My rambles come to an end at its starting-point. Now I penetrate the interior of the Wat. A vestibule leads to open courtyards, alleys, and shrines. In one sanctuary an assemblage of many statues lies scattered: it is the Shrine of the Thousand Buddhas. The place is torpid, environed by vague silence and undefined sadness. Under a covered gallery I find a flight of steps which lead to an upper floor. Here the light is poorer still, as befits the monastic chambers which lie around. The monks who lived here chose their habitation well. Once again I ascend an old stairway. It is set at an angle so close to vertical that the climb is dangerous and difficult. Moreover it is double the height of the last one. The old Khmers must have used ropes or wooden handrails to assist their exertions. By the light of barred windows I see the sign of the sacred serpent, symbol of eternity and mystic wisdom, again repeated on the walls; I discover that I have reached the highest storey.
The Wat is the best preserved and the least ruined of all the Khmer fanes. The Cambodian sculptors clearly worked on these walls after the blocks were already in position. They cut delicately and shallowly into the fine sandstone to make these polished low reliefs, and they worked so hard that hardly any available surface was left untouched. The long magnificently executed friezes of the ground floor, the rich columns, with hardly a stone left uncarved, of the other storeys now disappear, as though the sculptors had almost been forbidden to touch the highest sanctuary. Did the architects wish that worshippers should here have no attention diverted by the attractions of form, should put their whole mind into contemplation of that intangible Spirit which is without form?
-- Notebooks Category 15: The Orient > Chapter 5 : Ceylon, Angkor Wat, Burma, Java > # 55
