PHNOM SANTUK

The sacred mountain is about 150 km from Phnom Penh (and about Kompong Thom). The bedrock is made of sandstone. This stone, easy to work, has been utilsée by artists for centuries. A brahmanique shrine was once built on the summit, but in the second half of the th century it placed a Buddhist pagoda in the Small vehicle. We climb at the Phnom Santuk Summit by an easy road on the south slope and then follow the ridge line. On the plateau, large blocks of sandstone were carved from the ritual representations of Buddha, meditator in the forest, teaching his doctrine, surrounded by his disciples and accessing Nirvana. This last attitude of the eternal rest is visible in three long bas-reliefs of ten meters long. Some brahmanic sculptures, respected by Buddhists, still remain, among them three superimposed registers. In the highest, one distinguishes a god from a heavenly throne worn by garouda and a multiple-arm deity sitting on an elephant. Nearby, a 3 m high stupa accommodate a relic relic made from Ceylon in the th century. A wall of ancient bricks surrounds the vihara, whose eastern entrance is guarded by lions in front of this monastery, a carved imprint of the Buddha's foot in the style of the Adam's peak in Ceylon. More to the east, a rectangular basin of 10 m carved in the rock. The summit of Phnom Santuk, very beautiful view on the vast plains to the southeast, to the relief of Phnom Tuk Ame. In one of the recent buildings built by the monks, you can see a collection of antique pottery and a "magic" stone of about kilos floating in an aquarium.