Editing Ta Prohm (section)

==The site==
[[File:Taprohmplan10.png|thumb|600px|center|Plan of the temple, showing the relative locations of the main features.]]
[[File:Ta Phrom, Angkor, Camboya, 2013-08-16, DD 47.JPG|thumb|150px|right|Bas relief on Ta Prohm wall]]
[[File:AsceticTaProhm.jpg|thumb|160px|right|A bas-relief over an entrance at Ta Prohm includes this intense meditating or praying figure.]]
[[File:Dinosaur carving at Ta Prohm temple, Siem Reap, Cambodia (5534467622).jpg|thumb|right|The "[[dinosaur of Ta Prohm]]", one of the reliefs of the temple popular in [[pseudoscience]]]]

===Layout===
The design of Ta Prohm is that of a typical "flat" Khmer temple, as opposed to a temple-pyramid or [[Khmer architecture#Temple mountain|temple-mountain]], the inner levels of which are higher than the outer. Five rectangular [[Architecture of Cambodia#Enclosure|enclosing wall]]s surround a [[Architecture of Cambodia#Central sanctuary|central sanctuary]].  The sanctuary is centered around the stone face of [[Prajnaparamita]], the personification of wisdom, modeled after the king's mother.<ref name=ao/> Like most Khmer temples, Ta Prohm is oriented to the east, so the temple proper is set back to the west along an elongated east–west axis. The outer wall of 1000 by 650 metres encloses an area of 650,000 square metres that at one time would have been the site of a substantial town, but that is now largely forested. There are entrance [[Gopuram|gopuras]] at each of the [[cardinal point]]s, although access today is now only possible from the east and west. In the 13th century, face towers similar to those found at the [[Bayon]] were added to the gopuras. Some of the face towers have collapsed. At one time, moats could be found inside and outside the fourth enclosure. The presence of two moats led some historians to speculate that the 12th/13th remain of Ta Prohm is an expansion of a more ancient Buddhist shrine on the same site.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jacques |first1=Claude |editor1-last=Bacus | editor1-first=Elisabeth A | editor2-last=Glover |editor2-first=Ian| editor3-last=Sharrock |editor3-first=Peter D | editor4-last=Guy | editor4-first=John |editor5-last=Pigott |editor5-first=Vincent C | title=Interpreting Southeast Asia's past: monument, image and text : selected papers from the 10th International Conference of the European Association of Southeast Asian Archaeologists |date=2008 |publisher=NUS Press | location=Singapore |isbn=9789971694050 |pages=3–8 |chapter=Chapter 1: Moats and Enclosure Walls of the Khmer Temples}}</ref>

The three inner enclosures of the temple proper are [[Architecture of Cambodia#Gallery|galleried]], while the corner towers of the first enclosure form a [[Architecture of Cambodia#Quincunx|quincunx]] with the tower of the central sanctuary. This basic plan is complicated for the visitor by the circuitous access necessitated by the temple's partially collapsed state, as well as by the large number of other buildings dotting the site, some of which represent later additions. The most substantial of these other buildings are the [[Architecture of Cambodia#Library|libraries]] in the southeast corners of the first and third enclosures; the satellite temples on the north and south sides of the third enclosure; the Hall of Dancers between the third and fourth eastern gopuras; and a [[Dharmasala|House of Fire]] east of the fourth eastern gopura.

===Representational art===
Ta Prohm does not have many narrative [[bas-relief]]s (as compared to Angkor Wat or Angkor Thom.){{Citation needed|reason=Not a clear source|date=February 2024}} At any rate, some depictions of scenes from Buddhist mythology do remain. One badly eroded bas-relief illustrates the "Great Departure" of [[Gautama Buddha|Siddhartha]], the future [[Gautama Buddha|Buddha]], from his father's palace.<ref>Glaize, p.145.</ref> The temple also features stone reliefs of [[Architecture of Cambodia#Apsara and devata|devata]]s (minor female deities), meditating monks or ascetics, and [[Architecture of Cambodia#Dvarapala|dvarapalas]] or temple guardians.

===Trees===
The trees growing out of the ruins are perhaps the most distinctive feature of Ta Prohm, and "have prompted more writers to descriptive excess than any other feature of Angkor."<ref name="Freeman and Jacques, p.136"/> Two species predominate, but sources disagree on their identification: the larger is either the silk-cotton tree (''[[Ceiba pentandra]]'') or thitpok ''[[Tetrameles nudiflora]]'',<ref name="dun">Dehra Dun, [http://www.tribuneindia.com/2008/20080614/nation.htm#8 "ASI to conserve trees at Cambodian temple"], 13 June 2008, ''The Tribune'', Chandigarh, India, accessed 2009-05-09</ref> and the smaller is either the [[strangler fig]] (''[[Ficus gibbosa]]'')<ref>Freeman and Jacques, p.137.</ref> or gold apple (''[[Diospyros decandra]]'').<ref name="dun" /> Angkor scholar [[Maurice Glaize]] observed, "On every side, in fantastic over-scale, the trunks of the silk-cotton trees soar skywards under a shadowy green canopy, their long spreading skirts trailing the ground and their endless roots coiling more like reptiles than plants."<ref>Glaize, pp.143-145.</ref>