This polity covers the post-Angkor period of Cambodia’s history from the early 15th to the end of the 16th century CE. In 1432, the magnificent city of Angkor was sacked by the forces of King Trailok ‒ of the increasingly powerful Thai Kingdom of Ayutthaya ‒ who carried off the Khmer royal regalia as a symbol of their victory.
[1]
[2]
A Khmer royal presence continued at Angkor in reduced form until around 1504, when the rulers retreated to a site near Phnom Penh on the Mekong River, southeast of Tonlé Sap Lake.
[3]
[4]
However, Thai strength in the region continued to grow at the expense of the Khmer court, and in 1594 the then-capital Lovek was also attacked by the Thais, forcing the Cambodian king to flee to Laos.
[5]
Due to the Angkor kings’ waning fortunes and endemic warfare with Ayutthaya,
[6]
it is difficult to identify the ’peak’ of this polity. Indeed, the post-Angkor period is sometimes referred to somewhat dismissively as the ’Middle Period’ of Cambodian history,
[7]
but it should be noted that this term tends to also encompass the span of time between 1594 and the establishment of the French Protectorate in 1863.
[8]
Population and political organization
Although centralized Khmer power was much weaker than in former centuries, and very few inscriptions survive to throw light on political organization,
[9]
Khmer royals did still rise up periodically to assert their authority. For instance, historical accounts indicate that a king called Ang Chan reconquered Angkor in the 16th century and built a golden palace.
[3]
Meanwhile, the new capital on the lower Mekong was international in outlook, with quarters for Malay, Chinese and Japanese traders,
[3]
and some post-Classic Khmer kings had Japanese and Portuguese guards in their entourage.
[10]
More generally, this period was characterized by increasing commercial, religious and political connections within mainland Southeast Asia and greater integration into global trade networks,
[11]
especially after the arrival of the Portuguese in 1511.
[12]
Wars between mainland Southeast Asian rulers did not preclude the development of a common, ’hybrid’ culture among the wider population.
[11]
Likewise, one reason for the relocation of the Khmer capital (in addition to Thai attacks and drought coupled with ’intense monsoons’)
[13]
was likely ’a desire for greater participation in seaborne trade’.
[14]
[1]: (Stark 2006, 146, 164) Miriam T. Stark. 2006. ’From Funan to Angkor: Collapse and Regeneration in Ancient Cambodia’, in After Collapse: The Regeneration of Complex Societies, edited by Glenn M. Schwartz and John J. Nichols, 144-67. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
[2]: (Hall 2011, 233) Kenneth R. Hall. 2011. A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and Social Development, 100-1500. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
[3]: (Coe 2003, 208-09) Michael D. Coe. 2003. Angkor and the Khmer Civilization. New York: Thames & Hudson.
[4]: (Andaya 1992, 402-59) Barbara Watson Andaya. 1992. ’Political Development between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol. I: From Early Times to c. 1800, edited by Nicholas Tarling, 137-82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[5]: (Coe 2003, 210) Michael D. Coe. 2003. Angkor and the Khmer Civilization. New York: Thames & Hudson.
[6]: (Andaya 1992, 421) Barbara Watson Andaya. 1992. ’Political Development between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol. I: From Early Times to c. 1800, edited by Nicholas Tarling, 137-82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[7]: (Thompson 1997, 22) Ashley Thompson. 1997. ’Changing Perspectives: Cambodia after Angkor’, in Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia: Millennium of Glory, edited by Helen I. Jessop and Thierry Zephir, 22-32. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art.
[8]: (Coe 2003, 195) Michael D. Coe. 2003. Angkor and the Khmer Civilization. New York: Thames & Hudson.
[9]: (Thompson 1997, 22-23) Ashley Thompson. 1997. ’Changing Perspectives: Cambodia after Angkor’, in Sculpture of Angkor and Ancient Cambodia: Millennium of Glory, edited by Helen I. Jessop and Thierry Zephir, 22-32. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art.
[10]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, 98) M. Jacq-Hergoualc’h and M. Smithies. 2007. The Armies of Angkor. Bangkok: Orchid Press.
[11]: (Andaya 1992, 411-12) Barbara Watson Andaya. 1992. ’Political Development between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol. I: From Early Times to c. 1800, edited by Nicholas Tarling, 137-82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[12]: (Hall 2011, 35-36) Kenneth R. Hall. 2011. A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and Social Development, 100-1500. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
[13]: (Buckley et al. 2010, 6748) Brendan M. Buckley, Kevin J. Anchukaitisa, Daniel Penny, Roland Fletcher, Edward R. Cook, Masaki Sano, Le Canh Nam, Aroonrut Wichienkeeo, Ton That Minh and Truong Mai Hong. 2010. ’Climate as a Contributing Factor in the Demise of Angkor, Cambodia’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (15): 6748-51.
[14]: (Andaya 1992, 410) Barbara Watson Andaya. 1992. ’Political Development between the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol. I: From Early Times to c. 1800, edited by Nicholas Tarling, 137-82. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
| 48 P |
| Khmer Kingdom |
| Angkor | |
| Srei Santhor | |
| Phnom Penh | |
| Lovek |
| Kambudesa | |
| Khmer | |
| Khmer Kingdom | |
| Angkor Period | |
| Kambuja-desa | |
| Kambudesa | |
| Kambuja |
| none |
| Indianized Southeast Asia |
| Ayutthaya |
| 2,175,000 km2 |
| continuity |
| Preceding: Late Angkor (kh_angkor_3) [continuity] |
| unitary state |
| - |
| 280,000 km2 |
| [750,000 to 1,000,000] people |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| unknown |
| absent |
| present |
| inferred absent |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| unknown |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| inferred present |
| present |
| absent |
| present |
| absent |
| absent |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| absent |
| present |
| absent |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| absent |
| present |
| present |
| inferred absent |
| present |
| inferred absent |
| absent |
| absent |
| present |
| inferred absent |
| absent |
| inferred absent |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| inferred absent |
| inferred absent |
| inferred absent |
| present |
| present |
| inferred absent |
| inferred absent |
| absent |
| present |
| inferred absent |
| present |
| present |
| present |
| Year Range | Khmer Kingdom (kh_khmer_k) was in: |
|---|---|
| (1432 CE 1593 CE) | Cambodian Basin |
’The second and apparently unrelated legend involves a hermit named Kambu, who was given an apsaras or celestial nymph name demure by the great god Shiva (the major patron deity of Khmer rulers). This this marriage sprang the Khmer royal line as well as the people themselves. The Khmer thus came to call their land Kambudesa or ’Country of Kambu’, later abridged to Kambuja; it is the latter that the modern name ’Cambodia’ is derived.’ [1]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 33)
’We know little of the history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the Khmer chronicles are primarily eighteenth- and nineteenth-century court documents created in the eastern Khmer capitals, in particular Phnom Phenh, with a specific political agenda in mind.’ [1] ’Angkor was the vast low-density capital of the Khmer Kingdom, from the early 9th to the mid-14th/15th centuries of the Common Era (CE). At its peak, Angkor sprawled over nearly 1000 km2 [1] and may have housed more than three quarters of a million people [2,3]. The primary administrative centre in a kingdom that dominated most of mainland Southeast Asia by the 11th century CE, Angkor was the largest preindustrial city on Earth and remains the world’s largest archaeological site. The Angkor period is commonly understood to start in 802 CE with the proclamation of Jayavarman II as the chakravartin (universal-king) from a location in the Kulen mountains (Phnom Kulen), overlooking the vast alluvial plain where Angkor would begin to emerge in the following centuries (Figure 1). In doing so, Jayavarman confirmed himself as the great unifier; drawing Cambodia’s disparate polities together under the first ‘god king’ and establishing the Khmer state and the basis of its empire. Phnom Kulen was known as Mahendraparvata; ‘‘the hill of the great Indra’’. The extant history of Mahendraparvata is based on several inscriptions, the most well-known being an 11th century CE inscription (K.235) found at the Sdok Kak Thom temple, in eastern Thailand [4]. The inscription, dated to 1052 CE, outlines the lineage of a private family serving successive Khmer Kings for two and a half centuries, the first mentioned being Jayavarman II.’ [2] ’With the fading of the ANGKOR era, Cambodia shifts capitals south to Lovek, then to Udong, and finally to PHNOM PENH.This period also sees the waning of HINDUISM and the rise of THERAVADA BUDDHISM.’ [3] ’944 Rajendravarman II returns the capital to Angkor. The name “Angkor,” from the Sanskrit word for “city,” was given to the capital only in the 16th century. Temple inscriptions during imperial times call it Yashodharapura, “glory—bearing city.”’ [4] ’The Khmer pronunciation of Sanskrit negara, signifying capital of a kingdom. The ancient Khmer capital now known as Angkor was originally called Yasodharapura after Yasovarman, the ruler who moved the capital there in 889.’ [5] ’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] The capital in various locations between the Great Lake and the Delta.’ [6] ’But in the face of attacks from both Ayutthaya and the Cham, Suryavarman decided to retreat from the old site of Angkor and to move the capital to the area of Phnom Penh. After the fall of Cam- bodia, missions continued to arrive in China, in 1435, 1436, 1452, and 1499, indicating that the kingdom was still sufficiently integrated to be able to conduct foreign relations. The Angkor period, however, had come to an end.’ [7] ’First and most dramatic, Angkor’s empire fell apart. During the second quarter of the 13th century Angkorian forces were withdrawn from Champa. By mid-century most of the peninsula, areas west of the Chaophraya river, and northern Thailand had broken away, to be followed shortly by Lopburi and other states in the Chaophraya plain. By 1297 Angkor was defending against Tai attacks from the west. After new Tai pressure forced what some his- torians claim was a temporary withdrawal from Angkor during the mid- to late 14th century (various dates between 1350 and 1389 have been proposed), Khmer rulers may have abandoned the great capital in the 1430s or 1440s in favor of Phnom Penh in the southeast. It is equally plausible that Angkor was never actually abandoned, but that a more powerful royal lineage established itself at Phnom Penh in ri- valry with the old Angkorian family.78 In either case, the 14th century enfeebled central power. Thus Angkor’s disintegration began some- what earlier but overlapped substantially with that of the Upper Burma state, whose problems began in the 1280s, which suffered a major military-political crisis in the 1360s, and which also limped along into the 15th century.’ [8] ’In a belated effort to woo Chinese trade, between 1371 and 1419 Angkor sent more tribute missions to China than in the previous 500 years, but the subsequent effective transfer of the capital to the more commercially viable site of Phnom Penh marked the eclipse of pro-Angkor elements within the Khmer elite.87’ [9] ’The pioneer was a Dominican name d Gaspar da Cruz, who arrived in 1555 at the court of King Ang Chan -one of Post-Classic Cambodia’s greatest rulers-in the then capital, Lovek.’, [10] ’The initial move seems to have been to Srei Santhor, about 30 km (19 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, at some time in the fourteenth century; then, briefly, to Phnom Penh itself. By about 1528, the Cambodian court under its first great Post-Angkorian king, Ang Chan I, had moved once and for all to the all to the Quatre Bras region, establishing a new capital at Lovek (Longvek), on the right bank of the Tonle Sap River, 50 km (30 miles) north of Phnom Penh. Love, like Udong and Phnom Penh- the town s that succeeded it as the capital- was thoroughly international, with foreign quarters for Malay, Japanese, and Chinese traders (there were as many as 3,000 of the last in the 1540s). There Ang Chan (who really did exist) built a golden palace and at least four major wats, erecting a huge, four-faced Buddha of wood, the stone foundation of which survive in one of the town’s vicars. The capital was fortified by earthen ramparts topped with palisades; these ramparts, which form a huge rectangle, are still visible.’ [11]
[1]: (Fletcher 2012, p.313)
[2]: (Penny et al 2014, p. e84252)
[3]: (Ooi and Barnhill 2004, p. 1496)
[4]: (National Geographic 2009)
[5]: (Miksic 2007, pp. 17-18)
[6]: (Coe 2003, p. 195)
[7]: (Miksic 2007, p. 84)
[8]: (Lieberman 2003, pp. 236-237)
[9]: (Lieberman 2003, p. 240)
[10]: (Coe 2003, p. 201)
[11]: (Coe 2003, pp. 208-209)
’We know little of the history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the Khmer chronicles are primarily eighteenth- and nineteenth-century court documents created in the eastern Khmer capitals, in particular Phnom Phenh, with a specific political agenda in mind.’ [1] ’Angkor was the vast low-density capital of the Khmer Kingdom, from the early 9th to the mid-14th/15th centuries of the Common Era (CE). At its peak, Angkor sprawled over nearly 1000 km2 [1] and may have housed more than three quarters of a million people [2,3]. The primary administrative centre in a kingdom that dominated most of mainland Southeast Asia by the 11th century CE, Angkor was the largest preindustrial city on Earth and remains the world’s largest archaeological site. The Angkor period is commonly understood to start in 802 CE with the proclamation of Jayavarman II as the chakravartin (universal-king) from a location in the Kulen mountains (Phnom Kulen), overlooking the vast alluvial plain where Angkor would begin to emerge in the following centuries (Figure 1). In doing so, Jayavarman confirmed himself as the great unifier; drawing Cambodia’s disparate polities together under the first ‘god king’ and establishing the Khmer state and the basis of its empire. Phnom Kulen was known as Mahendraparvata; ‘‘the hill of the great Indra’’. The extant history of Mahendraparvata is based on several inscriptions, the most well-known being an 11th century CE inscription (K.235) found at the Sdok Kak Thom temple, in eastern Thailand [4]. The inscription, dated to 1052 CE, outlines the lineage of a private family serving successive Khmer Kings for two and a half centuries, the first mentioned being Jayavarman II.’ [2] ’With the fading of the ANGKOR era, Cambodia shifts capitals south to Lovek, then to Udong, and finally to PHNOM PENH.This period also sees the waning of HINDUISM and the rise of THERAVADA BUDDHISM.’ [3] ’944 Rajendravarman II returns the capital to Angkor. The name “Angkor,” from the Sanskrit word for “city,” was given to the capital only in the 16th century. Temple inscriptions during imperial times call it Yashodharapura, “glory—bearing city.”’ [4] ’The Khmer pronunciation of Sanskrit negara, signifying capital of a kingdom. The ancient Khmer capital now known as Angkor was originally called Yasodharapura after Yasovarman, the ruler who moved the capital there in 889.’ [5] ’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] The capital in various locations between the Great Lake and the Delta.’ [6] ’But in the face of attacks from both Ayutthaya and the Cham, Suryavarman decided to retreat from the old site of Angkor and to move the capital to the area of Phnom Penh. After the fall of Cam- bodia, missions continued to arrive in China, in 1435, 1436, 1452, and 1499, indicating that the kingdom was still sufficiently integrated to be able to conduct foreign relations. The Angkor period, however, had come to an end.’ [7] ’First and most dramatic, Angkor’s empire fell apart. During the second quarter of the 13th century Angkorian forces were withdrawn from Champa. By mid-century most of the peninsula, areas west of the Chaophraya river, and northern Thailand had broken away, to be followed shortly by Lopburi and other states in the Chaophraya plain. By 1297 Angkor was defending against Tai attacks from the west. After new Tai pressure forced what some his- torians claim was a temporary withdrawal from Angkor during the mid- to late 14th century (various dates between 1350 and 1389 have been proposed), Khmer rulers may have abandoned the great capital in the 1430s or 1440s in favor of Phnom Penh in the southeast. It is equally plausible that Angkor was never actually abandoned, but that a more powerful royal lineage established itself at Phnom Penh in ri- valry with the old Angkorian family.78 In either case, the 14th century enfeebled central power. Thus Angkor’s disintegration began some- what earlier but overlapped substantially with that of the Upper Burma state, whose problems began in the 1280s, which suffered a major military-political crisis in the 1360s, and which also limped along into the 15th century.’ [8] ’In a belated effort to woo Chinese trade, between 1371 and 1419 Angkor sent more tribute missions to China than in the previous 500 years, but the subsequent effective transfer of the capital to the more commercially viable site of Phnom Penh marked the eclipse of pro-Angkor elements within the Khmer elite.87’ [9] ’The pioneer was a Dominican name d Gaspar da Cruz, who arrived in 1555 at the court of King Ang Chan -one of Post-Classic Cambodia’s greatest rulers-in the then capital, Lovek.’, [10] ’The initial move seems to have been to Srei Santhor, about 30 km (19 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, at some time in the fourteenth century; then, briefly, to Phnom Penh itself. By about 1528, the Cambodian court under its first great Post-Angkorian king, Ang Chan I, had moved once and for all to the all to the Quatre Bras region, establishing a new capital at Lovek (Longvek), on the right bank of the Tonle Sap River, 50 km (30 miles) north of Phnom Penh. Love, like Udong and Phnom Penh- the town s that succeeded it as the capital- was thoroughly international, with foreign quarters for Malay, Japanese, and Chinese traders (there were as many as 3,000 of the last in the 1540s). There Ang Chan (who really did exist) built a golden palace and at least four major wats, erecting a huge, four-faced Buddha of wood, the stone foundation of which survive in one of the town’s vicars. The capital was fortified by earthen ramparts topped with palisades; these ramparts, which form a huge rectangle, are still visible.’ [11]
[1]: (Fletcher 2012, p.313)
[2]: (Penny et al 2014, p. e84252)
[3]: (Ooi and Barnhill 2004, p. 1496)
[4]: (National Geographic 2009)
[5]: (Miksic 2007, pp. 17-18)
[6]: (Coe 2003, p. 195)
[7]: (Miksic 2007, p. 84)
[8]: (Lieberman 2003, pp. 236-237)
[9]: (Lieberman 2003, p. 240)
[10]: (Coe 2003, p. 201)
[11]: (Coe 2003, pp. 208-209)
’We know little of the history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the Khmer chronicles are primarily eighteenth- and nineteenth-century court documents created in the eastern Khmer capitals, in particular Phnom Phenh, with a specific political agenda in mind.’ [1] ’Angkor was the vast low-density capital of the Khmer Kingdom, from the early 9th to the mid-14th/15th centuries of the Common Era (CE). At its peak, Angkor sprawled over nearly 1000 km2 [1] and may have housed more than three quarters of a million people [2,3]. The primary administrative centre in a kingdom that dominated most of mainland Southeast Asia by the 11th century CE, Angkor was the largest preindustrial city on Earth and remains the world’s largest archaeological site. The Angkor period is commonly understood to start in 802 CE with the proclamation of Jayavarman II as the chakravartin (universal-king) from a location in the Kulen mountains (Phnom Kulen), overlooking the vast alluvial plain where Angkor would begin to emerge in the following centuries (Figure 1). In doing so, Jayavarman confirmed himself as the great unifier; drawing Cambodia’s disparate polities together under the first ‘god king’ and establishing the Khmer state and the basis of its empire. Phnom Kulen was known as Mahendraparvata; ‘‘the hill of the great Indra’’. The extant history of Mahendraparvata is based on several inscriptions, the most well-known being an 11th century CE inscription (K.235) found at the Sdok Kak Thom temple, in eastern Thailand [4]. The inscription, dated to 1052 CE, outlines the lineage of a private family serving successive Khmer Kings for two and a half centuries, the first mentioned being Jayavarman II.’ [2] ’With the fading of the ANGKOR era, Cambodia shifts capitals south to Lovek, then to Udong, and finally to PHNOM PENH.This period also sees the waning of HINDUISM and the rise of THERAVADA BUDDHISM.’ [3] ’944 Rajendravarman II returns the capital to Angkor. The name “Angkor,” from the Sanskrit word for “city,” was given to the capital only in the 16th century. Temple inscriptions during imperial times call it Yashodharapura, “glory—bearing city.”’ [4] ’The Khmer pronunciation of Sanskrit negara, signifying capital of a kingdom. The ancient Khmer capital now known as Angkor was originally called Yasodharapura after Yasovarman, the ruler who moved the capital there in 889.’ [5] ’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] The capital in various locations between the Great Lake and the Delta.’ [6] ’But in the face of attacks from both Ayutthaya and the Cham, Suryavarman decided to retreat from the old site of Angkor and to move the capital to the area of Phnom Penh. After the fall of Cam- bodia, missions continued to arrive in China, in 1435, 1436, 1452, and 1499, indicating that the kingdom was still sufficiently integrated to be able to conduct foreign relations. The Angkor period, however, had come to an end.’ [7] ’First and most dramatic, Angkor’s empire fell apart. During the second quarter of the 13th century Angkorian forces were withdrawn from Champa. By mid-century most of the peninsula, areas west of the Chaophraya river, and northern Thailand had broken away, to be followed shortly by Lopburi and other states in the Chaophraya plain. By 1297 Angkor was defending against Tai attacks from the west. After new Tai pressure forced what some his- torians claim was a temporary withdrawal from Angkor during the mid- to late 14th century (various dates between 1350 and 1389 have been proposed), Khmer rulers may have abandoned the great capital in the 1430s or 1440s in favor of Phnom Penh in the southeast. It is equally plausible that Angkor was never actually abandoned, but that a more powerful royal lineage established itself at Phnom Penh in ri- valry with the old Angkorian family.78 In either case, the 14th century enfeebled central power. Thus Angkor’s disintegration began some- what earlier but overlapped substantially with that of the Upper Burma state, whose problems began in the 1280s, which suffered a major military-political crisis in the 1360s, and which also limped along into the 15th century.’ [8] ’In a belated effort to woo Chinese trade, between 1371 and 1419 Angkor sent more tribute missions to China than in the previous 500 years, but the subsequent effective transfer of the capital to the more commercially viable site of Phnom Penh marked the eclipse of pro-Angkor elements within the Khmer elite.87’ [9] ’The pioneer was a Dominican name d Gaspar da Cruz, who arrived in 1555 at the court of King Ang Chan -one of Post-Classic Cambodia’s greatest rulers-in the then capital, Lovek.’, [10] ’The initial move seems to have been to Srei Santhor, about 30 km (19 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, at some time in the fourteenth century; then, briefly, to Phnom Penh itself. By about 1528, the Cambodian court under its first great Post-Angkorian king, Ang Chan I, had moved once and for all to the all to the Quatre Bras region, establishing a new capital at Lovek (Longvek), on the right bank of the Tonle Sap River, 50 km (30 miles) north of Phnom Penh. Love, like Udong and Phnom Penh- the town s that succeeded it as the capital- was thoroughly international, with foreign quarters for Malay, Japanese, and Chinese traders (there were as many as 3,000 of the last in the 1540s). There Ang Chan (who really did exist) built a golden palace and at least four major wats, erecting a huge, four-faced Buddha of wood, the stone foundation of which survive in one of the town’s vicars. The capital was fortified by earthen ramparts topped with palisades; these ramparts, which form a huge rectangle, are still visible.’ [11]
[1]: (Fletcher 2012, p.313)
[2]: (Penny et al 2014, p. e84252)
[3]: (Ooi and Barnhill 2004, p. 1496)
[4]: (National Geographic 2009)
[5]: (Miksic 2007, pp. 17-18)
[6]: (Coe 2003, p. 195)
[7]: (Miksic 2007, p. 84)
[8]: (Lieberman 2003, pp. 236-237)
[9]: (Lieberman 2003, p. 240)
[10]: (Coe 2003, p. 201)
[11]: (Coe 2003, pp. 208-209)
’We know little of the history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the Khmer chronicles are primarily eighteenth- and nineteenth-century court documents created in the eastern Khmer capitals, in particular Phnom Phenh, with a specific political agenda in mind.’ [1] ’Angkor was the vast low-density capital of the Khmer Kingdom, from the early 9th to the mid-14th/15th centuries of the Common Era (CE). At its peak, Angkor sprawled over nearly 1000 km2 [1] and may have housed more than three quarters of a million people [2,3]. The primary administrative centre in a kingdom that dominated most of mainland Southeast Asia by the 11th century CE, Angkor was the largest preindustrial city on Earth and remains the world’s largest archaeological site. The Angkor period is commonly understood to start in 802 CE with the proclamation of Jayavarman II as the chakravartin (universal-king) from a location in the Kulen mountains (Phnom Kulen), overlooking the vast alluvial plain where Angkor would begin to emerge in the following centuries (Figure 1). In doing so, Jayavarman confirmed himself as the great unifier; drawing Cambodia’s disparate polities together under the first ‘god king’ and establishing the Khmer state and the basis of its empire. Phnom Kulen was known as Mahendraparvata; ‘‘the hill of the great Indra’’. The extant history of Mahendraparvata is based on several inscriptions, the most well-known being an 11th century CE inscription (K.235) found at the Sdok Kak Thom temple, in eastern Thailand [4]. The inscription, dated to 1052 CE, outlines the lineage of a private family serving successive Khmer Kings for two and a half centuries, the first mentioned being Jayavarman II.’ [2] ’With the fading of the ANGKOR era, Cambodia shifts capitals south to Lovek, then to Udong, and finally to PHNOM PENH.This period also sees the waning of HINDUISM and the rise of THERAVADA BUDDHISM.’ [3] ’944 Rajendravarman II returns the capital to Angkor. The name “Angkor,” from the Sanskrit word for “city,” was given to the capital only in the 16th century. Temple inscriptions during imperial times call it Yashodharapura, “glory—bearing city.”’ [4] ’The Khmer pronunciation of Sanskrit negara, signifying capital of a kingdom. The ancient Khmer capital now known as Angkor was originally called Yasodharapura after Yasovarman, the ruler who moved the capital there in 889.’ [5] ’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] The capital in various locations between the Great Lake and the Delta.’ [6] ’But in the face of attacks from both Ayutthaya and the Cham, Suryavarman decided to retreat from the old site of Angkor and to move the capital to the area of Phnom Penh. After the fall of Cam- bodia, missions continued to arrive in China, in 1435, 1436, 1452, and 1499, indicating that the kingdom was still sufficiently integrated to be able to conduct foreign relations. The Angkor period, however, had come to an end.’ [7] ’First and most dramatic, Angkor’s empire fell apart. During the second quarter of the 13th century Angkorian forces were withdrawn from Champa. By mid-century most of the peninsula, areas west of the Chaophraya river, and northern Thailand had broken away, to be followed shortly by Lopburi and other states in the Chaophraya plain. By 1297 Angkor was defending against Tai attacks from the west. After new Tai pressure forced what some his- torians claim was a temporary withdrawal from Angkor during the mid- to late 14th century (various dates between 1350 and 1389 have been proposed), Khmer rulers may have abandoned the great capital in the 1430s or 1440s in favor of Phnom Penh in the southeast. It is equally plausible that Angkor was never actually abandoned, but that a more powerful royal lineage established itself at Phnom Penh in ri- valry with the old Angkorian family.78 In either case, the 14th century enfeebled central power. Thus Angkor’s disintegration began some- what earlier but overlapped substantially with that of the Upper Burma state, whose problems began in the 1280s, which suffered a major military-political crisis in the 1360s, and which also limped along into the 15th century.’ [8] ’In a belated effort to woo Chinese trade, between 1371 and 1419 Angkor sent more tribute missions to China than in the previous 500 years, but the subsequent effective transfer of the capital to the more commercially viable site of Phnom Penh marked the eclipse of pro-Angkor elements within the Khmer elite.87’ [9] ’The pioneer was a Dominican name d Gaspar da Cruz, who arrived in 1555 at the court of King Ang Chan -one of Post-Classic Cambodia’s greatest rulers-in the then capital, Lovek.’, [10] ’The initial move seems to have been to Srei Santhor, about 30 km (19 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, at some time in the fourteenth century; then, briefly, to Phnom Penh itself. By about 1528, the Cambodian court under its first great Post-Angkorian king, Ang Chan I, had moved once and for all to the all to the Quatre Bras region, establishing a new capital at Lovek (Longvek), on the right bank of the Tonle Sap River, 50 km (30 miles) north of Phnom Penh. Love, like Udong and Phnom Penh- the town s that succeeded it as the capital- was thoroughly international, with foreign quarters for Malay, Japanese, and Chinese traders (there were as many as 3,000 of the last in the 1540s). There Ang Chan (who really did exist) built a golden palace and at least four major wats, erecting a huge, four-faced Buddha of wood, the stone foundation of which survive in one of the town’s vicars. The capital was fortified by earthen ramparts topped with palisades; these ramparts, which form a huge rectangle, are still visible.’ [11]
[1]: (Fletcher 2012, p.313)
[2]: (Penny et al 2014, p. e84252)
[3]: (Ooi and Barnhill 2004, p. 1496)
[4]: (National Geographic 2009)
[5]: (Miksic 2007, pp. 17-18)
[6]: (Coe 2003, p. 195)
[7]: (Miksic 2007, p. 84)
[8]: (Lieberman 2003, pp. 236-237)
[9]: (Lieberman 2003, p. 240)
[10]: (Coe 2003, p. 201)
[11]: (Coe 2003, pp. 208-209)
Peak of territorial expanse.
[1]
[1]: (TimeMap Project, University of Sydney, Australia, http://sydney.edu.au/arts/timemap/images/content/timemap/examples/2003_03_khmer_animation.swf)
Original 1327 CE start date (last Sanskrit inscription at Angkor) moved to 1432 CE (capital moves to Phnom Penh area). Original end date of 1594 CE (capital at Longvek/Lovek fell to Ayutthaya) This period ends in 1594, the year that the Angkorian capital at Longvek/Lovek fell to the Siamese. ’The last Sanskrit inscription carved in Angkor commemorates the ascension of a minor king. Archaeologists consider this the end of the Classic Khmer period.’ [1] ’During the early decades of the fifteenth century, the Angkor Empire started to decline, and it fell to the Thai in 1431.’ [2] ’Ayutthaya reasserted itself as the dominant Thai state, signalling its new position by a successful attack on the Khmer capital at Lovek in 1594. In desperation, the Cambodian king appealed to the Spanish at Manila, asking for military assistance in exchange for submission to the Spanish Crown. With the failure of this effort there was nothing to stop continued Thai incursions and the eventual enforced submission of Cambodia to Ayutthaya’s control.’ [3] ’The very last Sanskrit inscription in ancient Cambodia dates to AD 1327, and describes the accession of a king named Jayavarmadiparameshvara. With this event, the Classic period of Khmer civilisation effectively some to a close. There is here called the ’Post-Classic’, and by others the post-Angkorian or Middle Period of Cambodian history and culture, extends from that date until the establishment of the French Protectorate in 1863.’ [4] ’Even worse for Cambodia, in 1594 Lovek fell to the Thai army after the king and his son had fled to Laos. The Thai capture of Lovek is commemorated in two Khmer legends.’ [5] ’Cambodian history is normally divided into the pre-Angkor (third century to 802 CE), Angkor (802-1432), and post-Angkor periods. The pre-Angkor period is mainly known from seventh-century in- scriptions; Angkor epigraphy begins in the late ninth century. Thus there is a crucial gap in our sources during the critical transitional phase.’ [6] ’But in the face of attacks from both Ayutthaya and the Cham, Suryavarman decided to retreat from the old site of Angkor and to move the capital to the area of Phnom Penh. After the fall of Cambodia, missions continued to arrive in China, in 1435, 1436, 1452, and 1499, indicating that the kingdom was still sufficiently integrated to be able to conduct foreign relations. The Angkor period, however, had come to an end.’ [7] ’First and most dramatic, Angkor’s empire fell apart. During the second quarter of the 13th century Angkorian forces were withdrawn from Champa. By mid-century most of the peninsula, areas west of the Chaophraya river, and northern Thailand had broken away, to be followed shortly by Lopburi and other states in the Chaophraya plain. By 1297 Angkor was defending against Tai attacks from the west. After new Tai pressure forced what some his- torians claim was a temporary withdrawal from Angkor during the mid- to late 14th century (various dates between 1350 and 1389 have been proposed), Khmer rulers may have abandoned the great capital in the 1430s or 1440s in favor of Phnom Penh in the southeast. It is equally plausible that Angkor was never actually abandoned, but that a more powerful royal lineage established itself at Phnom Penh in ri- valry with the old Angkorian family.78 In either case, the 14th century enfeebled central power. Thus Angkor’s disintegration began some- what earlier but overlapped substantially with that of the Upper Burma state, whose problems began in the 1280s, which suffered a major military-political crisis in the 1360s, and which also limped along into the 15th century.’ [8]
[1]: (National Geographic 2009)
[2]: (Nyunt 2004, p. 180)
[3]: (Andaya 2008, p. 423)
[4]: (Coe 2003, p. 195)
[5]: (Coe 2003, p. 210)
[6]: (Miksic 2007, p.80)
[7]: (Miksic 2007, p. 84)
[8]: (Lieberman 2003, pp. 236-237)
’In contrast, the Hindu religion and its trappings offered the benefits of royal ideology tailor-made for nascent Southeast Asian kings, no political strings attached [as in Chinese-style imperial bureaucracy]. Here is what Indianization eventually brought to the region: the rich and complex Hindu religion, its mythology and cosmology, and its ritual (see p. 80); in particular, the cults of the gods Shiva and Vishnu, with whom local kings could identify. The Sanskrit language, the vehicle of Hinduism and one sect of Buddhism, and the source of many loan-works in early Khmer. The Indic (Brahmi) writing system, stone inscriptions and palm-leaf books. The Hindu temple complex, and an architectural tradition of brick and/or stone based upon Gupta prototypes. Statuary representing gods, kings and the Buddha. Cremation burial, at least of the upper stratum of society. Rectilineal town and city plans. Artificial water systems, including rectangular reservoirs (the srah and bray of Classic Khmer culture), as well as canals. Wheel-made pottery, which supplemented but did not supplant the local paddle-and-anvil ceramic tradition.’ [1]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 63)
’The year 1432 symbolizes the termination of the Angkor period because it coincides with the transfer of power eastward. This shift was due partly to military pressure from Ayutthaya on the west and partly to the attraction of a location closer to the coast in order to take advantage of increasing opportunities for maritime trade. Angkor was under the control of Ayutthaya for a short time, but in the 1540s a Khmer ruler known in the chronicles as Ang Chan moved back to Angkor and resumed work on some unfinished monuments, includ- ing relief carvings in Angkor Wat. Banteay Kdei was restored, Ba- phuon and Phnom Bakheng were altered, and the west facade of the second level of Baphuon was converted into a reclining Buddha 60 meters (200 feet) long.’ [1]
[1]: (Miksic 2007, p. 19)
km squared. Estimated by using Google Earth Pro to trace the boundaries of modern Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia.
’All the institutions of government reviewed above give the impression that they belong to an apparatus of (as least potentially) oppressive, even totalitarian, power. Indeed, it is altogether likely that after the time of Rajendravarman the kings of Angkor presided over a much more centralized regime than the Khmers had known before. Institutions of government embodied no principles of constitutional checks upon royal power beyond the notion of religious morality. An impulse to totalitarian government was present, and found expression whenever rulers found themselves temporarily without dangerous rivals still at large. We must remember, though, that this tate lacked all the advantages of modern communications and technology to assert its control in detail, and that all sorts of regional, personal and factional loyalties were liable to obstruct the impulse to totalitarianism before too long.’ [1] ’Angkor under Suyavarman [II] was at the peak of its glory. The institutional reforms of Rajendravarman were secure, giving a measure of centralisation to the administration of the empire. [2] The central administration in Angkor must have had fairly detailed information for the purposes of taxation and core labour of all the empire’s inhabitants, for according to Zhou a census was taken during the ninth Cambodian month, where everyone (or, more likely, all heads of families) was called to the capital, and passed in review before the Royal Palace. Such census registers were kept in Aymonier’s day, and revised every three years.’ [3] ’Because the Angkor kingdom commanded a significant army and a large centralized administrative apparatus and because thousands of workers were needed to build and maintain its enormous building complexes, it has been assumed that around the stone constructions of the palaces and temples a city with a substantial population must have existed.’ [4]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.169)
[2]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.105)
[3]: (Coe 2003, p. 145)
[4]: (Miksic 2007, p. 18)
Khmer or Cambodian [1] ’The Khmer language, which is distantly related to Vietnamese and many minority languages spoken in mainland Southeast Asia, belongs to the Mon-Khmer subset of the Austroasiatic family of languages. Over fifty distinct Austroasiatic languages are spoken across a wide swath of the Asian main- land, stretching from eastern India westward to Vietnam. Of these languages, only Khmer and Mon possess alphabets of their own.The Mons and the Khmers are also the only speakers of Austroasiatic languages to practice settled agri- culture. The earliest evidence of written Khmer comes from an inscription incised in southern Cambodia of the seventh century C.E., using an alphabet derived from southern India, which, in modified form, remains in use in contemporary Cambodia. The Thais adapted the alphabet for their own use in the thirteenth century C.E.’ [2] ’Linguistically and genetically an Austro-Asiatic group, the Mon belong to the Mon-Khmer ethnological unit. Archaeological remains have shown that they inhabited the area of the Mekong Delta and Tonle Sap regions of present- day Cambodia, northeast Thailand, and around the Gulf of Thailand from at least the beginning of the Common Era (C.E.). Perhaps they date even earlier, as evidence of an Austro-Asiatic group has been found in western Thailand in Kanchanaburi Province near the village of Ban Kao, dating from Neolithic times (10,000 B.C.E.). Archaeological remains indicate that a Mon civilization based on Theravada Buddhism was present in northeast Thailand up to around the early ninth century, when it was overtaken by the Khmers of Angkor expanding from cen- tral Cambodia at the beginning of the reign of Jayavarman II (770/790/802?-834 C.E.).’ [3] ’In northeast Thailand, for example, most Hinayana Buddhist stupas yielded to the standardized prasat structures of Angkorian Hinduism or Mahayana Buddhism.58 In 1200 people who spoke Khmer as their primary tongue probably formed a majority in the Cambodian plain, the Mekong basin as far north as That Phanom, much of the Chi and Mun river valleys, and the area im- mediately north and east of present-day Bangkok.59 But the lowlands also contained very substantial non-Khmer populations. Those parts of the Chaophraya basin subject to Angkor, for example, were dominated by Mon- and later by Tai-speakers, both of whom tended to be more attached to Hinayana Buddhism than to Hinduism. The basin also in- cluded people who in later times might be labeled Malay, Cham, or Karen.60 Angkor itself by 1297, according to Zhou Daguan, had Siamese (Tai) settlers as well as a large population of enslaved hill peoples, who were treated as a race apart. Each city and village in Cambodia, he added, had its own Khmer dialect.61’ [4] ’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] Theravada Buddhism as the state religion, with Pali rather than Sanskrit as its language.’ [5] ’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] Middle Khmer replaces Old Khmer as the language of the people and of the court.’ [5] ’Secondly, during the period in question and even long afterwards, the Cambodian and Thai courts were inextricably linked. Khmer intellectuals were steeped in Thai language and literature, and had come to think that the Ayutthaya chronicles were something to imitate; thus, they forced the Cambodian chronicles into a Thai model.’ [6]
[1]: (http://www.ethnologue.com/language/khm)
[2]: (Chandler 2004, p. 729)
[3]: (James 2004, p. 904)
[4]: (Lieberman 2003, p. 231)
[5]: (Coe 2003, p. 195)
[6]: (Coe 2003, p. 199)
Khmer or Cambodian [1] ’The Khmer language, which is distantly related to Vietnamese and many minority languages spoken in mainland Southeast Asia, belongs to the Mon-Khmer subset of the Austroasiatic family of languages. Over fifty distinct Austroasiatic languages are spoken across a wide swath of the Asian main- land, stretching from eastern India westward to Vietnam. Of these languages, only Khmer and Mon possess alphabets of their own.The Mons and the Khmers are also the only speakers of Austroasiatic languages to practice settled agri- culture. The earliest evidence of written Khmer comes from an inscription incised in southern Cambodia of the seventh century C.E., using an alphabet derived from southern India, which, in modified form, remains in use in contemporary Cambodia. The Thais adapted the alphabet for their own use in the thirteenth century C.E.’ [2] ’Linguistically and genetically an Austro-Asiatic group, the Mon belong to the Mon-Khmer ethnological unit. Archaeological remains have shown that they inhabited the area of the Mekong Delta and Tonle Sap regions of present- day Cambodia, northeast Thailand, and around the Gulf of Thailand from at least the beginning of the Common Era (C.E.). Perhaps they date even earlier, as evidence of an Austro-Asiatic group has been found in western Thailand in Kanchanaburi Province near the village of Ban Kao, dating from Neolithic times (10,000 B.C.E.). Archaeological remains indicate that a Mon civilization based on Theravada Buddhism was present in northeast Thailand up to around the early ninth century, when it was overtaken by the Khmers of Angkor expanding from cen- tral Cambodia at the beginning of the reign of Jayavarman II (770/790/802?-834 C.E.).’ [3] ’In northeast Thailand, for example, most Hinayana Buddhist stupas yielded to the standardized prasat structures of Angkorian Hinduism or Mahayana Buddhism.58 In 1200 people who spoke Khmer as their primary tongue probably formed a majority in the Cambodian plain, the Mekong basin as far north as That Phanom, much of the Chi and Mun river valleys, and the area im- mediately north and east of present-day Bangkok.59 But the lowlands also contained very substantial non-Khmer populations. Those parts of the Chaophraya basin subject to Angkor, for example, were dominated by Mon- and later by Tai-speakers, both of whom tended to be more attached to Hinayana Buddhism than to Hinduism. The basin also in- cluded people who in later times might be labeled Malay, Cham, or Karen.60 Angkor itself by 1297, according to Zhou Daguan, had Siamese (Tai) settlers as well as a large population of enslaved hill peoples, who were treated as a race apart. Each city and village in Cambodia, he added, had its own Khmer dialect.61’ [4] ’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] Theravada Buddhism as the state religion, with Pali rather than Sanskrit as its language.’ [5] ’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] Middle Khmer replaces Old Khmer as the language of the people and of the court.’ [5] ’Secondly, during the period in question and even long afterwards, the Cambodian and Thai courts were inextricably linked. Khmer intellectuals were steeped in Thai language and literature, and had come to think that the Ayutthaya chronicles were something to imitate; thus, they forced the Cambodian chronicles into a Thai model.’ [6]
[1]: (http://www.ethnologue.com/language/khm)
[2]: (Chandler 2004, p. 729)
[3]: (James 2004, p. 904)
[4]: (Lieberman 2003, p. 231)
[5]: (Coe 2003, p. 195)
[6]: (Coe 2003, p. 199)
Khmer or Cambodian [1] ’The Khmer language, which is distantly related to Vietnamese and many minority languages spoken in mainland Southeast Asia, belongs to the Mon-Khmer subset of the Austroasiatic family of languages. Over fifty distinct Austroasiatic languages are spoken across a wide swath of the Asian main- land, stretching from eastern India westward to Vietnam. Of these languages, only Khmer and Mon possess alphabets of their own.The Mons and the Khmers are also the only speakers of Austroasiatic languages to practice settled agri- culture. The earliest evidence of written Khmer comes from an inscription incised in southern Cambodia of the seventh century C.E., using an alphabet derived from southern India, which, in modified form, remains in use in contemporary Cambodia. The Thais adapted the alphabet for their own use in the thirteenth century C.E.’ [2] ’Linguistically and genetically an Austro-Asiatic group, the Mon belong to the Mon-Khmer ethnological unit. Archaeological remains have shown that they inhabited the area of the Mekong Delta and Tonle Sap regions of present- day Cambodia, northeast Thailand, and around the Gulf of Thailand from at least the beginning of the Common Era (C.E.). Perhaps they date even earlier, as evidence of an Austro-Asiatic group has been found in western Thailand in Kanchanaburi Province near the village of Ban Kao, dating from Neolithic times (10,000 B.C.E.). Archaeological remains indicate that a Mon civilization based on Theravada Buddhism was present in northeast Thailand up to around the early ninth century, when it was overtaken by the Khmers of Angkor expanding from cen- tral Cambodia at the beginning of the reign of Jayavarman II (770/790/802?-834 C.E.).’ [3] ’In northeast Thailand, for example, most Hinayana Buddhist stupas yielded to the standardized prasat structures of Angkorian Hinduism or Mahayana Buddhism.58 In 1200 people who spoke Khmer as their primary tongue probably formed a majority in the Cambodian plain, the Mekong basin as far north as That Phanom, much of the Chi and Mun river valleys, and the area im- mediately north and east of present-day Bangkok.59 But the lowlands also contained very substantial non-Khmer populations. Those parts of the Chaophraya basin subject to Angkor, for example, were dominated by Mon- and later by Tai-speakers, both of whom tended to be more attached to Hinayana Buddhism than to Hinduism. The basin also in- cluded people who in later times might be labeled Malay, Cham, or Karen.60 Angkor itself by 1297, according to Zhou Daguan, had Siamese (Tai) settlers as well as a large population of enslaved hill peoples, who were treated as a race apart. Each city and village in Cambodia, he added, had its own Khmer dialect.61’ [4] ’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] Theravada Buddhism as the state religion, with Pali rather than Sanskrit as its language.’ [5] ’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] Middle Khmer replaces Old Khmer as the language of the people and of the court.’ [5] ’Secondly, during the period in question and even long afterwards, the Cambodian and Thai courts were inextricably linked. Khmer intellectuals were steeped in Thai language and literature, and had come to think that the Ayutthaya chronicles were something to imitate; thus, they forced the Cambodian chronicles into a Thai model.’ [6]
[1]: (http://www.ethnologue.com/language/khm)
[2]: (Chandler 2004, p. 729)
[3]: (James 2004, p. 904)
[4]: (Lieberman 2003, p. 231)
[5]: (Coe 2003, p. 195)
[6]: (Coe 2003, p. 199)
Khmer or Cambodian [1] ’The Khmer language, which is distantly related to Vietnamese and many minority languages spoken in mainland Southeast Asia, belongs to the Mon-Khmer subset of the Austroasiatic family of languages. Over fifty distinct Austroasiatic languages are spoken across a wide swath of the Asian main- land, stretching from eastern India westward to Vietnam. Of these languages, only Khmer and Mon possess alphabets of their own.The Mons and the Khmers are also the only speakers of Austroasiatic languages to practice settled agri- culture. The earliest evidence of written Khmer comes from an inscription incised in southern Cambodia of the seventh century C.E., using an alphabet derived from southern India, which, in modified form, remains in use in contemporary Cambodia. The Thais adapted the alphabet for their own use in the thirteenth century C.E.’ [2] ’Linguistically and genetically an Austro-Asiatic group, the Mon belong to the Mon-Khmer ethnological unit. Archaeological remains have shown that they inhabited the area of the Mekong Delta and Tonle Sap regions of present- day Cambodia, northeast Thailand, and around the Gulf of Thailand from at least the beginning of the Common Era (C.E.). Perhaps they date even earlier, as evidence of an Austro-Asiatic group has been found in western Thailand in Kanchanaburi Province near the village of Ban Kao, dating from Neolithic times (10,000 B.C.E.). Archaeological remains indicate that a Mon civilization based on Theravada Buddhism was present in northeast Thailand up to around the early ninth century, when it was overtaken by the Khmers of Angkor expanding from cen- tral Cambodia at the beginning of the reign of Jayavarman II (770/790/802?-834 C.E.).’ [3] ’In northeast Thailand, for example, most Hinayana Buddhist stupas yielded to the standardized prasat structures of Angkorian Hinduism or Mahayana Buddhism.58 In 1200 people who spoke Khmer as their primary tongue probably formed a majority in the Cambodian plain, the Mekong basin as far north as That Phanom, much of the Chi and Mun river valleys, and the area im- mediately north and east of present-day Bangkok.59 But the lowlands also contained very substantial non-Khmer populations. Those parts of the Chaophraya basin subject to Angkor, for example, were dominated by Mon- and later by Tai-speakers, both of whom tended to be more attached to Hinayana Buddhism than to Hinduism. The basin also in- cluded people who in later times might be labeled Malay, Cham, or Karen.60 Angkor itself by 1297, according to Zhou Daguan, had Siamese (Tai) settlers as well as a large population of enslaved hill peoples, who were treated as a race apart. Each city and village in Cambodia, he added, had its own Khmer dialect.61’ [4] ’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] Theravada Buddhism as the state religion, with Pali rather than Sanskrit as its language.’ [5] ’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] Middle Khmer replaces Old Khmer as the language of the people and of the court.’ [5] ’Secondly, during the period in question and even long afterwards, the Cambodian and Thai courts were inextricably linked. Khmer intellectuals were steeped in Thai language and literature, and had come to think that the Ayutthaya chronicles were something to imitate; thus, they forced the Cambodian chronicles into a Thai model.’ [6]
[1]: (http://www.ethnologue.com/language/khm)
[2]: (Chandler 2004, p. 729)
[3]: (James 2004, p. 904)
[4]: (Lieberman 2003, p. 231)
[5]: (Coe 2003, p. 195)
[6]: (Coe 2003, p. 199)
In the 17th century, in the area of Phnom Penh there were around 5,000 Chinese merchants, 1200 Portuguese, and other communities of Malay, Cham, Siamese, plus local population [1] . Van der Kraan estimates a total of 1 million in the whole of Cambodia [2] . Since Oudong (the capital) and Phnom Penh were in this area, it is likely that a large portion of the population lived there.
[1]: (Van der Kraan 2009: 13)
[2]: (Van der Kraan 2009: f.n.87, p. 37)
Inhabitants at peak. Sources mention population drop in the 1400s - so probably fewer people during this period. These sources refer to Classic Angkor and not the post-Classic period. ’At its peak, Angkor sprawled over nearly 1000 km2 [1] and may have housed more than three quarters of a million people [2,3].’ [1] ’With a fluctuating but persistent political dominance that extended from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries, it is hardly surprising that Angkor could built a temple enclosure (Angkor Wat) the size of central Tikal (Figure 11.11) and create a low-density urban complex with a water management network that spread across nearly 1,000 km^2 of intermeshed urban-rural landscape. That landscape could have fed between 300,000 and 750,000 human beings (see Fletcher et al. 2003:117 for assessment by Lustig).’ [2] ’Angkor. It is now clear that the temple complex was the centre of an enormous dispersed city, home to up to one million inhabitants, making it the largest city of antiquity. ’ [3] ’Although it is likely that Groslier’s original population estimate was too high, Angkor was probably the largest pre-industrial city in the world. The most recent archaeological work indicates that one million is a reasonable estimate of the city’s size.’ [4] ’Acker has given detailed consideration to the area that could have been irrigated, the water requirement, likely yields, and the location of the barays relative to one another and the land below them. His calculations were based on Groslier’s estimate of a population at Angkor in the vicinity of 1,900,000 people, of whom 600,000 were supported by 86,000 hectares (215,000 acres) of irrigated rice fields. In the dry season, a hectare would require 15,000 cubic meters (525,000 cu. ft.) of water. Assuming all the major barays at Angkor were full to a depth of three meters (9.9 ft.), they could have supplied 7,000 hectares (17,500 acres). If they yielded 1.46 tons of rice per hectare and annual consumption was 220 kilograms (484 lbs.) of rice per capita, the dry season yield would have maintained about 44,500 people, about 2.5 percent of the estimated population. This calculation is based only on the amount of water available when the barays were three meters deep. It does not take into account the possibility that the barays were constantly replenished with water from the Siem Reap River throughout the dry season. There is also the possibility that the reservoirs were used to supplement water supplies to the fields when there was insufficient rainfall during the wet sea- son. If so, then a further 9,000 metric tons (9,900 tons) over and above anticipated wet-season production could have been obtained, making the total irrigated yield 19,200 tons, sufficient to feed nearly 100,000 people.’ [5] ’At its peak, the population of the impe- rial core may have exceeded 1.5 million.’ [6] ’At its height, Angkor was the largest premodern settlement in the world, a city of more than 700,000 spread over a larger area than modern Los Angeles. Its crowning achievement was Angkor Wat, built at the kingdom’s height in the early twelfth century. Topped by five towers, arranged in an “X” pattern like the dots on a die, Angkor Wat was designed as a microcosmic representation of Mount Meru, the center of the universe in Hindu and Buddhist cosmology. This vast complex, still the largest religious building in the world, remains a powerful representation of Angkor’s military, artistic, and economic might, as well as the absolute rule of the God Kings, who were said to “eat their kingdom,” ruling with an iron fist.’ [7] The figure was probably smaller toward the 1400s when the Phnom Penh area became the centre of the kingdom of Cambodia.
[1]: (Penny et al 2014, p. e84252)
[2]: (Fletcher 2012, pp.300-302)
[3]: (Tully 2005, p. 33)
[4]: (Tully 2005, p. 44)
[5]: (Higham 2004, p. 162)
[6]: (Lieberman 2003, p. 219)
[7]: (Strangio 2014, pp. 3-4)
levels. (1) Angkor Thom (monumental structures, theatre, market, hospital, central government buildings) (2) Former capital cities (monumental structures, market, theatre), (3) Major centres a day’s journey or less than 25km from Angkor (market, administrative buildings), (4) Regional centres approximately 150km from Angkor (administrative buildings, storehouse)), (5) Village centres less than 350km from Angkor (taxation office, shrine), and (6) Hamlet (residential only). ’At any rate, administrative divisions were standardized. On one widely shared interpretation the designation of many territories as visa where previously there had been praam indicated that formerly autonomous princely fiefs were integrated as provinces. It appears that the former was primarily a geographical term, while the latter came to refer to a specific administrative division, possibly equivalent to a province.’ In the thirteenth century, Chou Ta-kuan writes that there were over ninety provinces, each with a fortified citadel. At the level of the locality, there officials whom he called maichiech in the villages, possibly equivalent to me grok, custodians of settlements. Village elders, gramavrddha, are mentioned in the epigraphy, and appear to have had official responsibilities such as delivering criminals, suitably caged, into the custody of royal officials.’ [1] ’With distance from Angkor, the inscriptions appear to diminish in number in two stages, consistent with three decreasing levels of influence. Frequencies remain fairly constant up to about 150 km. Beyond this distance, there are fewer inscriptions to 350 km, and after that there are almost none.108 The shapes of the curves may also be a function of the pattern of settlement. For example, the dip in the 25-50 km interval may be related to the proximity of the Tonle Sap Lake, the associated swamps and the Kulen Hills, where there are few temples, while at 150 km the Dangrek Mountains could have affected settlement patterns. It may also be partly due to the existence of modern political boundaries and a potential for Khmer sites and inscriptions in Laos, Vietnam and Thailand to be less frequently recorded or published than those inside Cambodia.’ [2] See also Lustig’s (2009) six classes of inscription ’density’ [3]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.167)
[2]: (Lustig 2009, p. 133)
[3]: (Lustig 2009, pp. 147-148)
levels. ’Because all the Classic inscriptions deal with matters that are fundamentally religious in nature [...] we have much information on the central religious hierarchy, but little about the secular one. [...] The religious authorities and functionaries in the royal court were certainly almost entirely Brahmin caste [Level 2], although some priests in the provinces and villages [Level 1] may not have been so. Most of them may have received the honorific Khmer title of sten an, reserved for learned men. We already run across the purohita [Level 5]. In peninsular India,this Sanskrit word indicated a family priest or chaplain; in Classic Angkor, this important individual was the chaplain and chief priest of the king and, at least accordant tot he self-serving steal, was a hereditary officer charged with maintaining the cult of the devajara [Level 6]. The Sanskrit title of hotter or ’sacrificer’ occurs frequently in the texts; this is also supposed to indicate ’royal chaplain’ - but the exact scope of the term is unclear since while the royal hotar of the devaraja was a hotar, there were other hotter. Most of these may have had important administrative roles [Level 4]. There were many religious functionaries who received the Sanskrit title of acharya, a learned priest who acted as teacher and spiritual guide; or pandit, someone versed in sacred lore; or of upadhyaya, a teacher and preceptor leaned in the vedas. As with many Classic Khmer titles, there is little information on whether these were or were not interchangeable. [Level 3]’ [1] Coe (2003), citing Zhou, states, ’The highest dignitaries use palanquins with golden shafts and four parasols with handles of gold [Level 5]; those next in rank have a palanquin with golden shafts and two golden-handled parasols [Level 4]; then come those entitled to one palanquin with gold shafts and one golden-handled parasol [Level 3]. Further down the line come those permitted only a silver-handled parasol [Level 2], and there are others who use a palanquin with silver shafts [Level 1]... All parasols are made of red Chinese taffeta...’ [and, continues Coe] the great Suryavarman [Level 6] received the honour of fourteen parasols.’ [2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 143)
[2]: (Coe 2003, p. 144)
levels. King (level 1), leaders of military divisions and mercenary chief (level 2), captains of militia (level 3), member of elephant corps (level 4), member of calvary (level 5), units farmer-builder-soldier class (level 6). According to David Chandler, ’Though the king, who led his country into battle, sometimes engaged his chief enemy in single combat, Khmer military strength rested on the junior officers, the captains of militia. These men commanded the loyalty of peasant groups in their particular locality. If the king conquered a region, a new captain of militia would be enrolled and put under an oath of allegiance. The captains were simply headmen of the outlying regions, but their connection with the king enhanced their status. In time of war they were expected to conscript the peasants in their district and to lead them to Angkor to join the Khmer army. If the captains disobeyed the king they were put to death. The vast majority of the Khmer population were of the farmer-builder-soldier class.’ [1] ’One major feature of the ’imperial state’ was its maintenance of a large court and a corps of officials. Angkor has a sizeable bureaucracy staffed by officials of many sorts. Like so much about the Khmer kingdom in ancient times, the structure of government and the categories of the civil service are known to us through temple inscriptions, which frequently name various types of official or local dignitary in listing those present to witness the formal demarcation of land bestowed upon religious foundations; they mention a variety of grades and titles, some of them obscure. The khlon rajakarya was responsible for the administration of ’royal work’, probably corvee among other things. The tamrvac was an inspector; the officials who swore allegiance to Suryavarman I had this title, for example. The gunadosadarsin (assessor of virtues and defects) was concerned with temple property. A variety of functionaries were called khlon (inspector) and had responsibilities in various areas such as grain, temple dues, management of religious foundations and several aspects of court proceedings. Revenue was usually in kind, being paid in grain, but some special districts paid in other commodities such as honey and wax. There is evidence that some of the categories in which officials were placed were not types of professional specialisation but divisions of the government service placed under the patronage of particular chiefs belonging to the royal family, a system that was indeed known in later centuries. Some of the groups of dignitaries named in named in the inscriptions, again, appear to have been the bearers of hereditary privileges in the royal household; the term varna, for example, designates any of a number of orders of dignity, which have such official functions as religious teachers, performers of rites, door guardians, garden keepers, palace servants, bearers of flywhisks, and artists.’ [2] ’At Angkor Wat at the head of the "historic" march past, appears a foreign contingent identified by an epigraphic inscription as the chief of the Siamese and his troops. Is this mercenary chief in the service of Suryavarman II, part of the king’s own Siamese guard, similar to the Japanese and even Portuguese guards which some post-Angkorean rulers possessed, or a military contingent from a Siamese principality then a vassal of Cambodia, as S. Shai suggests? We cannot decide.’ [3]
[1]: (Ross 1990)
[2]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, pp.166-167)
[3]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 98)
According to Coe
[1]
, the Post-Classic administration was organised as follows:
1:King (raj/sdach)2::the four great Houses: Abdicated King (upayuvraj) 7 provinces; House of the King 42 provinces; Heir Presumptive (uparaj) 5 provinces; Queen Mother (brah varrajjini) 3 provinces3:::Council of Senapati: Prime Minister (samtach chauva4::::Council of Senapati: v, Superintendent of Palace and Finance (van), Naval Chief (krahlahom); Minister of War and Ground Transport (chakri)5:::::Guardians of the Kingdom (nagar pal), who answers to the Great Judge (yomaraj) and the Masters of Royal Chariots and Elephants, who answer to the Minister of War and Ground Transport (chakri) and the6:::::(equivalent to the level above) Master of Royal Secretaries (akara chinta), Master of Metal Stores (1. kosadhipati; 2. bra ghian adhipati), Master of Textiles, Wardrobe, etc. (1. para nayak), and Masters of Rice Granaries (1. abdimak mantri), who answer to the Superintendent of Palace and Finance (van)7::::::"okna", the leader of one of Cambodia’s "five lands"8:::::::lesser "okna" or governors, whose duties were to administer justice, to supervise the collection of taxes and rents, and to watch over the levying of core labour and the military call-up9::::::::an army of civil servants
’Post-Classic Cambodia was an absolute monarchy, headed by the king (raj in Sanskrit and Plai, scads in Khmer), whose power in theory had no limit, only the monks being exempt from his authority. On this individual were bestowed numerous titles, such as ’Raised above Heads’, ’Supreme Refuge’, ’the Master of the Lower Surface’, and so on. The king was the supreme landowner, and all the holdings of those who died went to him by escheat; but the real wealth of his royal domain lay among the alluvial margins of the main rivers and their islands, where rice fields were annually fertilized by rich deposits of mud (the some kind of situation on which the economic power of the pharaohs of Egypt and the Olmec rulers of Mexico had depended). Once crowned, the sdach was a sacred being, filled with what anthropologists call mana. Etienne Aymonier tells us: "Inviolable, he is henceforth the object of a cult pushed to adoration. No one is permitted to address a word to him or lay a hand on his sacred person; only his principal wives, by softly caressing his feet, dare to awaken him on urgent matters. His personal name which is never again pronounced is replaced by an equivalent which had been, according to custom, borrow from the ordinary tongue. He eats alone, surrounded outside by young pages, the sons of mandarins, and inside, by some favourites who serve him and who are in attendance at his meal, while keeping a respectful distance. At his audiences, which he gives seated cross-legged, princes, mandarins, and subjects remain crouching on their knees and elbows, their hands joined at the height of the forehead, which they knock on the ground three times at the beginning and end of the season."’
[2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, pp. 217-218)
[2]: (Coe 2003, p. 214)
’It was everyone’s ambition to be "rescued from the mud", but very few were. Most of those were placed, in Angkorean times, into various varna, or caste groupings, which made up perhaps a tenth of society as a whole. These people included clerks, artisans, concubines, artists, high officials, and priests, as well as royal servants, relatives, and soldiers.’ [1] ’The ordinary Khmer soldiers as well as officers might carry a lance; or a bow, with the arrows being held in a quiver; or sabres of different length; or various sizes of knives and daggers; or a kind of halberd known as a phka’h. The latter was basically an iron axe mounted on a long handle curved at one end. At Angkor Wat, the phka’k is held in the hands of high-ranking warriors mounted on elephants or horses; it is still in use in the twentieth century for hunting or work in the forest. Crossbows were known, but are extremely rare in the reliefs.’ [2]
[1]: (Chandler 2008, pp. 28-29)
[2]: (Coe 2003, p. 185)
’The bestowal of usufruct could bring tax benefits to a landowner; the orders of scholar-priests dwelling within them offered careers to the sons of great families; the sacramental power of their holy offices ensured rewards in the lives to come for their pious benefactors.’ [1] ’Gifts made to temples included all that was needed to support the cycle of rituals and its attendant priesthood: beans, sesame, beeswax, ginger, honey, syrup, clarified butter made from the milk of specially maintained herds, perfume specially ground for temple use.’ [1] ’It was everyone’s ambition to be "rescued from the mud", but very few were. Most of those were placed, in Angkorean times, into various varna, or caste groupings, which made up perhaps a tenth of society as a whole. These people included clerks, artisans, concubines, artists, high officials, and priests, as well as royal servants, relatives, and soldiers.’ [2] ’Temple building and maintenance of monuments, large numbers of state-supported Buddhist clergy, and punitive wars, coupled with the more egalitarian characteristics of THERAVADA BUDDHISM and the rise of the T’AIS, contributed to the decline of ANGKOR.’ [3] ’Evidence permits only a few observations about the economic, social, and political organization of the Angkorean polity. It is certain that the economy was based upon wet-rice agriculture, that temples were promi- nent custodians of land and peasants, and that royal authority was expressed through a relatively well-developed hierarchy that included priests and religious sanctions.’ [4] ’Khmers even travelled to Laos to proselytise for Theravadism. The new religion was ‘democratic’ in that there were no hereditary priests, such as the Brahmans—anyone might don the saffron robes and become a monk, and even a king who converted might beg for alms in the street. The new religion made a huge impact on those exhausted by the worldly demands of their sybaritic rulers. The material world was one full of vanity and one’s best chance of a better reincarnation and eventual ascendance to nirvana lay not with the accumulation of power and wealth, but in renouncing it and dedicating one’s life to good works. And what were the temples but monuments to the monstrous vanity of men who presumed to be gods when, accord- ing to the Theravadins, not even Buddha himself was a god?’ [5]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.115)
[2]: (Chandler 2008, pp. 28-29)
[3]: (Ooi 2004, p. 12)
[4]: (Taylor 2008, p. 160)
[5]: (Tully 2005, pp. 50-51)
According to Coe [1] , Post-Classical period professional military officers included a Naval Chief (krahlahom) and a Minister of War and Ground Transport (chakri). ’Inscriptions help us to identify some of the generals and contingents. Thus, units from Lavo are commanded by Prince Sri Jayasmhavarman, and at the right-end of the parade we see a Thai contingent. Significantly, they are represented as a motley, ill-drilled bunch, marking out of step in contrast to the nearby Khmers.’ [2] ’The ordinary Khmer soldiers as well as officers might carry a lance; or a bow, with the arrows being held in a quiver; or sabres of different length; or various sizes of knives and daggers; or a kind of halberd known as a phka’h. The latter was basically an iron axe mounted on a long handle curved at one end. At Angkor Wat, the phka’k is held in the hands of high-ranking warriors mounted on elephants or horses; it is still in use in the twentieth century for hunting or work in the forest. Crossbows were known, but are extremely rare in the reliefs.’ [3]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 217)
[2]: (Mabbet and Chandler 1995, p. 105)
[3]: (Coe 2003, p. 185)
Not mentioned by sources.
Many positions appear to have been hereditary. ’As for the clergy, the Brahmins (baku), descendants of the Hindu priests of Classic Angkor, form a patrilineal caste of several hundred facilities, distinguished from ordinary Cambodians by their long hair, which they wore in a chignon.’ [1] ’In this country there are ministers, generals, astronomers, and other officials, and, below them, all kinds of minor employees; only their names differ from ours. Mostly princes are designated for [official] positions; in other cases those selected offer their daughters as royal concubine.’ [2] ’Administrative officials were classified in four divisions, apparently horizontally arranged, which may have had a geographical basis, but about which little is known (Sahai 1978: 18). At least some administrative posts were hereditary, especially in the Angkorian period. For example, the purohita and the yājaka usually seem to have been hereditary officials and a single family was said to have been in charge of the devarāja cult for a period of 250 years (ibid., 24-25). A number of positions close to the kings (purohita, hotar, guru, ācārya and guṇadośadarśi) are referred to in Angkorian period inscriptions written by officials. These tend to be Sanskrit terms which had religious connotations, but as Vickery (2002: 93) points out, some of these became secular, as in India, and perhaps were so in Cambodia from the start. Researchers are not in agreement on issues such as whether certain roles and titles had to be held by Brahmins, could be held by women or were hereditary (Mabbett 1978: 33; Sahai 1978: 28; Chakravarti 1980: 53).’ [3]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 214)
[2]: (Zhou and Smithies 2001, p. 27)
[3]: (Lustig 2009, p. 74)
Full-time specialists ’One major feature of the ’imperial state’ was its maintenance of a large court and a corps of officials. Angkor has a sizeable bureaucracy staffed by officials of many sorts. Like so much about the Khmer kingdom in ancient times, the structure of government and the categories of the civil service are known to us through temple inscriptions, which frequently name various types of official or local dignitary in listing those present to witness the formal demarcation of land bestowed upon religious foundations; they mention a variety of grades and titles, some of them obscure. The khlon rajakarya was responsible for the administration of ’royal work’, probably corvee among other things. The tamrvac was an inspector; the officials who swore allegiance to Suryavarman I had this title, for example. The gunadosadarsin (assessor of virtues and defects) was concerned with temple property. A variety of functionaries were called khlon (inspector) and had responsibilities in various areas such as grain, temple dues, management of religious foundations and several aspects of court proceedings. Revenue was usually in kind, being paid in grain, but some special districts paid in other commodities such as honey and wax. There is evidence that some of the categories in which officials were placed were not types of professional specialisation but divisions of the government service placed under the patronage of particular chiefs belonging to the royal family, a system that was indeed known in later centuries. Some of the groups of dignitaries in named in the inscriptions, again, appear to have been the bearers of hereditary privileges in the royal household; the term varna, for example, designates any of a number of orders of dignity, which have such official functions as religious teachers, performers of rites, door guardians, garden keepers, palace servants, bearers of flywhisks, and artists.’ [1]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, pp.166-167)
there are no references to examination systems in the reviewed literature.
’The king was recognised as the final court of appeal and final authority in law. Before a case reached the king, it might go through various lower courts; inscriptions frequently mention officials who appear to have functions connected with courts of law. There is no way of measuring the extent of discrimination and corruption in the administration of justice. The ideal of fairness to all was certainly recognized; one judge, or [sic] example, is declared to have been appointed on the strength of his impartiality’ [1] ’Persons accused of crimes were taken before examining magistrates called sabhachara; these were peripatetic investigators of the court. Witnesses were called, testimony sworn, and written depositions taken. Often, fines were assessed, but punishments for serious infractions of the law was severe.’ [2] ’Within the village were local judicial courts (rah sabha), and there was always a keeper of records - an office that continued down to the nineteenth century.’ [3] ’Yang (2004) following Xia (1981) using the Shuofu A text, points to an inexactitude in Pelliot, whose text maintained the contrary, that scrivener’s shops did exist.’ [4]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, pp.167-168)
[2]: (Coe 2003, p. 144)
[3]: (Coe 2003, p. 142)
[4]: (Zhou and Smithies 2001, p. 45)
’Persons accused of crimes were taken before examining magistrates called sabhachara; these were peripatetic investigators of the court. Witnesses were called, testimony sworn, and written depositions taken. Often, fines were assessed, but punishments for serious infractions of the law was severe.’ [1] ’The king was recognised as the final court of appeal and final authority in law. Before a case reached the king, it might go through various lower courts; inscriptions frequently mention officials who appear to have functions connected with courts of law. There is no way of measuring the extent of discrimination and corruption in the administration of justice. The ideal of fairness to all was certainly recognized; one judge, or [sic] example, is declared to have been appointed on the strength of his impartiality’ [2] [2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 144)
[2]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, pp.167-168)
’Justice was administered according to principles about which we have little detailed information, though certainly such Indian texts as the Manusmrti lowboy were known. The king was recognised as the final court of appeal and final authority in law. Before a case reached the king, it might go through various lower courts; inscriptions frequently mention officials who appear to have functions connected with courts of law.’ [1] ’The Sanskrit poems proclaim the grandeur of kings; the Khmer inscriptions exhibit the precision with which jurisdictional squabbles were prosecuted and slaves registered.’ [2] ’As in the rest of the Indic world, the Angkor state and empire were government by rules laid down in the Code of Manu, a great compendium of Brahmanic law probably composed around the 4th century BC. [...] Every judicial act was theoretically inscribed on stone as well as on plaques of gold, silver or copper. The Khmer king was the defender of the law and order in Cambodia. His law courts, present on every administrative level right down tot he village, instituted criminal proceedings against transgressors and guaranteed the integrity of landholdings and the settling of boundary problems. Not even religious institutions such as temples were immune, sine they as well as private individuals could be sued over land.’ [3] ’Indian notions of kingship, which included the erection of commemorative stelae, architectural and art styles, the legal code, the use of a script, and the Hindu religion were selectively and skillfully woven into the emerging state-like polities of Cambodia.’ [4] ’The contents of Khmer temple libraries which may have been reproduced over the centuries, and the Khmer language royal chronicles, for which we have some evidence, are no longer extant (Jacques and Dumont [1990]1999: 17-18). This situation contrasts with that in some other parts of tropical Southeast Asia, where non-temple documents produced several hundred years ago still exist, having either been written on lasting materials such as copper plate or continuously reproduced (e.g. Wisseman 1977: 198-199; Aung Thwin 1985: 8-12; Wisseman Christie 1993: 180-181). These are sometimes able to provide alternative views of the society in which they were produced and can be compared with the temple inscription texts. In Burma, for example, the availability of a variety of historical text types (government archives, law codes, histories and administrative records, civil codes and chronicles giving narrative accounts) represent contemporary Burmese society somewhat more comprehensively (Aung Thwin 1983: 48; 1985: 8-12).’ [5]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, pp.167-168)
[2]: (Chandler 2008, p. 37)
[3]: (Coe 2003, p. 144)
[4]: (Hingham 2012, p. 184)
[5]: (Lustig 2009, p. 109)
’One major feature of the ’imperial state’ was its maintenance of a large court and a corps of officials. Angkor has a sizeable bureaucracy staffed by officials of many sorts. Like so much about the Khmer kingdom in ancient times, the structure of government and the categories of the civil service are known to us through temple inscriptions, which frequently name various types of official or local dignitary in listing those present to witness the formal demarcation of land bestowed upon religious foundations; they mention a variety of grades and titles, some of them obscure. The khlon rajakarya was responsible for the administration of ’royal work’, probably corvee among other things. The tamrvac was an inspector; the officials who swore allegiance to Suryavarman I had this title, for example. The gunadosadarsin (assessor of virtues and defects) was concerned with temple property. A variety of functionaries were called khlon (inspector) and had responsibilities in various areas such as grain, temple dues, management of religious foundations and several aspects of court proceedings. Revenue was usually in kind, being paid in grain, but some special districts paid in other commodities such as honey and wax. There is evidence that some of the categories in which officials were placed were not types of professional specialisation but divisions of the government service placed under the patronage of particular chiefs belonging to the royal family, a system that was indeed known in later centuries. Some of the groups of dignitaries named in named in the inscriptions, again, appear to have been the bearers of hereditary privileges in the royal household; the term varna, for example, designates any of a number of orders of dignity, which have such official functions as religious teachers, performers of rites, door guardians, garden keepers, palace servants, bearers of flywhisks, and artists.’ [1] ’As in the rest of the Indic world, the Angkor state and empire were government by rules laid down in the Code of Manu, a great compendium of Brahmanic law probably composed around the 4th century BC. [...] Every judicial act was theoretically inscribed on stone as well as on plaques of gold, silver or copper. The Khmer king was the defender of the law and order in Cambodia. His law courts, present on every administrative level right down tot he village, instituted criminal proceedings against transgressors and guaranteed the integrity of landholdings and the settling of boundary problems. Not even religious institutions such as temples were immune, sine they as well as private individuals could be sued over land.’ [2] ’Below all of this ponderous bureaucracy were the free people of the land, free in the sense that they enjoyed basic civil rights, and could settle wherever they wished. Nonetheless, the obligations of this largely rice-farming class were heavy; the entire able-bodied population between the ages of 20 and 50 owed up to 90 days of core labour annually. Those outside these age limits were called up for only light labour. Exempt from corvee were the monks, Brahmins, the Brah Van, the mandarins and their servants, and all employees of the king. There was no escaping this core, since all males were inscribed by name on census registers that were revised every three years under supervision of the roving commission. At this point, every person would also choose a particular mandarin or even high official in the capital as his patron. With this personage, who was not necessarily connected with the client’s territory, there were mutual obligations: the client owed the patron deference, and respect, services, occasional labour, and the usual small gifts, while the latter gave aid and protection (even legal) to the freeman and accommodation when he had to travel to the capital. It was this system through which corvees were mustered, and foot soldiers called up for Cambodia’s many wars.’ [3]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, pp.166-167)
[2]: (Coe 2003, p. 144)
[3]: (Coe 2003, p. 218)
’In other scenes, wrestling palace guards amuse themselves by tying one another into knots; and, in the marketplace, pedlars grapple with baskets, hung from the shoulder-yole, that are still a familiar sight in monsoon Asia.’ [1] According to Zhou Daguan, ’"In Cambodia it is the women who take charge of trade... Market is held every day from six o’clock until noon. There are no shops in which merchants live; instead, they display goods on a matting spread upon the ground".’ [2]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.127).
[2]: (Freeman and Jacques 1999, p. 36)
’Recent work at Angkor by the EFEO and the Greater Angkor Project has mapped a vast water management network extending across approximately 1000 sq km. From the new map an outline can be provide of the development of the network between the 8th-9th and the 14th centuries. Each large extension of the network tapped water from a succession of natural rivers flowing from NE to SW. Each river was further north and was tapped further to the west. The network had five major components - E-W embankments that trapped water flowing from the north and northeast; N-S channels that eventually delivered water to large reservoirs (baray); the baray and the large temple moats; embankments and channels oriented from NW to SE that could distribute water back from west to east across the slope of the land; and channels oriented towards the southwest which could dispose of water rapidly to the lake, the Tonle Sap. Significantly the later major channels, such as the Angkor Wat canal and the canal that pre-dated the current Siem Reap river, were drains that served to dispose of water into the lake.’ [1] :’[T]he Khmer practised water management on a scale dwarfing that of the Maya and most other regions of the world. Angkor’s surrounds were converted into an artificial landscape criss-crossed with canals, embankments, reservoirs, dams and other massive engineering works to redirect river flows, store water for the dry season and avert floods by disposing of excess water during monsoons. The Khmer struggled for centuries to maintain their hydraulic landscape until it became overwhelmed by climate change, producing floods that broke embankments and canals filled with sediments from eroded terrains’ [2] [3] ‘Retention and storage of surplus water during the rainy and flood seasons for use during the rest of the year was, along with the buildings of religious monuments, the major preoccupation of Khmer engineers throughout the long history of the empire.’ [4] ’Aside from the destructive effects of recurrent wars, Khmer kings constructively made it a priority to build reservoirs and canals, all necessary for collective irrigation. Some kings built rest houses along roads; others built hospitals.’ [5] ’Tikal featured constructed reservoirs in the centre among the main monuments and around the periphery of the central area that could hold about 568,000 m^3 of water at one time and more than 900,000 m^3 during the course of a year (Scarborough and Galloping 1991:661). By contrast, the West Baray at Angkor could hold more than 50 million m^3 of water at one time and covered 16 km^2 (Fletcher et al. 2008).’ [6] ’Not only did the productivity of marginal lands therefore begin to fall, but the complex of transport canals and agricultural waterworks on which Angkor’s economy rested became clogged.’ [7]
[1]: (Fletcher et al. 2008, p. 57)
[2]: (Diamond 2009, p.480).
[3]: (Fletcher et al 2008, 658)
[4]: (Engelhardt 1995, p.22)
[5]: (Mannikka 1996, p.4)
[6]: (Fletcher 2012, p.300)
[7]: (Lieberman 2003, p. 239)
’Chou Ta-kuan was in Cambodia less than a century after the reign of Jayavarman VII, who founded 102 medical institutions in all parts of the kingdom. Inscriptions list in detail the provisions that had to be made for the upkeep of these institutions, which required a huge investment in food, furnishing, and medicinal herbs. They are usually called ’hospitals’, though it is not clear whether they had any in-patients. It is more likely that they were warehouses and dispensaries for medicines.’ [1] ’State temples linked by river and road to the capital not only promulgated the royal cult, but also served as repositories for the surpluses of rice, oil, medicines, and all the other products necessary to sustain the the social system.’ [2]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, pp.128-129)
[2]: (Higham 2014, p. 272)
‘The importance of preserving this watershed as a source of water for the rice paddies and to fill the city’s transportation canals and municipal water system was clearly understood by the earliest inhabitants of the area’ [1] ‘Each water-based feature fulfilled several functions. Barays provided agricultural and domestic water, and fish and plant foods. Canals channeled water for public sanitation, and transport arteries. Embankments and dikes were usually oriented east-west following the contours and acted both as levees ti control floods and elevated causeways for roads. Moats surrounding temples, monuments, and inhabited areas also fulfilled several functions: they served as sacred boundaries, they were a source of domestic water and food, and they provided fill for foundations to raise the level of the terrain for drainage and protection. Access to domestic water was provided by tanks and basins dug into the water table.’ [2] ’More recently, a similar pattern was identified in the spacing of rectangular water tanks (trapeang) at four or five kilometre intervals along most of the Angkorian roads (Hendrickson 2004). This combined information points to an elaborate road network with a centrally-planned infrastructure to support the regular movement of people across a region’ [3] ’As the population in chiefly urban centers grew, so steps had to be taken to conserve and reticulate water. This was achieved by digging circular moats around settlements and allowing water to flow into the rice fields beyond. It is likely that such a system was used only to maintain the absence of wet season rains, and the moats would have also supplied the populace with water, defines, and aquatic food.’ [4]
[1]: (Engelhardt 1995, p.19)
[2]: (Engelhardt 1995, p.25)
[3]: (Hendrickson 2012, p.86)
[4]: (Hingham 2012, p. 184)
‘Each water-based feature fulfilled several functions. Barays provided agricultural and domestic water, and fish and plant foods. Canals channeled water for public sanitation, and transport arteries. Embankments and dikes were usually oriented east-west following the contours and acted both as levees ti control floods and elevated causeways for roads. Moats surrounding temples, monuments, and inhabited areas also fulfilled several functions: they served as sacred boundaries, they were a source of domestic water and food, and they provided fill for foundations to raise the level of the terrain for drainage and protection. Access to domestic water was provided by tanks and basins dug into the water table.’ [1] ’In spite of a century of Angkorian research, the study of the great system of highways that tied together the provinces of the Classic Khmer Empire has hardly begun.’ [2] ’[Jayavarman VII] saw to the construction of many other buildings across his empire, including roads with guesthouses every 9.3 miles (15 km) that linked Angkor with viceregal centers such as Phimai.’ [3] ’Highways were built—straight, stone-paved roads running across hundreds of kilometers, raised above the flood level, with stone bridges across rivers and lined with rest houses every 15 kilometers.’ [4]
[1]: (Engelhardt 1995, p.25)
[2]: (Coe 2003, p. 151)
[3]: (Higham 2012, p. 186)
[4]: (Vickery 2004b, p. 696)
Though the seat of power during Angkor moves to the Tonle Sap, it remains attached to the shorelines of the Mekong and its tributaries. Inscriptions make reference to transport by boat. [1] Ports were undoubtedly used, but unlike the monumental ports of the Mediterranean, the structures in Cambodia must have been more modest if we look at how port areas are organized nowadays in the Mekong. The drastic water level changes prevents the construction of fixed structures, therefore the ports may have been composed of stilted buildings, floating platforms and elevated trackways from the platforms to the shore or from boats to the shore. (RA’s doctoral fieldwork observations). Perhaps the largest ports were built by the state, but smaller transit points for riverine trade would have probably been organized by local communities, as they wouldn’t require great investments. (RA’s guess). Other researchers have suggested that there were no ports: ’[...] Cambodia had no deep-water port of its own until the 1950s’ [2] ’Given the location of Angkor in relation to Chinese or Cham ports, some or much of the reported trade was probably overland rather than via coastal ports.’ [3] It could be argued that the type of boats used in Cambodia do not require deep ports, but larger boats are documented in the bas-reliefs of Angkor [4] . Even though there may not have ventured into the Tonle Sap lake, the large planked vessel represented in the Bayon indicates that large vessels arrived in Angkorian ports. Similarly, ethnographic data shows an extensive use of boats for transport, so even if the coastal trade may have been limited, as Lusting suggests, trade using inland waters must have been necessarily conducted. (RA’s doctoral fieldwork observations). Furthermore, in 1644 the Dutch were able to go up to Oudong in the Tonle Sap river with their large ships, where they recorded seeing two Portuguese yatchs and several Chinese junks [5] . So even though harbour infrastructures have not been identified yet, cities like Phnom Penh and Oudong acted as inland port cities.
[1]: (Higham 2001, p. 41-42)
[2]: (Chandler 2008, p.10)
[3]: (Lustig 2009, p. 98)
[4]: (Roveda 2007, p.320)
[5]: (Van der Kraan 2009: 51-520
‘The importance of preserving this watershed as a source of water for the rice paddies and to fill the city’s transportation canals and municipal water system was clearly understood by the earliest inhabitants of the area’ [1] ‘The Rolous River, along which the first capital city of Angkor, Hariharalaya, was founded in the 9th century A.D. Note how the river bed was wide and straightened in ancient times to increase capacity and facilitate transport.’ [2] ’Not only did the productivity of marginal lands therefore begin to fall, but the complex of transport canals and agricultural waterworks on which Angkor’s economy rested became clogged.’ [3]
[1]: (Engelhardt 1995, p.19)
[2]: (Engelhardt 1995, p.21)
[3]: (Lieberman 2003, p. 239)
‘Arched remains of the Angkor period bridge, Spean Thma, which went over the Siem Reap River at the main approach to Angkor Thom, the last capital of the Khmer Empire. The original bridge consisted of a total of 14 arches.’ [1] ’[Jayavarman VII] saw to the construction of many other buildings across his empire, including roads with guesthouses every 9.3 miles (15 km) that linked Angkor with viceregal centers such as Phimai. He built bridges, hospitals, and mausolea for his parents and son.’ [2] Furthermore, a Dutch account from 1644 informs of the construction of two wooden bridges in just a few days to trap the Dutch ships in the Mekong during hostilities between the two countries. The bridges were made 220 m long and 7.5 m wide. [3]
[1]: (Engelhardt 1995, p.23)
[2]: (Hingham 2012, p. 186)
[3]: (Van der Kraan 2009 :52)
’Angkor Wat was built without the use of mortar or the arch. Two types of sandstone were employed in the construction: medium-grained for the walls and finer-grained for the elaborately carved gallery walls. Both were quarried at Mount Kulen, 45 km (28 miles) to the northeast, and the blocks were probably rafted down the Siem Reap river and brought to the site by networks of canals.’
[1]
’Temple construction also required the quarrying and transporting of vast quantities of sandstone. Uchida and Shimoda (2013) have not only identified the individual quarries on the lower eastern slopes of the Kulen upland, but also through different degrees of magnetic susceptibility, linked individual quarries with different temples.’
[2]
[1]: (Scarre 1999, p.83)
[2]: (Higham 2014b, p. 398)
According to Miriam Stark, ’[i]ndividuals increased their karma for the next life by establishing temples or making donations to extant temple (see also Hagesteijn 1996:189, passim). Entrenched and aspiring elite members recorded their temple offerings in stone. Such activity is clear in the earliest dated Khmer inscription (K. 600) from Angkor Borei in southern Cambodia. This inscription lists donations to the temple/foundation by two elite individuals: nine males, nine females, two children, eighty head of cattle, two buffalo, ten goats, forty coconut trees, and two rice fields (Vickery 1998:227)’, [1] and ’most indigenous inscriptions record the beneficence of aspiring elite individuals’ [2]
[1]: (Stark, Miriam 2006, p.160-161)
[2]: (Stark, Miriam 2010, p. 144)
‘The signally used in the Khmer language is and Indic-based script which dates back about 1500 years. It was used in inscription as far back as the sixth century and remains in use throughout Cambodia. The system is highly complex. Much of the complexity is due to its long history, since the phonology of the language has changed radically while the writing system has remained fairly constant. The writing system is alphasyllabic […] and written from left to right. The primary graphic graphic element represents a consonant, with vowels indicated by symbols on either side of the consonant or hovering above or below. The consonant is written first, and then the vowel is added, even if the vowel sign is written to the left of the consonant. The space below the primary consonant is used for secondary consonants. Diacritics which affect the interpretation of the consonant appear both above and below the consonant, sometimes shifting position depending on the shape of the consonant.’ […] Khmer was originally carved in stone and written on palm leaves.’ [1] ’No one knows for certain how long people have lived in what is now Cambodia, where they came from, or what languages they spoke before writing was introduced, using an Indian-style alphabet, around the third century CE.’ [2]
[1]: (Schiller 1996, p.467)
[2]: (Chandler 2008, p. 13)
’Each year the mandarin chooses a day in the month which corresponds to the fourth Chinese month and notifies all the country. Each family with a daughter subject to chen-t’an notifies the mandarin. The mandarin sends a candle on which a mark is made. At nightfall of the appointed day, the candle is lighted and when it burns up to the mark, the moment of chen-t’an has arrived.’ [1]
[1]: (Briggs 1951, p. 246)
’During the first five hundred years or so of the current era, India provided Cambodia with a writing system, a pantheon, meters for poetry, a language (Sanskrit) to write it in, a vocabulary of social hierarchies (not the same as a caste system), Buddhism, the idea of universal kingship, and new ways a looking at politics, sociology, architecture, iconography, astronomy, and aesthetics.’ [1]
[1]: (Chandler 2008, p. 17)
’Most of the subjects are drawn from the Indian epics and sacred books—Ramayana, Mahabarata, Harivamsa, Puranas—and portray legendary scenes from the lives of Rama and Krishna, avatars of Vishnu. They begin less than a meter from the floor and cover more than two meters in height. Owing to their extent, their accessibility, and their perfect lighting, these bas-reliefs are among the most striking specimens of Khmer art and among those longest remembered.’ [1]
[1]: (Briggs 1951, p. 200)
’This means that the sources available to us consist mainly of those that were inscribed on stone. The stone inscriptions were normally composed as records of endowments to temples, and they were overwhelmingly skewed to the affairs of religious institutions.’ [1] ’For several hundred years, Sanskrit was used in inscriptions that supposedly addressed the gods. Khmer, on the other hand, was the predominant language of Cambodian men and women, those who were protected by the gods and descended, as gods did not, from their ancestors and the highly localised nak ta.’ [2] ’This section also includes a discussion of the Riemker, which is the Khmer version of the great Indian epic, the Ramayana, and how they differ. He identifies indigenous additions and changes and notes similarities between later versions of the Riemker and scenes depicted on the bas-reliefs at Angkor Wat.’ [3]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.125)
[2]: (Chandler 2008, p. 27)
[3]: (Rooney 2004, p. 161)
’The Indian combat manual Kautiliya Arthashastra gives an idea of the ideal battle array, specifying ’three combat foot-soldiers per horsemen, fifteen per chariot (which in fact were not in combat use in Cambodia) or for an elephant plus five horse.’ The same proportions applied to the ’foot-guards’ who were probably grooms attending to the animals. So the ideal combat unit consisted of sixty warriors for an elephant and five calvary. [...] The same Indian military manual relates that on the eve of a battle the chaplain would make offerings to the Fire.’ [1] ’
[1]: (Jacques and Lafond 2007, p. 34)
’During the first five hundred years or so of the current era, India provided Cambodia with a writing system, a pantheon, meters for poetry, a language (Sanskrit) to write it in, a vocabulary of social hierarchies (not the same as a caste system), Buddhism, the idea of universal kingship, and new ways a looking at politics, sociology, architecture, iconography, astronomy, and aesthetics.’ [1]
[1]: (Chandler 2008, p. 17)
According to Miriam Stark, ’[i]ndividuals increased their karma for the next life by establishing temples or making donations to extant temple (see also Hagesteijn 1996:189, passim). Entrenched and aspiring elite members recorded their temple offerings in stone. Such activity is clear in the earliest dated Khmer inscription (K. 600) from Angkor Borei in southern Cambodia. This inscription lists donations to the temple/foundation by two elite individuals: nine males, nine females, two children, eighty head of cattle, two buffalo, ten goats, forty coconut trees, and two rice fields (Vickery 1998:227)’, [1] and ’most indigenous inscriptions record the beneficence of aspiring elite individuals’ [2] , and ’[g]enealogies frequently appear in royal inscriptions [...]’ [3]
[1]: (Stark, Miriam 2006, p.160-161)
[2]: (Stark, Miriam 2010, p. 144)
[3]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.161)
’Sanskrit inspirit, in verse, praise the actions of kings and the elite, such as building Hindu temples, sponsoring Buddhist monasteries, winning wars, and offering gifts to monks and brahmans. Some of the speakers trace or doctor their genealogies, as is to cash in on or invent ancestral merit; many praise brahmans at the expense of other segments of society; and all are fulsome in praise of those in power, who have, after all, allowed the temples to be built and the stone inscriptions to be incised.’
[1]
’From now on [1327] the only sources of information are the Royal Chronicles of Cambodia, known in several recensions, but generally regarded as unreliable; they are supposed to date from 1346 and were drawn up as lists of kings with details of the main events of each king’s reign. However written on perishable palm-leaf, they were often rewritten and re-edited to suit later reigns.’
[2]
’Here are the most salient traits of the Post-Classic: [...] Written royal chronicles, but few contemporary stone inscriptions.’
[3]
’The contents of Khmer temple libraries which may have been reproduced over the centuries, and the Khmer language royal chronicles, for which we have some evidence, are no longer extant (Jacques and Dumont [1990]1999: 17-18). This situation contrasts with that in some other parts of tropical Southeast Asia, where non-temple documents produced several hundred years ago still exist, having either been written on lasting materials such as copper plate or continuously reproduced (e.g. Wisseman 1977: 198-199; Aung Thwin 1985: 8-12; Wisseman Christie 1993: 180-181). These are sometimes able to provide alternative views of the society in which they were produced and can be compared with the temple inscription texts. In Burma, for example, the availability of a variety of historical text types (government archives, law codes, histories and administrative records, civil codes and chronicles giving narrative accounts) represent contemporary Burmese society somewhat more comprehensively (Aung Thwin 1983: 48; 1985: 8-12).’
[4]
[1]: (Chandler 2008, p. 27)
[2]: (Snellgrove 2004, pp. 182-183)
[3]: (Coe 2003, p. 195)
[4]: (Lustig 2009, p. 109)
Religious dramas and their derivations dominate the popular literature.
’At Angkor Wat [...] the measurements of both parts and whole contain calendrically and cosmologically significant totals. As an illustration of the part/whole relationship, the circumference of the fourth (outer) enclosure at Angkor Wat measures 1 lunar year expressed as 354.36 units. (There are 354.36 days in 12 lunar months). The circumference also includes a 28-unit ritual path through the triad of eastern, northern, and southern entrances. One lunar month is often expressed as 28 days of length and is a subdivision the lunar year. IN other words, the 28-unit path is contained within the 354.36-unit circumference, and the 28-day month is contained within the 354-day year. The part-whole relationship in architecture parallels the part/whole relationship in the calendar.’ [1] ’In Khmer astronomy, the positions of the planets and stars can be determined without using trigonometry. Nevertheless, at some point between the second and fifth centuries A.D., Indian astronomy adopted the trigonometric calculations of the Greeks and Romans. These methods may have been introduced into Cambodia by the fifth or sixth centuries. When solar and lunar alignments were found at Angkor Wat in 1976, it was clear that the angles between the towers, the moon or sun, and the observation points were carefully calculated, further suggesting that a knowledge of trigonometry was current when the temple was constructed. [2] ’Calendrical values were part of a living cultural context and invariably emerge in Khmer inscriptions. In this simple one-sentence inscription, two or three words were enough to say that a Siva gingham was set up (read:in a temple constructed for that purpose), but it took several lines to explain when that happened. The planets’ positions in the 12 zodiac signs or in the 27/28 naksatra, the light or dark half of the lunar month, the solar month, the day of the week, and the year come first by custom-before the main statement. According to tradition, the era date is given ’backwards,’ with the smallest year first and the century last, and spelled out through numerical symbols.’ [3] Attested as present during Angkorean times by David Chandler [4] . The central administration in Angkor must have had fairly detailed information for the purposes of taxation and core labour of all the empire’s inhabitants, for according to Zhou a census was taken during the ninth Cambodian month, where everyone (or, more likely, all heads of families) was called to the capital, and passed in review before the Royal Palace. Such census registers were kept in Aymonier’s day, and revised every three years.’ [5]
[1]: (Mannikka 1996, p.3)
[2]: (Mannikka 1996, p.4)
[3]: (Mannikka 1996, p.261)
[4]: (Chandler 2008, p. 15)
[5]: (Coe 2003, p. 145)
’The Khmer empire never developed a standardized currency, instead using exchange equivalents in gold, silver, rice, cloth, cattle, butter and slaves (Sedov 1978:125), and remained a marginal player in the China-Southeast Asia trade network.’ [1] ’The economy of Angkor, now receiving detailed scholarly attention is somewhat peculiar because, unlike most neighbouring states, the empire never used money of any kind.’ [2]
[1]: (Stark, Miriam 2010, p. 161)
[2]: (Chandler 2008, p.9)
’In China’s Song dynasty (AD 960-1279), contemporaneous with the period most closely associated with that height of the Khmer empire, records of Khmer tributary missions are scare compared to missions reported for neighbouring polities including Champa (central Vietnam) and southern Sumatra (Wong 1979). During this era, polities in Java and Sumatra developed multiple shipping ports, hosted foreign merchants, and established coinage (Christie 1999). The Khmer empire never developed a standardized currency, instead using exchange equivalents in gold, silver, rice, cloth, cattle, butter and slaves (Sedov 1978:125), and remained a marginal player in the China-Southeast Asia trade network.’
[1]
’The economy of Angkor, now receiving detailed scholarly attention is somewhat peculiar because, unlike most neighbouring states, the empire never used money of any kind.’
[2]
’Coinages were arguably introduced into Southeast Asia to expand the economies of early Indianised polities, including Funan, and to enhance the status of rulers. The absence of coins in later polities, such as Pagan and Angkor, is attributed to the redistribution of surplus wealth through the temples and monasteries, rather than the royal courts (Gutman 1978: 8-10)’
[3]
[1]: (Stark, Miriam 2010, p. 161)
[2]: (Chandler 2008, p.9)
[3]: (Lustig 2009, p. 95)
’In China’s Song dynasty (AD 960-1279), contemporaneous with the period most closely associated with that height of the Khmer empire, records of Khmer tributary missions are scare compared to missions reported for neighbouring polities including Champa (central Vietnam) and southern Sumatra (Wong 1979). During this era, polities in Java and Sumatra developed multiple shipping ports, hosted foreign merchants, and established coinage (Christie 1999). The Khmer empire never developed a standardized currency, instead using exchange equivalents in gold, silver, rice, cloth, cattle, butter and slaves (Sedov 1978:125), and remained a marginal player in the China-Southeast Asia trade network.’ [1]
[1]: (Stark, Miriam 2010, p. 161)
’The Khmer empire never developed a standardized currency, instead using exchange equivalents in gold, silver, rice, cloth, cattle, butter and slaves (Sedov 1978:125), and remained a marginal player in the China-Southeast Asia trade network.’ [1] ’Revenue was usually in kind, being paid in grain, but some special districts paid in other commodities such as honey and wax.’ [2]
[1]: (Stark, Miriam 2010, p. 161)
[2]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, pp.166-167)
Temple clusters functioned as postal stations. ’The findings challenge a few currently held views (e.g. that transactions were conducted without a unit of account), corroborate others (e.g. that officials based in regional areas acted in multiple roles, including the collection of levies), and provide some additional insights into the political economy of the Khmer state (e.g. that there were clusters of temple sites of long duration together forming communication corridors).’ [1]
[1]: (Lustig 2009, p. 30)
Administrative and trade communication was widespread, but their is no evidence of private communication channels.
Coe (2003), citing Mabbett, states, ’Inevitably, a ruler lived spider-like at the centre of a huge web of activities, surrounded by an army of clerks, cleaners, attendants, cooks, porters, messengers, carters, valets, maintenance workers, engineers, and so forth.’ [1] ’Suryavarman II is famed as a great concjueror. For several years his soldiers dominated the northern Chams, whom he recruited as allies in a series of unsuccessful invasions of Dai Viet. The Khmers communicated with the northern Cham territories through mountain passes from the Mekong Valley, and, interestingly, the southern Cham territories appear not to have felt the power of Suryavarman II.’ [2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 139)
[2]: (Taylor 2008, p. 161)
’The initial move seems to have been to Srei Santhor, about 30 km (19 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, at some time in the fourteenth century; then, briefly, to Phnom Penh itself. By about 1528, the Cambodian court under its first great Post-Angkorian king, Ang Chan I, had moved once and for all to the all to the Quatre Bras region, establishing a new capital at Lovek (Longvek), on the right bank of the Tonle Sap River, 50 km (30 miles) north of Phnom Penh. Love, like Udong and Phnom Penh- the town s that succeeded it as the capital- was thoroughly international, with foreign quarters for Malay, Japanese, and Chinese traders (there were as many as 3,000 of the last in the 1540s). There Ang Chan (who really did exist) built a golden palace and at least four major wats, erecting a huge, four-faced Buddha of wood, the stone foundation of which survive in one of the town’s vicars. The capital was fortified by earthen ramparts topped with palisades; these ramparts, which form a huge rectangle, are still visible.’ [1]
[1]: (Coe 2003, pp. 208-209)
’The wall [of Angkor Thom] is entirely made of superimposed blocks of stone; it is about two [sic] fathoms high. The bonding of the stones is very compact and solid, and no weeds are found there. There is no crenellation.’ On the ramparts, in certain places gangling [kuang-lang, kouang-lang] trees have been planted. At regular distances are found empty casemates. The inner side of the wall is like a ramp wider than ten fathoms. On top of each ramp are huge doors, closed at night, and open in the morning. There are also guards at the gates.’ [1] ’From the remains and traces, it seems that their religious edifices were also mostly of wood, with brick foundation and wandaf’a (p. 33), and with stone slabs sometimes used for frames of doors and windows; although, as will be seen, in the latter part of this period, brick edifices were not uncommon and even stone structures were probably not unknown. Even to the end of its architectural greatness, except for walls, gates, towers, etc., Cambodia used stone and brick for religious constructions only. This was because their architects did not know the principle of the true arch and used the "false arch," also known as overlapping or corbelling: i.e., from opposite sides, each succeeding pair of bricks or stones projected over the opening to be vaulted until the gap was small enough to be closed by a single brick or stone.’ [2]
[1]: (Zhou and Smithies 2001, p. 19)
[2]: (Briggs 1951, p. 32)
’The wall [of Angkor Thom] is entirely made of superimposed blocks of stone; it is about two [sic] fathoms high. The bonding of the stones is very compact and solid, and no weeds are found there. There is no crenellation.’ On the ramparts, in certain places gangling [kuang-lang, kouang-lang] trees have been planted. At regular distances are found empty casemates. The inner side of the wall is like a ramp wider than ten fathoms. On top of each ramp are huge doors, closed at night, and open in the morning. There are also guards at the gates.’ [1] [2]
[1]: (Zhou and Smithies 2001, p. 19)
[2]: (Dumarcay 2003, 25)
’The initial move seems to have been to Srei Santhor, about 30 km (19 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, at some time in the fourteenth century; then, briefly, to Phnom Penh itself. By about 1528, the Cambodian court under its first great Post-Angkorian king, Ang Chan I, had moved once and for all to the all to the Quatre Bras region, establishing a new capital at Lovek (Longvek), on the right bank of the Tonle Sap River, 50 km (30 miles) north of Phnom Penh. Love, like Udong and Phnom Penh- the town s that succeeded it as the capital- was thoroughly international, with foreign quarters for Malay, Japanese, and Chinese traders (there were as many as 3,000 of the last in the 1540s). There Ang Chan (who really did exist) built a golden palace and at least four major wats, erecting a huge, four-faced Buddha of wood, the stone foundation of which survive in one of the town’s vicars. The capital was fortified by earthen ramparts topped with palisades; these ramparts, which form a huge rectangle, are still visible.’
[1]
’Military campaings were probably conducted in the Post-Classic period as they had been during the Classic Era, but on a lesser scale: it is doubtful if any king of Lovek or Udong could muster the armies that were fielded by rulers like Suryavarman II. There was no standing army - in times of war, the patron was expected to muster a force of his clients, and place himself or an officer designated by the king at the head. The arms that they bore were substantially like those wielded by Classic warriors, with the addition of firearms and canon (after 1600). Again the principle of five ruled, as there were five corps: the vanguard, the rear guard, the right flank, the left flank, and the central corps or main body of the army, where the king kept himself with his war elephants. These animals were strengthened magically from time to time by bring sprayed with water mixed with human bile (or so say our sources); magical ideas also led the warriors to cover themselves with protective amulets. The king would be surrounded by Brahmins who conducted ritual ablutions, and by soothsayers who were consulted on the placement of military camps and for auspicious days for military operations.’
[2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, pp. 208-209)
[2]: (Coe 2003, p. 219)
’The initial move seems to have been to Srei Santhor, about 30 km (19 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, at some time in the fourteenth century; then, briefly, to Phnom Penh itself. By about 1528, the Cambodian court under its first great Post-Angkorian king, Ang Chan I, had moved once and for all to the all to the Quatre Bras region, establishing a new capital at Lovek (Longvek), on the right bank of the Tonle Sap River, 50 km (30 miles) north of Phnom Penh. Love, like Udong and Phnom Penh- the town s that succeeded it as the capital- was thoroughly international, with foreign quarters for Malay, Japanese, and Chinese traders (there were as many as 3,000 of the last in the 1540s). There Ang Chan (who really did exist) built a golden palace and at least four major wats, erecting a huge, four-faced Buddha of wood, the stone foundation of which survive in one of the town’s vicars. The capital was fortified by earthen ramparts topped with palisades; these ramparts, which form a huge rectangle, are still visible.’
[1]
[1]: (Coe 2003, pp. 208-209)
’The enclosure of Banteay Prei Nokor is the largest and most formidable of which we have any knowledge in pre-Angkorian Cambodia. It was surrounded by a large earthen rampart, probably surmounted by a wooden palisade. The rampart is about 2.50 kilometers square. A moat, about 100 meters wide, surrounded the rampart [...].’ [1]
[1]: (Briggs 1951, pg. 76)
’The initial move seems to have been to Srei Santhor, about 30 km (19 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, at some time in the fourteenth century; then, briefly, to Phnom Penh itself. By about 1528, the Cambodian court under its first great Post-Angkorian king, Ang Chan I, had moved once and for all to the all to the Quatre Bras region, establishing a new capital at Lovek (Longvek), on the right bank of the Tonle Sap River, 50 km (30 miles) north of Phnom Penh. Love, like Udong and Phnom Penh- the town s that succeeded it as the capital- was thoroughly international, with foreign quarters for Malay, Japanese, and Chinese traders (there were as many as 3,000 of the last in the 1540s). There Ang Chan (who really did exist) built a golden palace and at least four major wats, erecting a huge, four-faced Buddha of wood, the stone foundation of which survive in one of the town’s vicars. The capital was fortified by earthen ramparts topped with palisades; these ramparts, which form a huge rectangle, are still visible.’ [1] ’Military campaings were probably conducted in the Post-Classic period as they had been during the Classic Era, but on a lesser scale: it is doubtful if any king of Lovek or Udong could muster the armies that were fielded by rulers like Suryavarman II. There was no standing army - in times of war, the patron was expected to muster a force of his clients, and place himself or an officer designated by the king at the head. The arms that they bore were substantially like those wielded by Classic warriors, with the addition of firearms and canon (after 1600). Again the principle of five ruled, as there were five corps: the vanguard, the rear guard, the right flank, the left flank, and the central corps or main body of the army, where the king kept himself with his war elephants. These animals were strengthened magically from time to time by bring sprayed with water mixed with human bile (or so say our sources); magical ideas also led the warriors to cover themselves with protective amulets. The king would be surrounded by Brahmins who conducted ritual ablutions, and by soothsayers who were consulted on the placement of military camps and for auspicious days for military operations.’ [2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, pp. 208-209)
[2]: (Coe 2003, p. 219)
’The initial move seems to have been to Srei Santhor, about 30 km (19 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, at some time in the fourteenth century; then, briefly, to Phnom Penh itself. By about 1528, the Cambodian court under its first great Post-Angkorian king, Ang Chan I, had moved once and for all to the all to the Quatre Bras region, establishing a new capital at Lovek (Longvek), on the right bank of the Tonle Sap River, 50 km (30 miles) north of Phnom Penh. Love, like Udong and Phnom Penh- the town s that succeeded it as the capital- was thoroughly international, with foreign quarters for Malay, Japanese, and Chinese traders (there were as many as 3,000 of the last in the 1540s). There Ang Chan (who really did exist) built a golden palace and at least four major wats, erecting a huge, four-faced Buddha of wood, the stone foundation of which survive in one of the town’s vicars. The capital was fortified by earthen ramparts topped with palisades; these ramparts, which form a huge rectangle, are still visible.’ [1]
[1]: (Coe 2003, pp. 208-209)
’The first city conformed with the classic form of Khmer capital with certain fundamental elements: a defensive bank and ditch with a state temple at its centre, built from brick or stone, and a wooden palace. There would also have been many secular buildings, constructed almost entirely of wood, in and around the enceinte. The state temple at Roluos, the Bakong, and the temple built in memory of the royal ancestors, Preah Ko, were erected around 880. Another essential feature of a Khmer capital, a large reservoir, was added a decade later, with in its centre a third temple built to the north-west of Roluos, around the hill of Phnom Bakeng, now known as the Eastern Baray.’ [1]
[1]: (UNESCO ’Angkor’ World Heritage Site Long Description http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/668)
’The initial move seems to have been to Srei Santhor, about 30 km (19 miles) northeast of Phnom Penh, at some time in the fourteenth century; then, briefly, to Phnom Penh itself. By about 1528, the Cambodian court under its first great Post-Angkorian king, Ang Chan I, had moved once and for all to the all to the Quatre Bras region, establishing a new capital at Lovek (Longvek), on the right bank of the Tonle Sap River, 50 km (30 miles) north of Phnom Penh. Love, like Udong and Phnom Penh- the town s that succeeded it as the capital- was thoroughly international, with foreign quarters for Malay, Japanese, and Chinese traders (there were as many as 3,000 of the last in the 1540s). There Ang Chan (who really did exist) built a golden palace and at least four major wats, erecting a huge, four-faced Buddha of wood, the stone foundation of which survive in one of the town’s vicars. The capital was fortified by earthen ramparts topped with palisades; these ramparts, which form a huge rectangle, are still visible.’ [1]
[1]: (Coe 2003, pp. 208-209)
’From all this, we can bear in mind that Khmer breastplates, as we have described them, possibly used the materials cited by Bezacier: buffalo skins, tree bark, and bronze, even if this metal was replaced with iron at the period we are discussing, if indeed metal was used in making this armour. This was the case of the king, if we can believe Zhou Daguan, who in the thirteenth century AD indicates that the sovereign "had his body class in iron, so that even knives and arrows, striking his body, could not harm him".’ [1] Polity expert Charles Higham "I dont think there was ever a transition to steel but will ask the iron expert, Oliver Pryce for his view." (pers. comm. with Harvey Whitehouse 04/08/2017)
[1]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, pp. 20-21)
’For personal defence, there were two kinds of shields: round ones ornamented with vegetal or flower motifs, and long ones ornamented on the top border. The latter could be grouped together to form a kind of rampart. Both were probably of wood and hide, with metal plaques. Although most warriors wore only a kind of short-sleeved jacket (sometimes resembling the quilted ’armour’ in use in Mesoamerica), many were protected by a cylindrical cuirass, often with one or two knives lashed over it for close combat.’ [1] ’From all this, we can bear in mind that Khmer breastplates, as we have described them, possibly used the materials cited by Bezacier: buffalo skins, tree bark, and bronze, even if this metal was replaced with iron at the period we are discussing.’ [2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, pp. 185-186)
[2]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 20)
Bronze armor have been found and copper is needed to make bronze, so it seems reasonable to assume that copper weapons were probably used too.
’From all this, we can bear in mind that Khmer breastplates, as we have described them, possibly used the materials cited by Bezacier: buffalo skins, tree bark, and bronze, even if this metal was replaced with iron at the period we are discussing, if indeed metal was used in making this armour. This was the case of the king, if we can believe Zhou Daguan, who in the thirteenth century AD indicates that the sovereign "had his body class in iron, so that even knives and arrows, striking his body, could not harm him".’ [1]
[1]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, pp. 20-21)
The ballista. ’The rather later reliefs from banteay Chhmar and the Bayon show ballistae mounted on the backs of elephants. One man guided the elephant, and it took two to arm and fire the nallista. This technique was probably an innovation of the reign of Jayavarman VII and was, according to Mus (1929), derived from China through Cham intermediaries.’
[1]
’One type of contrivance, probably a ballista, is illustrated in the relief culture. Carried on elephant back or mounted on wheels, it is portrayed in the art of the Bayon and Banteay Chmar; it appears to be a double bow, operated by pulling back the rear bow.’
[2]
’This includes a ballista, mounted either on elephant back or on a wheeled vehicle that could be rolled onto the field of battle; it consisted of two opposed bows, worked by two men, and shot arrows with tremendous force. Michel Jacq-Hergoulac’h, the leading authority on Khmer warfare, believes it may have been of Chinese origin. Shield ’ramparts’ mounted on wheels are another innovation of Kayavarman’s VII’s reign.’
[3]
’But before we do this, to avoid repetition, we shall consider what was the technological level of this army, that is, what were the weapons it used, for, of course, contrary to what Zhou Daguan affirms, namely that the use of bows, arrows, ballistae, and breastplates was unknown to the Khmer army, it did in fact have these arms.’
[4]
See Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies (2007) pages 27 to 35 for a detailed description.
[5]
[1]: (Higham 2014b, pp. 396-397)
[2]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.157)
[3]: (Coe 2003, p. 186)
[4]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 13)
[5]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, pp. 27-35)
Catapults. ’The permanent guard maintained at the capital was probably better. Relief sculpture portrays guards wearing helmets wrought with elaborate motifs; door guards wearing helmets wrought with elaborate motifs; door guardians carrying ceremonial weapons, their points protected by covers; sentinels carry lances, swords and shields. Ordinary soldiers carried lances in their right hands and shields in their left. The arsenal included sabres, swords, shields, broadswords, daggers, catapults and other contrivances.’ [1]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.157)
The date of the inscription of Baset—the only inscription that got away from the Mekong and its path to the sea—hints that it may have been carved before Jayavarman I was really settled on the throne. The inscriptions seem to indicate that after long campaigns he pacified the country; but the location of his inscriptions hint that he may have made a mistake in abandoning his bow and arrows. During his later years at least he does not seem to have had all Chenla under his control; for, in a reign of perhaps more than 40 years, with more inscriptions than any other king before Yasovarman I, the inscriptions of his reign seem but once or twice to get away from the immediate region of the Mekong and its route to its port.’ [1] According to Coe (2003), iron was used in weaponry, including knives, spears and arrowheads since Iron Age chiefdoms (c. 500 BC to c. 200-500 CE). ’Iron was used not only for axes (for land clearance) and digging implements, but also for weaponry, principally knives, spears and arrowheads; in fact, weapons are often found in burials’ [2] ’But before we do this, to avoid repetition, we shall consider what was the technological level of this army, that is, what were the weapons it used, for, of course, contrary to what Zhou Daguan affirms, namely that the use of bows, arrows, ballistae, and breastplates was unknown to the Khmer army, it did in fact have these arms.’ [3] ’After the lance, the bow, at least at Angkor Wat, is the most common weapon.’ [4]
[1]: (Briggs 1951, p. 57)
[2]: (Coe 2003, p. 49)
[3]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h 2007, p. 13)
[4]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 21)
’Military campaings were probably conducted in the Post-Classic period as they had been during the Classic Era, but on a lesser scale: it is doubtful if any king of Lovek or Udong could muster the armies that were fielded by rulers like Suryavarman II. There was no standing army - in times of war, the patron was expected to muster a force of his clients, and place himself or an officer designated by the king at the head. The arms that they bore were substantially like those wielded by Classic warriors, with the addition of firearms and canon (after 1600). Again the principle of five ruled, as there were five corps: the vanguard, the rear guard, the right flank, the left flank, and the central corps or main body of the army, where the king kept himself with his war elephants. These animals were strengthened magically from time to time by bring sprayed with water mixed with human bile (or so say our sources); magical ideas also led the warriors to cover themselves with protective amulets. The king would be surrounded by Brahmins who conducted ritual ablutions, and by soothsayers who were consulted on the placement of military camps and for auspicious days for military operations.’ [1] ’The only major novelty is the appearance at the Bayon and Banteay Chmar of war machines which put the army a step up the ladder of technical prowess. But we are still far from the appearance of firearms.’ [2] ’More to the point, they [the Spanish] initiated a revolution in Southeast Asian warfare with the wholesale introduction of firearms, especially the naval cannon.’ [3]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 219)
[2]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 37)
[3]: (Coe 2003, p. 210)
’Military campaings were probably conducted in the Post-Classic period as they had been during the Classic Era, but on a lesser scale: it is doubtful if any king of Lovek or Udong could muster the armies that were fielded by rulers like Suryavarman II. There was no standing army - in times of war, the patron was expected to muster a force of his clients, and place himself or an officer designated by the king at the head. The arms that they bore were substantially like those wielded by Classic warriors, with the addition of firearms and canon (after 1600). Again the principle of five ruled, as there were five corps: the vanguard, the rear guard, the right flank, the left flank, and the central corps or main body of the army, where the king kept himself with his war elephants. These animals were strengthened magically from time to time by bring sprayed with water mixed with human bile (or so say our sources); magical ideas also led the warriors to cover themselves with protective amulets. The king would be surrounded by Brahmins who conducted ritual ablutions, and by soothsayers who were consulted on the placement of military camps and for auspicious days for military operations.’ [1] ’More to the point, they [the Spanish] initiated a revolution in Southeast Asian warfare with the wholesale introduction of firearms, especially the naval cannon.’ [2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 219)
[2]: (Coe 2003, p. 210)
’The ordinary Khmer soldiers as well as officers might carry a lance; or a bow, with the arrows being held in a quiver; or sabres of different length; or various sizes of knives and daggers; or a kind of halberd known as a phka’h. The latter was basically an iron axe mounted on a long handle curved at one end. At Angkor Wat, the phka’k is held in the hands of high-ranking warriors mounted on elephants or horses; it is still in use in the twentieth century for hunting or work in the forest. Crossbows were known, but are extremely rare in the reliefs.’ [1] ’Others, equally rare, carry an arbalest. This weapon (Fig 12.5), very poorly reproduced, seems to consist of a bow and a grooved guide. G. Groslier suggests it is a wooden trigger holding taught the bowstring; this seems possible but we have found nothing like it.’ [2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 185)
[2]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 23)
Jacq-Hergoualc’h’s in-depth and authoritative analysis of Khmer weaponry includes no mention of compound bows. ’They hold their bows almost vertically, left arm taut, the thumb on the inside of the flexed bow, the end of the arrow being upheld by the hand, with the right hand drawing back the bowstring as far as the chin, and holding the base of the arrow.’ [1]
[1]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 22)
According to Coe (2003), iron was used in weaponry, including knives, spears and arrowheads since Iron Age chiefdoms (c. 500 BC to c. 200-500 CE). ’Iron was used not only for axes (for land clearance) and digging implements, but also for weaponry, principally knives, spears and arrowheads; in fact, weapons are often found in burials’ [1]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 49)
’The ordinary Khmer soldiers as well as officers might carry a lance; or a bow, with the arrows being held in a quiver; or sabres of different length; or various sizes of knives and daggers; or a kind of halberd known as a phka’h. The latter was basically an iron axe mounted on a long handle curved at one end. At Angkor Wat, the phka’k is held in the hands of high-ranking warriors mounted on elephants or horses; it is still in use in the twentieth century for hunting or work in the forest. Crossbows were known, but are extremely rare in the reliefs.’ [1] ’Remaining to be studied is a weapon, the phkn’h, a kind of axe (which in this translation will be termed the Khmer axe) which, like the knives and cutlasses, remains the same in form from generation to generation until the present.’ [2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 185)
[2]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 24)
’The permanent guard maintained at the capital was probably better. Relief sculpture portrays guards wearing helmets wrought with elaborate motifs; door guards wearing helmets wrought with elaborate motifs; door guardians carrying ceremonial weapons, their points protected by covers; sentinels carry lances, swords and shields. Ordinary soldiers carried lances in their right hands and shields in their left. The arsenal included sabres, swords, shields, broadswords, daggers, catapults and other contrivances.’ [1]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.157)
’The ordinary Khmer soldiers as well as officers might carry a lance; or a bow, with the arrows being held in a quiver; or sabres of different length; or various sizes of knives and daggers; or a kind of halberd known as a phka’h. The latter was basically an iron axe mounted on a long handle curved at one end. At Angkor Wat, the phka’k is held in the hands of high-ranking warriors mounted on elephants or horses; it is still in use in the twentieth century for hunting or work in the forest. Crossbows were known, but are extremely rare in the reliefs.’ [1] According to Jacq-Hergoualc’h (2007), ’typical axes, or phka’ks’ were present. [2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 185)
[2]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 14)
’A turbulent three decades followed Ang Chan’s death in 1566, during which one of his successors flirted dangerously with European powers, i.e. allowing Catholic missionaries to preach, and asking the Spaniards in Manila to help him fight his Thai enemies (luckily, this did not happen). Interestingly, this ruler claimed that for the joint operation, he could field 80,000 troops, 10,000 horses, and 12,000 elephants. These figures may have been exaggerated, but even so, it appears that Cambodia was still a power in Southeast Asia.’ [Footnote from page 229]: One late sixteenth century source, Christoval de Jacque states that King Reamea Chung Prei had only 400 war elephants (Groslier 1958:154), a more likely figure.’ [1]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 210)
’A turbulent three decades followed Ang Chan’s death in 1566, during which one of his successors flirted dangerously with European powers, i.e. allowing Catholic missionaries to preach, and asking the Spaniards in Manila to help him fight his Thai enemies (luckily, this did not happen). Interestingly, this ruler claimed that for the joint operation, he could field 80,000 troops, 10,000 horses, and 12,000 elephants. These figures may have been exaggerated, but even so, it appears that Cambodia was still a power in Southeast Asia.’ [Footnote from page 229]: One late sixteenth century source, Christoval de Jacque states that King Reamea Chung Prei had only 400 war elephants (Groslier 1958:154), a more likely figure.’ [1] ’Military campaings were probably conducted in the Post-Classic period as they had been during the Classic Era, but on a lesser scale: it is doubtful if any king of Lovek or Udong could muster the armies that were fielded by rulers like Suryavarman II. There was no standing army - in times of war, the patron was expected to muster a force of his clients, and place himself or an officer designated by the king at the head. The arms that they bore were substantially like those wielded by Classic warriors, with the addition of firearms and canon (after 1600). Again the principle of five ruled, as there were five corps: the vanguard, the rear guard, the right flank, the left flank, and the central corps or main body of the army, where the king kept himself with his war elephants. These animals were strengthened magically from time to time by bring sprayed with water mixed with human bile (or so say our sources); magical ideas also led the warriors to cover themselves with protective amulets. The king would be surrounded by Brahmins who conducted ritual ablutions, and by soothsayers who were consulted on the placement of military camps and for auspicious days for military operations.’ [2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, p. 210)
[2]: (Coe 2003, p. 219)
Dogs are not held in high esteem and fighting with them would be disgraceful. Jacq-Hergoualc’h’ (2007) exhaustive discussion of the military structure and weaponry of the Khmers makes no mention of the use of camels, dogs, or donkeys. [1] ’Only dogs are forbidden entry through the gates [of Angkor Thom]. ’The wall is a very regular square, and on each side is a stone tower. Criminals who have had their toes cut are also forbidden entry.’ [2]
[1]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007)
[2]: (Zhou and Smithies 2001, p. 19)
’For personal defence, there were two kinds of shields: round ones ornamented with vegetal or flower motifs, and long ones ornamented on the top border. The latter could be grouped together to form a kind of rampart. Both were probably of wood and hide, with metal plaques. Although most warriors wore only a kind of short-sleeved jacket (sometimes resembling the quilted ’armour’ in use in Mesoamerica), many were protected by a cylindrical cuirass, often with one or two knives lashed over it for close combat.’ [1] ’The warrior could always extend his buckler with an addition (Fig 8.3) which might have been made of finely-woven rattan, as is clearly seen in type 10.’ [2]
[1]: (Coe 2003, pp. 185-186)
[2]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h 2007, p. 17)
’The permanent guard maintained at the capital was probably better. Relief sculpture portrays guards wearing helmets wrought with elaborate motifs; door guards wearing helmets wrought with elaborate motifs; door guardians carrying ceremonial weapons, their points protected by covers; sentinels carry lances, swords and shields. Ordinary soldiers carried lances in their right hands and shields in their left. The arsenal included sabres, swords, shields, broadswords, daggers, catapults and other contrivances.’ [1] ’For personal defence, there were two kinds of shields: round ones ornamented with vegetal or flower motifs, and long ones ornamented on the top border. The latter could be grouped together to form a kind of rampart. Both were probably of wood and hide, with metal plaques. Although most warriors wore only a kind of short-sleeved jacket (sometimes resembling the quilted ’armour’ in use in Mesoamerica), many were protected by a cylindrical cuirass, often with one or two knives lashed over it for close combat.’ [2] ’This includes a ballista, mounted either on elephant back or on a wheeled vehicle that could be rolled onto the field of battle; it consisted of two opposed bows, worked by two men, and shot arrows with tremendous force. Michel Jacq-Hergoulac’h, the leading authority on Khmer warfare, believes it may have been of Chinese origin. Shield ’ramparts’ mounted on wheels are another innovation of Kayavarman’s VII’s reign.’ [3]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.157)
[2]: (Coe 2003, pp. 185-186)
[3]: (Coe 2003, p. 186)
Jacq-Hergoualc’h’s (2007) in-depth and exhausting examination of Khmer armor discusses breastplates, rattan, resin-coated rattan, and thickly-braided cotton protective wear, but makes no mention of scaled armour, laminar armour, or plate armour. [1]
[1]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, Chapter 2)
Jacq-Hergoualc’h’s (2007) in-depth and exhausting examination of Khmer armor discusses breastplates, rattan, resin-coated rattan, and thickly-braided cotton protective wear, but makes no mention of scaled armour, laminar armour, or plate armour. [1]
[1]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, Chapter 2)
’From all this, we can bear in mind that Khmer breastplates, as we have described them, possibly used the materials cited by Bezacier: buffalo skins, tree bark, and bronze, even if this metal was replaced with iron at the period we are discussing, if indeed metal was used in making this armour. This was the case of the king, if we can believe Zhou Daguan, who in the thirteenth century AD indicates that the sovereign "had his body class in iron, so that even knives and arrows, striking his body, could not harm him".’ [1]
[1]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, pp. 20-21)
Jacq-Hergoualc’h’s (2007) in-depth and exhausting examination of Khmer armor discusses breastplates, rattan, resin-coated rattan, and thickly-braided cotton protective wear, but makes no mention of scaled armour, laminar armour, or plate armour. [1]
[1]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, Chapter 2)
’The permanent guard maintained at the capital was probably better. Relief sculpture portrays guards wearing helmets wrought with elaborate motifs; door guards wearing helmets wrought with elaborate motifs; door guardians carrying ceremonial weapons, their points protected by covers; sentinels carry lances, swords and shields. Ordinary soldiers carried lances in their right hands and shields in their left. The arsenal included sabres, swords, shields, broadswords, daggers, catapults and other contrivances.’ [1] ’The warriors are nearly always bear-headed. In the outer gallery at the Bayon there is one example in a poor condition of a dealers (Fig. 58E). [...] The head and nape of the neck seem to be covered by a kind of helmet with three protuberances: the central one is highest, and all three are embossed with regular concentric circles.’ [2]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.157)
[2]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 74)
As we have seen, Indravarman married the daughter of Jayavarman VIII, forced the abdication of that monarch, disposed of the legitimate claimant and began to reign himself, at the end of 1295 or early in 1296. Chou Ta-kuan speaks of him as a soldier and a vigorous young ruler. The only inscription of his reign which gives much information about him speaks as if he reorganized a disunited country. It contains a panegyric in which he congratulates his subjects on replacing an old king by a young one: "If the land, sustained by an ancient king, experienced ordinarily the inconveniences of a superabundance of enemies, now, guarded by a young king, it does not experience the least inconvenience" (392, st. 12). This new king, covered with mail, ventured on the streets, which the old king had not dared to do. Chou Ta-kuan says that, during the year he spent at Angkor, he saw the king set out from the palace four or five times.’ [1]
[1]: (Briggs 1951, p. 251)
’For personal defence, there were two kinds of shields: round ones ornamented with vegetal or flower motifs, and long ones ornamented on the top border. The latter could be grouped together to form a kind of rampart. Both were probably of wood and hide, with metal plaques. Although most warriors wore only a kind of short=sleeved jacket (sometimes resembling the quilted ’armour’ in use in Mesoamerica), many were protected by a cylindrical cuirass, often with one or two knives lashed over it for close combat.’ [1] ’But before we do this, to avoid repetition, we shall consider what was the technological level of this army, that is, what were the weapons it used, for, of course, contrary to what Zhou Daguan affirms, namely that the use of bows, arrows, ballistae, and breastplates was unknown to the Khmer army, it did in fact have these arms.’ [2] ’At Angkor Wat, breastplates were mostly worn by soldiers of higher rank riding elephants and horses rather than by foot soldiers. The breastplates have a special wrap-around form which encloses the chest, leaving the arms and neck free.’ [3] ’Some soldiers also wore a sort of breast plate in two pieces bound togather across the chest with twine. Their use seems to have been discontinued dueing the reign of Jayavarman VII.’ [4]
[1]: (Coe 2003, pp. 185-186)
[2]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 13)
[3]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 18)
[4]: (Jacques and Lafond 2007, p. 34)
’The Khmer sources for this Cham victory refer to a surprise naval attack, sending a fleet up the Tonle Sap to the Great Lake. This illustrates the importance of shipping, for naval warfare as well as commerce; the Khmers, long accustomed to navigation on the Lake and the great waterways that seamed their territory, were not backward when it came to war at sea, and in the twelfth-century war against the Vietnamese it was claimed that they sent a fleet of 700 vessels round the coast.’ [1] ’Elsewhere we see a land battle (with the Cham enemies wearing their characteristic head-dress with floral crests), and a naval battle, in which fierce-prosed longboats are crowded by standing warriors who wield spears above their heads, while shoals of fish below them suggest the otherwise invisible water.’ [2] ’Great naval battles with the Cham appear on the Bayon and at Banteay Chhmar, both sides employing essentially identical ships embellished with garudas on the prow and nagas on the stern. Each vessel had 20 to 42 rowers plus a steersman, and must have been enormous. The bloody engagements on the waters of the Great Lake included the use of grappling hooks.’ [3] ’The representation of naval craft used in war, on their own or taking part in a battle, is found twice in the Khmer bas-reliefs we are studying: once at Bayon on the end wall of the other gallery, S side, E wing (Fig. 111), a scene whose portrayals or naval vessels can be linked to those in the same wing but farther west (Fig. 110), and the on some panels on the south-east corner of the same gallery. The other is found at Banteay Chmar where another naval battle fills a panel on the outer east gallery, south wing (Fig. 112).’, [4] ’According to Maspero (2002[1928]: 75; see also Cœdès 1968[1964]: 159-160), Sūryavarman had his own fleet which might not have been confined to the Mekong and other river systems, since later Vietnam sources report Khmer attacks in 1128 by over 700 ships to loot the coasts of Thanh-hoa. In 1147, the Chinese resumed diplomatic relations with the Khmer by honouring the (Chenla) king, and negotiated a commercial agreement (Cœdès 1968[1964]: 162; Briggs 1999[1951]: 189).’ [5]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.157)
[2]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.127).
[3]: (Coe 2003, p. 187)
[4]: (Jacq-Hergoualc’h and Smithies 2007, p. 127)
[5]: (Lustig 2009, p. 101)
’The Khmer sources for this Cham victory refer to a surprise naval attack, sending a fleet up the Tonle Sap to the Great Lake. This illustrates the importance of shipping, for naval warfare as well as commerce; the Khmers, long accustomed to navigation on the Lake and the great waterways that seamed their territory, were not backward when it came to war at sea, and in the twelfth-century war against the Vietnamese it was claimed that they sent a fleet of 700 vessels round the coast.’ [1]
[1]: (Mabbett and Chandler 1995, p.157)