FOR EIGHT CENTURIES this serene and seductive celestial dancer has graced the entrance to the temple of AngkorWat, holding promise ofthe imagined delights of heaven.Agedyet ageless, she represents, in the Khmer lore of the 12th century, "the one who goes through the wafer ofthe clouds." Throughout the great religious complex atAngkor, thousands ofthese delicately carved apsaras bearwitness to the glories of the Khmer Empire that ruled Indochinafor six centuries. Time mellowed her lines but left her beauty undiminished.

Then–in a shattering burst of gunfire–she became anothervictim of the senseless brutality and destruction that has plagued Cambodia, now Kampuchea, since 1970. This victim was of stone–most were not.

After the victory of the radical Khmer Rouge in April 1975, the victors, vengeful and full of hatred for fellow Khmer who had not shared their wartime jungle hardships– and driven by a Hitlerian fervor to purify their nation of foreign influences–launched a systematic slaughter and enslavement of their own people perhaps unmatched in history. Infouryears as many as three million died of starvation, disease, forced labor, or execution.

Even before this carnage, United States saturation bombingof suspected Viet Cong sanctuaries had killed thousands of Khmer.

Then in 1979 their historic enemy, the Vietnamese, swept through the battered nation and drove the oppressive government of Pol Pot* Khmer Rouge into the mountains along the Thai border. More suffering, more death. Through all thoseyears a tightveil of secrecy kept most of the sufferingirom the eyes of the world. But the invasion sent hundreds of thousands of Kampuchean refugees pouring into Thailand. Pictures of theiremaciated bodies shocked the world, evoking the horror of Nazi death camps.

Millions of people, wrenched by this continuing tragedy, contributed millions of dollars to help.

Many Khmer were saved and have returned home to a less oppressive government. Butviolence still stalks the country as Pol Potguerrillas and the non-Communistforces of Son Sane's Khmer People's National Liberation Front attack a common enemy–the present government and the 180,000-manVietnamese occupation force .

Recently the veil of secrecy has liftedslightly. Last fall three of us from NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC were permitted an extensive look at Vietnamese-controlled areas of Kampuchea–including thefabulous temple complex of Angkor, which has been virtually closed to the outside worldfora decade. It was my first visit since 1968,whenPrince Sihanouk's government still maintained a tenuous neutrality in war-ravaged Southeast Asia. That year a surplus of rice was harvested. At Angkor Wat a ballet company danced with the delicacy and grace of living apsaras, to the enjoyment of thousands oftourists. The countryside was green with life. What I now saw were mass graves, barrenfields, and a people trying to returnfrom hellon earth. Only children–and only afew–were dancing.

At Angkor, Peter White, photographer Dave Harvey, and I made–as tourist brochures used to say–the grand circuit, visiting most ofthe 72 majorstone and brick temples and monuments of Angkor. Despite rumors and exaggerated reports that the temples were demolished or severely damaged, we can report that, amazingly, they are unscathed by the years of war. Of all the apsaras atAngkor Wat itself, only this one is so extensively damaged. She had survived intact the 12th-century sacking by the sham and the 15th-century Siamese conquest, but not the recent chaos. Thiounn Prasith, Pol Pot's Democratic Kampuchean ambassador to the United Nations, recently told me that the mutilation was almost certainly the work of a Vietnamese soldier. Perhaps. Most likely it was just senseless vandalism.

Whoever did it, andfor whatever reason, the very defacing by the bullets of war make itfor me a memorial in stone to the horrors of the past decade.

After a thousand-year cycle of destruction, decay, and rebirth, the ancient complex of temples now desperately needs a renewal of the roving and expert preservation and reconstruction once lavished on it by Cambodia and France. That work has been halted for a decade. War, vandalism, and theft have scarred the temples superficially, but it is the implacable jungle that threatens their very existence.

In addition to the article that follows, the National Geographic Society with UNESCO is preparing a large-scale photographic exhibition that shows the glories of Angkor as it was–and as itappears today.

It is our plea to theforces that contendfor control in Kampuchea to demilitarizeAngkorand permit the work of saving and restoring this remarkable site to resume. If that comes to pass,

we can be sure that the glories of Angkor will survive. * * *

IN THE LANGUAGE of the ancient Khmer, and of the Khmer people of contemporary Kampuchea, Angkor means "the city" or "the capital." Geographically it denotes some 75 square miles of fertile plain between the Kulen Hills and the lake of Tonle Sap, where between the 9th and 13th centuries A.D. a dozen Khmer kings constructed successive capitals. These encompassed a sophisticated irrigation system that mastered the vagaries of monsoon rains and drought to grow rice enough, eventually, for a million inhabitants; and a multitude of major building complexes in laterite, brick, and sandstone, of which the gigantic temple that later became known as Angkor Wat is the largest and artistically most accomplished.

Altogether, these creations of great conquerors and artisans embodied an integrated concept of the universe rooted in myth and deep religious belief, and hence a combination of physical and spiritual grandeur found elsewhere only in ancient Greece and Egypt, among the Maya and Aztecs, and in the medieval Europe of the Gothic cathedrals. That is what Angkor was. Its brilliance began to fade in the 13th century.

In the 20th century, Angkor became a model of restoration. Modern archaeology and physical science retrieved from the earth and the jungle some of the world's most impressive monuments and preserved them in a setting of tropical greenery: a juxtaposition of disciplined works of man and wildly exuberant nature, dramatic yet harmonious, on a scale uniquely memorable. That is what Angkor was until a decade ago.

But what of Angkor now?

Warfare and political upheaval forced the last archaeologists and maintenance crews to leave in 1972. Since then art historians and museum directors around the globe have wondered–what's really been happening at Angkor? Reports from occasional visitors, allowed limited access for a day or two, spread conflicting impressions. Some said they saw no major damage. Others spoke of unattended temples eroded by the elements, smashed by artillery fire, despoiled by thieves. There were tales of decapitated statuary, of great sandstone heads bartered on the border of Thailand for their weight in salt, going secretly to rich collectors on other continents.

I had not been to Angkor since 1968. When I arrived recently for an extended visit, it was with considerable foreboding. On my first day I stand in the halfmile-long outer gallery of Angkor Wat, which houses a succession of bas-reliefs unparalleled in extent: eight panels' carved in sandstone, each more than six feet high and 160 to 300 feet long. They are among the highlights of Angkor. The panel before me depicts an allegory of creation: gods and demons churning a mythical Sea of Milk to produce ambrosia, the elixir of life (preceding foldout). It's a theme from the sacred literature of the Hindus, for the brilliant civilization of the ancient Khmer has its antecedents in India.

In the time of the Roman Empire, when trade between India and the Mediterranean reached a peak, Indian merchants seeking more gold and gems, sandalwood, spices, and drugs sent ships to Southeast Asia and established themselves in trading settlements. Over the centuries these peaceful traders were assimilated by the Khmer, who thus acquired Sanskrit writing and the astronomy, mathematics, technology, and religions of India, blending these with elements of their earlier culture.

And so it is that the Khmer, in a sense, owe their existence as a nation to India, as the French do to the Roman occupation, and that the builders of Angkor, steeped in Hindu cosmology, dedicated their temples to Siva, Brahma, and Vishnu.

In the Kulen Hills they carved a riverbed with thousands of lingas, phallic symbols of Siva's creative power, to sanctify the waters that irrigate the Angkor plain. The temples–Phnom Bakheng, Baphoon, Angkor Wat–model the universe: An enclosing quadrangle delineates the earth bounded by mountain chains with limitless oceans beyond. In the center rises Mount Meru, the celestial abode of the gods, who like all else are subject to interminable cycles of destruction and creation.

The very dimensions of Angkor Wat are allegories. The American art historian Eleanor Mannikka calculated that the 617-foot length of the bridge over the moat, when measured in Khmer hat, corresponds to the 432,000 years of an age of decadence; that the 2,469 feet between the first step of the bridge and the threshold of the temple's center represent the 1,728,000 years of a golden age. A Khmer Brahman of the early 12th century, passing those bas-reliefs and successive terraces, she writes, would have stepped off many more such meaningful measures before entering at last the central tower's dim sanctuary, as Suryavarman II may have done for the first timein 1131, to face the great image of Vishnu. There, "Time stops, divinity and space merge and a long numerical journey ends in infinity. "

That Vishnu image vanished long ago. Now, in the central tower, I see five Buddhas. They reflect a chain of profound changes begun in the late 12th century.

The Cham, sometime vassals of the Khmer, came from the east and sacked Angkor in 1177. It was a fateful shock. Eventually King Jayavarman VII took his revenge, and then turned to rebuilding Angkor. The Hindu gods had failed as protectors. Jayavarman did not abolish their worship, but he dedicated his new capital–Angkor Thom, "the great city," surrounded by an eightmile moat 300 feet wide–to a new protector, also derived from India: the Buddha.

The largest monument of Jayavarman VII, the Bayon, in the center of Angkor Thom, bears 216 faces of an omnipresent deity. It is another highlight of Khmer artistry.

The last Sanskrit inscription from Angkor dates from 1327; the first in Pali, the Indian dialect of Buddhist scripture, from 1309. And by the 16th century the city with the Sanskrit name Yasodharapura had acquired the Khmer appellation Angkor. That glorious temple became known as Angkor Wat–a wet being a Buddhist monastery.

I sweat in the humidity and the searing sun. Why is the Sea of Milk gallery's roof missing? It was dismantled by the Angkor Conservancy in 1969. Hundreds of sandstone blocks lie nearby, neatly numbered. The bas-relief on the wall shows dark splotches. I have come face to face with some of Angkor's fundamental problems.

The first is structural. For their monuments' foundations, the Khmer made trenches filled with fine sand that allowed their mortarless walls to be perfectly level, resting on laterite slabs put over the sand. After centuries of rain seeping down, the sand shifts, the temple settles and cracks.

Those perfectly fitted sandstone blocks also are prone to trouble. Sandstone consists of hard mineral particles in a relatively soft alluvial paste, mostly clay. Centuries of rainwater passing through will dissolve this paste. The block disintegrates. What had been supported will cave in.

The second problem is biochemical, a kind of skin disease. Water dripping down from the vaults and seeping up from the soil by capillary action contains organic compounds, often including sulfur. When water enters a stone and passes out again, by evaporation, sulfur is deposited on the stone's face. Bacteria come and oxidize that sulfur, altering the carving.

To shore up the temples and to stop the damaging transmigration of water through the sandstone, the Angkor Conservancy chose a drastic two-step remedy. First, dismantling. Then complete reconstruction, of the painstaking sort first called anastylosis by the 1 9th-century restorers of the Acropolis; it means reconstruction of a monument with its original materials, adding new materials only as absolutely necessary.

At Angkor this has meant new foundations of concrete, so the walls will be stable and no water can seep up. New interior walls of concrete, behind brick or sandstone facing. And drains, to catch the rainwater and carry it outside.

Much of this work has been completed– at the Baphnon, at Prasat Kravanh, in parts of Angkor Wat. The Sea of Milk gallery has its new foundation and drains. But before the roof could be reconstructed, the time of the Angkor Conservancy was over.

Sponsored by the French government, the Conservancy had taken charge of Angkor in 1908. From 1953, when Cambodia became independent, it had been financed equally by the Royal Cambodian government of Prince Sihanouk and by France; it was a technological powerhouse, an archaeologist's delight. A hundred vehicles– trucks, bulldozers, jeeps, and 19 cranes, the tallest 200 feet high–a sandstone saw so big it was fed by its own small railway; power plants, weather stations, air-conditioned laboratories; engineers, architects, photographers, draftsmen, mechanics, a thousand laborers.

The Angkor Wat towers were checked regularly by a topographer with a theodolite; a millimeter's variation from the vertical, and there'd be a check for trouble. I remember the archaeologist in charge, Bernard Philippe Groslier, telling me in 1968 that he had nearly everything he needed.

Soon after, civil war engulfed Cambodia. What followed, from 1975 to 1979, was the fanatically destructive regime of the so called Khmer Rouge, or Red Khmer, led by Pol Pot. Its reign of terror, of purposeful starvation and murder, summons up the vision of hell carved in one of the Angkor Wat bas-reliefs. A few months ago when I met the new conservator of Angkor, a former Groslier assistant named Pich Keo, he had one small truck, a bicycle, and a hundred unskilled men, not even enough to keep all the greenery cut that sprouts among the stones....

Pich Keo is my guide for monument J touring in a government jeep that brought me in a two-day drive from the capital, Phnom Penh. We begin one day with Prasat Kravanh (page 581), a fivetowered brick sanctuary completed under Harshavarman I in 921; disentangled from the jungle by Henri Marchal and Georges Trouve in the 1930s; and reconstructed, with new foundation, interior walls, and drains by Groslier in the 1960s.

When the bricks were put back, a few broken ones were replaced with carefully made reproductions. They are discreetly marked with the letters CA, the Conservancy initials. That's the way of anastylosis.

The central tower, originally closed, was left open at the top so the carvings inside can be seen by natural light. The opening was covered with special glass, to filter out radiation that might harm the sculptures. It has been shotout. A steel door–lockable, to discourage vandalism–is gone. Pich Keo says the grasses outside were cut a month ago. They're nearly three feet high.

Sras Srang, the royal bath of Jayavarman VII–2,500 by 1,300 feet, once full of water–is full of grass. And Banteay Kdei, called the citadel of cells because of its many gallery-connected small chambers– for Buddhas, for monks–is a mess.

Blocks of stone lie jumbled where a gallery has fallen in. The sun shines through where more pieces of the corbeled vault will follow before long (page 575). In the center of a littered chamber, where once a statue stood, I see a charred palm stalk. "Somebody burned it to make smoke," says Pich Keo, "so the bats will fall." So they can be eaten, in bat soup.

I see a column made of two vertical pieces, originally held together by bronze clamps. Those clamps were taken long ago, presumably for their magic properties; a dagger of Angkor bronze has special powers. In the early 1920s, the Conservancy encircled the two-piece column with a steel hoop. That was removed recently, presumably to make a rim for an oxcart wheel.

In another chamber sits a Buddha image disfigured with black paint (facing page). Isn't that awful? Yes and no. The wavy pattern on the Buddha's chest is the same that many Khmer carry tattooed on theirs, for protection against illness or injury. By daubing the image, the dauber apparently hoped to gain protection for himself.

But what's that, painted on the Buddha's arm, a wristwatch? I got an authoritative explanation, later, as follows:

In the time of Khmer Rouge rule, when all religion was officially despised, some underling defaced this image with the approval of his Khmer Rouge superiors; but deep inside he hoped that by presenting the Buddha with a symbolic wristwatch he might somehow acquire a real one himself–preferably a Swiss Omega, then the mark of high functionaries. He hoped to become a powerful man himself, by magic....

I remember some Angkor magic myself. In a dark recess of the Bayon was a well. Chinese businesswomen from Phnom Penh were said to buy its water, to bathe in so as to do well financially and be more attractive to men. Soldiers went away with full bottles. It was clear, and cold, and gloriously refreshing. An old gentleman assured me it would give me long life.

That was in 1968, when some 70,000 tourists came, many of them Americans on round-the-world trips, and stayed at a luxurious inn near the main causeway to Angkor Wat. A hundred thousand were expected in 1970; Air France built another hotel.

It was just finished when Vietnamese Communist guerrillas attacked government troops nearby. From then on they and the Khmer Rouge, then their allies, held sway at Angkor; tourism was finished. Groslier was allowed to continue his work on a limited scale, but in 1972 he was ordered out.

The few visitors to Angkor now a days– official delegations from Communist countries, international-aid functionaries from Phnom Penh, the odd journalist–are put up three miles away in the little provincial capital of Siem Reap, at the old Grand Hotel. Of those two luxury hotels right at Angkor, nothing remains. The Grand Hotel has running water, and electricity in the evening. In the morning, before the sun becomes too intense, the benches in front are occupied by goats. Visiting the monuments requires an armed escort of provincial militia; there might be troublesome Pol Pot guerrillas about. This morning the militiamen carry extra percussion grenades. We're off to see some of Angkor's formidable hydraulic works.

Khmer prosperity depended on water–on its favorable distribution throughout the growing seasons, with the rice fields softened for tilling and then flooded at the right times. But the monsoon rains might come too early or too late. And so, when building a major monument, the Khmer would construct what has been termed a hydraulic city. With canals, wide moats, and bara~huge rectangular reservoirs.

These baray were not dug into the earth. They were formed by the raising of dikes. When such a reservoir is filled by rain and a diked river, the water level will be above the level of the plain; when water is needed, open the sluices and gravity will distribute it via irrigation canals and ditches. Thus dryseason farming is possible too.

By these means the Khmer obtained two and even three harvests a year, sustaining an enormous population on which rested the kingdom's economic, demographic, and consequently political strength. At the beginning of the dry season the king would lead the army to make war in the north or east or west, for glory, for slaves. Especially powerful kings ordered new hydraulic cities, new monuments, new baray.

Branching from the brownish Siem Reap River, a 15-foot-wide canal slowly flows westward, lined with shrubbery so tall that the branches over it form an intermittent tunnel. The canal skirts the square of Angkor Thom, turning south and then west again–and there's the Western Baray, built 900 years ago, the biggest of all.

Its dimensions amaze me all over again– one and a quarter by five miles. A little more than half of itis silted up: Oxen graze in it; in the distance two boys fly a kite. But the farwestern portion, fed by that slow-moving canal, is an inland sea. There's a sluice gate there, built in the 1950s, partly with foreign-aid funds from the United States. I remember being told that it dispensed irrigation water to 32,500 acres, through 140 miles of arterial canals. The farmers had radios, motor scooters, and houses with tile roofs. It was a landscape of prosperity.

That was 14 years ago. The civil war and the Pol Pot terror brought a dramatic decline. The population has shrunk. Most of the land lies uncultivated. The houses are thatch. A village of ficial tells me that people have trouble getting enough salt.

And what brought the decline of Angkor? Groslier believes this complex process may have begun as early as the mid-llth century. So much was built that eventually all available space was taken, all the water captured. After Angkor Thom nothing of importance was built. Waterworks gradually deteriorated, population declined, a once assertive faith gradually made way for a fatalistic Buddhism. The Siamese increasingly attacked from the west and at last gave Angkor a final blow, killing all the men they could capture and carrying off multitudes of women. Around 1430 nearly all Angkor was abandoned, though not Angkor Wat; that remained a Buddhist pilgrimage shrine.

Subsequent Khmer monarchs held court far to the south, but in the mid16th century now–one sees soldiers of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. They were instrumental in ejecting the regime of Pol Pot and still occupy most of the country, guarding against his return. Climbing around on the Bayon one morning, I encountered a cheerful bunch of them, unarmed. One took my picture. I snapped him and his buddies.

But this morning Angkor swarms with tense Vietnamese carrying rocket launchers, field radios, mine detectors. Some sweep around the Bayon. Who's the VIP with a jet all to himself?

It's Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, who prevailed in Indochina against the expeditionary forces of France in the 1950s–and, later, against the United States. Three hours inside Angkor Wat, and he's gone. He never did get to the Bayon, where bas-reliefs depict the land and naval battles of the Khmer and the Cham. Among the sandstone soldiery are Vietnamese fighting for the Cham king. The Khmer called the Cham and their mercenaries by the Sanskrit word yavana, denoting evil foreign barbarians; whence comes youn, the disparaging term some Khmer employ for the Vietnamese today.

As our tours take us farther along the periphery of the monuments, Pich Keo seems increasingly nervous. To me, the panorama of the stones and the greenery appears peaceful enough: occasional oxcarts or bicycles on the paths; a few people cutting timber or drawing lamp oil from chhoeu teal trees. Over it all, a great calm.

Notlong after I left, a respected Swiss daily, the Neue ZurcherZeitung, reported from Phnom Penh that Pol Pot guerrillas were said to have attacked the Siem Reap airport, which stretches to within 400 yards of the Western Baray. Supposedly there were at least ten dead. I wondered. Such reports must be treated with caution. But as of midDecember 1981 the government severely restricted foreigners' visits to Angkor, at least for the time being. . .

In the Angkor Wat bas-relief of the great military parade of Suryavarman II–with its chariots and war elephants, with the sacred fire carried ahead of the troops–there are holes, made by shrapnel. An artilleryman of the government army, aiming for Khmer Rouge, sighted his howitzer improperly.

Near the Bayon lies half of the head of a colossal Buddha, dynamited by Khmer Rouge zealots. When I later reported this to Groslier–now a senior government scientist in Paris–he said it was a 16th-century piece and artistically not important.

Historically, of course, everything is important. But one must remember that a number of Angkor's artistically most important works went to some of the world's great museums long ago. And that those left in place were removed by the Conservancy in the later 1950s, when thievery was rising and guarding such vast expanses became clearly impossible.

Groslier had noticed that the famous statue of the so-called Leper King, at Angkor Thom, had saw marks on the neck. Someone was after that head. He sent the statue to the museum in Phnom Penh and putout a reproduction. A naive thief stole that.

Today the world's outstanding collection of Khmer statuary by far is on view in the National Museum in Phnom Penh–the great bronze Vishnu, two heads purportedly of Jayavarman VII. In short, I have learned that the major problem at Angkor of late has been neither war damage nor thievery, but simply neglect.

Just the same, Preah Khan was a shock. In 1968, Wilbur E. Garrett, now Editor of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, photographed the long line of stone divinities along the northern gate causeway. At that time, one head was missing. Now it's two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine....

Lost en route to the Thai border, or to Vietnam? Smuggled out by some diplomat, and sold in Geneva or Dusseldorf? Or still in a dealer's storage in Bangkok? Perhaps strewn somewhere hereabouts?

What's been happening lately to promote conservation at Angkor? There's been visiting by representatives of international organizations. Much talk about help, not much action.

The government of India gave several Khmer a three-month archaeological course in Delhi, and sent equipment for a photographic laboratory. It was still in Phnom Penh. The U.S.S.R. invited Pich Keo and several colleagues to Moscow, to survey restoration techniques. An international Roman Catholic group headquartered in Paris sent drafting equipment and paper, ten bicycles, aToyotatruck. Allinall, afew crops in a very large bucket.

Back in Phnom Penh, the head of the Directorate for the Preservation of Monuments told me of a law in preparation to prohibit the stealing of sculptures and damaging of stonework. "It will have 104 articles, and heavy penalties. " He showed me a workshop where souvenirs are carved for sale, to aid the restoration. And on behalf of the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of Kampuchea he thanked Editor Garrett for bringing valuable books and documents: "They will be very helpful. " He added: "Through your presence here we would like to ask international opinion to help us restore the Angkor temples. They are our national patrimony, but they also belong to the patrimony of the whole world. "

PICH KEO just told me the same thing. And what says Ith Khlok, chief monk of Wat Angkor? That's the Buddhist monastery situated between Angkor Wat's outermost wall and the moat. It was founded by Siamese monks a century and a half ago. The chief monk, now 80, has seen a sizable slice of history.

When Ith Khlok was born, Siem Reap Province was under the Siamese. Then came French colonial rule, Japanese occupation, once more the French; then Sihanouk's regime, Lon Nol's regime, the Khmer Rouge. In all but one of these periods there was rebellion, the monk says–only in the time of Sihanouk did people have peace and prosperity. He hopes such a time will come again. He adds he also hopes that foreigners, Americans, will help the Khmer people–especially with the conservation of Angkor. "It is our patrimony, but yours also. "

I'd heard this now so often. It sounded like a rehearsed line from political school; monks, too, must attend nowadays. But it also sounded sincere.

I look for the last time at a most beguiling aspect of Angkor, the celestial dancers called apsaras. Fleshly counterparts of those sensuous entertainers of Khmer royalty were carried off by the Siamese despoilers of 1394. But their intricate dancing survived, and was admired at the 19th-century court of Bangkok by the British governess Anna Leonowens, the real-life protagonist of Anna and the King of Siam. I envy her for what she saw.

She wrote of a swaying like withes of willow, of arms and fingers curving in seemingly impossible flexures, of all the muscles of the body agitating like the fluttering of leaves in a soft breeze. "Their eyes," she said, "glow as with an inner light.... "

She called it a miracle of art. A latter-day reflection can be seen by today's tourists as "Thai classical dancing" in Bangkok hotels.

From the walls of Angkor still smile ideal apsaras, sculpted in sandstone as permanent entertainment for the gods. They have suffered the damage of time and war and mindless vandalism. But aren't there about 1,700 apsaras at Angkor Wat alone, and thousands more elsewhere at Angkor? Surely they will not disappear in the foreseeable future.

And yet, shouldn't effective ways be found now to safeguard their beauty–and the wonder of the world that is Angkor– regardless of the turmoil of the day? I say the sooner the better.