles passage in Homer’s Iliad XVIII, itself an epitome of his martial epic and a representation of its cosmology [yet to be written (40 and 41 will be inserted as a double sonnet at 34-35), so as to sit on the crossbar of the “H” in HERA and HERMES; group (2), then, will end with 41]
42-69: will include epitomes of the 26 books of the Sentence [42-56 finished] and (with eleven of these) the eleven dimensions of M-theory (the basis of our understanding of the “pluriverse,” in which an expanding universe gives birth to a variety of new universes through an endless process of generation); nine of these prose sonnets in turn will interweave in situ descriptions of the eight large panels of the third enclosure at Angkor Wat [see below] (plus a relief from one of the corner pavilions); two final “sonnets” [68-69, finished] describe the cosmological enclosures of Angkor Thom, the royal city, and Preah Khan, a Buddhist enclave)
| Greek | Indic | Chinese | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H(er) | = | Hera | Shakti | |
| E(xists) | = | Hades | Shiva | Yuan dynasty landscape |
| R(egarding) | = | Poseidon | Vishnu | Sung dynasty landscape |
| A(ll) | = | Zeus | Brahma | Ming dynasty landscape |
Notes:
Zeus (heaven), Poseidon (sea) and Hades (the underworld) are brothers of Hera (earth), whereas Zeus is her husband as well
Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva constitute the trimurthi, or triple manifestation of the deity who creates, sustains and destroys the world; Shakti is the Earth Mother
The three dynastic Chinese landscape types provide “subtexts” for the description of the landscapes of Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona (in the Southwest of the USA)
(1) Suryavarman II enters into heaven. Life is a curious affair: Vishnu descends to accompany him. Interviews on a trip around the world. Having entered the precinct of Angkor Wat. More interviews conducted in Pattaya and the Philippines. We are now traversing the causeway from mainland to island. Along with studies of Southeast and Northeast Asian countries: Over the ocean-symbolizing moat that surrounds the temple. Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia and Korea.
We pause at an observation porch, where the five-headed naga (a serpent god of the waters) gazes out over the moat. (The kala is a jawless lion imported from China.) The sun has just arisen. (The makara, a hybrid of crocodile, fish, bird, tapir and elephant.) The skies are pearly grey, faintly tinged with rose and yellow. (The apsaras, divine dancing girls.) Through the central portal leading to the temple enclosure, we enter a second long passageway. (The devatas, female divinities.) Which returns us to land. (The devarapalas, the youthful divinities that guard doorways.) This time to another world. (The garudas, anthropomorphic eagles.)
(2) We approach the next portal by mounting six steps. Excelling suggests the more important but ambiguous position of China. Then another four. For who is excelling whom? Brahma’s spire is framed by the narrow entranceway. In time China’s rise will lead to decline. One step leads us over the lintel, another back down. Is China excelling itself? Then up two steps and down two. Are others excelling China? Up two more and down two. From Shanghai to Congqing, Chengdu, Kunming, Guangzhou.
We descend five steps and emerge onto the esplanade leading to the inner temple. For Zhou Da-guan, a Chinese commercial attaché, the trade between Angkor and his native country is a subject about which he speaks with authority. Again we must travel a great distance, from this second entrance portal to the inner temple. Like Third World countries today vis-à-vis developed countries. Passing between the two “libraries.” There must have been a serious trade imbalance between the two. We pause at another porch. Since Chinese merchants brought in a virtual cornucopia of fine manufactured goods. On either side of the causeway flare the parrot faces of a pair of nagas.
(3) This is the only topographic book (aside from Each, which treats France, Germany and Italy from memory) that was not written in situ. We turn about to regard Vishnu’s portal. Like the Japanese professor who visited Siem Reap. To either side, in the near ground, we consider the “libraries” (likely centers of fire ritual, not book repositories). Only to rediscover, upon his return to Tokyo, a 17th century map of Angkor Wat. We turn about again to face the temple itself.
MM’s treatment of Japan relies upon books. Monsoon clouds have scumbled the skies, but Suryavarman’s brilliance remains undiminished, his seat of power intact. Among them Ovid’s Metamorphoses, one of the four hypertexts in APHRODITE. As we continue our approach we come upon a second pair of porches bordered with the bodies of serpents, their heads raised. The 17th century Japanese map had been drawn by a Buddhist pilgrim, who supposed that he had reached India. We look out over a small pond filled with languid lotus blossoms. Though it names nothing Cambodian, this scheme is the first surviving illustration of Angkor.
(4) At the end of the esplanade two nagas rise before us, two others facing in a direction perpendicular to the first two. Norway and Sweden, Finland and Denmark are the subjects of In. Now we must mount 20 more stairs (alongside which stand four of the mythical lion-beasts) to reach the temple entrance. Elephants would only have been for the king and the top tier of the Angkor hierarchy, or for military commanders. Which depicts Scandinavia in its pastoral, summertime aspect.
Once we have done so, the platform rises by two steps, then by another three. Each self-contained Nordic country is distinct from both its Scandinavian and its continental European neighbors. Elephants can travel no more than fifteen miles a day. We reach another naga porch and step down onto yet another platform, which terminates in two more pairs of mythical lion-beasts. They require constant watering along the route. We turn about to regard Vishnu’s diminishing entranceway. Not only for drinking but also for bathing. The region’s arctic, wintertime aspect is only hinted at, its lugubrious temperament deemphasized.
(5) With steps descending to their lower surfaces, the chanting of sutras continues in the echoing space of the cruciform pavilion. A rare, 17th century French visitor observed: As we mount many more steps to cross another lintel. “Angkor Wat is renowned among the heathen of five or six Southeast Asian kingdoms.” And continue upward: twenty-four steps in all. “As Rome among the Christians.” Then down two steps. Divine begins in Rome, where its hypertext is Dante’s Inferno.
Here we turn right or southward to negotiate a series of high lintels. “The kings of neighboring countries have gone on pilgrimages even in times of war.” Searching for entrance into the central court with its steep stairways to the spire of Brahma and the holy of holies therein. It continues, in Siena, Bologna and Ferrara, where its hypertext is the Purgatorio. “The King of Thailand sends his emissaries each year.” In Venice, Verona and Florence, where its hypertext is the Paradiso. At last we enter the courtyard, at the corner of the quincunx. Divine ends with a return to Rome. But author, unlike hypertextual Dante, avoids the dangerous steps to the top.
(6) Or represents Cambodia’s traditional enemy Thailand, an alternative to Indianized Myanmar (farther to the West) and Sinicized Vietnam (to the East). We descend three steps and up four, then down three more to enter Preah Pean, the cruciform gallery. This book also connects Egypt with Italy, Divine with Renewed. Erstwhile repository of The Thousand Buddhas, its four quadrants date from the middle period, when the prestige of Angkor Wat spread across Asia.
In time, Roveda continues, the faithful erected here a great number of Buddhist statues in stone, wood or metal. The ancient Khmer king is known to have centralized himself in the temple, where his queen resided with him, and to have constructed chambers at the four most distant points for his concubines. The majority of Angkor Wat’s 41 inscriptions from the middle period are inscribed on Preah Pean’s stone pillars. Into all four areas adjacent arms of the cross have been sunk ablutionary tanks. In Bangkok and on each of Or’s four outings, to the Isaan, the Northwest, Ayutthya, the southern provinces, Aphrodite is subdued.
(7) The multitudinous monuments of ancient Egypt stretch the length of the Nile. Again we turn about to face the East. Angkor’s 20 square kilometers rival their profusion. The tip of Brahma’s spire rises above the entrance portal. Perhaps even surpassing them in grandeur. The porch of the temple appears almost domestic in scale. Within 500 years Khmer art accomplished what for Egyptian art required 5000. Only by lateral scanning does one gain a view of the larger portico.
We cross a platform, then up three steps to the entrance. Renewed is tripartite. And up three more. Each part has an interwoven text: Then down another three. Apollonius’ Argonautica, Vergil’s Eclogues, the Koran. Up four more and down three. As the second hypertextual book in APHRODITE. We have reached the aisles leading to southern and northern corridors. It imitates Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Up another stair and into the sanctum. Books I-II (Alexandria); III-IV (the Nile); V-VI (Cairo). Then up twelve more steps to a view of two pools surrounded by porticos. Plus the six never written books epitomized in Mutabilitie Cantos.
(8) Four stairways of thirty five steps lead to this ultimate platform symbolizing the highest peak of Mount Meru. The Indic polities of mainland and insular Southeast Asia, says anthropologist Clifford Geertz. At each turn we forego ascent. Were “theater” states. To continue instead our circumambulation of an inner court bounded by four lesser spires. The spectacular cremations, processions and temple dedications were not meant to serve political ends but were instead ends in themselves.
On the ground floor, carved to the side of exit portals, the apsaras beckon. They were what the state was for. In one corner stand a dozen, arrayed in bas relief, figures of celestial power, not worldly allure. Court ceremonialism drove court politics. High above they are answered by another dozen angels. And mass ritual was not a device to shore up the state, but the state instead a device for the enactment of mass ritual. One begins to understand: the apsaras are offering a prospect of either difficult ascent, precipitous tumble, or both. Power served pomp, Geertz concludes, not pomp, power. Likewise Happening is an end in itself, an epic of India’s reality.
(9) Author, having experienced, on an earlier visit, such precipitous ascent and fearful descent, declines the present opportunity for disaster. In Possibly everything is possible. “The two most renowned monsoon-forest civilizations in history were the Classic Khmer and the Classic Maya.” The new world returns to the old. The stairs at any rate do not permit the complete scaling of the mountain. Every city has its fantastic counterpart. For high above them arises the pineapple cone of Brahma.
“Scholars and travelers are suitably impressed by the Classic Maya cities of Mexico and Guatemala.” One moves outside the space for more extensive consideration. “Yet one could fit ten Tikals or ten Calakmuls within the bounds of Angkor.” Every relevant book of the Sentence has its fantastic continuation. One pauses in the north to regard Shiva’s tower. We fly from Miami to Manaus. Then exits through a portal and peers down into the northern moat. To survey South America. Reenters the surrounding space. Continuing on to tour Iberia. And confronts yet another imposing stair midway between the temple’s northeast and northwest corners.
(10) Hera’s Zeus and the creator god of the Indic trimurthi underlie All. We move onward toward the northwest tower to view from beneath it the central spire of Brahma. But this juncture of HERA and APHRODITE is dominated by the great goddesses of hearth and marriage. Once more, the apsaras, in pairs, greet the pilgrim as he exits, a dozen to either side of the entrance/exit portal. Beauty, yes, and sexuality, and love, but also something more commanding, regal and permanent.
The landscapes of eastern Arizona provide the subject. Though there is no evidence identifying the architects of the temple. The god of four arms and four faces, whose vehicle is a goose, the spirit. It is likely that Divakarapandita, the servant reported in Suryavarman’s service. Is the supreme creator god. Who came from a long illustrious line of Brahmins. Ming dynasty landscape painting, the book’s subtext. Contributed to its conception and planning. Through a portal different from the one we had entered we exit. Among its practitioners are the literati painters Shen Zhou and Wen Zheng-ming along with many professional artists.
(11) Regarding takes as its difficult subject the landscapes of New Mexico, the most extravagantly beautiful in the world. Author has resituated himself on the nearest naga porch at the end of the eastward-directed entranceway. As its subtext, Southern Sung painting. The skies have lightened considerably. In particular, the monumental hanging scrolls of Fan Kuan, Guo Xi and Li Tang. Above the tower of Brahma four white birds flutter together across the blue interstices.
Divakarapandita had served the previous two monarchs, Jayavarman VI and Dharanindravarman I. Here Vishnu is the regnant divinity, in his ten earthly avatars. Light grey is emerging, pierced by pale blue openings high above. His vehicle is Garuda, his consort, Lakshmi, the goddess of happiness. The building of the temple commenced upon Suryavarman’s accession to the throne. Just as Brahma corresponds to the uncharismatic Zeus, so Vishnu to Homer’s “earth shaker” Poseidon, god of the tumultuous land and prehistoric ocean responsible for these spectacular vistas. He supervised its construction over the next thirty years.
(12) From this perspective only one of the five spires is visible. Though Brahma is supreme and Vishnu serene (as maintainer of the creation). From the courtyard in which author sits a coconut palm rises above a wall. It is Shiva (Hades) who excites the most fervid faith. The Khmers, from the early centuries of the Christian era, were familiar with the Hindu as well as the Buddhist faiths. As he dances the destruction of the universe in his reincarnation of the primitive Rudra.
At its base a mythical lion-bird, carved in stone, shrieks toward eternity. The landscapes of Oklahoma are difficult to grasp as they form and disappear before one’s eyes. By Ankorean times Hindu religious belief had focused on the concept of a trinity compounded of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. The deconstructive, literati painters of the Yuan provide the subtext: Who fulfill the three cosmic functions. Zhao Meng-fu, Wu Zhen and Ni Zan. Of creation, conservation and dissolution. Exists is the last of a trilogy that reads, backwards, All Regarding Exists, or, forwards, the last of three books about Oklahoma that include Engendering and Her.
(13) Neither Shakti nor Hera is dominant at Angkor. Hinduism expressed a monistic tendency in its Shiva and Vishnu cults. Where the matrix is the cosmos itself. Which emphasize God’s transcendence and immanence. Her represents at once Athena (the daughter of the mind of Zeus), Hera (his sister/ consort) and Hermes. “Here then,” says Claude Ferrère, “are those temples that seemed like visions.” The sky freed of birds, Brahma arises uncontested above the other gods.
“Here, the foundations, the plinths, the extraordinary domes resembling multi-ringed tiaras.” Against a cottony grey sky a dove alights atop it. “All that is missing is the tropical forest, sprawling beneath an Asian sky.” In the latter sect greater emphasis is laid upon the devotional aspect or bakhti, the relinquishment of the self to God. “From which, one moment, torrents pour, bringing floods but not relief.” And which alone is the source of our salvation. A slender rod extends above the spire. “From which, the next moment, a pitiless sun beats down.” To attract and dissipate the divine force of lightning. “Bringing to mankind sunstroke and inevitable death.”
(14) Between Her and Realization, as an interlude, Engendering embraces Confucius and Lao-zi. In the northeastern sky the sun emerges above the tower of Shiva. Author interweaves Lun Yu and Dao de Jing with in situ accounts of Norman Oklahoma’s town and gown. By the 10th century the worship of Vishnu resolved into three schools: The “gown” in conjunction with the great teacher. Pancharatra, Bhagavata and Satvata. “Town,” with the philosopher.
It reads as a white disc, beaming through three layers of cloud. Engendering is a universal principle: By far the most popular of these was the Pancharatra. From the young blade of grass to the newest universe. A doctrine requiring the worship of Vasudeva (Vishnu). In between it celebrates the student’s emergence from ignorance. As the highest (para-Vasudeva). Of the author’s two children into maturity. Her Engendering Realization, one in a trilogy of trilogies, is linked in the backward reading of the Sentence, to All Regarding Exists and Magic Every Second. The source from whom four forms (vyuha) successively emanate.
(15) Realization records a spiritual impulse. A dozen birds circulates past the tower, between author and god, as though in a gesture of bahkti. Its travels in three directions suggest the system of arteries in the ancient Angkor atlas. The first to be manifested is Vishnu-Vasudeva, followed by his brother Samkarshana (Balarama), his son Pradyumna, and his grandson Anirudda. From Angkor to Kompong Thorn (within the region); to Wat Phu, in present-day Laos; to Phimai, in Thailand.
This takes place in a sequence where each emanation originates from the anterior, “like a flame proceeding from The Battle of Kurukshetra, and from it another flame.” Realization stands beneath SOL and so partakes of its fire. In other terms, the vyuha are distinct manifestations of the undifferentiated reality of para-Vasudeva, and each has its own characteristics or guna. Of Surya, Vishnu and Krishna, the last of whose exploits are recounted in part III. “We have scarcely begun to study the great system of highways that tied the empire together, though ironically it was André Malraux who set out to do so, before his arrest in 1924 on looting charges.”
(16) An epitome of Magic / First of 11 dimensions of M-theory (to be interwoven with the following) / Panel 1 (a)
The sons of darkness, the Kauravas, meet the sons of light, the Pandavas, in The Battle of Kurukshetra, the final episode of the Mahabharata. This is the first of the large panels; we encounter it as we turn right for our counterclockwise circumambulation.
At the panel’s center Krishna tells Arjuna that his dharma is to fight: “He whose mind is free from any ill will, even if he kills these warriors, kills them not and is free.” Only deeds done without attachment to consequences and through devotion to God and trust in his grace can lead to the realization of Brahman.
(17) An epitome of Every / Second of 11 dimensions of M-theory (to be interwoven with the following) / Panel 1 (b):
The two halves of the panel meet in the middle, leading some to assert that the bas relief should be read from right to left. Others insist on the counterclockwise motion. Perhaps we should respect both motions, which join the narratives at the center.
On a profane level the Battle’s final event may allude to King Suryavarman being guided by Krishna to fight the Khmers’ enemies, but the ideology of sacrifice also here epitomized dictates that both the action and its results be offered to God, who is the real agent with regard to any action.
(18) An epitome of Second / Third of 11 dimensions of M-theory (to be interwoven with the following) / Corner pavilion
At the end of the first of the large panels, in the southwest corner pavilion, there occurs, above a window, the image of Shiva in the Pine Forest. Shiva plays the lecher to stimulate slander, thereby acquiring tapas and transference of the karma.
Opposite is the figure of Ravanna shaking Mount Kailasha, as Shiva, with his large toe, presses the mountain down upon him. The Puranas add the cosmological and cosmogonical concepts represented by the principal realms of the triple universe (earth, ocean, sky-paradise; where dwell men, the asuras and the gods).
(19) An epitome of Each / Fourth of 11 dimensions of M-theory (to be interwoven with the following) / Panel 2:
Is history potentially epic? Is epic potentially sacred? Can the history of a political dynasty be sacred? Georges Coedès observed that the event displayed in this relief has a religious character, because the sacred fire (vrah vlen) is shown at its center.
We have turned the corner and entered into the realm of Yama, who represents both a god of this world and a god of the next. Mannika notes that here for the first time images of “a real king and his men of rank were sculpted onto temple walls that had been reserved traditionally for the gods and their main manifestations.”
(20) An epitome of Revolution / Fifth of 11 dimensions of M-theory (to be interwoven with the following) / Panel 3:
The reliefs on the eastern section of the southern wall represent the 37 heavens and the 32 hells derived from Indian tradition. The hells, on the lower registers, as in Dante, are pictured with greater detail than the heavens above.
Each hell is identified by a Vedic inscription. The Vedic hymns tell of endless happiness to be found in heaven in the company of gods and of the deep pit where certain sinners are thrown. Have we moved into a moral realm or, as in the fantastic, dramatic representation of Suryavarman (see the preceding panel), into a mythic dimension?
(21) An epitome of A / Sixth of 11 dimensions of M-theory (to be interwoven with the following) / Panel 4:
In the Bhagavana Purana we read, “In the beginning of the world the gods (devas) and demons (asuras) were engaged in a 1000-year battle to secure amrita, an elixir that would render them immortal and incorruptible.
“When they could not achieve their goal, they asked the help of Vishnu, who ordered them to work together. They then commenced the churning of the ocean of milk by using Mount Mandara as the pivot and the five-headed naga Vasuki as the rope. When the mountain began to sink, Vishnu anchored it on his avatar the tortoise.”
(22) An epitome of Need / Seventh of 11 dimensions of M-theory (to be interwoven with the following) / Panel 5:
Momentarily the sun, on this second day, has risen above the trees and broken through the clouds, as a small troupe of monkeys passes beyond the precinct of the temple. Vishnu is not now illuminated by the light, either in Panel 5 or Panel 6.
This sixteenth-century panel representing Vishnu defeating the asuras is thought to derive from the Harivamsa. In Panel 6, on the northern wall, Vishnu will appear again, in the guise of Krishna (as he had done in the Battle of Kurukshetra). Despite Cambodia having joined the Theravada community, it had not forgotten its Brahmanic culture.
(23) An epitome of U / Eighth of 11 dimensions of M-theory (to be interwoven with the following) / Panel 6:
In Panel 6 Krishna appears seven times through the course of a bas relief executed rather crudely during the sixteenth century, some say from designs possibly left on the twelfth-century walls. We are in the midst of three consecutive battle scenes.
What does so much detailed battle imagery signify? For certain, a conflictive view of reality, likely the preferred thematics of a militaristic empire, though perhaps a view too of the cosmic battle of forces at the heart of reality. Here a variety of gods is represented, including Shiva at the western end.
(24) An epitome of Light / Ninth of 11 dimensions of M-theory (to be interwoven with the following) / Panel 7:
Battle is unending, for in Panel 7 the 21 principal devas of the Hindu pantheon are shown in armed conflict with asuras. The representation of the gods resembles the classic Greek representation of the twelve Olympians.
Unlike Zeus and his company, however, each Brahmanic god rides an animal mount, each engaging in singular combat with a demon. As in many other panels, Vishnu, pictured here at the center, is preeminent, as befits a temple devoted to him and one constructed by an earthly ruler who, after death, was renamed Paravishnuloka.
(25) An epitome of O / Tenth of 11 dimensions of M-theory (to be interwoven with the following) / Panel 8 (a):
Vishnu and Zeus represent paternalistic systems that center upon a male god. The story of Ramayana distributes our attention equally between Sita and Rama. (It might be noted that MM also balances male and female, including the latter within the former.)
Like the Odyssey, which complements and completes the Iliad, the Ramayana complements and completes the Maharabharata. The Battle of Lanka, like the battle of Odyssey 23, epitomizes the work of its author. Roveda calls it “one of the most savage of Hindu literature.” Likewise Odysseus’ slaughter of the suitors is appropriately brutal.
(26) An epitome of Sleep / Eleventh of 11 dimensions of M-theory (to be interwoven with the following) / Panel 8 (b):
Just as the Battle of Kurukshetra does not individuate the warriors that we know from the Mahabharata, so The Battle of Lanka is not subdivided by any pseudo-registers and the primary figures of both armies barely emerge from the mass of fighting figures.
The viewing of the Lanka panels is accompanied by the polyphonic voices of Chinese-, French- and Cambodian-speaking guides. Not only is Angkor Wat the epitome of ancient Khmer culture, like Homer and Hesiod’s epics those of Vyasa and Valmiki, it would seem, also represent a universal expression.
(27) “Jayavarman’s Angkor Thom (‘Great Angkor’) was a city, so to speak within a city.” At Angkor Thom, the royal city, the ocean and the rock that encircle the universe, are represented, according to inscriptions of Jayavarman VII, successor to Suryavarman II, by its moat and enclosing wall. Thus Vergilian and Homeric motifs are unwittingly recapitulated, and a new, Biblical, motif emerges. “Again we are fortunate to have the detailed record of an early visit, by Zhou Da-guan:
“‘Before its main portal, flanking the causeways on either side.’” During our first day’s outing the sun had shone. “‘Are 54 divinities in stone.’” During our second, clouds had prevailed. “‘Representing war lords.’” Today, as we arrive, it begins to rain. “‘Huge and terrifying.’” The mountain pierced the brilliant sky with its pinnacle, the ocean reached to the unplumbed depths of the world of serpents. The naga balustrade, it is said, represents the rainbow. “‘They grasp the serpents with their hands, seemingly to prevent their escape.’” The larger metropolis of Angkor may not have looked like Imperial Rome but its empire survived as long as Rome’s.
(28) From Angkor Thom we proceed to the Buddhist enclave of Preah Khan, temple, monastery, university, at one time sustained by 5000 villages. With the long rows of gods and giants holding the naga Jayavarman evoked the churning of the sea. “Though Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom and Preah Khan are the best known cosmological temples, Banteay Chhmar, relatively unvisited because located in provincial Northwest Cambodia, was likely the most expansively developed of all.”
Author passes down the length of Preah Khan, circling back through the woods along its flank to regain the porch. In an edifice whose imagery he devoted partly to Buddha, partly to Shiva, partly to Vishnu the hermit king created his own cosmic epitome. On his way through the wood MM slips and falls in the mud. As for Banteay Chhmar, Lunet de Lajonquière called it “the most ruined, most chaotic, the most indecipherable of all Khmer cities.” Having righted himself, he reveals his muddy condition to several lovely girls, who are much amused. According to George Groslier, who mapped the site, “Banteay Chhmar may have been larger than Angkor Wat.”