The Story of Prohm Kel Temple ( Part 1)

About Prohm Kel Temple

At Chong Kal commune, Samroang Chong kal District, Siem Preap Province, situated an ancient temple, where two pounds are nearby and whose body is 5.50 meters high and the size is approximately 15 to 16 meters four sided figure. Inside the temple, there is a stone which looks like the throne. The temple is called Prohm Kil, located about 150 meters in the north of a lake. The ancient legend of temple has been told as follows:

The Story of Prohm Kel Temple ( Part 1)

Once upon a time, a man who was looking for rattans in the wood found a black Roka tree. He used the tree to make a strong bar. The bar was so marvelous that he named it Damban Krahnung. With magic bar, the man became a very powerful person.

Realizing that the bar gives him great power, the man became greedy and seized the throne from King Chakraport, who had ruled the Kingdom of Angkor. The man gained the throne from the King and named himself King Kambong Kranhoung, following the name of his bar to remember his success.

 

King Dambong Kranhoung immediately ordered his astrologist to predict the event. The astrologist predicted that that marvelous event was a sigh to show that a majestic person would be born, and rule the Kingdom. 

Hearing this prediction, King Dambang Kranhoung was so worried. He ordered his men to kill all pregnant women and burnt down their corpses. At that time, the king’s concubines, ladies-in- waiting and other women who were all pregnant were killed and burnt down.

 

 

How marvelous it was! Since a fortune person certainly incarnated, while the King’s troops were putting on fire all the dead bodies of pregnant women , and poking the metal spit into the burning corpse of a woman, who was a concubine of king Chakraort, a baby boy dropped from her uterus to the fire, burning his limbs, but he was still alive. Then the troops hid the baby in a rattan bush.

 

In the evening, when the chief of a pagoda went out in the wood praying for the dead and meditating, the troops gave the baby boy to him for rearing. The chief of monks treated the baby until the burnt scars where healed, but the baby limbs were not a they had been and became withered.

When the baby boy grows up, he studied literature and other skills in the monk’s residence. Whenever he went somewhere, he moved on his buttock instead of a normal walk. Since then, some people always called him Prohm Kil (moving on the buttock) and some name him Ponhea Kraek, which referred to his background from the rattan ( Kraek) bush. ( Read Part 2)