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Cambodia History
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Angkor history, Angkor Wat Cambodia, Asia history, Asian history, brief history
of Cambodia, Buddhism history, Buddhist history, Cambodia apsara, Cambodia Asian
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If one is to believe the legend, the
ancient dynasties of the Khmer empire were derived from the
union of a Hindu prince,
Preah Thong - who had been banished
from Delhi by his father - with a “female serpent-woman”, the
daughter of the Nagaraja, who was sovereign of the land. She
appeared to him in radiant beauty, frolicking on a sand bank
where he had come to make camp for the night. He took her
as his wife, and the Nagaraja, draining the land by drinking the water
that covered it, gave him the new country, called it Kambuja and built
him a capital.
A variation, revealed on an inscription at Mison in
Champa (mid Vietnam) and reproduced in various descriptions of Cambodia,
substitutes for the prince the Brahman Kaundinya, who “married the nagi
Soma to accomplish the rites” and, throwing the magic lance with which
he was armed, founded at the point of its landing the royal city where
Somavamsa, the race of the moon, would rule.
Another popular tradition, though less
widespread, gives as the origin the coupling of the maharashi Kambu and
the apsara Mera, whose union is symbolic of that between the two great
races, solar (Suryavamsa) and lunar (Somavamsa). This survives
particularly in the word Kambuja - son of Kambu - from where derives the
name “Cambodian” by which we now call the present descendants of the
ancient Khmer.
Whichever version one takes, the mythical implication is undeniable and
the truth remains - that the Khmer people are born of a joining of two
distinct elements; Indian and native. They are not, as some would
believe, just people of purely Indian or Hindu origin who had come,
following migration, to settle in a region devoid of any inhabitants, or
where the indigenous race had been eliminated by mass deportation. |
Established since prehistoric times in the lower Mekong valley of the
southern Indo-Chinese peninsula
that included not only present day
Cambodia but also Cochinchina and parts of Siam and Laos, hey were in
fact a mixture - from an ethnological rather than a linguistic point of
view - of people from lower Burma and various barbarous people from the
annamitic chain, themselves in turn quite probably deriving from Negroid
and Indonesian roots. The Indian contribution apparently resulted from a
natural expansion
towards the east for commercial, civil and religious reasons rather than
for any brutal political motivation.
Moreover, with the fall of the
Khmer empire
- that so captures the imagination in the extent and apparently abrupt
timing of its destruction - came perhaps a total decline and abandonment
of the capital, but, mysteriously, not the entire extinction of the
race. With a little help from France and a clear understanding of the
glory of their past, these people soon regained an awareness of their
value and began to rise again, having never
ceased to exist. Having retained their fundamental characteristics -
their
traditions, their religion and their language - their artistic talents
need only the
opportunity to revive.
Some physical catastrophe, earthquake,
flood, or a drying up of the
country’s economy has been suggested, and though it is difficult to
accept
that an earthquake could leave so many stone structures standing, there
are however indications, such as the filling of the enormous basins and low areasof Angkor Thom and its suburbs, that render the suggestion of an
overflow of
the Great Lake or the rupture of some dike plausible - and it is common
that
such disasters usually result in epidemic and devastation. Likewise, the
collapse of a perfected hydraulic system that gave life and fertility to
the
region could have quickly transformed to inhospitable areas of land that
had
until then been populated and plentiful.
But human causes suffice. Although only five
centuries separate us
from the date of
Angkor’s abandonment as capital, it should not be
forgotten
that a hard and far less glorious time followed the four century period
- from
the 9th to the 13th - of her splendour. Already exhausted by builder
kings
seeking to ensure their posthumous glory, the Khmer people could no
longer
offer resistance to a series of bloody wars followed no doubt by the
systematic transfer of the population to slavery. Ruin came, but not
total
extinction.
Cambodia and the Cambodians
The geographical framework of the ancient Khmer empire is reflectedin that of its monuments. Although these are found grouped in a
particularly
dense manner in the
Angkorian region to the north of the Great Lake, one
can
however include in totality more than a thousand remains scattered over
the
whole of the area between the gulf of Siam and Vientiane on the one side
and
between the Mekong delta and the valley of Menam on the other - that is
to
say in Cambodia itself, the major part of Cochinchina, lower and middle
Laos,
eastern
Siam and a part of the Menam valley. The changes that occurred
over the centuries came not from any lack of unity in the population,
but rather
from a contrast of a physical nature between the dry regions to the
north of
the chain of the Dangrek mountains and the fertile plains to the south.
Present day Cambodia
is found bordered by the Gulf of Siam to the
south-west, Laos to the north and Vietnam to the east and south-east.
Its
main artery is the Mekong valley, which crosses from north to south.
This is
joined at Phnom Penh by the Tonle Sap, spreading to the north-west in a
large plain of water that extends for some 140 kilometres by 30 and
irrigatesthe surrounding plains.
The Tonle Sap - once a maritime gulf that
now forms a lake
- has the
peculiarity that each rainy season, from May to October, its waters are
no
longer able to flow into the flooding Mekong and become choked, rising
by
ten metres and so forming a huge regulatory basin, whose surface area
triples that of the dry season. Large water festivals with canoe races
during
November’s full moon mark the end of this period, and the King, in a
symbolic
ritual, presides over the reversing of the current.
Each annual deluge sees the
Tonle Sap rise still further, completely
flooding the forested zones that border its banks and ensuring a
particularly
abundant source of nourishment to its fish - so making it the richest
fish pond
in the world.
Cambodia lies between 10 and 14 degrees latitude north, and the
climate nears the equatorial with an almost constant temperature. The
contrast between the dry season and the season of the heavy rains is,
however, quite marked, and although the average temperature of the year
is 28 degrees, the nights of December and January - that are
particularly fresh
- see the temperature fall to around 20 degrees, while the months of
April and
May are distinguished by a torrid heat reaching 35 degrees in an
atmosphere
charged with storms which never break.
Although affected by the monsoons, the country is protected from the
coast by chains of mountains ranging from 1000 to 1500 metres in height
-
notably the Elephant mountains, where the
Bokor altitude station is
located -
giving it a less humid and unhealthy climate than Cochinchina. Here the
skies
are often quite fresh and clear - and extremely favourable to moonlit
nights.
With its eight million inhabitants for an area of 180,000 square
kilometres, Cambodia is an under-developed country with little
cultivation.
Thin agricultural resources are complemented with fishing, a little
rearing of
cattle and some forestry, while a large part of its area is mostly
covered with
unbroken forest and bush, and remains deserted.
Rice and fish are the staple diet, and the harvest is regulated by the
rhythm of the rains and floods. Fish are plentiful - even in the paddy
fields
where they hibernate in the underground mud during the dry months to
reemerge
with the first rains. On the Tonle Sap, during the dry season, entire
villages are established on the open lake - their belongings suspended
from
poles with the racks of drying fish.
The rural Cambodian lives a rudimentary existence,
by the water if
possible, in straw huts or in wooden houses raised from the ground on
posts
of two metres in height. He is sheltered from the animals and the floods
and
keeps his meagre livestock under his home. With just enough work to be
able
to pay his taxes and support his family he lives preferably in the
middle of his
small-holding, and, without much of a taste for business, is content to
let the
Chinese or Vietnamese deal with the surplus produce from his paddy or
sugar
palm, pigs, chickens or the fruits of his garden.
The extensive crossbreeding over the centuries - the happiest ofwhich has resulted, particularly in urban areas, from a mixing with the
Chinese - does not appear to have fundamentally changed the nature of
the
people. Cambodians are broad and muscular (standing on average 1m.65),
are brachycephalic and generally dark in colour. The nose is broad, the
lips
are thick and the eyes straight and narrow. The hair is worn short, even
by
the women. When they feel that one shows them some interest, they are
hospitable and sweet natured.
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Sensitive and religious, the family centres its life on the pagoda,
where
the male youth is obliged to spend some of his time. Generous towards
their
priests - the innumerable monks whose bright orange robes animate the
landscape and to whom subsistence is readily assured - they take every
opportunity to venerate
Buddhism and gain merit, marking the year with
numerous festivals to satisfy a distinct taste for leisure.
The national religion is Buddhism of the Small Vehicle, or Theravada,
of the Pali language - which is also practiced in Ceylon,
Burma,
Thailand and
Laos.The
monastic life here plays the principal
role and the popular faith,
while rudimentary and sometimes tinted with remains of ancient
superstition,
is based on the transmigration of the soul and the search for personal
salvation through work during the course of an existence in which each
action
is accounted for in the regulation of the future. After death the body
is carried
to the pyre, and the cremation ends with either the deposit of the ashes
in a
small funerary monument (Cedei) or their scattering on sacred ground. |
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