Wat Phnom Daun Penh of Cambodia

If you are observant enough, you may find names of "Phnom Penh" and Wat "Phnom" share some common words. Yes. The capital city's name of Phnom Penh Cambodia is more or less interrelates with a small hill-top Cambodian temple of Wat Phnom with "Wat Phnom Daun Penh" in its full name.

Wat means temple (as with the Thai), Phnom, in native Khmer is equivalent to a "hill"; so, most people referred it as hilltop temple or a temple on the hill. The temple's location on this greenery hill is also the highest spot in the capital city but the hill was a actually a man-made formation.

The legend said a wealthy widow lady whom the local affectionately referred her as Grandma (or Madam) Daun Penh who was settled on a high land at the west river bank of Sap River had uncovered four bronze and one stone Buddha statues inside a hole of a floating big koki tree down from upstream which hit her compound during high flooding season; in respect of the her belief, she thought it was a good omen and has decided Lord Buddha should be placed over the ordinary, hence, she ordered her people tp piled up earth to create a man-made hill and used the original Koki tree trunk to construct a small temple on top to house the discovered Buddha statues and that was how the original shrine was constructed.

Source: mir.com.my