Transcript for:
Exploring India and Southeast Asia's Architecture

it's week four tremendous temples stupendous stupas weing at in India and Southeast Asia let's get into it so a little bit of a disclaimer to start this one out of all the weeks in this course this is probably the one where I am going to mispronounce with my silly American accent the most names and words in the whole in the whole class mostly because I don't speak any of the hundred of languages spoken by the billions of people that live in this region of the world so I apologize for that ahead and to do the best I can um there's a lot of words in here there's there's a fair amount of uh vocabulary but as long as you kind of get the sense of what the things are you're going to you're going to do well with understanding what's going on here um because once again the parts of the architecture in uh and and and everything we're going to look at today are important for a lot of reasons right so where we at the last few weeks we've looked at civilizations that are mostly surrounding sort of the Mesopotamia uh Middle East and and the Mediterranean right and all of those civilizations in that area had quite a bit of influence on each other right not always at the times we were looking at but generally there's a lot of cross-contamination and trade and everything that's happening there what we're looking at today is we're going halfway around the world and you you're going to notice very quickly how different things are now there was there was connections between these two regions though Alexander the Great went from essentially Greece all the way to the indust valley and sort of Northern India um and did have a great influence particularly on on sculptural Art and there's entire studies on that but his influence on architecture and particularly the architecture we're going to look at isn't super noticeable so the what we're going to look at today is very much of the place and it is very much the invention of the people that live in these places right so where are we a lot of what we're going to look at today all sort of stems from very early civilizations in the indis valley this is along the indis river this is uh mostly in to in current day Pakistan and sort of that bit of India up there obviously those are not the name those names of India and Pakistan haven't existed for particularly long historically speaking and the civilizations though in the indis valley are just as old as everything we've looked at so far going back 5,000 years right and uh as we it's been studied more recently there were great cities grided cities like we were seeing in in uh in Rome and Greece but way earlier uh with uh forms of of plumbing and and Sewer so like moving water irrigation uh but we still don't know an absolute ton about those civilizations but we do know that a lot of the civilizations in the area particularly Indian civilizations sort of grew out of the Traditions that started there so one of the the important things that comes from that area is Hinduism and Hinduism is going to affect everything we look at today right so Hinduism it's uh the third largest religion in the world it is really more than a religion it's an entire worldview and a way of life that is split into sort of smaller uh sect and other other uh sort of sub religions or or branches of religion um I'm not going to go into all of the belief systems but know that the ideas that the ideas of Hinduism are are considered sort of the oldest surviving religion in the world one of the oldest that's still widely widely uh practiced right so there's you know well over a billion Hindus in the world right and that's going back at least 4,000 years right so what we're going to be looking at today though particularly temples and stupas and I'll get a little bit into what each one of those are and how they're related uh are really going to be looking at not as old but we're kind of getting to an Era that's sort of where we left off with Greece and Rome right around say 500 CE right in the Common Era so 500 I'm not going to be saying CE and BCE all the time now cuz we're kind of in our era from about 500 to say 1100 right like a thousand years ago and then we have an outlier today which is one of the most contemporary projects we're going to actually look at from the 1700s and you'll see how that sort of fits in uh and that's a little bit different so that's the time period we're looking at sort of Starting around 500 going forward with a little before a little bit after right so temples and stupas so a temple I think most of you are probably familiar with that the idea of what a temple might be it's a uh a space place of worship right in in our cases and I'll probably repeat this over and over again the temples were sort of protective homes of the Gods particularly in Hinduism and then stupas are another religious building that is a part of mostly Buddhist uh the Buddhist religion and it was primarily for holding relics right so it's still part of uh uh ritual and everything like that but as compared to Temples which are usually sort of occupiable in a lot of ways stupas are are sort of uh their reliquaries that's the term for a place where you hold relics and we use that term in in kind of all religions that have relics relics being um sort of holy objects that are usually related to to in the case of Buddhism to Buddha or to bodhisattvas or to sort of The Descendants uh and important religious leaders throughout time right so let's start though with Hinduism right and the Hindu temples so before I jump into to uh to to specific temples I need to kind of there's there's a little bit of uh uh you know there's some terminology that we need to come to to figure out here so one of the main ones and this is going to be for everything we look at today is the term AIS Mundy now that's a Latin term so there's other terms from it uh you know in every every other language but usually when you hear access Munday it's it's a term used to always describe this type of thing and in these cases it has architectural form but it's more of an idea of something and the axis mday which means the world's axis right the the center of the world and in these cases it's specifically referring to the axis in which it connects sort of our world to a holy world a spiritual world the world of the Gods right and you'll see it in almost everything we look at and we can see it right now in uh in this Temple that that tallest tower the idea of the line that's drawn through it is the AIS Mundi right and we'll see some other examples of it and we'll talk about it a little bit more in Hinduism it is also the idea of Mount meu now meu is uh the the the space the the mountain on which the gods live right and the exus Mundy connects that world to our world right this concept of the connection the interface between sort of our our profane world and the sacred world is just driven over and over and over again particularly in these temples and we'll get even more to that the other some of the other terms the gopuram now this is we're not seeing it in this image but we will see a few of them that is the Gateway or a Gateway Tower this is usually a a uh a large Tower and gate at the front of the temple um sometimes separated from the main temple building sometimes it's it's absolutely massive sometimes even bigger than the temples themselves it's uh associated with uh a lot of more Southern Indian temples but a lot of temples have it and the idea of this gate transcends sort of all of the temples and again this this gate is this transition from the secular world through to the sacred so crossing the threshold of that gate is important you're going to see this over and over again that every piece as I mentioned has some sort of symbolism attached to it the next term Shikara and we're seeing it right here Shikara is or I'm going to use that term Shakara throughout this class it's also called the Viana depending on what part of India you in Shikara is for the north viman for the South I'm going to try not to try not to get that too confusing but this is the main tower of the temple and here we see it it's that main tow Tower it also this is the axis Mundi right so that Shikara axis Mundi those two sort of go together the Shakara is when we're talking about the architecture access Mund and the idea of that connection right um through understanding these towers we're able ble to sort of place this architecture where it is regionally so we're going to see a few different ways in which it looks and we'll get to that um but it's sort of always in these temples right and it's a very it it's something that's just always part of these Hindu temples uh the next part and we'll see more of this too is the mandapa this is a pillared hall uh Hall filled with columns now we saw something very much like that in Egypt these are not related to each other except in what they kind of do and this provides the sort of dark dense large interior space which once again is is tempering this this movement from the outside world to the inside World from the profane to the sacred right it's happening again this is usually sits right in front of probably the most important space of the temple which is the garbag GHA the garbag GHA is the inner sanctuary of these temples and this space it's it's the innermost space it's usually quite dark and in the case of Hindu temples usually holds an idol that is of the god that the temple is dedicated to and it's sort of a protective space protecting that God uh and in a lot of cases this is a space that uh Outsiders don't really make it all the way into right except for um for monks right now around that space and in these temples there's also uh a circum ambulatory path that's a like a $13 word the the the Hindu word for it and this is one that I always have trouble with uh produ patha now this circum ambulatory break that word down that means walking in a circle is a space specifically where you can walk uh around around the sanctuary for praying right it's movement in a circle around around the space now this is important um because circles um octagons symmetry these are all geometric terms that that rule these buildings as well to the point that we actually have a name for the type of geometry used for Designing these buildings it's called the vistu perusia Mandela the sacred geometries now again these are a ton of terms that I don't want to to get you you know too overwhelmed by the terminology except for the fact that you should know that each one of these things has been codified and we've been talking about that this this whole class is like that's that's one of those things that as Architects we do right we we're not just building these buildings but there's a a deep planning that happens and to do that planning we must name things and in the case which which really sets off this architecture from a lot of what we've seen is that every single one of these things has uh a spiritual or a sacred tie to it so every piece of the architecture has sort of a sacred meaning to it right now the sacred geometry you'll you'll start to pick up on it is sort of there's many many parts to it um and it it it has ratios and everything that again we're not going to we're not getting into the measurements of everything but thinking about symmetry thinking about processions of space thinking about the linking of geometries and shapes and forms is is is really intense through all of this the other part of it that uh you know obviously will stand out is essentially the adornment and the ornament of all of these so let's actually get into uh some of some of the temples um uh this is kandara karia uh Temple this is sort of North uh North Central India um this is in What's called the nagara Style again I'm putting a lot of terminology on it but know that this is the northern style of uh of Temple right the northern style of Indian temples so this was built you can see the date uh at about you know 1,000 in that in the first 100 years after 1,000 it's uh one of the best examples uh from this period which is sort of considered the Medieval Time of India right uh it's the chief deity that's associated with it is Shiva and we're going to get into what that sort of plays with but it's a 100 it's 100 fet tall making at the time right we've been looking at some of the taller buildings in the world this was a very very tall building for the time period right uh it sits on a massive plinth which we can see here the plinth being sort of the giant flat uh uh stand in which is the building that that term plinth is one that we use to this day right and it has sort of three main uh main Halls the mandapas right leading in to uh leading into the to the garaga in the center and in that Center oh sorry we can actually see sort of the plan of this right here we see these andap there's another sort of gate before we get into to this the garaga here and then here you see in the red the circum ulatory space which is out again it's outside of that tiny Sanctuary but it's it's a space where we can move around right inside of of this Temple and this isn't exactly what's in this Temple but this is something that you would find in this Temple are these types of idols and this is the Shiva linga and without being too graphic this is a phallic symbol which is used to represent Shiva right it is an idol in the place of him right so you would see a large statue like this sitting in the middle of the of the sanctuary right and this this symbol just like in a lot of religious uh in a lot of religions is essentially uh a standin for the God right here we see the outside of the temple itself and you'll notice and we can start to see it that the entire uh Stone building is covered in reliefs right we've talked about reliefs we talked about it with Greeks um where it's statue statuary that and sculpture that is that is on the surface of the stone right and Nobody Does it Better Than Hindu temples right and they're absolutely positively covered in statues now what are these so in a lot of cases they are telling the stories of the gods they are also often telling the stories of uh the people who built temples they sort of write themselves into the architecture so often the you know the the royalty of the time who paying for these for these temples are writing themselves into the story of the temple now in a lot of cases throughout history these uh the leader you know leaders of the time consider themselves like demigods so they belong in the temple right as part of the temple because they find themsel they themselves consider themselves to be sort of maybe not at the level of the Gods but working in that direction right and by putting themselves on the temple are showing their piety right here we can see some of these sculptures and again not to be overly graphic in this class not safe for work the topics even in this case we see sort of uh sexual acts from the sutras alongside Gods alongside courtiers in sort of this style that we see from from the period and the entire building is covered in this right now we're seeing what the southern temples look like and I think you know at a quick glance we're like okay what's they're very there's there real similarities I think the easiest way to sort of understand the difference at least formally is that within Northern temples we have what's sort of always called the The Beehive shape sort of the smooth building and in the South uh which is called the dravid style is these more pyramid style shapes right uh with the straighter walls but the building nonetheless has all of the the same Parts they're just stylistically slightly different and you'll see this is absolutely covered in sculptures as well right here we see um uh see the temple from another angle built around the same time this one is much larger though this is this Temple uh which again my pronunciation of it briad D war is 27 ft tall right this a massive 20 story building uh being built 1,000 years ago um again following all of the same the same rules of symmetry bilateral symmetry right here we can see the entry into the Halls beforehand uh and this one will would also have a a shivalinga in the middle or does right I think it's important you know what we've looked at so far in this class and I should you know make a point to you know acknowledge this is that when we're looking at Egypt and we're looking at Greece and Rome their religions if there are people still worshiping ofid and Zeus they are there are not many right um and they're not the the the ideas of those times and sort of the symbolism were always sort of deciphering it trying to understand it and in this case we know the most of most of what we're going to look at except in one very one or two uh instan says these have been temples non-stop continuously occupied for the last 10,000 years now there are very few other religions even other old religions that have that sort of continuity right of of building either uh obviously there's other older relig old religions that are over a thousand years old right but many of their buildings have been destroyed through War destroyed through any other reasons or they just were never built to last this long so with the Hindu buildings uh we're we we have this wonderful connection this this unbroken line going all the way back to when they were built so we we do know quite a bit about them uh and just because of the fact that India has had um an extremely rich written history like we there's there's writing there's text that tells us so much about these right so here we see with here we see that text right here we have the text literally on the building telling us what we're supposed to know not just about the building but about the ideas and beliefs that surround this building right you can this this idea that you can sort of read in this case literally read the building is going to continue through other cultures as well but I don't think it's anywhere nearly as powerful as with these temples one a lot of them have text on them so we can literally read it but otherwise they're covered in statuary and we know who we know who the figures are in a lot of these um we have written texts like written text of who they are so we can just sort of go around and decipher everything that's going on which is rare with buildings this old right now that doesn't mean that we don't uh that there isn't information that was lost but this level of sort of deep understanding and deep use of these buildings is pretty rare in our world anywhere architecture textually and if only for that reason these buildings become really important to sort of human history outside of India as well right so here we see more of the statute the statuary so you can sort of see the style if you're interested in um in Indian art at least in the past when I again so old but when I was a student at wwm uh there were wonderful class on this that I took and it's it's absolutely enlightening uh to to learn about how you can actually read these temples right so along with sort of the traditional temples right which really you know got started you know a bit before the 1000 era uh and sort of have continued to get built another and and obviously Hindu temples are are still built there's another architectural uh site with sites within India that aren't built anymore but are also extremely spectacular and these are the stepwells um these sometimes are called uh beis or vs or Pasar like again we're going to use the term stepwell it's for for our sakes for pronunciation but essentially what these are are inverted temples that have a very practical a very practical use so once again we have this idea of an AIS Mundi right this sort of line that has to do with that that can be read through its Symmetry and height and in this case depth going straight down through the site um but essentially these are are are voids of upside down pyramids right they kind of like step P like the the void in which like you could pull a pyramid out of this or you could you could pull one of those Towers out of this so it's a complete inversion of it now like I said they had a practical use though they're Wells um or or maybe sistern is a better term to use so during a monsoon season uh many of these are found in uh sort of Northwest India in or very arid parts of India but there are there's quite a few of them in other dry parts of the country that during the monso season they would fill up with water um and they would bring water to them from River rivers and everything like that and they would hold water for dry seasons right and they were a place where uh you know pilgrims could come where the public could meet where uh they were sort of a social slash uh you know cooler place you know they're just cooler because of the water cooler place for people to rest and then they usually also include a temple a temple itself like a more formal Temple and right now we're looking at the Temple part of uh this is Rani kav the The Queen's stepwell uh the Temple part of of this stepwell they'd often Al also have sort of space where sort of royalty could be segregated from everybody else but still enjoy the step well itself or still still have Ceremonies for the well but it was like a space just for the royalty and these were you know these were used they were built again it's 11th century so it's still around 1,000 again around the same time so there's this great amount of building of of Epic building that is happening um across India at the time um these now these have a few things that just sort of what what I find really fascinating about these is they produ they're a space that is sort of impressive in its own right but unlike sort of towers and normal temples that we see which we can relate to pyramids or Greek temples or Christian churches or mosques like that idea of you know this Monumental structure on the landscape these happening which happen completely underground produce a space that I think you could argue is sort of sublime right through its Symmetry and through its repetition which we see uh here we can see the Symmetry and then the repetition of uh the stairs this is sort of uh another another section that we don't see in this last photo right and these are extremely deep this this one itself is uh is uh about 100 fet deep right uh it's about seven stories deep um also absolutely uh covered in statuary uh that's you know religious and sort of the authoritarian the the owner the the Builders of it would carve themselves into these buildings as well um the this one the queen St Sewell includes over 1,500 statues or sort of each one of these statues and this one's sort of notable it was built by a by uh you know by an 11th century Queen to um to commemorate uh her husband who had died so she built instead of building a big Temple she built a stepwell again sort of no even even in in this sort of what's supposed to be sort of a practical space a space of function um religion is is not separated at all in fact it's sort of layered on it in sort of beautiful ways right um it's these stells though um you know they're not I don't think they're really used today in the same same way there may be some don't say that none of them are I I can't speak to that these ones are not now these are sort of UNESCO world heritage sites they're still sites of pilgrimage they're still sites where sort of religious things can happen and do happen excuse me um uh but these all these were uh harder to Main maintained than the than the other temples so some of them have fallen into disuse I just love it sorry I just wanted to show this amazing uh statue of Durga um and this one which is the largest one uh the Chad Chad bori this is in rajastan it's a it's a little bit older 9th century and this one was uh because of sort of how dams and sort of new irrigation and sort of more contemporary things this one was actually completely filled with water for a very long time and it was only until the 1980s when it was excavated but essentially they drained it to get it back down to a height that works so um but this one is is is epic right um it goes 100t down into the into the ground there's 3500 steps right and you're you're looking at it and you're like I don't think they need that many stairs right there's no reason but again the stairs here the stairs in themselves become a motif a geometric Motif uh that has to once again reinforce sort of the Symmetry um the sublime of the space and here we can take I think we have some more look um more looks that also is they there's so many that they get to the level of being pattern right and we can we can just see that there's the level of sort of care beyond just the function of the space uh you know making this be you know this this sort of unbelievable space right um where you know you would be you know mov moving you would go through a gate and come in here and then be sort of faced with this space unlike anything you had ever seen right this epic this epic well right um again sort of there's steps on three sides sort of in this inverted pyramid shape and then on the other side there's there's a sort of a palace and Temple on the fourth face right I think we can see some more photos of these stairs in this sort of amazing Sublime it's hard not to use that word when Des describing this something that's sort of overwhelming in its near uncanny Perfection right this sort of relentlessness of space now the Hindu stuff is is all over India it's all it's all over it is also in Southeast Asia and we're going to jump over to Southeast as are sort of pivoting on this project itself so this jumps backwards a little bit so Hinduism we have record of it going back you know for over 4,000 years um it doesn't Hinduism doesn't have sort of a Founder uh as a lot of religions do right there's not a central figure um so we don't its Beginnings sort of are developing out of just sort of indigenous religions of of the of its space and just sort of growing and growing and amalgamating from from different gods from different parts of of the region right now Buddhism though the other major religion in the area uh in the region sort of does have a start right so without getting too much into the philosophy of Buddhism um but giving you enough that you can understand that the the architecture also in a similar way as the H as the Hindu temples do reflects the religion uh in a very sort of direct way that we can look at it and understand something about the religion and something about um um the ideas that are driving the form and space uh and effort that's put into the buildings so Buddhism is started as an idea by uh by sarta who was generally believed and known to be a historical person in the sixth and fifth century who became enlightened and became the Buddha the awakened one or the enlightened one right and he's he's moving around India Northern India throughout his life um and really as a philosopher like spreading ideas is about Enlightenment sort of leaving oneself like leaving uh our physical form to uh leaving our physical form through the use of meditation but also talking about sort of compassion and kindness and these are the things that are sort of at the heart of Buddhism to this day so again another religion that sort of goes forward now Buddhism and and Hinduism are sort of closely tied as well and sometimes buddh is shown or understood as being sort of an avatar for Vishnu a Hindu god um but they are separate right and we're going to see a little bit of things where it like buildings sort of split back and forth move back and forth between the religions and are associated with one than the other um but understand that they're there are differences and the architecture shows these differences in especially in how they're used right so Buddhist architecture can be found all over India all over southeast Asia but also and we'll get to this when we get to the weeks on it in other parts of East Asia so China and and Japan and Korea right where Buddhism has spread more prolifically today we're just going to be looking at India and Southeast Asia so Budd is around 6 and fth Century BCE so 5 600 years before the switch as we call it but really there weren't you know temples or buildings built much built at that time it took nearly s or 800 years until sort of this building or a building in this spot then eventually this building and was built and this is the great stupa uh at sanchi sanchi is again in sort of North Central India uh and this is from about you know two this is from 300 BC so this is a few hundred years after after Buddha was alive uh so this is an extremely old building that sort of has survived and has been rebuilt a few times as it would be but here we're seeing [Music] um we're seeing some of you know some similar ideas that that propagate that come up in in the Hindu AR right we see the major gate and a lot of these stupas and again a stupa as I mentioned in the beginning is a space that um often houses relics which are sometimes used in religious rights um or but often are are just stored here um we see the gates here we see more than one there's often four Gates that are going in the cardinal directions uh we see the intense this is bilateral symmetry as in it's it's symmetrical in more than one direction and we'll see this again and again we also see the idea of the AIS Mundy right here at the base inside of of this would be again another uh uh another chamber that uh that would hold hold relics and again on the on this case on the outside we see another space for circum circum circum circum ulatory space another space for for walking in circles right walking in circles around it right so we see those that there's these moments that that are sort of uh reminiscent of what's happening in Hindu architecture but happening in Buddhist architecture right few differences though right so this this is in the round more it doesn't have the dire actionality um but that that will come into come again because they're so interlocked they sort of come in and come out of uh these in in weavings between Buddhism and Hinduism right now this is still in India where Buddhism was founded but Buddhism and Hind Hinduism both were exported from India to Southeast Asia now when we talk about southeast Asia we're talking about the modern countries of Cambodia Vietnam Thailand La Myanmar um some called sometimes called Burma depending on who's ruling it Indonesia parts of Indonesia and the Philip parts of the Philippines but this whole area where essentially I think another billion people live right it's one of the densest populated parts of the world as well um and once again the architecture that's happening here is heavily affected by the people that were already there but in this case we get uh we get influence coming from India um and then sort of mostly around sort of the the the first century CE right so it's a few hundred years after that last stupa we saw and it's mostly coming uh it's coming with coming both Hinduism and Buddhism at the same time right but they're also getting influences from China which we'll take a look and we'll see sort of where that fits in right which will make maybe a little bit more sense when we look at Chinese architecture but this there's so many people coming to these crossroads right right here in Southeast Asia now um along with sort of people coming to trade and Priests and Merchants and sort of everything that's happening here from India uh there's Monumental just absolutely massive temples being built and we're looking at one of them right now and I'll get into it in a sec so we're seeing temples and Su is being built across southeast Asia and for you know this has continued to this day as well now this Temple and here we see Buddhist monks in the foreground is Anor wat which has gone by a lot of different names throughout history but we it's near the city of Ancor we call it Ancor wat it is in pres present day Cambodia it's uh it's generally considered sort of the the it's often called the city of temples because of the fact here we can see you can tell that it's sort of massive this is you know off in the distance but its actual size is sort of mind-blowing it's um the temple itself or sort of the temples itself the building parts are here but there's also this entire space is considered part of the complex making this which is generally considered the largest religious site in the entire world um the mode itself is is over 3 mil long um there's a 2 Mile wall that goes around it um and it's what's what's amazing even for its size this this this site too was also essentially abandoned for a very long time for a few reasons so it was originally built um you know this has it at 11 I have it written as 1150 we know which king built it um we know a lot you know some like there's there's records of it being being built but within only 253 years uh after there was some Wars uh it actually becomes a Buddhist site so it's built as a Hindu temple but then it becomes a Buddhist temple and it essentially stays the Buddhist temple on and off throughout history um but by sort of the 1500s so just a few hundred years later it's mostly abandoned um now there are still sort of Buddhists there's they've been finding sort of uh evidence that there were even that there were Buddhist monks living here just sort of encampments it's such a huge space that you know um there was like Villages that were built inside of here of uh of everything from like Japanese monks to you know other monks from other other parts of southeast Asia that were still coming here but it wasn't it wasn't sort of maintained as a as a temple um it wasn't until sort of more recent times in the last 100 years that it's it's really been excavated again much of it had been overgrown excavated again and now it has become one I mean it's probably the largest tourist attraction in all of Cambodia um it is absolutely covered in statues oh here sorry do want to go over the map so here we see again um the axial symmetry right so this is sort of the entire site we see the moat going around and then all those buildings we were seeing those giant buildings are all just inside of this little square right here so the this you know like each one of these is a half mile long or so um and here's sort of the wall surrounding in here we see the major Gates Right that Crossing in this case the gate the moat itself works as a wall or a gate again this passage from being in sort of a profane space to an entire sort of holy space on the inside up close we can see um see the the temple itself or I should say temples I think it's too too big to just call one Temple but the temple itself self with extremely you know elaborate walls and and and Halls all the way again to the central AIS Mundi in the center right so again built built as a Hindu temple but almost immediately becoming a Buddhist space right um the entire the entire uh Campus of buildings is covered and just elaborate statues uh telling the story of uh of the ramayana which is sort of a a great epic um but again this is another one where like stories of of the of the king who built it are carved in carved all over the place as well but we don't actually know what all of the carving carving means in this one because there are faces and things that don't it's sort of gone back and forth with who's controlled it and who added to it and took away from it and destroyed it that we we don't know everything about this one unlike some of the Indian ones that have sort of had this long line of History that's that's very legible right so here we see what it looks like today right so here we have monks and the entire thing I mean it's uh of of a a space that is just sort of mindblowing in so many ways we see you know the intricacy of just parts of it that are completely in Ruins that are still just so sort of spectacular and then the the entire thing covered in like I'm guessing these are giant Banyon trees right um the root system of trees that have grown across this right so this is a great deal of Ruin it's an it's it's an extremely active archaeological site um but but it has once again become a religious site back and forth right so we see see some of the statuary around it amazingly there are these giant faces uh covering huge portions the spires themselves are covered in these huge faces um for scale I think each one of these is like 15 or 20 ft tall now these these do I have another another image of no here I don't think we can see the faces on this one this is the central tower ums we'll get to that um but these these faces are are part of what's sort of mysterious it's you know it's often it's just like oh these are all of Buddha um because they sort of fit the style that Buddha is often carved in um but we know that the it wasn't built as a Buddhist temple so it's likely not Buddha himself but because of sort of that interplay between Hinduism and Buddhism we also can't say that it it wasn't Buddha as well right um a lot of people think that it was um there there's there's thoughts that it's uh that it's the king that built it uh another bodh SATA like sort of another religious leader um but these faces face in all different directions right uh looking out over the landscape uh and just really giving you an idea of just sort of the epicness of this I want to take another look right that's all happening in in what seem in that those giant everything is happening in this little tiny space right so here we see uh the the central tower and and sort of its elaborate carvings as well which if sort of not again uh this is in the middle of the Jungle this wet climate has has been degraded but is still still sort of Epic in so many ways now I said we're going to move to sort of one of the the newest buildings that uh that actually that we're probably going to look at in the entire class because this was built uh in the 1700s but I wanted to to to draw that line again and reinforce that idea that there's sort of this line that can be on it's it's that despite places like Anor Watt and sort of the stepwells that weren't haven't continuously been uh been occupied or used that there is still this unbroken line of Hinduism and Buddhism that just absolutely permeates all of Southeast Asia and India right so uh this is wat FR definitely saying that wrong or what's normally referred to in the West as the Temple of the emerald Buddha now this is part of uh the the Royal Palace in Bangkok so of of a lot of what we looked at today this is well I don't think visiting within this Temple is completely easy but you may be able to visit this if you go to Bangkok some of these getting to Anor wat is is you can do it but it's it's a trip into Central camp AA uh which I hope you all get the chance to do today I'd love to do it I've wanted to go to encor wat for since I first learned about it um and some of the other temples are a bit more remote and the step wheels are harder to get to but there's definitely a chance that some of you are going to probably go to Bangkok sometime in your life to Thailand and here's one that you'll at least be able to see parts of right so this is um this Temple was it's it's again a huge Temple complex and we can see that there's sort of these these smaller buildings which in some cases are individual stupas right holding relics um but there are also we're seeing what we're kind of seeing here is a library which is holding texts ancient texts uh for study um we're seeing uh other uh Temple buildings which are uh where where ceremony is happening and this is the space where sort of the the kings of the kings of Thailand in the region had hold all of their religious rights like this is where all coronations happen for the last few hundred years and um and we're sort of the the the center this is sort of the center of Buddhism in Thailand right so um we can get a better look here now the style of this we see is incredibly different right and this is showing some of this influence not from India as much but also coming from the north from China right and once we look at China you'll sort of start to see some of those cues but these incred these sort of incredible pitched roofs with these are we'd call these finals uh and the Really elaborate capitals Right is coming from more from East Asia than from from India right but some of the some things just are some things are that continuation where everything is covered in ornament right we see statuary on everything but this is built much much later than those other buildings right um this is not all Stone um there's wood being used here whereas a lot of these other temples we've looked at are are all carved into stone um and that it's not that there wasn't wood being used in India or hasn't been wood being used in India but the tradition of building temples out of wood uh in particular often coming from Buddhists Buddhism coming coming back down from China right after being spread from India to China and then back down to Southeast Asia here we see the emerald Buddha right he's the this entire complex is named after this uh Buddha it's they don't let people come in here and do tests on it but it's it's believed to be Jade he's about 2 feet tall but here we're also seeing this sort of idea of the exis Mundy running through this statue the Statue sits right in the center of the complex and here we see uh sort of this this is the main stupa right so we can look back and I'll flip back to show you this extremely early stupa one of the earliest and largest right in India so this is 2,000 years earlier and then when we get to this final one this final image now it's changed right but there's still sort of a dome form by aial symmetry the idea of the axis Mundy coming through the center this is holding relics as well and this one actually has just as an as an an in interesting aside over each one of these Gates these doors that go into the reliquary on the inside is an exact replica of itself over each one of the doors right we see and then the entire thing currently is covered in Gold Leaf it's it's it's completely covered in Gold um we know over the years like this finish has been uh has been changed it was covered in Gold tiles that were imported from Venice of all places uh when it was built or like around the time it was built so now we're seeing sort of materials moving across the world to get to a point where we can build something sort of really spectacular like this right where the again influences from outside are coming in but then being uh manifest in something that is that is very that that the people of Thailand would tell you is is extremely Thai right in in this great stupa so those are the slides I have for you today and I just wanted to like again go back over and think about sort of some of the things we've seen now as a survey class every everything I've shown you today each one of these projects and at least the few sections right of Hindu temples uh and Buddhist stupas particular sort of those and India versus southeast Asia each one of those really needs an entire semester right because or an entire PhD you can spend if any of these interest you you could spend your entire life studying any one of these of these sites right much like with with uh with everything we're going to look at in this case but in these cases there's so much history with each one of them that there's so much there's so much inscribed into each one of them that you could spend uh you could spend a lifetime just focusing on the statuary on the outside of one of these temples right when we're when we're looking at this you can spend your lifetime working on this so the richness of this is hard to get into one class so I just wanted to give you all uh you know an idea of a place for you to sort of enter into the conversation of these but there's a few takeaways that just I don't want you to miss one is that is this un un sort of unbroken line of development of temples and stupas that goes back at least 2,000 years for most of it from religions that are in Buddhism about 2500 years old to Hinduism which stretches back as far back as we're going to go as humans or as as far back as we're going to go back as as civilization right so this this unbroken line that's a development of an architecture that over that time has when we talk about the codification right the the inscribing of of of architectural pieces into code has become so unbelievably refined over all of that time that each individual every single layer of every piece of this has meaning right and that in itself is an architectural idea that is not Universal right with the Greeks when we were looking at it there was this idea that there was sort of Stories being told on the freeze there were um there were reasons and proportions being used but a lot of that had to do with and we believe with beauty now overall as a whole there was sort of a symbolism and an iconography to it but it wasn't that each little bit told us some sort of religious had some sort of religious meeting mostly it was you know uh about sort of the beauty of it when we looked at Egypt a lot of the buildings we can read especially if they were covered in hieroglyphics but again those really older that those older temples and uh the pyramids and burial uh spaces of burial they were meant they they're not legible in the same way right again they're playing with proportion and shape and size but they're they're really there as sort of as a whole as an icon of whatever they're supposed to represent now that's that idea of sort of this very clear icon which you don't have to read the pyramid to know that the guy that's buried inside or supposed to be buried inside was important in these cases each one of these projects is something that all of these pieces tell us the stories about what these what these people were what the What mattered to them about faith about you know about ceremony about movement through space right and that's that's that's sort of one of the really rich things about about this about this entire era of architecture and sort of lineage of this part of the world that is super unique to this this part of the world we will uh we will eventually see some more architecture that you can read where the parts have meaning but never again in in no other place does it come close to like this sort of uh this sort of symbolism right where there's things happening so high up on this building that we you know that you could climb up this and read each part of this right so um that's a very quick overview I just feel like I'm just not I'm not going to do justice to any one of these weeks but that's a very quick overview of a very complex and long history uh of of a region that affects you know a fifth of our world that all live and live with these temples and live to this day with this architecture at least um to some degree right so next week we're going to go to something so different than everything we've looked at when we come here to North America to ideologies that are that are so unbelievably different that there's just there's just not a translation between the two right and uh things get interesting and the idea of meaning and permanence are sort of out the window in a very real way uh compared to what we're looking at at this week so look forward to that thank you very much uh we'll see you next week when we come to North America to look at indigenous architecture all right thanks a lot see you next week