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To these barays were added relatively smaller basins with stony banks,
called sras (see our chapter « Sra Srang », often located close to a temple.
Furthermore water was also stocked in the large moats surrounding a lot of
temples (Bakong) . This is a Khmer innovation regarding the classical Indian
temples schemes, which is a powerful symbol but was also an important
arrangement for agriculture.
The “3 or 4 rice harvests a year” noted by Tcheou Ta Kouan, the 13th century
Chinese emissary, meant that the Khmers were engaged in irrigated rice
agriculture.
A network of canals laid out in a rectangular grid were part of a
hydrological system on the scale of those instituted by civilisations at
Babylone (Egypt) and pre-Colombian Mexico.
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Today, the
topography of Angkor region is well-known, not only to
ground observations but also thanks to satellite views.
Indeed, the broad lines of the huge hydraulic Angkorian
system as well as the limits of the flooded zones around
the Tonlé Sap are particularly visible on those
satellite photos. |
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The dam bridges
The whole Angkorian economical system did mainly rely on well-controlled
irrigation system. The Empire could not survive and the power of the king
could not be solidified in case of failure of the system.
The conjunction of human and political adverse factors during the 13th
century seems to have led the Khmers engineers to modify their approach of
the irrigation problem. Their new approach is linked to the occurrence of
different changes which were responsible of the weakening of the Khmer
empire after the reign of Jayavarman VII. Water is no more collected and
re-distributed in a central administration but belongs to the owner of the
land where the river is flowing or where a dam bridge is built, it means
that the feudal lords but also the small local potentates.
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