ESSAY | A Brief Portrait of Khmer
This is a brief portrait of Khmer culture that I wrote for school a few years ago. It’s definitely not perfect, but I hope it acts as a good intro to many of Cambodia’s cultural elements and prompts further research.
This is the Region, this the Soil, the Clime
Geographically, Cambodia is a shallow basin that collects water swept forth from Monsoons, a great wind that visits Southeast Asia to dispel the dry season. The water muddies the land and runs in torrents down the mountains into the rivers and their tributaries, and from this mud a humble grain sprouts- rice.
The people of this land learned to cultivate rice, speaking to each other in a less familiar version of Khmer to irrigate rice patties and drain excess water. This is how the vast majority of Khmer people lived. With their feet sinking into wet earth, planting seeds precisely. Sometimes fishing in clothes designed to shed their humid heat. Returning to homes raised off the ground and balanced on stilts for when the Monsoon rains flood the region.
They prayed to their neak ta, ancestral spirits that inhabit the stones and the plants and all the other nooks and crannies of the world. They represented many of the dichotomies easily observable in reality. Masculine mountain spirits opposed feminine valley spirits, the earth which brings forth life represented death and the moon and sun war daily for control of the day.
This historical inference wasn’t derived from written text for they had none, but rather humble artifacts excavated from the land. Through observation, historical research and listening closely to the stories these relics told, archaeologists could look beyond the death in a cemetery and see less obvious truths, such as the fact that men and women were given the same burial rites suggesting a shared social status. Rice baked in an ancient clay pot implied a propensity for agriculture. Bones of oxen and pigs suggested a propensity for animal husbandry. It wasn’t until the Chinese and Indians came that anyone would write about the Khmer as they lived.
The Indian Influence and Integration
At this time, India and China were actively looking for alternative routes for more secure and expedient trade. Merchants sailed hugging the coast of Southeast Asia searching for each other and happened upon other peoples in other lands in between. There are not many documents surviving that detail these interactions. Anything written upon perishable parchments would have been susceptible to the destructive qualities of the Cambodian clime, the moisture and the air.
The Indians who had come to trade, rest and spread religion also brought many of these technologies aforementioned. Sanskrit was brought in the form of literature and accounting. The Khmer learned to map the stars using Indian astronomy and science that had a highly mystic quality. And the Brahmin priests brought gods, a creator, a preserver and a destroyer.
Vishnu in particular resonated with the people for he represented the mountain’s power paralleling their reverence of mountains. These complementary ideas and concepts would become assimilated in the animistic culture and lead to the people developing social and architectural structures with greater religiously inspired ambition.
The Lotus with No Stem
After an eight-hundred-year period of the Khmer people trading with foreigners and incubating the influences they brought, the Khmer became threatened by an increasingly powerful maritime force from Java. One of their tactics was to send an emissary to undermine the Khmer. This person would later be known as Jayavarman II. And instead of further serving Java, he instead allied himself with the Khmer. But what makes him particularly important is what the Brahmin priests decided to do with him. After centuries of exposure to Hindu concepts, the Khmer saw the priests ceremonially declare this outsider deva raja, God king. And this is why he has been referred to as the lotus with no stem. Because he came out of seemingly nowhere to sit on top of a mountain as an incarnation of Vishnu. A Javanese man elevated by Indian priests and acknowledged by the indigenous people as not only their leader but an avatar of a god.
Jayavarman II, with his new authority and knowledge of the Javanese, mobilized a massive relocation of the city and its people north, away from the coast and towards the mountain. This would mean that the people would have to redefine their economy, adapt to a new territory and expand their power and influence so that they may be ready for attack. And this is exactly what they did.
The Lake Swells and Rises
The Khmer economy had largely been mercantile, but the move inland cut them off from those ideal coastal ports. Instead they doubled down on agriculture, rice cultivation, irrigation and fishing and this boom in food would lead to a boom in population. Jayavarman II could raise a standing army and expand their sphere of influence expanding the developing empire and ensuring their security from foreign threats.
In Angkor City, the new capital of the Khmer, gigantic markets bustled with thousands of people, canals carried unwieldy supplies and materials, and building were being made out of durable stone instead of wood. And there was a religious fervor that informed the average citizen’s life. A fervor that is absent in many of today’s society, but in this place in time, it fueled the soul and encouraged growth.
During the wet season the river reverses and overflows the lake so that it sometimes covers a seventh of the land in Cambodia, and the nutritious slew creates an explosion of fish that provided protein to the average diet. The excess water could then be irrigated into reservoirs in anticipation of the dry season. The people, like the lake, swelled with life.
The Cosmos Mapped and Built
Jayavarman II eventually passed and other kings would come to take his place. The most influential in terms of growing the empire’s wealth and sophistication though was Suryavarman II. Under him, one of the greatest religious monuments was built to represent the Hindu cosmos, Angkor Wat.
The building has five main towering structures symbolizing mountains. The middle is the largest, twice the height of the Tower of London, and it’s flanked at its four corners by the other tower buildings. The east and west sides of the temple host two enormous reservoirs representing the cosmic ocean. The Wat hosts several galleries, the third gallery telling the stories of the Hindu gods and Suryavarman II himself.
The Third Gallery’s story is told in eight panels and must be read and experienced in a specific way because of the designer’s use of direction, polarity, numerology and the way that sunlight interacts with the story telling at different times of the year. A visitor is supposed to enter the gallery through the west gate and circumambulate the gallery counterclockwise to mimic the apparent motion of the sun. You begin seeing Battle of Kuruksetva derived from the Mahabharata and then begin to be exposed to events in Suryavarman’s life and what this does is create a direct parallel between the life of Suryvarman and the lives of the gods. The entire building is a piece of rhetoric legitimizing the kings power inspiring submission and reverence. The workers who slaved over the details and brutish logistics weren’t coerced but rather believed they were serving the gods. And if there were any other leaders vying for Suryavarman II’s power but the power of the nation, but like the Tonle Sap during the dry season, the lake will eventually drain.
Jayavarman VII was the last king of the Angkor period. During this time Buddhism had become a more dominant religious influence replacing the warrior culture that Hinduism propagated. Some point to this being the root of Angkor’s downfall. That in adopting Buddhism, the people became less prone toward violence and honing power making them particularly vulnerable when the Thai of Siam would eventually attack from the North. Other’s point to a reduction in rice production due to drought. Or perhaps silt build up interrupted water flow of the reservoirs stagnating the water where Malaria carrying mosquitos would breed. Whatever the root, Angkor was sacked, the empire crippled and the people fell under the rule of the new regional superpower, Siam.
Even Mountains Perish
Siam took the mountain from the Khmer who had no standing army, a crumbling infrastructure and Hindu gods that no longer seemed to favor them. The people fled their mountain stronghold into the Mekong valley until it flooded during the rainy season. Again the Khmer would escape further from these external forces. Further more, back South toward the coast, to Phnom Penh- the place they previously fled to escape the Javanese. Like Sisyphus's stone, the Khmer had rolled down to their original position.
Cambodia was split for the daws to peck at day in and day out. For four centuries and more, the kingdom was ruled by a King in the North and an Emperor to the East. Vietnam imposed its language, dress and culture onto the Khmer. And as time churned, the mountain crumbled. Everything that made Angkor brilliant seemed to slip into darkness.
Time to Recline
Of course, the Khmer are a persistent people. They survived. Though ages of war and struggle against violently vying neighbors damaged their cultural memory. They forgot Sanskrit, losing those imported literary compositions. They forgot the deva-rajas, no longer worshipping the Hindu gods. And even though Angkor Wat was still a site for pilgrimage, the pilgrims had forgot that they had built it.
In this void, another Indian innovation would manifest. Buddhism would capture the hearts and minds of the Khmer, and during this cultural recession, a time of great loss and a decrease in cultural production, it makes sense that the Khmer took this time of respite to renounce worldly things. Theravada Buddhism is an exercise in humility.
One of the notable paradigm shifts that this sect of Buddhism implied was that religion was more accessible to the populace rather than exclusive to the elite. One didn't have to climb a mountain to feel close to the spirits, because the Buddha is an earthly icon.
From Stone to Wood, From Gold to Dirt
It is popularly thought by some scholars that the Khmer slipped into darkness and stagnated for four hundred years. This would be a fallacy.
The war disoriented and distracted the Khmer from producing, but a lack of lasting images could equally indicate that the Khmer had embraced the Buddhist belief in impermanence. Rather than carve their image into the sides of mountains in pursuit of a sort of immortality, vihāras were raised on the foundation of Bhraman's sanctuaries. Like the longhouses the Iroquois of north America built, these wooden structures were made to be large and accommodating for a crowd. Though both structures were designed well and stably, neither were meant to resist time in the way modern concrete buildings are designed to. The longhouse and vihāra follow the grain of time to their respective ends.
The Monsoon climate isn't exactly preserving in its nature either. It is not like the dry arid Egyptian climate that grants Pharaohs and papyrus perpetuity. The humidity eats at animal skin documents, saturates deep into wood and can literally dissolve anything organic given the correct exposure. Water is a universal solvent.
Be like Water
Water is fluid and adaptable. To survive, the Khmer, and many of the existing culture today had to emulate these properties. Waves of Indianization had up until this point washed over the Khmer soaking them in the Hindu Cosmos. But after reaching a boiling point under the pressure of the Thai and Vietnamese, Buddhism mingled in the stew and became the dominant flavor.
Buddha was carved into the steps of a shrine previously dedicated to Shiva. Vihāras were erected east of the ancient sanctuaries and the stories of the Jataka Tales were painted depicting the life of the Buddha. Even the Hindu characters of the Ramayana shape-shift into a Buddhist cast in the Reamker. Buddhism informed the public mind and even lead to novel works. Tum Teav, Cambodia's equivalent to Romeo and Juliet told the tale of two star-crossed lovers torn between love and duty. A tale unique in form and content.
The royal family shared a similar fate. But instead of love and duty, the contemporary ruling class was torn between a crocodile and a tiger. While the culture as a whole may have been gradually adapting, the contemporary ruling class had to deal with the political reality of allying themselves between the Thai and the Vietnamese, deepening the fissure.
But then Ang Duong's reached out to the French through their explorers , enticing their curiosity and appealing to their greed so that the more powerful Western country might invest in protecting the distant Eastern country. Yet again the tides shifted and a new player enters the stage.
Explore! The Quest From the West
At the time Angkor Wat was being built, Paris was but a town in the mud. One might hope that the Khmer would send explorers to enlighten the barbarians and their crude ways. However, by the nineteenth century this dynamic had reversed. The Khmer were being torn by surrounding predators and lost much of their knowledge and sciences. Time and progress stood still and almost reversed. Meanwhile in Europe, industrialization quickly raised the European nations from the ground and equipped them with new technologies. Looking for wealth, glory and answers, explorers would come back and tell their fantastic tales to people who knew no other world but that of their country.
The French explorer Henri Mohout came with tales of a place called Cambodia. In 1859, while wandering around the jungles, he happened upon some kind of magnificent temple structure. He presented drawings, and while elegant in form, they did not convey their enormity. When he asked some of the locals who had built these struggles, they replied that it was the gods who had built them. Artifacts were arduously brought down the Mekong river so that they may be presented to the European continent. There they would be placed in European museums to pique the interest of the multitudes and the influential. Coupled with a suspicion that there lay a great mineral wealth and a new route to China, France sent teams to survey and colonize the vulnerable land.
Under the French Wing
In 1867, King Norodom successfully requested the French to become a protectorate of Cambodia to alleviate the Thai and Vietnamese pressures. In 1907, the Thai gave back the Mekong Delta and Siem Reap where the Angkor Wat was located. The French even started using Angkor Wat as a symbol for their own uses.
The French created boundaries that marked where Cambodia began and ended. They built roads and established institutions. In 1900 the École Française d'Extreme-Orient was established and acted as a center of knowledge of Asian affairs for France's understanding. In 1927, the magazine Kambujsurya came out sometimes featuring Cambodian writers.
The French did not impose Christianity on the people, nor did the Khmer actively seek to incorporate the Abrahamic religion. It did not complement their core beliefs. It was not like when the Khmer adopted Hinduism and Buddhism. Shiva sat neatly on top of the spirit mound and transformed gracefully into the Buddha. The form of Jesus that the French brought with them did not acknowledge the spirit house. And he did not see eye to eye with the Buddha.
That being said, the Khmer were allowed to practice Buddhism and keep their language.
This French permission wasn’t born out of respect for the culture though. In a sense, it was more a decision of prioritization. The effort it would take to convert a nation is expensive, and France’s main concerns in Southeast Asia was Vietnam. The French saw the Annamite people as being more advanced and susceptible to their mission civilisatrice, their civilizing mission. This would allow the Khmer to form a greater sense of self.
Sihanouk
Norodom Sihanouk was supposed to be a solution for the French forces. He was supposed to be a subservient alternative to his rebellious uncle, a puppet with no real responsibility, distracted by luxury. How were the French to know that this saxophone player was going to go free form and reshape Cambodia into a Sovereign state capable of entering the global stage independently. The French mistook Sihanouk's affinity of Western culture as an exploitable weakness, but like the Khmer who adopted the Hindu and Buddhist culture, Sihanouk assimilated Western thought into the melting pot of thought.
After disassembling the Cambodian parliament, campaigning in France and self-imposing himself into exile, Sihanouk was able to negotiate independence as France was distracted by the deteriorating military situating in Indochina. He then rigged the 1955 parliamentary election and became the country's uncontested hero leader.
Sihanouk was a hybrid. Buddha-raja meets Western statesman. He had architects like Vann Molyvann carve new structures across Cambodia and connected them with roads and bridges. But while he modeled the infrastructure to be Western in it's technology and industrialization, he also retained and promoted Khmer culture by promoting the creation of Aspara Dance Troupes who could choreograph the ancient dances, even having his own daughter lead a troupe. A literary canon was developed that Cambodian writers could aspire to grow, and historic heroes and symbols were chosen following the French example. He saw himself as the embodiment of Cambodia and whether driven by narcissism or a desire to represent Cambodia cinematically to the world, Sihanouk and his friends made many movies in which they also starred. The mercurial king sought identity.
Neutral Not Stable
Even with all of these domestic undergoings, Sihanouk was able to address foreign policy as well. At this time the Cold War was pitting Capitalism against Communism and countries anxious about “the domino effect” were picking one of the major power blocs to side with. Following the trend of the Non-Aligned movement, Sihanouk chose neither and entered the country into a state of neutrality. Cambodia had just recovered from centuries of foreign invasion and sought no role in another country's proxy war. He wanted the country to heal. The neutrality also allowed Sihanouk to play the fence and receive financial support from the U.S. who was trying to win them over.
Yes, Sihanouk was able to balance increasing cultural production with international diplomacy, but one of his greater oversights was the degree of corruption that manifested in his own government. Most of the money from the U.S. was diverted into the pockets of generals. And when the money disappeared, so did the loyalty of his public officials.
Coup D'état
While Cambodian youths were listening to rock and roll and playing their own version and learning about their history and place in the world in a way that their ancestors could not have imagined, a coup was being organized by Lon Nol to depose of Sihanouk. The U.S. was aware of this plan and agreed not to interfere. Lon Nol was not only frustrated with the change in economic stability, but also with Cambodia's relationship with communist North Vietnam. At the behest of Prince Sirik Matak, a competitor to the throne, Lon Nol arranged the national assembly to vote Sihanouk out of office withdrawing their confidence in him. With a sudden change in leadership and increasing violence growing in Southeast Asia, Cambodia's bright future darkened into a fog of uncertainty. Who would win out in this civil war? What will happen to the reformed people? When will the fighting stop?
ROUGE
Sihanouk was exiled into the jungle, disgraced. His loyalists who watched his last movies could see how the old king perceived himself. A man wounded by his country, crippled and betrayed. He needed a new force to give him strength and in his desperation he sought out a group he did not truly understand.
Farmers whose homes were destroyed in Nixon's bombings, they now had nothing to fight for but the cause. They wanted to use military force to radically restructure Cambodia into a completely isolated agricultural nation, self-sufficient and without intrusion.
They hated the West. As an abstraction, they were everything wrong with the nation. They didn't just want to find a sense of national identity, like in the independence period. They wanted a sense of national purity. They wanted to burn away everything they saw as a corrupting Western influence. Like a fever frenzied body burning away sickness. And Sihanouk would make excellent kindling for the fire.
Sihanouk endorsed the KR, calling for all Khmer loyal to him to join the resistance movement. While at the same time, the previous alliance between the North Vietnamese backed by the USSR and the KR backed by the Chinese began to fray. Despite sharing communist party labels, the KR were still skeptical of the Vietnamese and were afraid they would proceed in uniting much of Southeast Asia under Vietnamese rule. Alliances shifted and the confusion continued. Phnom Penh lay waiting for the fighting to cease, but peace did not arrive. Only men in black clothes and red checkered scarves.
Angkar
Pol Pot is considered one of the primary architects of the Cambodian genocide, but at the time, it was difficult for the public to identify the KR leadership. The entire Khmer Rouge was shrouded in mystery. They used cryptic words such as Angkar to describe an almost omniscient authority and reduced any sense of individuality. It was unclear what they were capable of.
After deceiving Sihanouk, the Khmer Rouge invaded Phnom Penh and forced everyone to migrate out of the city on a mass exodus. They were directed to agricultural villages where forces would initiate them into their new agrarian lifestyle. Under KR rule, all of Cambodia were now to strive to become the peasant farmer. This was not the same movement towards humility advocated during the Theravada Buddhist phase though. This was not relinquishment of earthly pleasure for greater spiritual knowledge. This was... relinquishment of everything- for a nihilistic nothingness.
It did not matter if the individual understood. They would submit. And if they did not they would be killed. If they spoke anything beside Khmer, they would be killed. If they were suspected of being a Thai or Vietnamese spy, they would be killed. If they were given a Western education, they would be killed. If they worshipped the Buddha, they would be killed. This was not a fever that would restore the country's health. It was an autoimmune disease that would eat itself from the inside out. A hollow mechanistic philosophy devoid of human value. Anti-cultural in nature.
There was no more religion. Angkar is the religion. Language lost its content. Angkar is the word.
Children turned on their parents. Trust only Angkar.
All those who lived in the new villages were quick to learn this. Every hour of their life was managed to fulfill the unrealistic expectations of Angkar. Those in charge demanded that they farm the land and produce three times the amount of rice the land was capable of growing. They had to meet quotas and when the camp officers were unable to meet this absurd standard, they took it out of the workers rations. Middle management rationalized that it's because they weren't working hard enough, while the higher ups feared that espionage from foreign entities was keeping the farms from reaching their idealistic potential.
Between a Crocodile and a Tiger
North Vietnam invaded and found what the Khmer Rouge had done. Cambodia was de- industrialized, another way to say destroyed. They found mass graves filled with rail thin bodies. An elementary school reformed into a mass torture center. Phnom Penh empty.
This year, the Monsoon had flooded the Tonle Sap with blood and the Earth was filled with not rice, but corpses. All the rice had been exported to China for guns. Rice and guns.
The villages were liberated but the people were still prisoners. As the Khmer Rouge scrambled for the Thai border, the people of Cambodia had to make heads or tails of the Vietnamese invaders. Were these liberators or the new tyrants? Hun Sen was the man put in power. But he was part of the Khmer Rouge once. Was he an old threat or a new one. A national leader returned or a Cambodian with a Vietnamese head.
The U.N. had to figure out how to frame this narrative as well. The genocide had stopped, but this move was not sanctioned. Indeed it was performed by the North Vietnamese and the USSR. To endorse them would be acknowledge a communist success. So instead, the Vietnamese were deemed invaders who had deposed al legitimate government. And since the only force strong enough to reclaim Cambodia was the Khmer Rouge, the U.S. would have to indirectly fund and aid the genocidal regime. Even if the U.S. wished to empower Sihanouk afterwards somehow, the old king was locked away and Cambodia's seat at the U.N. was occupied by a Khmer Rouge official.
Survive
At this period in time, there were two forms of expression that circulated among the Khmer people.
Firstly, there was the propaganda published within the country by the DPK, Hun Sen's established political party. There was a day devoted to cultivating the hatred in people's heart towards the Khmer and converting that into loyalty. Books were still published but they were always slanted to romanticize the Vietnamese invasion and express gratitude towards the DPK. When Hun Sen tried Pol Pot in absentia, testimonies were curated by the DPK so that the people might express their genuine horror and pain and anger towards the Khmer Rouge while also ending their sentiments with verbal support of the DPK. The U.S. and the Cambodian government were working very carefully to present this story on the world stage.
Meanwhile, on the border of Thailand, along the mountains and the jungle and the mines, survivors lived in camps, focused on remembering who they were. Many forgot their trade and the arts and the old stories, which is why those who remembered worked dutifully to resurrect the dances. Junk was turned into props and despite the desolated earth, the Asparas still continued to practice consecrating the land so they might revitalize Cambodia's essence. They maintained what essential spirit they could, while leviathans discussed their fate.
The U.N. engaged in a massive effort to create a legitimate government while Hun Sen poised himself to critique the world's reactions and maintain his position. Two billion dollars were spent relocating camp survivors back into Cambodia and to educate them on voting. All of the
Hun Sen was elected and shared power with Sihanouk's son who was no match for the experienced tactician and Hun Sen maintains power to this day. The horrors of Pol Pot were captured by artists such as Vann Nath who lived through the genocide. They were documented by journalists and international inquirers for the world to understand, but there is no way to experience what the Khmer experienced as a culture. There is no way to master the story. No depiction or summary, no matter how poetic, comprehensive or concise can convey the enormity of such a thing. It is impossible, yet we must try.
The knowledge must survive, and it must be told through a multitude of perspectives. It is in this way we can combat that spirit of Angkar that exists within us all that tells us to forget and cultivate the spirit of Angkor Wat that exists within us all that tells us to aspire. For in so many ways, we too are the Khmer. All humans are mercurial, containing the capacity to change, produce wondrous art, and to feel such pain and fear as to inflict it onto others. We are creators, destroyers and preservers. We are the mountain and the valley. The river that swells and rises. We do what we can to preserves ourselves and the things we love and then we recline and pass so others may come, an ever flowing river. And with our stories hopefully the new ones will remember too. For the story of war is an oldie but a goodie. There are many in this world that conspire to tell this story to more and more people, and this story of war is what makes us forget the most. It damages us and usually continues to until we find a way to articulate the hurt. We must communicate this pain with these lessons so that the people who have yet to come may tell a story that is wholly original.
