A prominent Indian mystic has made some eyebrow-raising (read: ridiculous and laughably incorrect) claims that Angkorian temples were built thousands of years ago in India before being shipped to Cambodia.
Mystic claims Angkorian temples built in India
Phnom Penh Post, 24 January 2015
Nithyananda Sangha posted a series of YouTube videos making the assertion shortly before hosting workshops in Siem Reap
A prominent Indian mystic who claims some 10 million followers has argued in a series of YouTube videos that the earliest Khmer temples were built in southern India, and that Angkor Wat itself was constructed 3,000 years ago.
The videos by Nithyananda Sangha, also known as Swami Nithyananda, were posted in October and December last year, just before he visited Siem Reap to host a three-week, $10,000 meditation workshop at the Empress Angkor Hotel.
In the satsangs, or assemblies, he calls on his followers to “please understand” that the Cambodian temples are far older than the 900 or 1,000 years asserted by “cunning” Western historians, and that many of the temples were not built in the Kingdom at all.
Rather, he says the temples were first built and carved in Tamil Nadu in southern India, where the stones were then numbered, dismantled and taken by ship to Cambodia. There, they were re-assembled and re-carved.
Full story here.
Needless to say, the claims are ridiculous. There is a far more simpler answer:
They’re just mad the Cambodians did it better.
The sad thing is a whole lot of people will simply believe it because it’s controversial in their minds