Editing Khmer architecture (section)

===Kala===
[[File:Banteay Srei Kala.jpg|thumb|right|A '''kala''' serves as the base for a deity at the 10th-century Hindu temple [[Banteay Srei]].]]
The kala is a ferocious monster symbolic of time in its all-devouring aspect and associated with the destructive side of the god [[Shiva|Siva]].<ref>Glaize, ''Monuments of the Angkor Group'', p. 39.</ref> In Khmer temple architecture, the kala serves as a common decorative element on lintels, tympana and walls, where it is depicted as a monstrous head with a large upper jaw lined by large carnivorous teeth, but with no lower jaw. Some kalas are shown disgorging vine-like plants, and some serve as the base for other figures.

Scholars have speculated that the origin of the kala as a decorative element in Khmer temple architecture may be found in an earlier period when the skulls of human victims were incorporated into buildings as a kind of protective magic or [[apotropaism]]. Such skulls tended to lose their lower jaws when the ligaments holding them together dried out. Thus, the kalas of Angkor may represent the Khmer civilization's adoption into its decorative iconography of elements derived from long forgotten primitive antecedents.<ref>Roveda, ''Images of the Gods'', p. 209.</ref>