Essay #3

 ���������� I believe religion change was reason of the abandonment of the city of Angkor.� I believe that because if the attacks were the reason, then the temples would have been ruined.� The city seemed to have been untouched and not fractured at all because the temple are still in really good condition today.� Briggs claims that Mahayana Buddhism was the main religion that emphasized priests and maintained class differences between rich and poor.� So therefore there was already separation between upper class and lower class and there was probably conflicts and differences between them.� It seems like Mahayana wasn�t the majority of the Khmer, but they had to obey the rules anyway because everything would just go against them.? But Britannica claims that the reason why the converted to Hinayana Buddhism, which concentrates on monks rather than priests and discourages class division, Britannica says that it was force that caused the abandonment because if they don�t convert than they would kill them.� I don�t think that�s true because then why would you kill people and expect them to convert into peaceful monks.� I think that since they converted to Hinayana Buddhism, they didn�t need the temples to persue their religion.� Since Hinayana Buddhism was brought to Cambodia by mons of Lonvo and Tais of the North, such as prisoners, laborers, merchants, and some bonzes, they decided they wanted to more to the heart of where the religion was brought to them.� I think the theory about how aliens invaded Angkor is so invalid because it doesn�t go into much detail and just says that the people run off real quick because they saw flying saucers in the air.� I also think the attacks that the Tai arrange wasn�t correct because usually a big territory like that would have fought back.� It even says that the Khmer kingdom was such a large empire that spanned 100 square miles at the height of it�s power, more than 1000 temple. So there I think the religion change caused the upper class of the Khmer more out of the temples and then they were no use and was abandoned.� The rest of the Khmer lived on and started a new territory.

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