Po Klong Garai

Site and dating

The towers stand on đồi Trầu above Đô Vinh, on the northern edge of Phan Rang^[1][2]. Wikidata records the group at latitude 11.6018 and longitude 108.9465^[4]. The protected site covers 86,969.3 m², of which the inner protection zone accounts for 1,571.5 m²^[2].

The Department of Cultural Heritage dates the standing towers to about the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, and notes that inscriptions, style and finds suggest an earlier eleventh-century shrine to Shiva on the same spot, later converted into a temple of the king^[2]. The Vietnamese Wikipedia article gives the same late thirteenth to early fourteenth century date and names Chế Mân as the builder^[1]. The English Wikipedia article places the building at the end of the thirteenth century under Jaya Simhavarman III and notes steles from about 1050 that point to an earlier structure^[3].

Researchers class Po Klong Garai in the Late style of Cham architecture, following the Mỹ Sơn E1, Hòa Lai, Đồng Dương, Mỹ Sơn A1 and Bình Định styles, and treat it as the last fully completed temple group of Champa^[2].

The three towers

The central tower, the kalan, occupies the top of the hill. It is over 20 metres high on a square plan measuring 10.5 by 10.5 metres, with the entrance opening east through four receding courses of brick door pillars; the outermost pillars are of stone and carry old Cham script^[2]. The arch above holds a relief of Shiva with six arms, standing on a pedestal in a dancing pose^[2]. The roof rises in three diminishing tiers and ends in a round stone block that stands for a linga^[2]. The Vietnamese Wikipedia article gives the height as 20.5 metres^[1].

The gate tower, the gopura, stands east of the shrine on the same axis and is a reduced copy of it. The Department of Cultural Heritage gives its height as about 10 metres^[2]; the Vietnamese Wikipedia article gives 8.56 metres^[1]. It opens through two aligned doorways facing east and west^[2].

The third tower stands in front of the shrine and slightly to the southeast. It is rectangular, 8 metres long, 4 metres wide and nearly 10 metres high, is divided inside into two rooms and has three doorways^[2]. It held the vessels used in ritual and is also read as the tower of the fire god Anhi^[2]; the Vietnamese Wikipedia article calls it the fire tower and gives its height as 9.31 metres^[1]. Its roof is the curved saddle form built up in brick, with a carved stone slab at each gable end^[2].

The mukhalinga and other objects

The shrine still holds its yoni and linga altar intact, and the linga carries a mukhalinga, a face in relief that Cham tradition reads as the king Po Klong Garai merged into the image of Shiva^[2]. The English Wikipedia article dates the mukhalinga to the sixteenth or seventeenth century and records that the Cham identify it as the statue of the king^[3].

The site also holds a statue of the bull Nandin, statues set around the towers, two inscriptions carved on the tower doorways, a three-faced inscribed stele, a stele whose script has gone, a kut image of a queen and a stone linga pillar outside the south wall^[2]. Further objects from the site are held and displayed by the Ninh Thuận provincial museum^[2].

On 18 January 2024 Deputy Prime Minister Trần Hồng Hà signed the twelfth-round decision recognising 29 objects and groups of objects as national treasures; the Phước Thiện stele and the worship statue of King Po Klong Garai, which stands in the tower, were among them^[1].

Kate and the living cult

Po Klong Garai is one of the principal sites of Kate, the festival of Cham followers of Brahmanism. The Department of Cultural Heritage records that it is held annually on the 30th day of the sixth month and from the first to the tenth day of the seventh month of the Cham calendar, which falls in September, October or November in the Gregorian calendar^[2].

The sequence is fixed: the first day at the temple towers, the second at the communal house of the village, the third at the house of the head priest, and the fourth day to the tenth of the seventh Cham month in family homes^[2]. The date falls at the end of the autumn, when the harvest is in^[2]. No fetched source states when the festival began^[2].

Protection

The Ministry of Culture ranked the group a national relic in 1979^[1]. The Prime Minister ranked it a special national relic under Decision 2499/QĐ-TTg of 22 December 2016^[1][2].

Besides the three original towers, the protected area now contains a yard, gardens, a boundary wall, internal paths, two gates, a block of buildings for cultural and visitor use, subsidiary structures, a small shrine and the remains of further buildings^[2].